I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ll never change your opinion of Evolene.”
“He’s right,” said Mother.
My head snapped up. Since when did she agree with him? “What?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I saw what Jack Galloway did to your father’s guardian and what Jack tried to do to your father.”
Closing my eyes, I let out a weary breath. “Father has already explained that family’s murderous history.”
She folded her arms. “Oh, did he tell you how Jack Galloway later betrayed Cendrilla?”
I stood. “Evolene’s my friend, and I’m going to judge her by her actions, not her family history.”
“Sit.” Father placed his hand on my shoulder and gave me a gentle shove. “This is about your general reckless behavior and not about the Galloway girl. I heard about your encounter with the spriggans and all the other ways you nearly got yourself killed.”
“In my defense, I would have been captured by the spriggans anyway, if you’d sent me to Savannah to marry King Magnar. They’re holding his sisters. They’d probably do worse to his wife.”
I met Father’s glower with a stare of my own.
“If anyone’s a bad influence, it’s him,” said Fyrian. “Always drinking and dueling and turning up late for meetings. Evolene’s a paragon of virtue compared to him.”
I pressed my lips together and suppressed a snort.
“This is your final warning, girl.” He pointed a finger between my eyes. “If Fosco or anyone else makes a complaint about you, real or imagined, I will make sure you never see the light of day until you are twenty-one.”
“And I’d rescue you,” said Fyrian. “He couldn’t keep us apart.”
I stood. “Fine. Can I go, now?”
He wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and pressed a kiss on my forehead. “I am warning you.”
“Have a safe journey back to the palace.” I rushed out of the royal suite. Considering that I really had broken into the Magical Militia prison to rescue Evolene, that conversation hadn’t gone too badly.
Chapter 5
The next morning, the four of us crossed the campus to the cliff face, where Captain Caiman waited with three full-sized, red dragons and a rapier red. Fyrian sat on her haunches at the end of the row, looking as regal as ever with her crown of horns catching the morning sun like freshly-cut jewels.
“Yes,” she said with a purr in her voice. “I rather like that description.”
“Bluford!” Captain Caiman barked. “What are you?”
I reared back. I hadn’t done anything wrong… yet. “Sir? I’m not sure I understand.”
“Ignore him,” muttered Fyrian. “He’s full of hot air.”
He strode forward, fists clenched. “Are you a mage or are you a man?”
Dread trundled through my stomach. If he knew my secret then it would only be a matter of time before everyone discovered I didn’t meet the basic qualification for a brotherhood of dragon warriors. I glanced at Stafford, who stared back at me, face pale, hazel eyes wide.
Veins stood out from our instructor’s red scalp like angry serpents. “Answer me!”
“A-a mage, s-sir,” I whispered.
He cupped his hand behind his ear. “A what?”
“A mage,” I said in a louder voice. “Sir.”
He grabbed the collar of my flying jacket with the ferocity of a half-giant plucking an escaping pickpocket from the crowds of the Capital Market. “Then why did you allow yourself to be caught by witches on dragon back?”
A gust of relief blew through my lips, and my shoulders relaxed, but not enough to wriggle out of his grip. This had nothing to do with my being female and everything to do with how Niger had gotten himself arrested in disguise as me.
I glanced up at the snarling instructor. “Sorry, sir. They cornered me at the wards, and I had nowhere to escape.”
He let go of me with a grunt of disgust. “No witch should ever be able to outfly a dragon mage!” Then he turned to Fyrian. “And you should be guiding your partner better.”
Fyrian snorted. “He’s just angry that Byrrus chose Magnar instead of him.”
I pressed my lips together, suppressing a laugh and glanced at Stafford, whose brow wrinkled. He wrung his hands as though debating whether to come to my defense. I gave my head a tiny shake, and his hands dropped to his side.
Captain Caiman straightened his flying jacket and mopped the sweat off his bald head. Patches of red dye colored his handkerchief, and I dropped my gaze to my boots. If Stafford or Fyrian looked at me with so much of a twinkle in their eyes, I would burst out laughing and wouldn’t be able to stop.
