Honorbound

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “I did care about you. Of course I did. You were my best friend, too.”

  “Then why didn’t you write me back? Did the king not let you, or…?”

  “No. It… it wasn’t anything like that.”

  That’s obviously not the answer Cedric was hoping for. His mouth pulls into a thin line. “Oh.”

  “I should have, though. I missed you.”

  “Then why didn’t you? What did I do to make you just stop talking to me?”

  Amelrik’s eyes go wide. “Nothing. You didn’t do anything.”

  “Then why?! Why did you—”

  “Because I didn’t know how to be the same person I was before. The same person you knew.” His eyes flick over to Cedric’s, then down at the table.

  “What? Why?”

  Amelrik swallows, not saying anything.

  The hope on Cedric’s face flickers out, replaced with a scowl. “If you can’t even tell me, then why should I believe you? Maybe my word’s not good enough anymore, but neither is yours.” He snaps his book shut, gathering his things like he’s going to leave. “You can have the table. You can have the whole inn, for all I care. I’ll find somewhere else to—”

  “She broke my wings.” Amelrik’s voice is small, barely a whisper.

  Cedric freezes, halfway out of his chair. He sinks back down. “What?”

  “When my mother attacked me, when she almost killed me…” He squeezes his eyes shut for a second and sucks in a breath. “She broke them.” His hands are on his knees, but I see them shaking. “She tried to tear them off, and she—”

  Cedric holds up a hand to stop him. His face goes pale, and he stares at him, horror stricken. “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. And I… I changed into human form,” he says, keeping his voice low, “and that healed most of my injuries, but not my wings. But I couldn’t bring myself to change back, not after what happened, and they stayed broken for so long.”

  Cedric looks like he might throw up. And like he has about a million questions to ask. He opens his mouth to say something, then stops himself. He jerks his head toward our room. “Come on,” he says, getting up from his chair again. “We shouldn’t talk about this here.”

  I follow them upstairs, because there’s no way I’m just going to sit at the table alone. Even if this is maybe kind of a private conversation. But it’s a private conversation I’m a part of, right? I mean, sort of, but it’s not like Amelrik hasn’t already told me all of this before.

  Amelrik leans against the door to our room to close it once we’re inside and then lets his head fall back. “I should have written to you. I should have told you. But I couldn’t talk about it. And I was just so—”

  “I don’t care about that anymore,” Cedric snaps, his voice more serious than I’ve ever heard it. Er, not that I’ve heard him talk that much, since we’ve known each other less than a day, but still. He sounds like he means it. “Show me.”

  Amelrik flinches. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “No, Amelrik, show me.”

  I take it back. That’s the most serious I’ve ever heard him sound.

  Amelrik scowls. He opens his mouth to tell him no, and I brace myself for another argument between them.

  But he doesn’t say no. He sighs, pulls his shirt off, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Then there’s the sound of bones crunching and flesh tearing as he transforms.

  His eyes turn yellow. Leathery wings stretch out from his back, and little black scales spread along the edges of his face and down his neck. They cover his forearms and run down his sides, too, stopping just above his hips. And it occurs to me that I have no idea if they continue again farther down, or if they actually stop there. I know his feet end in claws, just like his hands, because I’ve seen them poking through his socks before. Well, once. But I’ve never actually seen them. We’re getting married, and I haven’t even seen his feet, let alone what he looks like without pants on.

  In dragon form, I mean. I’ve seen him naked plenty of times in human form, but maybe that doesn’t count the same way. Because being naked means letting someone see all the parts you normally keep hidden.

  It doesn’t matter to me what he looks like, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. But it matters that he doesn’t want me to see, that I’ve shared the most intimate parts of myself with him, and he’s still holding something back. Like I’m closer to him than he is to me.

  Amelrik’s sitting on the corner of the bed, facing me, his back toward the wall. Cedric stands behind him, one knee pressed into the mattress for balance as he inspects Amelrik’s wings. He cringes at the sight and sucks air in through his teeth.

  Are they that bad? I’ve never seen them that close up. Or from behind. I take a step forward, wanting to see for myself, but the look of terror on Amelrik’s face when I do, and the way his whole body goes tense, stops me in my tracks.

  He doesn’t want me to.

  The realization stings. More than I want to admit. It makes my throat get kind of tight and my eyes prickle a little.

  Because it turns out it’s not that he doesn’t want anyone to get that close. He just doesn’t want me to.

  “This is bad, cousin,” Cedric says. “Do they still hurt?”

  Amelrik shakes his head. “No, not—”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “He says they ache whenever it rains.”

  He gives me a look, like he’s surprised I just tattled on him. Or maybe it was the way I said it, sort of snappish and angry.

  Cedric nods. “How bad?”

  “It varies,” Amelrik admits. “But sometimes… sometimes it gets pretty bad.”

  Like last fall when it was raining really hard for weeks on end. He kept saying he was fine, even though it was obvious how miserable he was.

  “Do they hurt now?” Cedric asks.

  “No. Not since it stopped snowing.”

