4
The training hall spread out before me. It was an enormous structure, a room within the Academy where we gathered to work with the instructors, and a place where I had come to feel uncomfortable. I wanted to fit in within the Academy, but it had become increasingly obvious that I did not.
So many of the people who came to the Academy had talent already. While I might have a connection to the dragons, or dragon, I didn't necessarily have anything else. That connection made a difference. Those who had such a connection used it in ways that allowed them to demonstrate their power, but it was more than that. They used it in order for them to prove that they were worthy.
Dragon mage worthy.
I might be able to feel the heat in my belly and detect something guiding me, sharing with me that there was something else I could or couldn’t do, but that was all I could feel at this point.
I stayed in the back, looking at the others. Brandel remained close to the front of the chamber, talking to others on his level, like Cara and Dominic, both of whom seemed to belong in the Academy far more than I did. Brandel always had others with him, and they leaned forward, hanging on every word.
"He can be a bastard, but he's skilled enough," the voice said behind me.
I turned to see Ames standing there.
He was younger than me, and had been at the Academy for quite a bit longer. Much like so many who came to the Academy, I suspected Ames had been here since he was young, when he had first demonstrated his connection and talent with the dragons, and had proven that he had real potential.
"Why does it have to be like that?" I asked—though as I looked at Brandel, and the way that the others hung on him, I could see it. There was something charismatic about him, almost magnetic. I had known men like him before, but they weren’t all bullies like Brandel was.
And because he was a bully, there was a part of me that reacted instinctively. I wanted nothing more than to tell him off, but that wouldn't do at all. I was older, and theoretically, I should know better.
"His father is someone of nobility," Ames said. He shook his head. "Not that I would ever know it by talking to him. That is, if he would let me talk to him."
I looked over and frowned. "Why wouldn't you?"
"He doesn't believe that I'm of the right class."
"What class is that?"
"His. He’s got to become a full mage or his father suffers in the eyes of the king.” Onas started forward, and I frowned again. He had always set himself apart, more so than most of the students whom I had come to know, but he hadn't been rude to me, not like Brandel or the others who hung on him.
When Matthew, the master instructor who was to lead today's session, strode in, his flowing robes hanging over his rotund form, he swept his gaze around the others, holding it briefly on Brandel then the gathered students with him.
"I would like you to harness your connection to the dragons," he said. His words carried, and I didn't know if it had anything to do with how he summoned magic, or if it was simply the contours of the room. The acoustics here might have allowed his words to easily resonate. Certainly in a place like this, where we were expected to continue to study and learn, there would be benefits in having our words carry as his did.
I stayed off to the side of the room. I focused, thinking about the dragons, thinking about the connection that I shared with them, and trying to find something within it.
There were steps that I could follow, and I did them the way that I had been trained to, but the heat that I could feel in my belly was still not enough. Not nearly enough.
If only I could feel the same thing I felt when I was in the forest with the Djarn.
I had felt that connection then.
I needed to do so consistently.
Every so often, I caught Brandel looking in my direction.
It seemed as if he were amused. Or annoyed. Maybe both.
"As you hold onto it, what I would like is for you to focus on letting that power flow out from you. You can feel it in your fingers. That is the first step."
In my case, that wasn't the first step. Feeling it in my fingers was just a part of what I knew I needed to do, but I had not even managed to accomplish that. Not yet. I wasn't sure if I even could. The heat was there. And as it burned within me, I focused on it, struggling to see if there was something within that heat that I might be able to push out into my fingers the way that he instructed.
But I couldn't.
I tried. Each moment that passed, I tried to feel something else, some way for that heat to begin to build, to push it out into my fingertips.
But I couldn't.
"See? He can't even do this much."
I looked over at Brandel, and found his fingertips glowing with the dragon mage energy. It wasn't the first time that I had seen him holding onto that power, but he had decided to turn his attention upon me.
I didn't need this. I didn't need his arrogance, and I certainly didn't need his attention. It annoyed me.
But perhaps it shouldn't.
I reminded myself what would happen if I failed.
"Quiet," Master Matthew said, and he swept his gaze around the others again. He said something to the students nearest him, before making his way over to me. "Are you able to reach for any of the heat?"
I looked down, focusing on my fingers, before looking up and meeting his gaze. I was here for a reason. And if I could pass enough of the tests—if I could prove that I deserved to be here—then perhaps even Master Matthew would understand. "I can feel the heat," I said. "I can't always do anything with it." Always was an understatement.
"There are different techniques for harnessing that power. What I would encourage you to do would be to find your focus, and see if you can draw upon the energy within yourself. Perhaps you can find the way to touch that heat in a different manner." He cocked his head. He had wide-set eyes and a double chin, and his thin lips pressed together tightly. "Don't let the others get on your case too much. Everybody has their own technique. You must find yours."
