CHAPTER ELEVEN Maren

I sat up, breathless. In my dream, Sev had seen me—we had spoken, we had touched. And Sev was alive, and at least seemed to be in one piece. That in itself was an enormous relief, but I had heard tension in his voice—seen him hesitate. He’d been holding something back. But what?

The dragon kit chirped beside me, and I looked at her. “How are you doing this, little one?” If she and I were able to maintain this connection, maybe I could have more dreams with Sev. We might be able to coordinate in the future—strategize or—

A door creaked, and I looked around, suddenly aware of the fact that I was sitting on a cot in what appeared to be a barn, and the light outside was bright. Panic flooded my body. I’d lost hours, at the very least—the last thing I remembered was speaking with Glivven, and then collapsing…

Kaia peeked her head around the barn door and, seeing that I was awake, ran to my side. “Maren!”

“Kaia! What happened?”

She sat next to me, taking my hand. “I don’t know what you said to the dragon, but it left. You collapsed coming back over the hill. Some of the villagers carried you here, and you’ve been asleep since last night.”

So I’d only lost one night—that was a relief. “Where are we now? What time is it?” I said.

She waved away the questions. “We can talk about that later. First, tell me. How are you feeling? Are you ill? Injured?”

I paused, taking stock of my body. I felt tired and bruised, but otherwise relatively normal. “I feel fine,” I said. “Hungry.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Kaia said. “Why did you faint? Was it something to do with the dragon?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But, Kaia, I dreamed something important.”

“Dragon dreams?” Kaia grimaced, and I remembered the argument we’d had the last time I’d brought up dragon dreams and what I’d seen in them.

“Yes, but these are different. I saw Sev—he’s alive, and we were able to talk to each other. He’s in the emperor’s palace right now.”

“I see,” Kaia said slowly. She picked at the blanket with one hand, unraveling a loose thread. “And you’re certain that these visions are real?”

“I can’t explain it, but yes,” I said. I glanced away, my cheeks warming as I remembered the way Sev and I had held each other in the dream.

“Then that’s good news,” she said, a little too brightly. “Didn’t you say that you were hungry? Let’s get you some breakfast.”

My stomach grumbled, as though it had been listening for an opportune break in the conversation. But the prospect of food only reminded me that I still didn’t know where we were.

“From where?” I asked. “What happened while I was asleep?”

“We’re in the village. Everyone is alive, and the houses survived, thanks to you. They invited us to take shelter with them. I thought it was prudent, given the circumstances.”

I felt as though she had poured ice water over my head. “But, Kaia—they’re Zefedi.”

“You need to stop saying that like it’s a bad thing,” she retorted. “We saved their village from a rampaging dragon. They wanted to thank us, and what was I supposed to do? Carry you on my back through the wilderness? Not everyone is a spy for the emperor, Maren.”

“But the dragon kit—”

“She will be fine,” Kaia said firmly. “Please, just come meet them. You’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.”

Too hungry and fatigued to argue further, I allowed Kaia to help me up. The dragon kit jumped up to my shoulder, and we all emerged from the barn together.

The morning air was cool, and I crossed my arms, rubbing warmth into them. Kaia led the way around the houses toward the center of the village. I smelled the fire before I saw the communal fire pit and the people standing around it. They were singing as we approached, a Zefedi folk song that bore some resemblance to a Celet melody I’d learned as a child. But when they saw us coming, they quieted, parting to create a path to the center of the crowd.

The attention made me nervous. For so long my survival had depended on my ability to pass unnoticed, to hide in plain sight. Now these people knew what I looked like and what I had done. Any one of them could identify me to the Talons. But their silence as we passed didn’t seem threatening. It felt… reverent.

We went to one of the long tables surrounding the fire pit, and I dropped onto the bench in front of it. The dragon kit jumped down from my shoulder and sat beside me. Someone put a bowl of soup in front of me with a crust of slightly stale bread, and I fell upon it ravenously, all other concerns pushed aside.

