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The warm rock against her palm was almost smooth, small dimples on its surface keeping it in her loose hold. The flashing blue light lit up the world. Panic closed in around her, making it hard to breathe. Although she could hear her heart pounding fast in her ears, it was as though it had stopped in her chest.
As she focused on the man in dark green clothing by the porch, the egg dropped from her fingers. Its shell broke on the gravel with a quiet crack. Yolk oozed slowly out between the sharp edges of what had once kept it safe.
The whole world closed in around her.
Cora sat up, dragging in deep breaths. Each time she had the dream, the strange world she found herself in made more sense. The odd metal machine was a car, the rock was an egg, and that the man with his hat held too tight in his hands, didn’t want to be there.
Cora slid into the bench seat at the low table before the fire. Her mother remained silent, standing between her and the flames. The last time Cora had dreamt of the blue lights, she had woken to find her mother standing in the same place, but she had moved back to the sleeping area without a word when Cora had sat at the table.
Other than her father’s gentle snores, the rest of the cavern was silent. She looked away from her mother’s rigid back and glanced across the dark space. No one else moved, although she could feel Deen’s gaze on her.
Her mother turned slowly from the flames and sat opposite her. Cora looked down at the table, running her fingers over the wood’s grain.
Her mother cleared her throat.
‘We don’t have to talk about it,’ Cora offered quickly.
‘How often do you dream this?’ her mother asked.
‘You know.’
‘I do,’ Cora’s mother admitted, reaching forward to take her daughter’s hands.
Cora pulled her hands away. She didn’t want to feel her mother anymore that night.
‘That was the day I left,’ her mother said in a sad voice.
‘It felt as though the world was ending,’ Cora said, reliving the pain her mother had felt that day.
‘It was also the day your father found me in the snow, disappointed that I wasn’t what he wanted me to be.’
Cora looked up then, surprised at her mother’s words. She knew the story. The entire cavern knew the story of how the great Oldra, Gerry, had come to them from a land so far away. But it was always accompanied by the story of how much Pira loved her, how they were linked from the beginning. How this was where she was meant to be.
‘I can’t imagine that,’ Cora said softly.
‘Essawood was so different from the world I knew. I had lost so much, and I was so lost myself. They needed a man. They needed a warrior.’
‘They got one. You are amazing with a bow.’ Cora watched the woman opposite her carefully. ‘I thought you were meant to be together.’
‘We were,’ her mother said, the smile forming easily on her lips as she looked back at the sleeping area. ‘But I didn’t know that, and he fought it for so long.’
‘When did you know?’ Cora asked.
‘That I loved him?’
Cora nodded once.
‘When I lost him.’ Her mother sighed. Cora reached across the table then and took her hands. ‘You have heard the stories of the battle when he fell from dragonback and we feared him lost forever.’
‘You and Ariandi found him, and saved him.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I found Sarn that night. Looking for one man, I found another.’
‘But that helped end the war.’
Her mother pulled her hands away. ‘They were both so broken, so close to death.’
‘You saved him,’ Cora said again. ‘You saved them both.’
‘I remember wondering how I would live if Pira died. How easily the world would go on without him. I was so scared,’ she added in a whisper.
‘You are never scared.’
She gave a little huff of a laugh. ‘I am scared more often than not. I am scared that babies will not survive, that the darkness would take us over, that Pira could slip from dragonback on any hunting trip.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Cora whispered.
‘I knew that I loved him, but I didn’t know what we had until he showed me.’
Cora raised her eyebrows. She wanted to know... And yet, this was not something she wanted to learn about her parents.
‘When two Oldra come together, they are bound in dragonlight.’
She expected comment from the dragons then, but there was nothing. She could feel them close by, and yet they were out of the cavern hunting. Usually they returned by the time she woke.
‘Why could I not choose my own dragon as the others did?’ Cora asked instead, drawing the conversation away from her parents’ union.
‘Ariandi chose me after a long time with no rider. Dra chose you, because you are the greatest Oldra of them all.’
Cora looked down at the table again. ‘I don’t think I can live up to that.’ She put her hand over her chest, where the mark lay cool against her skin, directly over her heart.
‘You will understand some day.’
‘And if I don’t want to understand?’ Cora asked, sounding far more like a child than she wished.
Her mother smiled indulgently, like she had when Cora was small. ‘This is your fate. This is who you are.’
‘My healing skills are limited at best, and I’m not the warrior you were, nor am I needed to be.’
‘You are the greatest Oldra,’ her mother insisted.
‘How do you know that? Why are you so sure I can be so strong?’ she asked more loudly than she’d intended, the frustration evident in her voice.
Her mother stood slowly from the table. ‘Because you have already saved us all from the darkness, and there will come a time when you will find the shadows again.’
