VALOR LOOKED EVEN MORE MAGNIFICENT NOW THAN WHEN THE drake had been newly commissioned.
While Elara and Aveline had been dealing with international politics, the queen had given the order for Valor to be airlifted from Deadegg and taken to Highfort to be restored. With war looming, and the threat of Iya’s inevitable reaction to his missing dragon eggs, Aveline wanted San Irie to have every tool at their disposal—and it was much faster to fix a drake than it was to build a new one from scratch. The queen had been home longer than Elara had, but this was the first time either had seen the repairs.
All drakes were built to emulate the shape of the Langlish dragons that they fought, but the form that took was typically generic: four legs, a long tail, a triangular head, and a mouth that opened to throw blasts of magic at the enemy. But, as golden as the sun that glinted off the scalestone, Valor had been given the curved horns that some dragons had, an added level of defense for the upcoming battle. Elara thought it looked otherwise unchanged, if perhaps a little smaller, though she wasn’t sure if that was accurate or if her memory had built up the drake to be something it never was. The last time she had been this close to it, she had been hoping to be chosen as a drake pilot. Now, she was watching as yet another hopeful cadet failed to make a connection with Valor.
Beside her, Aveline chewed her bottom lip until it reddened. “I thought we would have found at least one pilot by now.”
In the last week, the queen had readied everything on her end. With or without Valor flight ready, they would be taking the fight to Iya rather than waiting for his next move. Returning the dragon eggs to the divine plane might not have weakened him, but he would no longer have access to those dragons as part of his army. They wouldn’t get a better chance to end this.
But it was clear from Aveline’s fit of nervous energy that she’d expected Valor to be flight ready. Elara didn’t know if their odds were that bad without the drake or if Aveline just needed the illusion of control, but either way she couldn’t relax with so much stress radiating off her monarch.
“It took us months to find three pilots last time,” said Elara. “Expecting to do that in a few days may have been too ambitious.”
“We do not have much choice, Maiden.”
“Are things really that dire?”
“I hope not. But why leave anything up to chance?”
Elara eyed Aveline, taking note of the queen’s exhaustion. Aveline was always tired, but it seemed different somehow. There was a frantic edge to it that pushed it closer to a passive panic. “Is everything all right?”
There was a slight pause. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like if none of this were our problem?”
Elara’s eyebrows furrowed in silent bewilderment.
“If I weren’t the queen and you weren’t the Empyrean. If neither of us was old enough to enlist, even if we wanted to, and all these wars and politics were someone else’s burden to carry. What would that be like?” Aveline’s eyes were on the drake, but she didn’t seem to see it. “Back when I still answered to the name Ava, the revolution was something I heard about in whispers, in the papers. It shaped my life, but it wasn’t my life. Some days, I miss that. There was the uncertainty of if we’d live to see tomorrow, but there was the freedom of endless possibility, too.”
Elara could hardly remember a time before the fight. It had shaped her in too many ways, changed the trajectory of her life so that peacetime seemed like an illusion and battle was the only time she felt real. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked, “What would you do with that freedom now?”
Aveline was quiet for a long time. Her cheeks slowly darkened. She cleared her throat, defaulting to her stilted formality. “I was only reflecting. Such freedoms are not afforded to the queen of San Irie.”
A group of soldiers jogged past them. Aveline’s cheeks flushed even deeper.
“Or,” asked Elara with raised eyebrows, “do you just not want to be overheard?”
“Maiden—”
“Come on. I think that was the last cadet. Let’s see the restoration up close, shall we?”
Before Aveline could protest, Elara grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the drake. No one stopped them as they climbed up the exit ramp and into Valor’s hollow flank. She released Aveline once the floor evened out. There was a cockpit in the head and another one near the tail, but Elara’s eyes were drawn to the dark cockpit in the center of the room. This was where her dreams had died. This was where her friends had died. Swallowing, she took a step toward it but stopped herself before she could go any farther.
Her heart felt as if it were sinking, but she ignored it. This was not about her.
“So,” she said, turning to the queen, “what would you do with that freedom now?”
