by Audrey Faye
She tried to breathe in, but the only way the air wanted to go was out, like when she was small and Rubia pulled the goat’s tail and it kicked Jae instead. She put her hands to her ribs, trying to make them work, trying to get her throat to let the chill air in.
Small black flecks swirled in front of her eyes.
Scared faces.
She felt the deep concern inside her head from her dragon.
And then only darkness.
Fendellen licked up the last vestiges of a most delicious bowl of stew. She could feel the drafts as people came and went from the rondo. Checking on Jae. Refreshing straw that was perfectly fine just the way it was. Bringing small pretties and special treats and other things humans and dragons tried to use to apologize for wrongness when they didn’t truly understand what had gone wrong.
Fendellen understood. She had been attached to Jae’s mind when it went dark.
“That’s enough fretting, missy.”
Irin picked up her bowl and handed it out to someone she couldn’t quite see.
Fendellen gave him a look. Very few invaded a dragon’s sleeping nook, especially when that dragon would one day be queen.
He slid down a wall onto a pile of soft straw and returned her look. “Karis is chasing everyone out. I didn’t want to disturb your kin, so we’ll talk in here. I know how you whine when you have to go outside in the cold.”
His words loosened the tightness inside her a little. “I was barely hatched, and it was my first winter.” She’d thrown an unholy tantrum when her feet hit the snow, which had earned her not a whit of sympathy from man or dragon.
“Indeed.” A pause. “New experiences can be overwhelming.”
They weren’t talking about snow anymore. “I can’t see everything in her mind clearly, but I think the village she was raised in is tiny.”
“They all are that high up.” Irin shrugged. “A few families and the orphans they take in.”
That was a disturbing thought. “There are a lot of orphans?”
“The mountains are a dangerous place. And villagers from the foothills often leave unwanted babies close to one of the high-mountain villages.”
Fendellen shuddered. There were some things about humans she would never understand. Rejecting their young was one of the foremost. “Jae was left to die. She knows it. It weakens her, somewhere deep inside.”
“Then we help her become strong.”
He was so solid. So certain. She leaned into his strength, even though a future queen should rely on her own. “She isn’t as fragile as today made her look.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I’ve seen what happened to her in others. Panic that grips the throat and doesn’t let it breathe. It hits some soldiers in their first battle. For some, it’s less serious than it looks, and it doesn’t happen again. For others, it’s their last battle.”
There was more than one possible reason for that, and none of them were good. She shuddered to think of a sword run through Jae’s ribs as she stood frozen by fear. “This isn’t a battle. We have time.”
A steady look—one that wasn’t altogether approving. “You have a little time.”
She had more than that. The humans and elves and dragons of the village had been warned, and they knew better than to face a future queen’s fury.
“It’s a complicated choice you made.”
A man who never let anything rest. Fire rose in Fendellen’s belly. “The sight of a crowded village knocked her out cold, and you think I should tell her anything more?” She was careful in her words. Even in sleep, Jae might hear.
“She isn’t as fragile as today made her look.”
Fendellen grimaced as the weapons master tossed her own words back at her. “She isn’t. She flew for five days with very little food, following the call of some cursed star. She might lack for common sense, but she doesn’t lack for determination.”
Another long pause as Irin carefully plucked several bits of straw and lined them up in his fingers. “Karis says she expects to be shunned for her wings.”
The fire hadn’t entirely settled. “Anyone who tries will deal with me.”
“You know better than that.”
There were a lot of ways he could mean that, and she didn’t have the energy to play dueling word swords with a master. “I know she’s had a very long day and tomorrow is a new one.” She swallowed her pride because sometimes a queen had to know how to do that too. “She needs to feel accepted. If you have ideas about how to accomplish that, I would like to hear them.”
He huffed out something that might be a laugh in anyone else.
She waited. She meant it, and under his gruffness, he knew well just how much of her respect he commanded. And she wanted his help. He knew how to straighten spines and snap shoulders into place, and her kin needed both of those things.
