Page 53 of The Shattered Rite
“Like fire.”
“Do they hurt?” asked a girl, flour smudged on her cheek.
Eliryn blinked.
“Not anymore.”
She let that settle.
“At first, yes.”
The older woman looked her over like she was sizing up a loaf. “You speak kindly for someone so marked.”
Eliryn met her gaze without flinching. “I was a healer.”
Silence swallowed the room whole.
Then, after a moment:
“Sit.”
Eliryn hesitated.
“You look too thin for someone so powerful.”
“I already ate.”
“There’s always room for honeycakes,” the boy said, hopeful.
Without thought, she smiled.
Eliryn stepped further in. “May I ask your names?”
They exchanged uncertain glances. The boy shifted his weight, rubbing at a bruise on his arm.
“People like us… we don’t usually get asked that,” he said, voice low.
She softened her tone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense. I forgot—names are held close here, aren’t they?”
“Among the highborn, maybe,” said the man who was stirring the pot of soup. His mouth twisted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “But not for the likes of us.”
“I’m not so different from you,” Eliryn said gently.
Can I share my name?she asked Vaeronth silently.
Yes,his reply was instant.
She turned. “I’m Eliryn of Lirin’s Edge. My dragon is Vaeronth, the Endbringer.”
The older woman exhaled. “Well. Those are names worth remembering.”
One by one, they told her theirs.
The boy: Nim. Sixteen. Kitchen apprentice.
The older woman: Marta, third-generation palace baker.
The soup-stirrer: Reven, quiet, scar splitting his lip.