Aveline was paying a little too much attention to the curved metal walls. Elara waited her out, letting the silence between them grow taut with expectation. The sound of marching soldiers, the clank of still-working drake mechanics, and the low bark of orders from officers swelled to fill that silence, but the air inside the drake grew thick. Finally, Aveline lifted her diadem from her curls, toying with the golden suns that decorated it.
“I suppose I thought by this age I would be… more certain of who I am and what I’m doing. My action and inaction affect so many lives, it’s impossible to ever have that certainty.” She stared down at the diadem, which twinkled in the light that poured in from the drake’s windows. “I thought I’d have a place of my own. A partner. Maybe teach dance to children in Guirland. Stupid, small dreams.”
“That’s not stupid,” Elara said. “I wanted to be a teacher at one point, too.”
Aveline’s grip tightened on the diadem. “Pilar Montserrat and I were once involved.”
Another silence followed. Somewhere outside, the shriek of birdsong proved that life hadn’t stopped, even if Elara’s thoughts had jerked to a halt. Aveline’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard. The silence pressed forward like an unwanted visitor.
“Oh” was all Elara could think to say as several things fell immediately into place.
Aveline’s brief glance was nervous, gone before Elara could fully process it. “It was just… she’s very”—her lips pursed—“persuasive.”
“And—and attractive.”
“And that, yes.”
“So, you”—Elara blinked—“you like women?”
“I like people. It doesn’t matter to me how they present themselves.”
“Ah.”
More silence followed.
Aveline sighed loudly. “Please don’t be awkward about this.”
“I’m not! I’m not. I just didn’t know.” Elara cleared her throat. Maybe it was for the best that she hadn’t known. She had thought her impossible crush impossible not because Aveline was queen but because she had been so certain that Aveline had liked men and only men. Her assumption had been based on the soldiers on whom Aveline’s eyes had lingered, but it had still been just that: an assumption. If she’d known she’d had a chance, no matter how miniscule… “Is… are you and Doña Montserrat still…?”
“Of course not.” Aveline said it so quickly that it had to be a lie. “I admit my self-control is often weaker than my resolve, but it’s… We can’t. I can’t. But there was a time when—when I pieced her into that picture of my alternate future.”
Elara moved closer, slowly, but Aveline didn’t blink, even when Elara was right beside her. Her muscles were tense beneath Elara’s fingers when Elara touched her arm. “What do you mean, you can’t? Being queen doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed a partner.”
“She’s Joyan. Being the queen of San Irie means that I’m not allowed a partner from a country that enslaved us.”
Elara winced, thinking of Signey. “Well, I mean… that happened before we were born, so you can’t really—”
“And a Montserrat, besides? How could I explain to my people giving the Joyan royal family such a foothold on the island? They would depose me immediately.”
Elara’s mouth opened and closed, because there were no words for this situation. The queen was right. Aveline was the ruler of the country. Anyone she chose to stand beside her would be scrutinized even more heavily than she was, and the island-wide protests that had arisen just from the Summit and conference proved she didn’t have the luxury of choice. If she took a Novan woman as her spouse, there would be an immediate revolt, a civil war, leaving them as easy prey for one of the empires to swoop back in.
Tournesola Orianne had used Signey as a weapon to discredit the Maiden Empyrean’s opinion. Their relationship had been used by Desmond Pryor as a reason Elara was unfit to represent San Irie at all. It would be worse for the queen, worse if she married another royal. Elara was only Empyrean until the gods took back her power. Aveline would be queen until she died.
“I’m so sorry,” Elara finally said for lack of something better. Aveline had that look of profound exhaustion again, and it was that more than anything that pushed Elara to continue. “Have you ever considered that maybe Mr. Pryor has a point? An end to the Empyrean, an end to the monarchy?”
“Pardon me?”
“Well, I mean—there are plenty of countries that are doing just fine without a monarchy. I know the Renards were gods-chosen to rule, but just because something has always been doesn’t mean it should always be, right? I’m the last Empyrean anyway, remember? When this is all over, you could put power in the hands of a council of representatives or—”
“You want me,” Aveline said coldly, “to give in to the dissenting minority, destroy my mothers’ legacy, and become the first Renard to abdicate the throne without an heir?”
“I want you to be happy.” Elara wasn’t surprised when Aveline shrugged her hand off her shoulder, but it stung anyway. “You’re an amazing queen, Aveline. You’ve done all that’s been asked of you and more. But this doesn’t have to be your life.”