The soup was peasant fare but well made and hearty, thick with lentils and carrots and rich in flavor. When I finished the bowl, another was set in front of me, and it was only when I was halfway through that one that I reluctantly looked up.

Our table was surrounded by villagers whose expressions ranged from suspicious to curious to slightly awed, their attention split between me and the dragon kit. I set the crust of bread down slowly. I only had the one knife. What would I do if the crowd decided to turn on us? The dragon kit snatched up the bread, and I put an arm protectively around her.

Kaia, standing next to me, didn’t seem to share my concerns. She smiled genuinely—even eagerly—at our audience. Compared to her I was suddenly very aware of how ill-mannered I must have appeared, to have eaten without speaking to anyone first.

“This is the village of Lynd,” Kaia said in Zefedi. She gestured to a young man standing at her side. “If it’s all right, they have some questions.” She put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing encouragingly.

“Um, I suppose,” I said, most eloquently.

At Kaia’s behest, the young man—a boy, really, a year or two younger than us—circled the table and sat down across from me. He had a pleasant, open face and an easy smile. He looked at Kaia again and then at me.

“Are you a Talon?” he asked. “How did you control that dragon?”

I started to snap out a reply, but then stopped. I should have expected this. These people were far removed from Talons. They were mostly of Celet heritage, not Old Zefedi, and they cared about their village and their family and their well-being. Most of them probably had never seen a dragon up close—their only knowledge of the beasts came from the official stories disseminated by the emperor. Why should it even occur to them to consider that a dragon might fly free, of its own accord?

“I’m not a Talon,” I said. “And I didn’t control the dragon.”

“Then what made it stop the attack?”

There was no getting around this. Talon I might not be, but the fact that I could talk to dragons was special. Besides, there was no hiding who we were. Any of the emperor’s servants would be able to track us just by asking about a girl with a dragon kit. Telling these people who I was—who I really was—would make little difference now.

“I spoke to the dragon, and he agreed to leave the village.”

Shocked gasps spread throughout the crowd. “But how? If you’re not a Talon?”

I set my hands on the table before me, palms down. The dragon kit nudged her nose up under one of my arms. “In truth, I don’t know exactly. But we are from Ilvera. Before the empire of Zefed was founded, we were the dragon riders. I believe that my ability is connected to my heritage.”

The boy held up a hand and called for a drink, then turned back to me. “Tell us,” he said. The air was still, as though every person in the audience was holding their breath. And for the first time, I began to believe that there was something to be gained here, something more than food and shelter for the night. If I could change their understanding, I could weaken the tyrant’s grip on the dragons, and on Zefed.

So I took the wine that was offered to me, and I told them everything. The truth about the dragons’ origin. That the Talons did not have mystical bonds with their beasts—that their control was dependent on the dragons being drugged into a stupor. That the dragons were highly intelligent creatures and didn’t deserve to be captives of the emperor.

I didn’t know if they agreed with me, but they asked questions, here and there. A few of them wanted to touch the dragon kit. The kit humored them easily enough, though she stayed close to my side. And they listened.

Kaia retreated from the circle as the conversation progressed, and I saw her sitting by the fire, speaking with some of the villagers. In between questions I watched her. She smiled and laughed easily, with more light than I had seen from her since I had rescued her from Lumina. It was difficult to describe the uncomfortable swirl of emotions this stirred within me. Relief to see her smiling. Concern, that she interacted so easily with people who could be dangerous to us. And a strange pang of envy, that she was so comfortable in an empire I had only experienced as a fugitive.

Sometime later, I found I was barely able to keep my eyes open. Despite the worthy conversation and the fact that I had slept through the night, I still felt exhausted. “I’m sorry,” I said, interrupting a question about a dragon’s lifespan. “I’m not feeling well—please excuse me.”

The boy—Avery—made sure I had enough blankets and pointed me back in the direction of the barn in which I’d woken. I didn’t even have the energy to look for Kaia—I couldn’t stand to be upright a moment longer.