It was the most reassurance that any of the instructors have given me. Well, Jerith had attempted to try to reassure me, but even his reassurances had come laced with questions. It was almost as if Jerith didn't know whether he believed that I could do what I needed to do.
"What do you recommend?" I asked.
"What works for me is to feel the heat. I assume you can feel that, otherwise you wouldn't be here." He waited a moment, and I nodded. "Once you feel it, then you must find a way to push it. At least, that's what I do. I can push that heat along my blood, along my arms, and it heads out to my fingers."
As he did it, an arcing of flame raced from one fingertip to another, sizzling in the air. It created a bright flaming spiral, and then it faded.
Dragon mage magic was impressive when seen up close, but had proven to be more challenging for me to draw upon.
"Do you see?" he asked.
"I see," I said softly.
"Then keep trying." He nodded, smiling and turning back to the other students as if that were all the answer I needed.
I snorted to myself and focused on the heat. There was no point in trying to do anything else. I could feel that, and tried to draw on the energy that was within me, trying to feel for something else, but each time that I did, I recognized that the heat went nowhere.
If it were supposed to radiate throughout me, it did not.
I watched the other students gathered, noticing how so many of them had no difficulty with pushing the heat out of their fingertips, leaving him glowing.
Some of them, Brandel included, had a surge of power that went from one fingertip to the next, and they were able to carry power through them.
Until I could do that, I would never be a dragon mage. But I could feel the heat. It told me that I might be able to do something.
Eventually, I grew tired of remaining here. I couldn't draw enough power out, so staying here didn't serve any purpose.
; I headed out of the training room, but not before seeing Brandel looking over at me, a smirk on his face.
From there, I headed upstairs.
A dark-cloaked man passed me in the hall and it took me a moment to realize it was the same man I’d seen with Manuel the night before.
“You’re the young man Manuel spoke of,” he said.
“Am I?” I looked along the hall, but it was empty save for the two of us.
“He claims you came from the plains.”
He waited for me to speak, and I nodded.
“I should like to speak to you about your experience. I have not found many with talent beyond the forest.”
Was that what this would be about?
If he were a dragon mage, then I knew I had to interact with him, but I didn’t need someone to accuse me of the same thing Brandel and the others did. “If you would like.”
He grunted. “Find me later.”
I nodded, and as he left, I wondered if maybe I could learn something from him. Matthew had mentioned that I would need to find my own way of attaining power. What if the dark-cloaked man could help me find my way?
I reached my room, where I sank down in the chair in front of my desk. I pulled open my book and turned the pages, flipping through slowly and reading the instructions written upon them. I was asked to find myself, the power within me. Channel it.
These were the same points I had learned from the instructors. They were just written down. Despite that, I still did not find what I needed. How could I? There were no answers. Nothing that would give me any guidance, and nothing that would tell me where I needed to go and what I needed to do. I had nothing other than my belief that I could.
And it was a belief that had been pushed upon me by others who seem to think that I have potential—though I no longer knew if I truly had it.
I pored over the pages, looking for answers in the same way that I had every day in the months that I had been in the Academy, trying to understand some way for me to reach for the power of the dragons—not just to feel it.
There was a section in one of the early parts of the book that spoke of the heat that I was supposed to feel—and because I felt it, I thought that perhaps I could uncover something from it. But the longer that I felt it, the harder it was for me to know if there was anything within it that might be useful to me.
It talked about finding a pattern within myself.
What did that even mean?
The instructors talked about focusing on the heat, focusing on the breathing, and then pushing that heat out as I connected to the dragons, but a pattern?
It seemed interesting, only in that it might provide me with a different way of reaching for the power of the dragons. But still, it didn't provide me with any immediate benefit.
A knock came at my door.
I looked up from the book, rubbing my eyes. I felt like I had been studying for the better part of several hours, though I doubt it had been anywhere close to that. It was just that this mental work was far harder on me than I would've expected it to be, especially having been on the farm for as long as I had, being accustomed to physical activity. Thinking the way that I had been drained me almost as much as a full day of work on the farm. I got up from my seat and headed to the door, pulling it open and frowning.
"Oh," Cara said. She had auburn hair and a round face that pouted as she looked up at me. "You are here."
"Can I help you?"
It was best to be polite. I was older than Cara, and though she looked at me with disgust in her eyes, there was no point in me causing drama with her. I had enough drama with others in the Academy as it was.
"I was told to give you this."
She held out a folded piece of paper, stuffed into an envelope and sealed with wax.
I frowned at her. "By who?"
"I don't know," she said. "One of the master instructors claims it was left here for you."
I took it, and before I had the opportunity to do or say anything else, she stormed off down the hall. I stepped back, closing the door, and leaned on it for a moment.
As I unfolded the envelope, my eyes skimmed the neat handwriting.
It was from Alison.