“One life—my life—is not more important than the rest of the world.”
“That doesn’t mean your life’s not important at all.”
Aveline’s mouth trembled. She sighed, and it was a shaky sound. “I… will take this under advisement. Thank you, Maiden.”
She walked down the exit ramp, a thoughtful look on her face. Elara should have followed her, but instead she looked back at the cockpit. She had wanted to be a drake pilot so badly, in the hope that it would give her some distinction beyond being the Childe Empyrean’s sister. That hadn’t been the first time she’d failed, but it had felt the most significant. Maybe Valor had sensed that her intentions were selfish, and that was why she had been rejected. She would never know. It wasn’t as if drakes could talk.
Elara drifted into the cockpit, which looked identical to the last time she’d seen it. The cushioned chair with the double-strap seat belt and the neck pillow. The flat panel with its dark screen and lack of levers. The whisper of magic that she felt like a physical touch, residue left behind from the drake mechanics who had repaired it. As if in a dream, she sank into the chair, her breathing slow and even.
So much had changed.
Had Wayne or Aisha sat here? Had their hands glowed with astral magic as they directed the drake into the air? Had one of them died right here where she was sitting? Her eyes burned at the thought. A tear ran down her cheek.
Elara placed her hands on the panel, sending a prayer up to Mala. If Wayne and Aisha are with you, keeper of the astrals, please take care of them. And then, as if they could hear her, she added, I miss you both.
She didn’t realize she had closed her eyes until her lids went red with outside light. The panel was now illuminated, a shimmering screen showing the outside of the drake and the wide-eyed soldiers who had gathered around it. Her stomach swooped as Valor levitated only to drop to the ground with a worrying clank. She tumbled atop the panel, scraping her cheek against the edge of it, wishing that she had strapped herself in.
But why would she have? Valor had no pilots. Valor should not have been moving.
Footsteps clattered up the plank. Elara fumbled her way out of the cockpit just in time to see Queen Aveline and several officers staring at her as if she were a wayward astral with no ancestor to claim them.
“Did you just fly this drake?” Aveline asked.
“I…” Elara yawned, struck by a sudden desire to sleep. It warred with the building excitement in her chest, their shock mirroring her own. “I think I did. Did I?”
“You lifted it several inches off the ground. Without any help. How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unable to stop herself from grinning. “Several inches? Are you sure?”
“Is that even possible?”
This question was directed at one of the officers, who stepped forward with a swing of her braided ponytail. “I… can’t say we’ve ever had an Empyrean attempt to fly an unmanned drake, so I wouldn’t have thought so until now. But if she can channel the power of the gods, who’s to say she can’t generate the power of three summoners working in tandem?”
“I wasn’t channeling, though,” said Elara. Despite all the impossible things she’d seen to this point—an Iryan dragon Rider, an ancient god rising from an inter-realm, her own girlfriend having the power to break dragon bonds—it seemed ridiculous that she could still be an impossible thing. She could be lucky, or she could be accidental. But impossible? Her excitement faded. “No, I just touched the panel—”
“And Valor chose you as its pilot, Maiden,” said the officer. “I suppose we can still try to find more—”
“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Aveline pointed out. “If no one else is chosen by the end of the week…” She stepped closer, her dark eyes swirling with an intensity that pinned Elara in place. “Hey, listen to me. Can you do this? Can you pilot this drake?”
Could she? She would give anything to. She would have given anything to. She just never thought that she would do it alone. Like this.
“I…”
This was her dream coming true. This was a nightmare. How could she balance channeling the gods with keeping a drake in the air? Why hadn’t she been chosen before? What if her sister needed her on the ground? And after the war was over, would she be tied to Valor for the rest of her life?
She looked at Aveline, kind, exhausted Aveline, who had given up any chance of happiness to lead her country. She looked at the officers, most of whom she didn’t recognize, and she forced herself not to mentally deflect their awe. She was the Maiden Empyrean, and she was meant to be a symbol of hope. A shield for the people who most needed protection. Now was not the time to be insecure.
Now was the time to be selfish.
This was her dream, and it was coming true. She would meet it with open arms.
“I can do it,” Elara said. “Anything you need, I can do it.”