He set down his neatly straightened handful of straw. “I have an idea or two.”
Chapter 9
It was a bed so soft she might be sleeping on clouds, except she remembered enough of yesterday to be quite sure she wasn’t dead.
Jae opened up her eyes as more memories flooded in. There had been eyes, so many eyes and faces—and then nothing.
“Good morning.” The voice from the door was friendly, and attached to a smiling face and a tray that immediately set Jae’s belly to growling. “If you’re hungry, I have breakfast for you.”
Jae dug for a name. Kellan. “Thank you. I’m very sorry about yesterday. I don’t quite remember what happened.”
“What happened,” said a new voice from the door, this one with more than a hint of Gran’s acerbic tones, “is that half the village tried to get a look at you all at once, and you did the same thing my dragon does. You shut down for a while and had a nap.”
That elf walked in with two more on her heels. The four of them took off their boots and cloaks, chattering quietly with each other and demanding nothing of Jae, and sat down on the second bed in the room. They didn’t stare at her. They just made themselves comfortable and helped themselves to food from Kellan’s tray.
Jae swallowed. She had dreamed her whole life of friends her own age. Ones who saw a person before they saw her wings. If she could keep her head on her shoulders, maybe this was her chance. “Do you all have dragons?”
The fair-haired one with round cheeks looked up from spreading some kind of jelly on her bread. “Kellan doesn’t yet. She rides Afran sometimes, though. The rest of us are kin. I’m the newest. Trift only found me this past summer.”
“She’s Alonia.” The dark-haired elf poured something hot out of a carafe into mugs. “I’m Lily, and my dragon is Oceana. She’s the small blue creature who was climbing under my cloak yesterday. That’s Sapphire over there on the end. Her dragon is Lotus, and she’s in trouble more often than not.”
Jae collected the names like precious jewels.
Alonia held out a slice of bread covered in a thick spread of jelly. “There’s cheese, if you’d rather.”
Goat cheese was a winter staple in the high mountains, but anything made of berries was a wonderful treat. Jae took the bread carefully.
Sapphire grinned and layered cheese between two slices of bread. “So, what’s it like being able to fly?”
Alonia made shushing noises, and Kellan frowned.
Lily rolled her eyes. “The grownups think we should be gentle with you and not talk about anything important for a while.”
Jae’s hands shook, and the jelly along with it. “I don’t mind questions. It’s just that no one ever asks about my wings.” They just stared, and judged, and sometimes hated. She saw none of that in these four. They only ate bread with jelly and watched her with friendly curiosity in their eyes. She took a deep breath. “I fly at night so I don’t scare anyone. In winter, the stars are so bright, I feel like I can touch them.”
Kellan smiled, a dreamy look in her eyes. “That would be amazing. And cold.”
Jae shrugged. “I grew up in the high
mountains. I’m used to cold.”
Lily shuddered. “I like it warm, thank you very much.” She dipped a spoon in the jelly pot and plopped a big dollop on a new slice of bread. “I heard that Fendellen made you a hot pool in the cave you stayed in. If you liked that, you should come swim in my pool.”
The idea that anyone had such a pool for their very own stole Jae’s breath. She curled her wings around herself, trying to imagine such a wonder—and then froze as four sets of eyes got wide.
She reached for the covers. If she wrapped them around her shoulders, maybe that would hide her wings until she could find her cloak. Or make a new one—one that hung all the way to the ground this time.
“They’re beautiful.” Kellan’s words were quiet. “Your wings. They’re so pretty.” She held out a hesitant hand. “Could I touch your feathers?”
Jae stared. None but the very littlest ever wanted to touch. She lifted a wing tip and tried to breathe.
Kellan touched. A single finger at first, and then a tiny sound of delight as she stroked with her whole hand. “Oh. They’re so soft.”
The softest ones were underneath, but Jae was too overwhelmed to form the words.
Alonia scooted a little closer. “Do your feathers ever come out?”