There was a bucket of clean water in the corner of the barn, and I used it to wash my face and what parts of my body I could manage without taking off my clothing. The dragon kit snuggled into a loose pile of hay, and I flopped down onto the cot beside her. Though my limbs felt as heavy as lead, my mind was racing.

Up until now, I had approached the problem of freeing dragons as though it were as simple as finding the correct key to a door. I had not considered the fact that each of these dragons was as individual as any human. I had gotten lucky, after all, that Glivven had allowed me to converse with him and had gone along with my suggested course of action. What would happen to the rest of the dragons when we freed them? What if they didn’t agree with what I asked of them? I could not seek to assert control over them. That would only lead to disaster. Humans were not meant to control dragons. History had borne that out clearly enough.

And what of the words that Glivven had used to describe the Talons’ bond with the dragons? They had not been in any language I understood, which could only mean that dragons could communicate between themselves without human interference. That wasn’t surprising, considering how intelligent they were. But when they were under the influence of the mirth wood oil, what did that communication consist of? Did dragons who were drugged understand that they were not free? I wished I’d asked Glivven before he left.

At that moment I heard the barn door open and looked up to see Kaia entering.

I turned to face her as she lay down beside me. “Hello,” I whispered.

“Hello to you, too,” she said back, a smile glimmering on her face in the light that shone through the cracks in the barn wall. “Are you all right? Avery said you weren’t well.”

“I’m exhausted—I slept all night, but I still feel as though I could sleep until next week.”

Kaia frowned. “Perhaps freeing the dragon took a toll on your body?” she said uncertainly.

“Maybe…” I reached for her, running my fingertips down her arm. “You saved me yesterday. If you hadn’t gotten the Talon’s sword, that might have been the end.”

“I should have managed to keep it,” she replied. “If she had gained control of the dragon again—”

I shook my head. “Don’t dwell on it. We got away, after all.”

We lay listening to each other’s breathing for a while, and I was grateful to have this moment of stillness.

“What’s next?” Kaia said at last, breaking the silence.

“What do you mean?”

“Are we still in search of the Dragons?”

I opened my eyes wide in an effort to stay awake. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because you just did something monumental. These people will be talking about it for years. You’ve changed their lives in one day.”

“I didn’t do it so that people would talk about it,” I said sharply.

“Right,” Kaia said. “But they will talk about it. Word of what you’ve done will spread. Don’t you think that we should take advantage of it?”

“How?” I couldn’t think of what she might mean and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the eagerness in her voice.

“After you left, the villagers were calling you dragon mistress. There’s power in that. Imagine what we could accomplish if we traveled across the empire. People would listen to you.”

I was already shaking my head. “We can’t do that right now. We need to get to Gedarin as quickly as possible, and that means meeting up with the Dragons.” Besides, we couldn’t rely on a convenient dragon encounter every time we wanted attention from villagers. We had freed one dragon, yes. But could we replicate yesterday’s accomplishment so easily? The dragon kit was very young—it was an enormous responsibility to place on her wings, and I still wasn’t certain the dragonsong would work again. We might simply have been lucky.

“Because of Sev,” Kaia said. She said his name as though it tasted bitter in her mouth.

I frowned. “I owe him everything—I got you back because of his help. I must save him before we do anything else.”

Kaia made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a scoff. “So you’d throw this away? I thought you wanted to make a mark on the world.”

No, that had always been her dream—not mine. And it troubled me that when she thought of freeing the dragons, she thought of making marks. Dragon mistress. The title made my skin crawl. But my head was aching, and tomorrow would come sooner than either of us wanted. “I’m just trying to do what is right,” I said softly. The best that I can do.

Kaia sighed. “Try to sleep. We can’t get anywhere if you’re felled by exhaustion.” The sounds of the day drifted through the air. The fire outside crackled. Slowly my body began to relax. The dragon kit snuffled a little in her sleep. I rolled so that I could put an arm over Kaia’s waist, pulling her toward me. She tucked her head underneath my chin, resting against my chest and hooking a leg over mine. I closed my eyes and sank into the familiar feeling of our bodies fitting together like a matched set. Whatever else was happening, holding Kaia still felt like home.