That was unexpected. Not that Alison would not send word. She had promised that she would try to update me, but the fact that she had written . . .
The letter was simple. Only a few lines. She hoped that it found me well. She was diving into her apprenticeship, which didn't surprise me at all. I had expected that she would be. And she wanted me to keep an eye out for Joran, since he was coming to the capital and wouldn't know how to find me.
That was it.
I had a sneaking suspicion as to who got the letter here. It was the kind of thing that Manuel would have done, though why wouldn't he have given it to me when I had seen him before?
Still, my heart hammered, and excitement filled me.
Joran was coming to the city.
I smiled to myself, and was left with other emotions I had not anticipated—excitement, yes, but maybe a little embarrassment that I hadn’t reached for the magic yet.
How would Joran react?
My oldest friend would probably tease me about failing to become a dragon mage, but then he would be jealous when he learned that I could be a dragon rider.
I smiled again. Now I only had to figure out how to find him when he came to the city. I wanted to figure out why he was coming, as well.
It didn't matter though.
And when Joran arrived, my months of feeling isolated here would no longer matter either.
And maybe, I had to hope, he could stay for a while.
5
Heat radiated from the dragons, and I stood outside of their pens, watching them. The dragon pens were made out of metal worked with a hint of dragon magic, the metal itself unlike anything that I had ever experienced before, and perpetually warm. Patterns were worked into the metal, so finely wrought that they blurred into the metal itself—you could only determine what they were by tracing your fingers along it. Perhaps by using power as well, though I didn't have that experience.
The bars of the pens stretched high above. The only way in was through a gate in the center of the pen. It was not enclosed at the top. There was no purpose in doing so. It was not designed to keep the dragons in, but to keep others out.
The small greenish dragon that had come back to the city with me was curled up in the corner of the yard, watching. This dragon was small, larger than a horse, but not nearly as massive as so many of the other dragons within the pens. He had grown in the time that we had returned to the capital and now his scaled sides glittered in the sunlight. A heat washed over him, giving him an energy that caught my awareness.
I focused, thinking about the power that radiated between myself and the dragon, using the techniques that I had learned within the Academy. I needed to breathe, to focus, and to find some way to recognize how to channel that power.
Those were the steps.
I moved on from my breathing, trying to feel for the heat within me, though it came suddenly and faint. I steadied my breathing, focusing on each breath within my lungs, thinking about just how much I needed to find some energy buried deep within me.
Finally, I attempted to relax. It hadn’t worked all that well for me out in the forest, but while standing this close to the dragon, especially one that I knew that I could connect to, I had to hope that I would be able to feel that connection.
I readied for the possibility that it would strike me in the chest when I did, throwing me back. It had happened when I’d been in the forest.
“Do you always stand there and stare at the dragons? I don’t think they will do anything more than what they have.”
I turned to see a dark-haired woman watching me. She had on a plain brown cloak, and she watched me with dark oval eyes. There was something almost impossibly alluring about her. I smiled. “You might be surprised.”
The woman approached slowly, and
she leaned up against the bars of the dragon pen, squeezing them. When I had been here before, I had never seen anyone other than the students at the Academy who had been willing to approach the dragons so closely.
“I think they are impressive, but I feel bad for them.”
I tipped my head to the side, frowning at her. “You feel bad?”
The woman nodded and took a deep breath. “They’re captives here.”
“This is only where they sleep,” I said. “Most of the time, the dragons are free to travel wherever they would like.” I thought of the black dragon that had flown away from me, the one that Jerith had used to test me. Those dragons were not in captivity. “You aren’t with the Academy.”
She shook her head as she glanced over to me, holding my gaze with her dark eyes. They practically swallowed me. “Are you?”
I nodded, staring through the bars of the cage at the dragon. “I’ve been here for a few months.”
“A few months?” She arched a brow. “Most students at the Academy are younger, are they not?”
I shrugged. “I came here following a testing out beyond the borders of the forest.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “The Wilds?”
Why did everybody keep assuming that I came from the Wilds? Did so few people within the kingdom know that there was anything beyond the forest? Did everybody really believe that the Wilds were all that was there?
“Not the Wilds. I came from the city of Berestal. Well, not quite from the city, but outside of it.”
“I don’t have much experience with those who trained at the Academy,” she said, “but I would not have expected someone like yourself.”
I shrugged. “I suppose I wouldn’t have expected someone like myself either.”
She turned her attention to the bars of the cage, staring through. “Why this dragon?”
“No reason,” I said. She didn’t need to know the dragon seemed to call to me. I couldn’t really explain it, anyway. There was a sense of power that came from the dragon. While it was similar to what I detected from the other dragons, it wasn’t quite the same. It was almost as if this dragon, the one I had connected to first, had bonded to me in a way that was meant to pull upon me differently, more strongly than others. “Do you come here often?”
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 4