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I took a step back as Shamino turned to face me. His jaw was clenched so hard that it looked as if it were chiseled from rock. He glared, but his eyes were focused in the distance. He didn’t really see me.

  “Shamino?” I tried again, cautious this time. “Is it the kits, is—”

  Eyes found me, and some of the anger faded. “Dragonling? But I just sent—First One, what happened to you?”

  I followed his gaze to the scorch marks all over my body. I’d feel my injuries as soon as my anxiety went away. “Lightning. Shamino, I ran all the way here. What’s so urgent that—”

  I caught sight of the room. Shamino’s pristine desk had exploded with paper. Drawers hung open. Books were scattered on the floor and they listed in the shelves.

  Shamino pointed to a pile of dark green ash. “That.”

  The ash worried me even more than the room. Shamino had used his Gift?

  “I’ve been summoned to Dragonsridge. My father is dying.”

  Of everything I had imagined, that hadn’t entered my mind. Relief began to seep into my bones, except it felt wrong to be relieved at death, and Shamino still radiated fury, so I sort of muddled out, “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t be.” Shamino slammed a drawer shut. “He only wants to humiliate me. I can’t believe I’m—I swore I’d never see him again.”

  I wanted to slide my arms around him, calm him into being my Shamino—Not my. “Death changes things.”

  He grunted.

  “What happened between you? Maybe he regrets…”

  Shamino gave me a look. “Father never regrets.”

  I bit my lip.

  He quickly moved piles of paper from the chairs so we could sit. “I’m sorry. You’re trying to help, and I’m—I’m being him. Basically, my Gift took its time manifesting, and when it did, it was for dragons. You know that part. What you don’t know is Father wanted me to stay, marry a girl who had loved my dead brother, and participate in the Game. When I told him I’d rather live with dragons, he disinherited me. In front of the entire court. I responded with ‘thank you’ and I swore I’d never return.”

  I blew out a slow breath. “Do you? Have to go?”

  Shamino scowled, and this time he looked less furious and more disagreeable. “I Incinerated two summons. My uncle insists, and I respect him.”

  “Ah.” Awkward silence as he fumed and I felt, well, awkward. Finally, one thought broke through: Shamino is leaving.

  A hollow sensation spread from my heart to my toes. Which was stupid. He was the Seneschal; he wouldn’t be gone forever. And maybe, just maybe, I could make myself immune to him while he was away.

  And maybe at court he’d meet a beautiful noblewoman who was everything I wasn’t: outgoing and graceful and able to be all he needed—particularly, noble.

  Don’t cry.

  He took a notebook from the desk. “I’m leaving as soon as possible. I’ve asked Orrik to return for the Dragonmaster’s duties, but I need an acting Seneschal.”

  It took me a few moments to realize he was staring at me. “You’re joking.”

  “The dragons aren’t joking. They voted, and you’re it.”

  “I’m a trainee!” I said, standing. “Sylvia’s been here forever and Byron—”

  “I’m not the one to argue with,” he snapped, standing to face me.

  “I—” I was letting his agitation get to me. “I just don’t understand dragons sometimes.”

  “No, you understand them perfectly, until it’s about you.” He pointed at me with the notebook. “Then you insist on thinking yourself worthless.”

  “I—”

  “What did they do to you?” Shamino threw the book on the desk. “Sylvia says you never speak in class, you let Tressa puppet you around—”

  “You’ve been talking about me?” I asked, my face heating.

  “Yes! Because I’m concerned, Sylvia’s concerned, even Paige—she said the king’s dungeon isn’t as guarded as you. What did your family do to you?”

  I wanted to bolt through the door, but nothing would change if I ran. Instead, I pictured Lily and Garth and answered about them, because then I could speak a truth. “They took care of me.”

  “Clearly they did nothing but feed and clothe you.”

  I crossed my arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be leaving?”

  He took in the room, took in the chaos, took in the pile of green ash. He looked at me and I hugged myself tighter, because Shamino was gazing at me with an intensity that made me fear any moment he’d see the truth: Not only was I a liar, but I myself was a lie.

