Page 6 of Of Blood and Fire
Others will come.
I do not hold your certainty.
Trust.
I did trust. I just didn’t think the lure of having flame would be enough to overcome the—justified—prejudices and fears ofthe older drakkons, especially since most of them would not have seen firsthand just how effective drakkon fire could be. Once they did, then maybe there’d be a rush; in which case, the whisperers might have a right to be worried. Not all older drakkons were as open-minded and fair as Kaia, and some would no doubt use their flames against us—maybe not against Esan, but certainly some of the more remote farmsteads and settlements.
Kin stop them, Kaia commented.
I snorted.Like I can stop you doing anything you want?
Am queen. Different. Stronger of mind.
Rua ignored both youandme when she flamed those barges. That suggests she is pretty strong of mind to me, Kaia.
She young. Not sensible.
Andthatwas her stock answer to those sorts of criticisms. We made our way down the steps and back into the palace. Jarin returned to the new war room while I made my way up the stairs, then headed right toward my suite. The spell Damon had layered around our accommodation buzzed around my fingers as I opened the door, and the bracelet around my wrist briefly responded, the threads of red and gold—the colors of his house and mine—shimmering softly between the brown and black leather. Damon had given it to me to prevent Gayl—his aunt, and his father’s spy in Esan—from reading my thoughts, but the inner me suspected there was far more to the magic that inhabited the thing—especially given it clung to my wrist like a gentle limpet. It wasn’t tight, but it also wouldn’t be removed.
Of course, Gayl hadn’t only been a powerful reader but also a minor seeress. Damon had told me that, while she wasn’t able to read the minds of anyone belonging to her bloodline, she could and did skim the thoughts of many others and was often able to divine their future actions and perhaps even fate through their thoughts.
Which made me wonder if that was why she was no longer here—had she seen Esan’s fate and wanted no part of it? Or was her disappearance connected to Damon’s? My parents had certainly seemed convinced the latter was true.
But until he returned, I would have no answers.
I closed the door with a little more force than necessary, and the sound echoed through the emptiness. While my suite was smaller than my parents’, it was still extensive, consisting of a lounging area, a large bed platform, a bathing area, and behind that, a dressing room.
Damon might not be here, but his magical sphere remained, and the symbols he’d written on the floor continued to glow with an odd, bloody luminance. As I walked toward it, light flared across its surface, its hue yellowish rather than the bloody red of the symbols—the latter unsurprising, I guessed, given they’d probably been soaked in his blood to activate them. I reached out and lightly touched its surface; light gathered where my hand met the spell, buzzing around it like tiny moon flies, even if their color was yellow rather than silvery.
Was it a warning that would echo back to him? If I closed my eyes and pushed all the urgency, heartbreak, and the desperate need to have him back, would he feel it?
Did magic even work that way?
I had no idea, but he and I did have a connection that went deeper than mere magic, even if it was one he wasn’t willing to talk about.Dhrukita—the belief that everyone had a perfect partner, a soul that was the other half of their own, if you will—was something I’d always thought to be nothing more than a tale told to amuse little girls growing up. But now, with what was happening between us, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’d been more than a little truth in that old tale.
But if itwasDhrukita, wouldn’t he already be aware of my emotional and mental state? Or did it, perhaps, work alongsimilar lines as my strega ability to mind speak to animals had, and had a set range beyond which there was simply no connection?
I didn’t know.
There were so many fucking things I just didn’t know.
Still... I pressed my hand flat against the bubble of magic and felt it give—and had the strangest feeling that the magic designed to prevent access no longer had any effect on me. It was tempting to push harder and find out, but the moon flies were buzzing around my fingers angrily, and I had no desire to trigger any sort of magical backlash. Instead, I closed my eyes and sent a desperate plea for him to return. Then I snatched my hand away, cursed my foolishness, and spun, doing my best to ignore the gentle ache in my heart as I strode through the bathroom into my dressing room. If there was one thing I’d learned over the last week or so of drakkon riding, it was that the more layers I had without bulking up or restricting movement, the better. I might be able to raise my inner flame to keep warm, but it was always best to use that as a last resort, especially when we were flying into enemy territory.
After pulling on a silk chemise, I layered up with a woolen undershirt and a vest, then tugged on a heavy oilskin coat and slipped a woolen scarf around my neck. I’d been tugging up the longer necks of my undergarments to protect the lower half of my face from the weather simply because I didn’t want to deal with scarf ends when flying at speed, but one of the saddlers we’d asked to come up with a better harnessing system for the drakkons had suggested we sew a long woolen scarf into multiple loops that could easily be slipped over our heads. Aside from the fact that there were no ends to fly loose, the loops meant one or two could be tugged up to cover the face while the remainder protected what the coat collar left exposed. It had been the perfect answer to a rather chilly problem.
Once I’d tugged on my more rugged boots, I strapped on my sword and pulled on the climbing harness we were still using to keep attached to our drakkons, then finally grabbed my pack. My gaze fell on Mom’s bow and quiver, and, after a longish pause, I picked it up. While there was a part of me that didn’t want to use it out of respect, the bow was made of blackwood—trees that only grew well in the five islands—and had a natural elasticity, a sweetness of draw, and a cast second to none. And paired with Ithican-glass arrowheads—which could cut through the golden armor that protected the birds and their riders so very easily—it became a deadly combination in the right hands. Mom had been bow master on Jakarra, and she’d taught me an accuracy that the military had not. There were only six of the arrows left now, and I really wished we could get more. But Ithica had as yet not responded to our queries and were unlikely to in the near future, thanks to our quill network being down.
I slung the quiver over my back, the pack over one shoulder, and then left, moving back down the stairs before weaving my way into the kitchen. Kaia was right; I needed to eat. The last thing I needed was to collapse with exhaustion when on her back or in the middle of a fight.
Though why I expected there to be a fight, I couldn’t say, beyond the fact that the goddess Túxn didn’t often throw good fortune our way when we were flying out on reconnaissance missions.
Candra—our chief baker—turned as I entered the long, overpoweringly hot room, and smiled. “How are you doing, Princess? Or should I be calling you ‘my queen’ from now on?”
I smiled. “I’ll answer to anything if there’s Hutzelbrot in the offering.”
Hutzelbrot was a heavy loaf of bread that was jam-packed with dried fruits and had a delicate, gingery-cinnamon flavor. AsI kid, I practically lived in the kitchen stuffing my stomach with it whenever ginger harvesting season rolled around.
She laughed and clapped her hands together, sending flour puffing into the air. “Didn’t make any this morning, but I did save a couple of yesterday’s loaves, just in case you came in.”