“I have an announcement from Master Fosco,” said the instructor. “All dragonets, including the flying cat, are under a curfew and none are allowed to venture from their dwellings without the supervision of an adult dragon or four warriors.”
My head snapped up, and I drew in a sharp breath through my teeth. Captain Caiman read from a scroll with a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, but this time, the ridiculous sight didn’t make me laugh.
His brows formed a deep V. “If you see a dragonet wandering around on its own, you are to capture it and take it to the nearest dragon or group of warriors.”
Gobi’s eyes widened. “Is Asproceros in Mount Fornax?”
“We do not know if it is him, but somebody is trying to snatch dragonets.”
“Spriggans!” Stafford hissed.
All five dragons shook their heads.
Stafford tilted his head to the side. “Why are they disagreeing?”
“Dragons can feel a spriggan when they’re close, even if they try to disguise their magic.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “But you said a spriggan moved the eggs from the incubators to the royal carriage.”
“It did, but everyone was at the opening ceremony. A blue dragon called Ardenti could feel their magic, but she was on the cusp of sleeping and couldn’t raise the alarm.”
Captain Caiman clapped his hands together. “Right, class. Get on your dragons. After ten minutes of placing your hands on the dragon’s scales and focusing on your physical connection, you will practice speed drills.
“Don’t forget what you told Niger about us learning how to fly using signals,” said Fyrian.
“Thanks for the reminder.” I raised my hand. “Sir?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Can I practice with one of the red dragons, please? Fyrian and I aren’t so great with signals, and we’d—”
“Your mental connection is faster than any hand or leg signal,” he snapped. “Why would you encumber yourselves when you have the potential to be the fastest rider who ever lived?”
My heart sank at his refusal yet warmed at the compliment. After months of floundering in the Magical Militia and then failing, it was nice to get good feedback from an instructor, even if it was dressed as an admonishment.
“Never mind,” said Fyrian. “I’ll ask Flavo if he’s all right with swapping. Caiman is clearly too angry to see reason right now.”
“All right, sir. Fyrian and I will practice speed drills together.”
He clapped me hard on the back. “Good boy! All of you, get on your dragons before I make you run laps.”
The rest of the class was a grueling ordeal of our instructor glaring and snarling. While everyone else was left alone to practice speed drills. Captain Caiman rode Rubens, the rapier red from our first lesson, alongside me, keeping up with our speed.
“You should be faster than that!” he bellowed. “Tell Fyrian to flap harder.”
Rubens opened his beak-like jaws and let out a squawk of agreement.
“I’ll flap them in a minute,” she snarled.
I clenched my teeth and opened up our bond wide. “Let’s combine power and give them what we want.”
“Ha! They’ll choke on my farts of fire!”
A laugh huffed
out of my chest. “Fyri!”
“I wouldn’t really do it,” she said in a small voice.
My brows rose. Something told me she was only backtracking because of my shocked reaction. Had I been someone like Niger who found that sort of thing funny, she probably would have left Captain Caiman and Rubens in a cloud of foul air. I focussed on our bond. Heat surged through my veins, and I pushed as much power as I could through to Fyrian. The air around us shifted, moving in a current towards Fyrian’s snout.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m filling all my lungs with buoyant air. It will make me as light as a balloon.”
I turned to where Captain Caiman flew atop Rubens. The half-ogre’s eyes bulged, and his mouth fell open. Rubens dipped his wing and swerved down and out of range. I stared after them. It was like they both knew we were about to do something spectacular.
“Hold tight,” Fyrian snarled. “I’ll shut them up for life!”
Excitement surged through my veins, hot and fast and sizzling. I leaned forward, pressing my thighs into Fyrian’s sides, and my gauntlet-covered forearms onto her scales. The enchanted armor wouldn’t let me waver an inch off her back if we reached a tremendous speed.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Nearly there!”