Jae managed a nod. “Sometimes.”
“I like to do fancy stitching.” Alonia looked a little shy. “I’d like to try copying a feather, if I could borrow one for a while. Or I could use the small ones for decoration.”
Gran had always told her to leave any she lost out in the forest. “You can have as many as you like.”
Lily shook her head as Alonia bounced gleefully and Sapphire chased the bread that was trying to fall jelly-side down on the floor. “You’ll knock us all off the bed, silly. Or cover us in jelly.”
Jae could feel the tears trying to come again.
This kind of closeness and easy conversation and playful silliness existed in her village too. She just never got to sit and feel a part of it.
Alonia grinned from her spot in the middle of the bed. “I can do normal sewing too. Would you like some help altering that cloak you were wearing yesterday so it doesn’t cover up your wings? That must have been really uncomfortable.”
Jae stared, her speech gone again.
Alonia’s head dipped, her cheeks turning red. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”
“No.” The single word spilled out before Jae could think. “It’s not that. I’ve always covered my wings. In my village, I wrapped them tight to my body to hide them.”
Lily wrinkled her nose. “Then how could you fly?”
“She didn’t,” Kellan said quietly, watching Jae’s face. “Only at night when no one could see you, right?”
Jae nodded.
“My clan wasn’t always nice to people who were different.” Sapphire glanced at Jae and then looked down at her knees. “I had a cousin who couldn’t say all the words right, and sometimes the others would tease him. I bet it was even worse with wings.”
They were trying to understand. “People are sometimes scared of what they don’t know.” It was something Gran said often, even if it was little comfort to a sore heart.
Lily snorted. “People are sometimes idiots. It’s good that you’re here now.”
So many faces. They couldn’t possibly all be this friendly. “I don’t want to scare anyone here.”
Lily gave her a look like the one Gran used when she was trying to figure out which remedy would best help a patient. “When I first brought Oceana here, she was really cranky. She wasn’t used to people and she hated fire, and none of the other dragons were sure what to do with her.”
Jae understood the lesson behind the words. “I’ll try not to be cranky.”
All of them laughed. Alonia elbowed Lily. “Too bad. You’ll still be the crankiest of us all.”
Lily made a face. “Whatever.”
Sapphire grinned and stole Lily’s bread. “What she’s trying to say is you're not the first person or dragon to arrive in this village who’s a little different.”
Wings weren’t little. Jae looked helplessly at the feathers taking up half her bed.
Sapphire sobered. “We all have things that make us different. Lily can’t cook and her dragon doesn’t like fire, which is really strange for a dragon. Lotus and I were too scared to fly and Trift still won’t, and he does magic with Alonia, which is even stranger than not liking fire.”
Jae felt dizzy, like her head had a spinning hoop inside it. “Magic?”
“Yup.” Alonia sighed and made a face. “The first thing we did was turn the weapons master’s sword into a flower, so trust me, anyone who might be worried about a few feathers left this village a long time ago.”
It had never occurred to Jae that there might be a place where she wasn’t the most frightening inhabitant. And even magic probably wasn’t as scary as fire-breathing dragons. She felt the lightness of that thought lifting her wings—but it wasn’t until Kellan grinned that she realized she was smiling.
She took a breath and let it get bigger.
Four faces beamed back at her.
Kellan nodded. “I think you’ll be a good kin for Fendellen. Karis says you’re already a really amazing flier, but you’ll know how to be her friend, too.”
Jae didn’t miss the slightly strained looks that passed between her new friends, but she wasn’t going to let anything dampen her happiness. Gran said that if you opened your mind, the plants would teach you in their own time. She would let this village teach her too. “You all did so much for me yesterday. What work can I do?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about that. Work will come find you, and we can show you all the good hiding spots for when there’s too much of it.”
Jae ducked her head and smiled. Lily sounded like Mellie. Good-natured complaining from someone who never actually shirked her work.