  “Here.” He picked up the notebook again and shoved it at me. “We have a lot to cover.”

  The tension lessened as we lost ourselves in duties and lists. Now that my Gift worked, I could do most of the Quarters’ tasks, but I didn’t know how Shamino decided what to do or when. Nor did I know what he did personally.

  Most of all, I hadn’t realized that he kept detailed records of everything. What each dragon ate, if they slept, if they went flying, if they squabbled. Anything and everything that related to their physical or emotional health went into one of several notebooks.

  A little over a Sphere later, Shamino’s study had phased from disaster to neatly cluttered.

  “I think that’s it.” He surveyed the room again. “First One, I don’t want to go.”

  “You’ll be back soon,” I said.

  He grunted as if he didn’t believe it. “If something urgent comes up, use the courier system.”

  I nodded. A string of dragons formed a triangle between the front, Dragonsridge, and the Kyer. Telepathic messages traveled in minutes. It was how Shamino already knew Orrik was on his way.

  We stared at each other. There was nothing else to do, nothing else to say. He couldn’t kiss me goodbye. He couldn’t even hug me.

  “You’ll be fine,” he finally said. “The dragons will take care of you.”

  “Take care of yourself,” I said.

  “I’ll have Raul.” But his eyes told me he’d rather have someone else, someone human, beside him.

  We said goodbye without touching. The moment the door closed, I sank into his chair and surveyed the mess. I’d have plenty to keep me busy. I wouldn’t miss him. I dove into the first task.

  Three days later, Shamino sent me a message via courier:

  My absence will be longer than expected. I have inherited and need to deal with the estate.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I lit the altar’s candle. Two weeks had passed. Paige had told me that Shamino’s younger brother, Emory, had grown up wild. Thus, with bruised pride, Shamino’s father had irrevocably changed the inheritance. I told myself it didn’t matter. By blood, Shamino had always been highborn. By blood, I had always been forbidden.

  “I am sorry it’s been so long,” I said to the flickering candle. I scattered silver nobles around it, along with one gold dragon. The Dragonmaster had sent some gold as a thank-you for acting as Seneschal. “You know there’s no good excuse, so I’ll get to the point. I miss him. When I’m caring for the dragons, when I record the day, always. I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t, and I don’t know what to do.”

  The candle stopped flickering and stood true. An unwavering, steady flame. I hoped it meant the First One was listening.

  “Zoland wants me to go to war once I bond. I’m good. Very good, he says. But if I go to the front, it feels like I’m running away from, well, Shamino. All I ever do is hide. It’s… easier, I guess. Hiding.”

  I fell silent. Sometimes I wondered why I bothered praying. The First One never answered. At best, He gave me visions with absolutely no guidance. Thorkel could be anywhere flying on his angry dragon. And the black mage… in the vision I was somewhere indoors. That could be the Kyer, or Dragonsridge or, seriously, anywhere with chairs.

  I removed the Record from its shelf under the bench. After a deep breath, I searched for the passage about the blue mage Cylia.

  In the year 258, the First O
ne chose the blue mage Cylia as His champion. He singled her as His own by sending her three visions: the battle at which she saved King Irian the First; the rose that became the symbol of her new house; and the moment of her murder. All three marked the crossroads of her life.

  “Crossroads of life,” I murmured. I hadn’t had the gem vision since receiving the sapphire. I couldn’t deny its importance—using it had unlocked my Gift.

  So the First One gave me the gem vision so I’d accept Thorkel’s help? What about the vision of Thorkel himself? Or the dying man? There must be more…

  I flipped through the book. The candle burned lower and wax pooled on the glittery black marble. My finger paused on a paragraph.

  When Cylia saw the petals of the rose fall to the ground, she knew the moment the First One had warned her about had come. Her decision to fight or to flee would affect events to come. She prayed and meditated on the Record, and in the end, she decided to fight…

  … The enemy had almost killed Cylia, but she had won despite overwhelming opposition. The section of land that she had defended became the founding of her estate. Her house emblem: the dying rose.