Cora stared after her mother as she made her way back to the sleeping area and curled in beside Pira, Cora’s father. He groaned as she elbowed him, and they rolled together as one before his snoring ceased. One of Cora’s brothers muttered in his sleep. She looked back over her hands, despite being taught by both her mother and the Ancient Arminel, her healing skills were not what they thought they should be.
Arminel would place a surprisingly steady, weathered finger on her chest, knowing where her mark was, and smile. ‘One day soon,’ he would say. ‘One day soon you will burn.’ But it had been years since she had started her training, and she wasn’t getting any better.
Cora would shake her head at his words. She was marked—she was destined for greatness, like the leader her father was, the healer her mother was. Yet Cora knew she was something very different, despite her mother’s assurances that she was something stronger. Now she claimed that Cora had already saved them from the darkness, but she hadn’t been there in the time of the shadows, and many of the men who had been had left this world already and gone to Essara.
She looked again around the cavern. It was still dark, and she knew it was the middle of the night, but she wanted to see Re-Mah. She was one of the few people who might be able to help Cora understand her mother’s words.
The dragons hadn’t returned, and it was too far to walk. She shivered at the idea. The Keetar settlement was far enough away that they lived independently, but close enough that they could visit regularly with each other.
Cora had grown up hearing stories of the constant fight between the clans, and there were times when the older members of the cavern struggled a little with their visits. The world had changed when Cora’s mother arrived. Sometimes she wondered just what her mother had given up by coming to Essawood, and yet her dreams told her there was nothing left for her.
Maybe her own destiny lay in the land her mother had come from. She wondered if it was a place she could visit. She had only ever suggested it once, and her mother had shaken her head. When Cora pressed her, she said it wouldn’t be the same—or that it might be just the same, and she couldn’t face that. Their life was with the Penna.
Cora tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn, but it didn’t matter where she was. Either at the table or lying in her blankets, the same thoughts would keep her awake. Or worse, she might sleep and dream something else.
She jumped as Deen slipped onto the seat beside her and wrapped his strong arm around her shoulders. For a man his size, she was always surprised he could move as silently as he did. He kissed her temple, and she tried not to sigh. He was always watching out for her, and he clearly cared for her. She felt safe with him, and at the same time a little trapped by his embrace.
‘You should be sleeping,’ she whispered, trying to smile for him.
He shrugged and pulled her closer. ‘As should you. More dreams?’
She nodded, but she hadn’t told him what she dreamed of. There was some expectation from people—not all the people, but most—that she had the same skills as her mother and her dreams would foretell what was to come. ‘I only dream of what has been,’ she murmured, answering the question before he had a chance to ask it.
‘Do you dream of me?’ he asked, leaning in close, his warm fingers working their way under the hem of her singlet. His rough hands tingled across her skin.
She pushed him away, looking back towards her parents. Their relationship was not frowned on, yet her father always gave the idea that it would not last. Not that it was wrong, but that it wasn’t quite right. Temma, Deen’s mother, was a cuddly, friendly woman always keen to pull Cora into conversation when she visited their hearth. She didn’t get the same feeling from his family that there could be anything in their future but each other.
Cora kissed Deen on the cheek and nodded back across the cavern. As he walked away, she climbed back into her sleeping mat. Her father had started to snore again, and her little brother continued to mumble. There was always noise of some sort in the cavern, whether it was conversation, children playing, pots against fire grates, or dragons murmuring at the back of her mind. And as she focused on the quiet noises of the people, she drifted back to sleep.
The world Cora found herself in was different and yet the same. It was dark, and thankfully there were no blue lights. She crept through hearths, even though it violated so many customs. She needed to see people. But the people sleeping around the fires were not people she knew, nor were the hearths like those of the Penna.
She heard someone behind her and froze, wondering how she could explain herself. Turning slowly, she came face to chest with a tall, broad man. She looked up into his brilliant eyes. Reflecting the firelight, they looked lighter than those of the average Penna. In fact, they were similar to the amber eyes she had inherited from her mother. She was momentarily distracted thinking of Darring’s blue eyes, and how surprised her mother was that Deen had inherited them.
The man smiled down at Cora. Her heart stopped, as though nothing else in the world mattered. Then movement caught her attention, and they turned together as an older man appeared from the shadows. He was a similar age as her father, perhaps a little older, but he too was not someone she knew. When his serious face split into an odd smile, her chest hurt as though someone had pierced her heart with a blade.
Cora sat up, the pain still sharp in her chest. She glanced across at her mother and wondered if the woman saw every dream Cora had or only those connected to her own history.
She shook her head and curled back under the blanket, trying to remember the face of the man who had stood before her. The man with light eyes and a smile that stopped the world. She couldn’t quite remember anything other than his eyes as she rubbed at the burning sensation across her mark. Was this what her mother meant, or was it something else?