  Cedric leans closer, his forehead creased with worry. He brushes his fingertips against Amelrik’s wings. He actually touches them, and Amelrik lets him.

  A hot wave of jealousy rises up in my chest. My heart pounds.

  Cedric’s hands trace patterns across Amelrik’s wings, his expression getting more and more troubled as he goes along. “These weren’t just broken—they were mangled.” His voice is tight, as if they were his wings he was talking about, as if he’s picturing what Amelrik must have gone through. He swallows.

  Amelrik’s yellow eyes fill with tears, though he’s blinking rapidly to try and keep them at bay, and I realize this is probably the first time anyone’s touched his wings since his mother broke them.

  I tell myself it’s good for him to have shared this with Cedric. It probably wasn’t healthy to have only told me, even if that felt like something special we had between us. Like he trusted me more than anyone else.

  But obviously he doesn’t. After all, it’s not me he’s letting get so close to him. And I hate myself for how bitter I feel, because I shouldn’t begrudge him this, but…

  But I can’t stop picturing the terror in his eyes that made it clear he didn’t want me anywhere near him.

  13

  PLENTY OF PEOPLE SNOOP THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S STUFF AND GET AWAY WITH IT

  We get back downstairs just in time to stop someone from stealing our table, even though Cedric’s things are still there. And I’m pretty sure there was another chair here before we left.

  Leif’s back, working behind the counter. It’s too busy in here for him to get away, but he and Cedric make eye contact from across the room as we sit down.

  “You could have told me, you know,” Amelrik says. “About you and Leif.”

  Cedric startles, obviously not expecting that. He glances down at the table and doesn’t look at either of us when he says, “How did you know?”

  “We, um…” Amelrik trails off, like he doesn’t want to say it.

  I do it for him. “We saw y
ou guys making out at the festival.”

  Cedric’s face turns pink.

  “It was an accident,” Amelrik says. “I mean, we weren’t spying or anything.”

  “Yeah, we thought we were following a murderer.”

  Cedric scowls. “It wasn’t Leif. I was with him this morning.”

  “I figured,” Amelrik says.

  “He lives near Denton.”

  “But you weren’t meeting him there.”

  “No,” Cedric admits. “I’d stayed over. I was just leaving to come here and work on my book when he got back from his morning shift. We ended up hanging out for a while before I left. I was definitely with him when the murder happened. Not that he would ever do anything like that.”

  “You should have just told me.” Amelrik punches him in the arm.

  Cedric barely reacts, even though it looked like he hit him kind of hard. But I guess it wasn’t that hard for a dragon. “I didn’t want you blabbing to your father.”

  Amelrik scoffs. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

  “Well… I thought I didn’t.”

  “You’re going to have to tell him eventually, though.”

  “I know.” Cedric sighs. “And it wasn’t just that. I thought maybe… I didn’t know what you’d think of me. You’d already stopped talking to me for seemingly no reason. I mean, I get it now. But we were so close growing up, and I couldn’t take it if you looked at me like…”

  Amelrik raises an eyebrow. “Like how people look at me?”

  Cedric winces, then nods.

  “What clan is he from?” I ask, trying to sound casual about it. But I figure it’s less weird for me to ask than for Amelrik to.

  “Oak.”

  So the scale we found definitely wasn’t his, then.

  “How’d he end up here?” Amelrik’s hand finds mine under the table, his thumb tracing circles in my palm.

  Oh, so now he wants to be close to me? Part of me wants to pull away, the hurt and jealousy still fresh and prickling. And it kind of bothers me that he doesn’t seem to have any idea that anything even upset me, let alone something that has to do with him. But it also feels good, and so familiar and comforting, and I don’t actually want him to stop. And it’s not like I’m actually mad at him. It’s not like he did anything. At least, not on purpose. Even if it still hurts.

  “He didn’t want to spend his whole life in a cave,” Cedric says. “He wanted to travel and see more of the world before settling down.”

  “He didn’t get very far,” Amelrik says.

  Cedric grins. “Well, he met me. He was only planning on staying here for a month or two. That was over a year ago.”

  “Does Odilia know?”

  He snorts. “Of course not. If she knew, everyone would. Well, my parents, at least. And your father.” He shudders a little. “He’s going to kill me.”

  I lean toward him, across Amelrik. “Tell him you want to marry a St. George. Anything will sound better after that.” I pause, then add, “But if the king wants to align with Oak clan, can’t you just…” I trail off, because they’re already giving me weird looks. “What?”

  “It wouldn’t work,” Cedric says.

  “He’s not royalty,” Amelrik explains.

  I pinch his arm. “How do you know? Because he’s not standing up straight enough?”

  He pokes me in the side where he knows I’m ticklish. “No, because I grew up in a royal household and I know the names of the nearby royal families.”

  “Leif’s nobility,” Cedric says. “His family’s pretty influential, but they don’t rank high enough for what you’re thinking. And there wouldn’t be children. For a political alliance, there needs to at least be the possibility.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Would there be the possibility if you married Rosalind?” And would there be if Amelrik married her? Not that I want to think about that.

