Page 27 of Wings of War

Yet as he opened his mouth, his stomach sank. Proud as he was to be his dacha’s son, he hated watching the reactions in people’s eyes when he introduced himself.

“I’m Fieran.” He swallowed. As much as he wished he could, he couldn’t leave off his last name. She’d find out eventually. “Laesornysh.”

“Laesornysh?” Her eyes lit, and her voice went up. “The son of Prince Farrendel Laesornysh?”

Ugh. She’d said his dacha’s name in that way. The octave higher, voice-squeaking way that suggested she was one breath away from breaking into a squeal.

Great. It was even worse than he’d feared.

Bracing himself, Fieran forced out the word. “Yes.”

This time, she gave a slight squeal, her hands over her mouth. She spoke rapidly behind her fingers, as if the words were popping out without her permission. “I have his poster on my wall at home!” Her hands clapped harder over her mouth, as if she couldn’t believe she’d just said that.

Oh. Oh, no. It was much, much worse. This adorable mechanic had one of those posters on her wall. One with his shirtless dacha lounging in a sexy way.

Well, so much for flirting with her. He would never flirt with anyone who had a pin up poster of his dacha.

Fieran’s ears burned. He edged backwards. “Um, well, I probably should…”

Pip’s face flushed, and she flapped her hands as if she didn’t know what to do with them. “I didn’t mean to say that. It isn’t as weird as it sounds. I dreamed of going to Hanford University just like he did, and he was the first elf to do so, and I put up that recruiting poster as motivation and…” She dropped her face into her hands. “Ugh. I sound like a stalker. I promise, I’m not stalking your dacha.”

Fieran released a breath, some of the urge to run fading. She didn’t have one of those posters. She was talking about one of the Hanford University recruitment posters. Dacha had posed for one of those decades ago—fully clothed, thank you very much—with goggles on his forehead, magic lacing around one hand, and a textbook in the other hand. The result had been an unusually high number of elven university students—and female students—in the next few years after that marketing campaign.

“I don’t think that…well, for a moment…” Fieran shook his head and forced a smile back onto his face. “He’s my dacha, you know? He’s just normal to me. But he’s not normal to everyone else, and that’s…weird.”

“Sorry.” Pip’s smile was lopsided. “If you hadn’t guessed, he’s my childhood hero.”

“Understandable. He’s a hero to a lot of people.” Fieran nodded, working to keep his smile in place. As cute as she was, he probably wouldn’t flirt with her again.

But he could be friendly with her. If he ignored everyone who looked up to his dacha as a hero, then Merrik would be his only friend in the world. And Merrik only didn’t see Dacha as his hero because he saw him as an adopted uncle.

Come to think of it, Merrik had been his only friend until he’d met Lije and the others in the barracks. The whole famous parents thing made finding genuine friends rather difficult.

Her eyes cleared a bit from the hero-worship haze. “Oh, that’s why you knew so much about the engine.”

A slight topic shift. He could work with that. Fieran gestured around them. “I work—well, worked—for AMPC, so I’ve done a lot of testing on all kinds of engines, including these most recent Dymman models. Not to mention that my magic is in the power cells in about a third of the flyers around us.” Fieran pointed to the aeroplane she had been working on. “Not that one. My dacha’s power is in that one. But mine is in that one. And that one.” He waved to two of the nearby aeroplanes.

He wasn’t boasting. Well, okay. Maybe he was boasting a little bit. But she was a mechanic who dreamed about going to Hanford University so much that she tacked a poster of his dacha on the wall as motivation. She’d find the fact that he could tell whose magic was in which aeroplanes fascinating.

As he’d expected, her eyes took on a gleam as she glanced around at the aeroplanes. “That’s really interesting.” She turned back to him, cocking her head as if she was now studying a piece of machinery instead of a man. “I’ve always just worked with the magical power cells. It makes it easy to forget there’s actual people’s magic in there.”

Fieran raised his hand, then let a tendril of his magic loose from that tight control he always kept on it. After two weeks of holding his magic in check without the daily release of morning practice with his dacha, his magic flared bright and blue, crackling as it twined around his fingers and up his arm. Something almost like relief flowed through him, as if he’d been in pain and hadn’t even realized it from holding his magic back for so long.

Pip’s eyes widened, her mouth falling open. “Oh, wow. That’s…so neat. I never expected to see the magic of the ancient kings in person. Does it feel different than normal magic when you wield it?”

“I wouldn’t know. It’s my magic, so it just feels normal to me.” Fieran let his magic play around his hand and arm before he, reluctantly, suppressed his magic again, locking it once again into the iron control his dacha had drilled into him over years and years of practice.

“I guess that makes sense.” Pip held out her hand. A shimmer of some kind of silvery magic glowed around her fingers. But it didn’t look like the gray stone magic Aunt Vriska wielded. Or any other stone magic he’d seen over the years. Pip glanced up, meeting his gaze and smiling. “I have an unusual form of iron magic. It just feels normal to me too.”

“Iron magic? I’ve never heard of an elf with iron magic.” Fieran crossed his arms, wishing there was a wall nearby so he could lounge nonchalantly.

“Half-elf. And half-dwarf.” She gestured to herself, her smile tipping as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

She probably did. Being half-dwarf explained her height and her magic. “I was guessing you were half-human like me. You have a good grasp of Escarlish.”

“I had to learn it to go to Hanford University.” Pip fiddled with one of the wrenches tucked in her tool belt. “Not to mention that Escarlish has become the language of trade among many of the human kingdoms. My family runs the far western rail terminal in Tarenhiel, so we interact with some of the Afristani tribes on the other side of the river. Many of them have begun learning some Escarlish since that’s easier than elvish.”

Fieran opened his mouth, but tromping boots behind him had him straightening.

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