by Audrey Faye
Jae dug out one of the bits she had tucked away. ::Kis is your friend.::
Surprise—and fondness. ::Kis is dear to me. But I have never let him be as close as he would wish to be. I told myself the distance was necessary, that it made me a better queen.:: A long exhale. ::Perhaps it has.::
It was hard not to turn away from the pressing sadness. Jae reached into it instead. ::Gran says the same about being a healer. Your heart can’t get too close or your mind won’t have the space it needs to think clearly.::
More surprise. Warmth. ::Ah, you understand then.:: A pause, one so long Jae thought the words might be done. ::And you perhaps understand some of the cost.::
Jae’s heart squeezed. ::You did not choose a kin?::
A regal head, slowly shaken. ::No. Or perhaps I did not let one choose me.::
Jae straightened her shoulders. ::Fendellen isn’t alone. I won’t let her be.::
The pride in the queen’s eyes was unmistakable. ::She will need that fierceness from you, youngling. Even now, she holds back the last of her loneliness from you.::
Jae’s hands formed into fists. “That’s not true.”
A sigh. “It is true, but my words were perhaps clumsy. She accepts your bond fully now. But she believes that one day, she will need to step into loneliness again.”
Jae didn’t understand—and then she did. “When she becomes queen.”
A long, slow nod. “Yes. She would protect you still.”
Fire rose from Jae’s belly, traveling up to wrap around her chest. Her throat. ::She can try.::
Rumbling laughter from the queen, and flashing, fierce pleasure. ::Oh, she has chosen well. Does she know what a temper you have when you’re finally lit?::
Jae grinned. ::Not yet.::
::Ah, I would see that day.:: The queen nodded her head sharply. ::Come. I have a small gift for you, and your dragon grows restless.::
Jae could feel that through their bond. She sent soothing. Calming. The kin version of chamomile tea.
The queen walked a few steps and stopped, her chin pointing at a small box on a table with no other treasure. ::Open it. What is inside is for you.::
Jae walked over with no small trepidation.
“There are beads in your wings. They are very pretty.” Elhen nodded her head toward the small box. “Perhaps you would add a few more to their number.”
Gingerly, Jae lifted the lid off the exquisitely crafted box—and gaped at what she saw inside. Gorgeous, glimmering flakes of ice, catching the dim light in the cave and turning it into stars.
She reached out a shaking finger, knowing full well they weren’t really flakes of ice, or stars, or simple beads. They were something she had seen only rarely in the high mountains, and only in a family’s most treasured possessions.
Jewels.
She gulped. She couldn’t possibly take them, but she had no idea how to turn down the gift of a queen.
“All dragons have some fondness for treasure.” Elhen sounded like she was describing a particularly tasty bit of cheese. “I have caves full, and rarely do I have a chance to give any of my pretties to someone who will properly appreciate them.”
Pretty was entirely the wrong word. They were dazzling. Breathtaking.
“They are a suitable gift for the one who will wear them.”
Jae heard the message behind the words. These weren’t for her, healer girl from the high mountains. They were for the kin of one who would be queen.
::They are for both. Don’t forget your girl from the mountains, youngling.:: The queen’s voice was stern, and it resonated somewhere deep in Jae’s head. ::That is who the star chose, and I believe that is who Fendellen needs.::
Jae stared at the jewels as the words seeped into the new tea she had already begun. This one was so very important. She could feel that in every bit of the healer Gran had painstakingly trained. A monumental tea. One that would touch souls.
She smiled at the jewels. She knew exactly what she needed to add next.
Chapter 20
“They’re so shiny.” Alonia talked around the pins in her mouth.
“They look like raindrops froze in your feathers.” Kellan carefully stitched another of Elhen’s jewels onto Jae’s wings, each one added individually so no threads would hamper her flight. It was delicate, time-consuming work—and her friends had jumped at the chance to spend their day adorning her wings.