  The more I read, the more I thought I understood. Visions were the moments when the Champion’s decision altered his or her life. Sometimes that decision affected all of Drageria.

  “But you don’t say what to do,” I said, snapping the book shut. “Thanks.”

  The candle flickered.

  I sighed with frustration and stood. Every minute I spent with an aggravating deity was a minute I fell behind at the Quarters. I blew out the candle and pulled the door shut.

  As it clicked, the vision hit.

  The dragon’s hot, sulfuric breath fills the room as it roars, and saliva drips from its black teeth. A man in desert garb rides his back. He laughs, a cruel laugh without humor, and he raises a hand that glitters with rings and red fire...

  Then nothing. My hand still clung to the brass door handle. Cold sweat slicked my back. I threw open the door and ran back inside.

  “What was that?” I exclaimed at the altar. “You are the most useless—”

  “Adara?” Soft knocking came from down the hallway. The opening of a door. “Trainee Adara? Very sorry, excuse me.”

  I stepped into the hall. A Speaker tapped on doors, asking for me.

  “I’m Adara,” I said before he interrupted the next person at prayer.

  He startled. “Adara, you are needed at the Infirmary immediately. Wounded.”

  The sweat from the vision grew colder. “You’re sure?”

  He tapped his head—he’d been told by the dragons and his eyes were slightly out of focus. “Orrik thinks something happened to the courier dragons. They’ll be here any minute.”

  I barely heard his last words. I was already running.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Infirmary swarmed with activity. Byron gave orders from memory to unknown mages, who half collided as they tried to prepare stations. Dragons—six of them—huffed in shifts on the beds. Sylvia threw herbs into bottles like a wild woman. Through the open doors, dragons flew against the blue sky. They were much too close.

  Orrik, the serving Dragonmaster while Shamino was gone, entered right behind me. “What do I do?”

  I opened the thin red notebook—instructions for the Infirmary—and waved it around helplessly. I’d never bothered to read it, because of course we couldn’t have wounded without Shamino. “Is Shamino on his way?”

  To my horror, Orrik shook his head. “The courier line to the front is down. That is why we had little notice—the injured are exhausted and their telepathic range is short. The courier line to Dragonsridge is intact, so Shamino should be receiving a message from us as we speak, but our liaison in Dragonsridge hadn’t heard about wounded. Therefore, their line to Merram is down, too.”

  “So it’s two days until Shamino arrives.”

  “Maybe a day and a half. But yes.”

  Rutting weasels in pigshit. I’d read a book on dragon healing, but I still couldn’t heal; dragon healing was something you were born with. Who but Shamino could diagnose internal wounds? “How bad are the incoming?”

  “Eight dragons, all very bad. Two others died en route and were abandoned.” Orrik’s eyes grew hard. “They sent a message to Dragonsridge when they began flying, hoping Shamino would meet them here.”

  “But the message never went through…” Thorkel’s timing with taking out the couriers was perfect, to have a message started but not finished. I said a few more curses in my head. The dragons would have died on the front without healing; that must be why they had risked flight. Now they’d die in front of me. I tried to picture the lake, but the real thing glinted in the sunlight, and above it listed flying dragons struggling with wounded.

  “I need Mettalise—she’s an unbonded,” I told Orrik. Best to start with what I knew. “Tell her to restrain troublemakers, she’ll know what to do. Then get half of these mages out of here. They’re causing more chaos than they are helping.”

  Orrik nodded and his eyes unfocused. I rushed through the book, trying to create order. On the second page, the wounded landed.

  Dragon screams filled the air.

  We weren’t only missing Shamino, we also lacked Raul, the healer’s dragon who assisted in getting the wounded to their beds. Shamino must have directed Raul during triage, for the Seneschal’s patients had never roared in pain as mine did. I tried to notice where the assisting dragons touched the injured, tried to guess what might have caused the pain, but there were too many dragons and too much pain…

  Sylvia and I sorted the best we could. She had no draughts finished when Byron started on his first dragon; nothing to dull the pain as Byron began to clean the main wound. Dimly I heard a hysterical mage being carried away by Mettalise. My attention, though, was on my patient.

