Page 33 of House of Ashes

I peered past him at the carefully-organized harnesses hanging from chains set in the ceiling, ranging from basic leather configurations, to the gleam of a full set of dragon armor in the shadows at the back of the room.

It was a well-tended eyrie, everything neatly labeled and organized, with a desk set near the storage room door. Maps had been pinned to the wall above it, and an enormous ledger was laid open on its surface. All Eyrie-Masters kept exacting records of which dragons entered their eyries.

Viros caught my attention, holding out a measuring tape. “Good morning, Princess Sera. We’ll need to take fittings for the final harness this morning, but this one should suffice for practice flights.”

The title almost made me twitch, but I needed to get used to it. Once, I’d thought nothing of being referred to as ‘princess’ by the Bloodless people of Silvered Embers, though it’d often been prefaced with a diminutive ‘little’ until I’d been enrolled in the Training Grounds and began preparing for my majority.

I nodded to Viros, allowing him to begin whipping the measuring tape around my legs and waist.

“Have you worked on any more of our silent code?” I asked Rhylan, managing to question him without actually meeting his eyes. “We’re going to need more signals than what we worked with the first time.”

Gods, it was ludicrous that I couldn’t look him in the face without cringing. He’d managed to knock me so thoroughly off-kilter with that almost-kiss that it actually pissed me off.

I despised this dragon. Not as much as my father and Yura, it was true, but enough that for the first time in my life, his presence made me wish I were Bloodless, and no longer subject to the biological drive to find a strong mate that was ingrained in all draga.

“I’ve given it some thought.” Rhylan held several leather gloves. I forced myself to hold still as he took one of my hands, his fingers pressing lightly into my palm, and began to slide one of the gloves on me. “This one’s too large. We should keep the basic signals—I’ll remember them easily. But maybe you should decide on the ones for other problems. I can feel it when you touch my back. Perhaps a touch system would work.”

The gloves were all well-worn leather, lined with soft fleece. The third glove was a perfect fit, encasing my arm almost to the elbow and flexing as easily as my hands.

“Why the change of heart?” I spread my fingers, made a fist. “I thought you wanted to control the flight.”

Rhylan peeled the glove off, and it was probably my imagination that he held my wrist a little more delicately than he really needed to.

I didn’t miss the warning look Viros gave him, either. The Eyrie-Master didn’t look like a man who would tolerate any foolishness in his domain.

“You are the one in danger during flight,” Rhylan finally said, checking the size of the glove rather than meeting my eyes. “I was rushed and desperate when I came to retrieve you. If this is going to work, I need you to be as comfortable as possible with flying on me.”

I stared at him, taking in the sharp blades of his cheekbones and the way his jaw flexed. He knew he was being stared at, and I could almost see the discomfort written in the broad lines of his shoulders.

Meeting my demanded level of comfort and trust should have been obvious from the beginning, but…peace. We had promised each other to try harder.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” I said carefully. “I think a tap system might work best, since I’ll need to be able to keep one hand free for emergencies.”

Many mate bonded draga wielded weapons during flight. That would be almost impossible without the mind-speech, but I would need to be able to ride while keeping one hand free. It would look odd to any other dragonbloods if I clutched the reins with both hands like my life depended on it.

“We can keep your system as well,” I quickly amended. “It’s easy enough for the major issues.”

Rhylan nodded, passing the discarded gloves from hand to hand. “Look, your comfort matters to me. But don’t forget I’ll still be in control during the flight, so don’t be shocked if I choose to—fuck.”

If he chose to what?

But his eyes were focused somewhere over my shoulder. I whirled around, taking in the mountain vista through the columns of the eyrie’s peak, at first seeing nothing but shredded wisps of cloud wreathing the jagged black Krysien peaks.

Then I saw a glimmer of pale blue in the sky, and heard the distant snap of a wing beat.

“Get in the storage room,” Rhylan said, focused on the incoming dragon.

Viros held the door open for me, waving a hand. I went to him in a hurry, not in any rush for a dragon and rider to see me like this. We weren’t even close to ready.

Viros nudged me behind the door. “Stay here,” he said quietly, and for whatever reason, he tapped on the far edge of the door, near the hinge, before leaving and shutting it behind him.

The pleasant scents of leather and polish filled the air. Moving quietly as the wing beats grew louder, I shifted towards the corner, and saw why Viros had tapped it.

There was a slight crack at the edge of the door, and between the wood and the stone wall, I had a narrow slit to peer through. I could make out a thin slice of the terrace, a hint of Viros’s white hair to the left, one of Rhylan’s shoulders to the right.

They stood back, watching as the dragon descended through the dragon door and settled on the terrace.

He was not as large and bulky as Rhylan, his form thinner and sleeker, glimmering the pale blue of glacier ice. A silver-coated muzzle sprouted long feelers that waved in the wind, and the simple riding tack was vivid white leather.

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