Lily and Sapphire had tried to volunteer too, but Alonia had overruled them, claiming they would manage to sew Jae’s sleeves to her wings or some other calamity. So those two were quietly taking care of some other things that needed to happen this day instead. Things a healer having jewels stitched to her wings didn’t have time to do.
Kellan smoothed another of the jewel beads into place and smiled. “Are your wings tired yet? Do you need a break?”
They’d been holding up their arms for as long as she’d been holding up her wings. “I could go ask Inga nicely for some lunch.”
“We already did.” Sapphire danced in the door with a tray and grinned at the elf behind her. “Well, I asked nicely. Lily stood in the corner and scowled, so she probably got the moldy loaf of bread.”
Jae was quite sure Inga would never allow such a thing in her kitchen. She smiled at the newcomers. “That smells delicious.”
“Not as delicious as what else she’s cooking.” Sapphire set down the tray, her eyes glinting in conspiratorial happiness. “Karis had some special spices, and Irin went hunting, and Ana went to the village down the road and came back with all the butter they could spare. There will be so many meat pies. Fendellen will be so surprised.”
Jae could feel her heart swelling. She had hoped people would help without asking too many questions, but this was more than she could have imagined. Even her four closest friends didn’t know all of what she planned, although perhaps they had some guesses.
Kellan picked up a slice of bread and buttered it thickly. Then she handed it to Jae, who was still waiting for Alonia to finish sewing on a jewel. “Are the villagers talking?”
“Of course.” Lily rested her knees against a bedpost and nibbled on a square of cheese. “They’re all a-dither about four being marked now.”
Four sets of eyes turned her way.
Lily snorted. She raised an eyebrow at Kellan. “Some are saying you’ll be the fifth.”
That was just like Lily. Brutally direct and kind, all at the same time. Saying what might otherwise be said in whispers.
Kellan shrugged. “They’ve been saying the next dragon would be mine for a long time too. So far, they’ve been wrong.”
Elhen was right. Courage came in many different forms. Jae reached out for the food tray and added two spoonfuls of jam on top of her bread and butter. Then she handed it to the small elf who waited and somehow chose to be useful and cheerful instead of bitter and sad.
Kellan smiled and bit into the extra helping of jam.
Jae slid down the wall next to her. Trying, with all the small, everyday motions of friendship to include the one who could feel so very excluded. She had spent her whole life on the receiving end of those small barbs. “The villagers are just hoping the star doesn’t decide to pick one of them. From what I can tell, being marked just leaves you wet and cold or with a sore head.”
Alonia giggled. “Or bruised ribs.”
Jae winced. She hadn’t been to weapons training yet, and she was not looking forward to it. “I should have made more salve.”
“That salve is really helping Kis.” Lily shot Jae a look. “I heard Irin tell Karis that he slept as easily last night as he does in the summer. Usually the winters are really hard for him.”
That warmed Jae right from the depths of her belly. “I don’t know if there’s enough to last until spring.” She’d made as big a batch as she dared with the ingredients she had, but Gran hadn’t expected her to be dosing dragons. “I might try to fly back in the first spring melts.” It would be dangerous, and cold, but worth
it.
Lily snorted. “Do that alone and your dragon will disown you. Or issue a royal edict or something.”
Jae rolled her eyes. In very short order, her four friends had turned the idea of being kin to a dragon queen into a standing joke. Which was far better than the alternative, so she wasn’t going to issue a word of complaint, other than the obviously expected ones. “What can she do, deprive me of bread and toasted cheese?”
“Probably.” Kellan grinned. “Inga really likes Fendellen.”
That would be why the cook was currently making dozens of meat pies instead of the small plate of them Jae had very tentatively requested. Her dragon might be important, but it seemed more significant to Jae that she was loved.
That was the true gift of this place.
She took a bite of her bread and butter, suddenly shaky. She had planned this day for her dragon, but also for herself. She wanted to soak in the best parts of what it meant to be kin, to belong, to have friends who chattered away as they sewed jewels from a dragon queen to her feathers, and then sat on the floor and ate bread and jam and cheese together like it was just a normal day.