  “That’s not…” Cedric squirms a little and clears his throat. “What I want wouldn’t matter.”

  That’s not exactly what I asked, but I let it go. “So, he’s nobility?”

  “His family doesn’t approve. I don’t think mine will, either.”

  “You don’t know that,” Amelrik says. “Odilia won’t care, at least.”

  “Are you serious? Odilia’s been looking forward to my supposed wedding with Rosalind more than anyone. I guess they became friends when we stayed with them that summer, and now she can’t wait for her to move to Hawthorne clan so she can gossip with her about me.” He rolls his eyes. “She’ll be heartbroken.”

  “Not if my father gets his way.” Amelrik’s mouth turns down. He scrapes the edge of the table with his fingernail.

  “Maybe none of us should go back.” Cedric whispers that, as if he might get in trouble just for suggesting it. “Maybe—”

  “We’d go to war.”

  Cedric’s quiet for a second. Then he says, “I don’t want to live my life for somebody else. Neither should you. You’ve done it enough already.”

  “It’s our home. The people we care about—”

  “Are in this room. Mostly.”

  Amelrik shakes his head. “I can’t just abandon everything. And you’ve spent your whole life knowing you’d be king someday. Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility?”

  “The only thing I’m responsible for is my own happiness.” But he doesn’t look at Amelrik when he says that, and his shoulders hunch in kind of a guilty way. “I’ve found that here, in East Westford. This is my life now. Doing research, being with Leif. This is what I want.”

  “And while you’re being responsible for your own happiness, what about everyone at Hawthorne clan who doesn’t have that choice? What about all the people who might die, through no fault of their own, because neither of their princes could be bothered to sign a stupid piece of paper?”

  “A piece of paper tying one of us to a girl we don’t love for the rest of our lives! They can’t ask that!”

  “And you can’t ask them to die for you because of it, either!”

  An uneasy feeling runs down my spine, because I’d never thought of it that way. “Amelrik—”

  “I’m not marrying her,” he says.

  But neither is Cedric, and Amelrik’s the one who won’t let his clan go to war. Which I kind of really like about him—I just wish it was under other circumstances.

  Amelrik and Cedric eventually decide to go dragon hunting. Well, dragon sniffing, I guess. Cedric says dragons pass through East Westford fairly often, or at least they did before the barrier went up, but he doesn’t know of any living nearby besides him and Leif. But this area is hardly the entire city, which means there are an awful lot of people who could secretly be dragons.

  But the idea of wandering around in the cold, feeling completely useless while the two of them follow scents I can’t possibly detect, does not sound like a great way to spend my afternoon. So when Amelrik says it’s time for us to get going, I suddenly blurt out that I’m not going with them. And instead of saying I’m just going to stay here at the warm, cozy inn like any sane person would do, I tell them I’m going to go see what information I can get from snooping on the paladins.

  He gapes at me, just as surprised by that answer as I am.

  And I have no idea why I said it other than the fact that I felt left out of their stupid dragon club and because I wanted to prove I could still contribute something to the investigation. So I point out that if Cedric could go around talking to paladins, surely it’s way safer for me to do it, what with actually being one.

  And then Cedric’s eyes light up and he says he has a whole list of questions that maybe I could find a way to work into the conversation somehow, because maybe it wouldn’t be weird for me to ask them things like how intermarriage works between the families—which some people might describe as mating habits, just saying—and do they have any paladin-specific holidays he should know about, and would I ever consider bringing him as my plus one?

  I t
ell him it would actually be super weird for me to ask any of those things, especially since I already know the answers. Then he gets this awed look on his face like he hadn’t even considered that and flips open his book to a blank page, his charcoal ready, like he’s going to start interviewing me.

  Then Amelrik reminds him they’d better get going and that there’ll be plenty of time to ask me stupid questions after we catch the murderer and get out of here.

  And that’s how I find myself heading back to Rosewood Manor not much later, kind of wishing I’d just stayed at the inn. Because not only is it really cold outside, but it turns out it’s even colder when you don’t have your dragon boyfriend right beside you to warm you up. And it also turns out that it’s one thing to say you’re going to go snooping and another to actually do it, since this is basically a giant maze and I have no idea where to even start.

  But there’s no way I’m going back to the inn, because that would be like admitting I’m useless. Which I’m not. Just because I’m not a dragon and can’t sniff out other dragons or get wing-touching privileges doesn’t mean I can’t do anything.

  I go through the kitchen entrance again, keeping my hood up and hoping that same cook isn’t here to recognize me. But unlike last time, there are no last-minute meals to prepare, and since dinner’s not for hours, the kitchen’s pretty much deserted. There are a couple of girls gossiping in the corner, working on a giant pot of soup that’s hanging over the fire. They glance over when I come in, then go back to their conversation, not saying anything to me.

  Then I just sort of wander through the house until I get lost. Because this manor is huge, and I have no idea where I’m going. I mean, I don’t even have a destination other than trying to find some kind of information I can take back with me.