“How large are a dragon’s lungs?”
“The first pair are the size you’d expect for a creature our size,” she replied. “But the second have several times the capacity. I’ve never filled them completely.”
The world stilled, filling my ears with silence and my heart with a tingle of anticipation. Then, Fyrian raised her wings and cleaved through the air like a thunderclap. No sooner had I cringed at the sound than she propelled us forward, leaving my stomach what felt like several leagues behind. She flew faster than the time we fled from her execution, faster than when she fell from the skies with a broken wing. My stomach caught up, a mass of writhing worms, fighting their way up my gullet. Clamping my lips together, I breathed hard to stave off my nausea.
“Alba!” She must have felt my discomfort through our bond.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “K-keep going. I-I’m fine.”
A moment later, I cracked open my eyes. The sky was its usual calm, cloudless cerulean, but beneath us, the landscape blurred into a bland mess of beige. Harsh winds made them water, so I slammed them shut and focussed on the darkness.
“Look through my eyes,” she said. “It might make you feel better.”
“A-all right.” I pushed myself into her side of the bond and opened my eyes. The world beneath us blurred a little around the edges, but colors stood out like one of Master Fosco’s paintings. My stomach settled, and a huge breath of relief whooshed out of my lungs. “That’s so much better. How fast are we traveling?”
“I don’t know, but it’s really fast.”
“What’s made the difference?” I asked.
“My third and fourth lungs. I never used them until now.”
I pushed myself upright, enjoying the wind through my hair. “Why not?”
“Dragonets only have two, and I’ve only been in this body for a month and a half. Until the blue dragons offered to teach me to swim, I’d forgotten I even had the extra lungs.”
“Oh.”
“And you’re a lot stronger,” she added. “Before, I could only open and close my side of the bond, but since the plague, you’ve been able to use your side.”
A warm glow filled my chest. We had General Thornicroft and his dream-horn to thank for that. “The dragon quest.”
“We’re going faster than a wild dragon, you know.”
“Really?” The memory of that iridescent dragon popped to the front of my mind. He had recognized me somehow. Perhaps he could access the memories of other dragons. If he could, why did he shake his head? I had to speak to him and find out.
“How are you feeling?” Fyrian asked.
I rubbed my stomach. “Much better.”
“We shouldn’t fly much longer than this. As soon as you let go of the bond and get your vision back, you’ll feel just as bad.”
“Right.” I glanced down into the landscape. “Let’s separate when we land… Just in case.”
Fyrian flew around the waterfall side of the mountains, where a dragon nearly as pale as the one in the cage leaped out from the depths of a pool. We passed it in seconds and in no time, rounded the dry side of the mountain. The terraces there were rocky and narrow. In some places providing just enough space to accommodate a single person if they clung onto the walls with both hands.
Rapier reds poked their heads out of openings barely large enough to accommodate their bodies if they folded their wings. Had the Forgotten King Fashioned them out of woodpeckers or another kind of burrowing bird? They really were the most peculiar type of dragon.
Stomach worms writhed deep within my belly, reminding me of their presence. “Fyri, let’s land.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice!” she swooped down and landed on the surface of the mountain in a low crouch.
Clamping my lips together, I withdrew from our connection. Nausea surged up my gullet, and I scrambled off her back and down her leg. The first spasm rocked my diaphragm before I reached Fyrian’s paw, and I leaped the last few feet, landing on my hands and knees. The contents of my breakfast, including two tankards of foamy mead, splattered onto the rocky ground in a series of noisy heaves.
“Poor Alba,” said Fyrian.
I coughed. “We’re not doing that again for a while.”
“Maybe Jesper or Duclair can give you something to stop you from being sick. This level of speed will be useful when you’re fighting Magnar’s war.”
The mere thought of King Magnar and his spriggans brought another load of breakfast surging up my gullet. “Oh! Don’t talk about him when I’m being sick.”
“You’ll see him soon enough,” Fyrian muttered.