It was a gift to a human girl born with wings, and, she hoped, to a dragon who had been born to be queen—and was somehow convinced she would need to walk her life’s path alone. Jae knew what it was to believe that so deeply it was etched on her very bones. She’d grown up watching the others of the village form friendships and have babies and laugh and cry together for big reasons and small ones, and believed it was her lot to always walk on the edges of that. To watch, and to be tolerated, even appreciated, but never quite included.
She knew what such believing did to the shape of a heart.
Today, she wanted to set Fendellen’s heart free to be the shape it needed to be.
She took in another shaky breath and took a big bite of her bread. Healers knew that hunger and thirst could undo a proper healing, and whatever else this afternoon might be, it was a healing of sorts. She wouldn’t go into it with an empty belly.
Kellan’s hand settled gently on her arm. No words. No questions. Just presence.
Jae offered the small elf a smile. Then she looked around the room. At Alonia, one cheek full as a chipmunk’s, carefully threading needles for the last few jewels. At Sapphire, tossing bread out the window Lily had opened and laughing as a large pink tongue caught the tossed snack. At Lily, shaking her head and offering the last of her bread for dragon feeding.
All of them acknowledging the invisible marks on their foreheads—or the lack of one—and holding tight to steadfastly ordinary lives anyhow. And they had somehow included her in their number.
They were five. Perhaps not the five of prophecy, or the five the star would finally pick for whatever destiny lay ahead, but they were five nonetheless. Five in friendship, in strength, in honest acceptance of each other, the weaknesses and the strengths.
She let it wash over her. Let herself lean into it and grow strong from it. Let it steep inside her because this was the most important ingredient of the tea she was making, and the one with which she was least familiar. She tried not to let that worry her overmuch. Healers sometimes had to use new medicines, especially when they proved so very well suited to the task.
She let out a breath and shook her head. So very presumptuous, she was, believing she could heal one who would be queen. But she could feel the voice inside her. The tugging. The same insanity that had called her out on a dark night and away from her home and into near death.
She swallowed hard. Elhen believed she was worthy to be Fendellen’s kin. So did the four friends making short work of bread and cheese and jewels.
Even a star believed.
Now all that was necessary was that a human girl left to die in the high mountains might spread her newly jeweled wings and believe it too.
Chapter 21
Jae looked over at the mouth of the cave. The old and nearly translucent queen dropped her chin ever so slightly in acknowledgment, perhaps even in support. But Jae knew the truth. She stood on this cliff alone.
She held out her wings, letting the bright noonday sun catch the jewels and make them radiant.
Heads snapped to attention. Dozens of them, dragons and villagers both, standing on boulders and craning for a better view.
Jae lifted into the air so they could have it. So many had come, even the large and pained yellow dragon and his three miraculously well-behaved charges. Inga was there, with bread flour still on her skirts, and Ana had brought a wagon for the children to stand on so they could see. Irin stood proudly at Kis’s shoulder, and Karis perched on Afran’s head, two sets of wise eyes studying her with calm curiosity.
Every one of them here simply because she had invited them. To a ceremony with no name and a ritual she was about to make up out of thin air. Which was right and proper. As any flier knew, it was the thinnest air, the highest air—the air that had kissed high mountains—that held the most power.
And the most risk.
She couldn’t let that shake her now. Jae ran her hands down the ice-blue tunic and its silver stitching. She was about to issue an edict to a queen, and that wasn’t going to work if she quivered while she said the words. She raised her head and called for the dragon that couldn’t possibly have missed the gathering of every living being in the village. “Fendellen. Dragon who chose me. I call you to join me.”
The words rang out over those gathered, and somehow, in the crisp, cold light, they didn’t sound nearly as silly as when she’d imagined them in her own head.
For a long moment, nothing—and then Afran’s head turned.
