Page 78 of House of Ashes

But it was an option. The sky wouldn’t have to be forbidden to me forever.

“We’re ready. Sera, come here—slowly. Let Garnet smell you, and give her the treat. Food offerings will reinforce the friendship bond.”

It was strangely harder to approach Garnet than it was to approach a dragon. I knew a dragon would be as cognizant as myself, knew he’d be calculating every move to his advantage. But a wyvern was far more unpredictable, with an animal nature.

I did as Kirana ordered, taking slow steps towards the wyvern, keeping my movements loose and unthreatening. Garnet’s eyes flamed hotter, but as I drew nearer, her nostrils flared again.

She turned her head, questing for my hairbrush to snuffle at it, and lifted her nostrils again to breathe my scent.

The wyvern uncurled herself from Kirana, taking a few dancing, tentative steps towards me, and I chose that moment to offer the meat.

For a moment, I was completely convinced the wyvern would take not just the bribe, but my entire arm, her little razor teeth shearing right through meat, tendon, and bone—

But she merely sniffed me, distrusting until she got the first good whiff, her eyes focused on my face and brightening she recognized the scent Kirana had called ‘friend’.

She snatched the treat from my fingers with almost surgical precision, throwing her head back and gulping it down all in one swallow.

“There. She can put a face to a scent,” Kirana said, stroking Garnet’s bony shoulder. “She’ll know you now. I thought it would be best to get this out of the way before the First Claim. She’s going to have a hard enough time dealing with all the other Houses there.”

“Poor girl,” I muttered, daring to reach out and touch her as Kirana was doing. The wyvern shivered and purred, her sounds much higher-pitched than a dragon’s roars and grumbles. She was smooth and sleek, unlike the rough ridges of dragon hides. “So you’re coming with us?”

“Yes. Maristela knows we’re planning something, and since we’ve been friends for so long, she might be more forgiving towards Rhylan if I’m there to smooth out the sharp edges.” Kirana’s lips turned down at the corners; I had to deliberately force myself to not think about how deeply I’d alienated my peers. “Your presence will be a shock. Hopefully one that turns the tides in our favor, but…still a shock.”

Shock and awe. That was Rhylan’s plan; I was beginning to doubt there would be any awe. Plenty of surprise, yes. But not awe.

Not with an empty territory, nor a broken draga.

I came to from my thoughts to find Kirana watching me, a shrewd look on her face. “Come look at the harness. You’ll see how your modified design was taken from it; all wyvern-riders are fully lashed to their mounts.”

She showed me the saddle and harness that was fitted to Garnet, so small it could fit a horse; her bonds were far stronger than mine, with multiple safety lines that clipped to the saddle itself.

“She’s trained with both physical and verbal commands,” Kirana explained. “Much like you and Rhylan are doing now. His touch system was adapted from Garnet’s training—”

Gods. It pained me to think of how I was treating the prince of the Obsidian Flames like a wyvern. Like a horse.

Ludicrous. Ridiculous. Shameful.

That was all I could think of through the rest of the day, even as Kirana did her best to distract me from brooding thoughts.

And it didn’t escape my notice that Rhylan never appeared, not even that night. Before I curled under my bed, already fighting the bands slowly cinching down on my chest, I looked outside for the shadow of a dragon.

Empty sky, bare stone. There was nothing out there at all.

My final fitting took place the next morning. I drank the tonic, trying not to call it ‘sludge’ in my head—that seemed rather disrespectful now for a potion that had taken Kirana a year to perfect and required a donation of true dragon blood—and nibbled at the apricot pastries that had become my favorite snack.

Disturbingly enough, I noticed that although food had not lost any of its luster for me, that the energy I took from it paled in comparison to that of the tonic.

Kirana was right. I needed to stop, before…I didn’t know what. All I knew was that it was taboo to drink a true dragon’s blood, and yet I didn’t know why. But there was no time to ponder the reason.

Jenra had arrived with considerably greater nerves than I’d ever seen from her before, pulling the ebony lace-and-silk dress onto me and muttering to herself in a low, frenzied voice. The thick scent of chokeroot hung around her in a cloud.

“I think it looks nice,” I offered, trying to ameliorate some of her frantic activity as she fussed with the dragon brooches, straightening them over each shoulder.

“Nice?” She looked up at me, eyes huge, voice raspier than ever. “Nice? The prince did not ask for nice. He asked for art. For beauty. For a goddess in the flesh, to put Naimah’s light to shame. For resplendence.”

“Rhylan did not ask for that,” I said indignantly. A goddess in the flesh? I couldn’t even imagine those words passing his lips.

“Not in those exact terms, but the implications were clear.” Jenra held a pin in a rather threatening manner, daring me to defy her.

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