I was too busy rinsing my mouth out with the contents of my water skin to ask what she meant. After giving my face a good splash of cold water, I pushed myself off the ground and stood on shaky legs.
“Have you finished?” she asked.
“I-I think so.”
“Because I don’t want any of that lodging itself under my scales.”
I shook my head. “If it comes to that, I’ll pull off my knapsack.”
She snorted. “You’d never get your notes dirty. Come on, let’s go back to class.”
We took the short ride to the cliff at a leisurely pace, and I closed my eyes, letting the breeze cool my sweat-dampened skin. That ride had been unbelievable, and Captain Caiman’s chastisement had given us the push we had needed to improve. Between the two of us, we had unlocked some hidden potential for speed, and if only I could handle the nausea, we would fly faster than any rapier red and become almost as uncatchable as a purple dragon.
Fyrian and I landed to a round of applause, and I opened my eyes. Captain Caiman, Stafford, Rufus, and Gobi all stood on her left side, grinning up at me. I rubbed the back of my neck. They probably wouldn’t be so congratulatory if they had seen me heaving out my guts five minutes ago.
I climbed down Fyrian’s side to be swept into an ogre-tight hug.
“I knew you could do it, boy!” cried Captain Caiman. “That speed was incredible.”
My breath left my lungs in a single whoosh, and I wriggled in his grip, trying to get some air. Not even Father hugged this tight. When my head spun and I thought I’d pass out, he released his grip and gave my shoulder a bone-crushing squeeze, making me shudder. Did the Captain not know to be gentler with quarter-ogres?
“He wouldn’t be so rough if he knew you were female,” muttered Fyrian.
“How did you do it?” Admiration shone in Gobi’s eyes.
I blinked twice. Was the boy talking to me or Fyrian?
“You, silly.”
“We used our connection, and Fyrian filled her third and fourth lungs.”
“Then I will never be able to
fly like that!” he whined.
Captain Caiman clapped him on the shoulder. “You are the youngest dragon warrior who ever lived. Think of what you will achieve by the time you are Bluford’s age!”
Gobi’s chest puffed out, and red spots appeared on his round, fuzz-covered cheeks. If I didn’t know him to be an annoying brat, I would have thought he looked cute.
Stafford and Rufus both clapped me on the shoulder. Rufus more gentle than Stafford.
“Well done,” said Rufus. “That was impressive.”
The thud of a dragon landing from behind made us all turn around.
Fyrian hissed. “Byrrus!”
The dragon with the ox-blood colored scales dipped his head with shame, and Fyrian roared something that made the red dragons chitter. Byrrus’ posture sagged further.
“Fyri,” I snapped. “Are you bullying that dragon?”
“It’s only what he did to me.”
“But he was under the influence of the loyalty elixir.”
She tossed her head. “That doesn’t excuse him.”
I was about to bring up Fyrian entering my name for King Magnar’s stupid sky commander tournament when a blond head poked out from behind Byrrus’ back. I bared my teeth. “What are you doing here?”
King Magnar climbed down from Byrrus, as though the dragon was an extra high royal palanquin. He strode up to me with his nose in the air and said in a loud, clear voice, “I wanted to thank you.”
Chapter 6
Panic laced through my heart, and I glanced from Captain Caiman to Rufus and to Gobi. If King Magnar mentioned his sisters, anyone with half a brain would work out that they had broken into the Magical Militia. And they’d also correctly guess that I’d somehow collaborated with them to free Evolene. It was no secret that they used spriggan artifacts to commit their crimes.
“There's nothing to thank me for, apart from not killing you,” I hissed. “Go back to your dung house.”
“And I’m here to nurture my bond with my dragon.” King Magnar stepped forward, arm outstretched, as though he wanted to shake my hand. For a fraction of a second, I pictured myself squeezing his fingers to splinters of bone with an ogre handshake, but I threw off the image. The longer I stayed in his presence, the more chance he might blurt out something incriminating like our betrothal or how I hadn’t really been in the jailhouse yesterday.
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