The incoming ice-blue streak circled the gathered crowd, at a distance and speed that nearly blurred her. Jae pivoted in the sky, always facing her dragon.
Fendellen circled closer on a long, majestic glide. Then she pointed her nose into the sky, a sharp, zooming climb—and at the top, a twist into a spectacular, glistening dive that captured the streaming sunlight on her wings.
Jae grinned. Her dragon certainly knew how to make an entrance. That was good. At least one of them should.
::This is not too shabby for your first effort,:: came the wry reply.
Something that had been tight in Jae’s chest all day relaxed. The bond was there, full and bright and resonant, and nothing she could do or say in the next moments would shake that. She held up her arms to the dragon above her in the sky.
Fendellen tucked in her wings and shot downward, a hurtling ball of dragon headed straight for Jae’s outstretched fingers.
She didn’t move a muscle.
A collective hiss from the crowd, and then Fendellen tucked and rolled, zooming out so close to the ground that even Jae’s breath caught, and buzzing by the crowd close enough to shake whiskers and scales.
Eleret got waist-high into the sky before Irin nabbed her.
Jae grinned. Every ritual needed a noisy toddler or two.
Fendellen swept by the last of the gathered crowd and angled toward Jae. More slowly now, with grace and strength and dawning majesty.
Jae hovered in the sky and waited for her queen.
::Not yet.:: Fendellen came to a stop, face to face and heart to heart, so close their wing tips skimmed the same air. ::I am not your queen yet.::
Jae raised her hands to each side of an ice-blue nose. She paused and took in a breath.
The tea was ready.
“I thought you were a demon.” Jae pitched her voice in the way of the people of the high mountains when they needed to be heard. “You came to me on a fierce winter night. I saw your face in the ice and snow and thought you were my death.”
“I thought you were dead.” Fendellen’s voice rang clear and crisp and true. A dragon who might not know why she had been called, but knew how to tell a good story anyway.
The silence below them was absolute. Even the littles stared up in awe.
“I woke up in warmth, in a cave with a pool of warm water and a dragon who matched the color of
the moonlight.”
Fendellen’s eyes glinted with humor. “You called me demon, even as your teeth chattered.”
Jae wasn’t entirely sure if that was true, but she had surely thought it. “I come from the high mountains, where the winters take many lives. Where the people are good, and hard working, and kind, but not always so trusting of those who are different.” She steadied her voice. “On my way here, I discovered the people of the lowlands are sometimes like that too.”
She could feel Fendellen’s pain through their bond. Her sorrow. A queen who felt guilt for not protecting one she hadn’t even known yet.
That needed to stop. “I was left on the side of a mountain to die, and found kindness instead. I grew up knowing love, and I grew up knowing what it was to be different, always. I learned to heal, and I learned to persist because the high mountains rarely forgive those who quit.” She angled her wings to catch the sun. “I learned to fly like the eagles. My wings were my biggest fear and my greatest solace.”
She breathed out. It ran contrary to everything Gran had ever taught her to talk so much about herself, but the details mattered. “This was my journey, and I believe it was for a reason.”
Fendellen’s cheek leaned into her hand. “It made you a kin fit for a queen.”
That was almost right. “It made me a kin fit for one queen.”
The ice-blue dragon stared.
“I am your kin. I am not meant to be royalty. I’m here to be your friend. To say, in front of all these witnesses, that you will never walk alone.” Jae dropped the most bitter herb into the tea. “Even when you are queen.”
Fendellen froze.
Speaking about her dragon’s most private pain was even more counter to everything Jae knew—but it was also necessary. Some pains had to be seen to be properly lanced. “You believe that is a thing you will do alone.”
A long, fierce silence in which Jae understood just what it was to have stirred the fire of a dragon. “So it has always been.”
She wasn’t going to argue dragon history with a dragon. She would leave that to Elhen, or to Fendellen’s own fearsome honesty. “I hear dragons have never tumbled-rolled in the sky, either.”