  Bloody blankets wrapped the green dragon’s wings. I used Telekinesis to wrestle them off, but my clumsy magic made him thrash; a random dragon came to hold him down.

  “First One, help me,” I breathed. Strips of flesh hung off wing-bone. If I sewed them together, they’d form a morbid, striped quilt of flesh. There were so many strips… Nausea welled in my stomach as I realized what needed to be done.

  I knelt in front of an eye filled with agony. “I can’t mend your wings like Shamino can. I can stitch them together, but it’d take so long you’d bleed out. I think I can save your life, however, if I take the wings entirely.”

  The dragon closed his eyes. A small, quick nod. He rolled with a muffled scream so I could reach a wing.

  “Get help to hold him,” I told the unknown dragon pinning my patient. An eye-blink later, Mettalise rushed over—she’d finished carrying off the screaming mage. I gave her a nod and steeled myself for what needed to be done.

  The wing connected to the dragon’s back in a muscular, powerful joint as thick as my waist. Hacking through the protective scales would be near impossible; getting a dragon to hack it off with teeth or claws would leave a jagged, bloody mess.

  Magic was the answer. Magic and fire. During harvest, sometimes people’s scythes missed. The blacksmith used hot metal to seal the wound, and his patients lived… most of the time. I didn’t have a forge, but I had a Gift.

  “Lower your barrier,” I told the green. He nodded. I took a long, deep breath.

  I need a line of Incineration, hot as I can make it. I shifted, so that if I were holding a sword, the angle would hit only the wing joint and not the back. I raised my hand, pretending to hold that sword. Anything to help the visualization.

  The thinnest beam of blue fire, hot as—you sheep-brain. He’s fireproof.

  I looked at Mettalise. “I need the scales removed.”

  She grimaced but flexed her claws. One scale after another plinked on the ground, revealing knobbly green skin that resembled a reptile’s. Each tear must have stung, but the dragon didn’t flinch. In fact, he stared into space… I didn’t have much time. The moment
the last scale fell, I formed my blade of blue fire and sliced.

  It took two chops. Charred meat overwhelmed the sulfuric scent of dragon blood. The severed wing plopped wetly on the floor. I swallowed against the urge to vomit, because I didn’t have time. I needed to get the other wing off, now.

  The spell sliced through the second wing on the first try. Though neither stump bled, I instructed Orrik to smear them with healing ointment and bandage them. I told Mettalise to dispose of the wings.

  Before I moved on, I took one last look. The dragon had long passed out. Without his wings, he seemed… small. Less. Tears fell from Mettalise’s eyes as the remains of the wings pooled in her claws. The other dragon excused himself to a corner.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the unconscious dragon. I kissed his forehead.

  Byron’s patient, one with a hole blown in its chest, had died as I worked. Sylvia poured antivenom down the throat of another dragon with spears in its belly. I went to the next unattended dragon, another pin-cushioned one, and went to work.

  That dragon died as I removed the second spear.

  Even with Shamino, these are too badly wounded to save them all, I told myself as I moved to the next patient. But Shamino could have saved more.

  We finished by midnight. My heart and muscles ached with exhaustion; my Gift was somewhat depleted but still so strong. I hated it. Our third dragon had died, and I still had magic to spare.

  “The rest will live, I think,” Sylvia said. We washed in a supply room adjoining the Infirmary. Her body shook with exhaustion. “I hope.”

  I struggled not to cry. “I can’t believe the Kyer functioned before Shamino.”

  “We haven’t had a war in a century, love.” Sylvia eyed a pile of bandages as if she might sleep on them. “Raiders don’t often injure dragon patrols. The world has changed.”

  I kept scrubbing, but I couldn’t get the death off my hands. I pumped more water to start over, and each thrust of the handle grew more frantic.