“We need to find you some clothes.” Alonia brushed a few crumbs off her knees. “I have two dresses that are a bit small for me, so we can start with those. Or we can make you some tunics, like Kellan wears.”
No girl old enough to walk wore anything but a dress in the high mountains, but Kellan’s leggings looked warm and practical, especially for a healer’s apprentice. And skirts were neither warm nor practical to fly in.
“Right. Tunics, then.” Alonia grinned. “I’ll go talk to Inga. I think she still has some bolts of wool from the fall fair, and there are probably some pants and long shirts in the storage bins that we can tuck and alter a bit. Lily can help with the basic sewing, and then you can show me how to do the fancy stitching on your dress and we can copy it to your tunics.”
“I don’t mind sewing,” Jae said quietly. “I’m sure you all have your own work to do.”
Sapphire shrugged. “We do, but you can help with some of that too. Tomorrow we’ll go play with the babies so Irin doesn’t yell.”
That steadied Jae. She knew how to mind littles.
Kellan popped up and set mugs and crumbs and bits of leftover cheese back on the tray. “I’ll get us some food for while we sew.” She smiled at Jae. “I’m a terrible seamstress, but Alonia won’t let me wreck your clothes. Are there things you particularly like to eat?”
Jae had no idea how to answer that. “Anything that fills my belly.”
Kellan laughed and carried the tray over to her cloak and boots. “That I can promise to deliver.”
Alonia lined up behind her. “I’ll go raid the storage bins and Inga’s woolens.” She gave Jae a cheery wink. “I think your dragon is waiting to say good morning, but don’t go far. It’s nice and warm in here, so we’ll spend the day here, if that’s all right.”
Jae nodded, dazed.
A day spent hiding with new friends sounded far more than just all right.
Chapter 10
The littles weren’t human.
They were dragons.
Jae stared at the three tiny creatures currently sitti
ng up and staring back at her and tried not to turn into springmelt at their cuteness.
Irin chuckled. “Don’t let them fool you. They’re just as much trouble as full-grown dragons, and far less likely to clean up their own messes.” He picked up a well-worn leather bag at the door to the nursery. “Karis will be within earshot, and Afran will know where to find me.”
Sapphire rolled her eyes, but Jae noticed she didn’t do it where the gruff older man could see.
Kellan nodded respectfully. “We’ll be fine. We’ll take good care of them, and we promise to listen to Kis.”
A large golden eye opened on the far side of the nursery, and Jae jumped backwards—straight into Fendellen behind her.
::Easy, sweet one. He’s large and grumpy, and his kindness knows no bounds. He’s also hurting this morning. He carries many old wounds of war, and the winter cold makes all his aches and pains worse.::
Jae kept her eyes on the yellow scales of a dragon who looked almost as big as Afran. ::Can your healers not help him?::
::It’s rare for a dragon to suffer grievous injury. Elf healers do what they can. His kin has searched lands far and wide for things that will help him.::
Then a high-mountain healer’s apprentice would know nothing that hadn’t already been tried. She dipped her head respectfully. ::I’m sorry he hurts.::
The eye closed slightly, as if it had heard her.
“This is Squirt.” Sapphire was already sitting on the floor, a tiny purple dragon baby in her lap nibbling something from her fingers. “That’s her nickname, anyhow, until the queen or her kin finds her real one. She’s the smallest of the three, but she’s always hungry.”
Jae tried to gather her wits. “Sometimes the smallest ones need to eat to catch up.”
Kellan giggled. “I’ve been trying that forever and it hasn’t worked yet.”
Fendellen made her way carefully over to a space near Kis. “I’ll lie down over here, and you can lean against me and protect me from their fierce little claws.”
Jae was pretty sure her dragon didn’t need protecting from anything much, but a safe place to sit and watch was very welcome. She took a step Fendellen’s way and then froze as the baby the same color as Kis finally lifted her face out of Kellan’s bowl. Her head was oddly shaped, like a rock had landed on her egg and squished it, and she had only knobs where her short front legs should be.