Page 13 of Magick and Lead
I did as instructed, and the colonel proceeded to open a manila folder and read the official account of the events that had happened two months prior. It was excruciating to listen to.
I’d flouted orders, flying when I was to be grounded, punched a fellow pilot, stolen his plane, and taken off. Once airborne, Major Carter Blaize claimed I’d attacked him during the course of our mission and impeded his efforts to engage with the enemy.
It was all true, every damned word. But I hadn’t done enough. Because he’d still shot down Essa’s mother…
I would never forget the sight of that magnificent dragon falling from the sky, or the glimpse I’d gotten of Essa’s face as she looked upward at her attackers. At us.
Carter had been flying my plane, the Silver Wraith. But surely Essa knew it wasn’t me who’d attacked her and killed her mother, the queen. At least, I hoped she knew that.
But hearing that officer drone on, reading the report, images from that terrible day flashed before my eyes once more. The hatchery where the dragons lived—destroyed. The walls of the mighty palace Charcain—falling. The splendid city of Issastar—in flames. My sweet baby dragon Parthar—cut off from me.
Parthar. God, my baby dragon. I’d never intended to become a dragon father, but the damned thing had imprinted on me, and that, apparently, wasn’t the sort of thing that simply went away. I still felt him sometimes, like a string pulling on one of my internal organs. But his voice, his words, were lost to me, cut off by the distance. I’d tried to ignore the feeling of loss. Tried to forget about Parthar, to refrain from wondering where he was and whether he was okay. But being bonded to a dragon, they say, was sort of like having a twin, being a parent, and having a best friend who could read your mind, all rolled into one—with a dash of magical soul-connection sprinkled over the top. Even though I’d tried to deny our bond, the truth was every time I was searching for Essa, I was searching for Parthar, too. I couldn’t help it.
Parthar. Essa. Can you hear me?I asked, reaching out with my mind using the power the Skrathan called simnal. But the response was the same as it had been for the past two months: silence. I was cut off from them. And it felt like being cut in two.
Silence…
Suddenly, I realized this room was silent, too.
I looked up from the desktop I’d been staring at to find the officer had stopped speaking. Everyone was looking at me.
I cleared my throat, glancing around.
“Didn’t you hear him? He said you’re reinstated, Inman. Cleared of all wrongdoing,” one of the officers said. “You’re to report for flight duty at zero-seven hundred tomorrow morning. Don’t you have anything to say to that?”
I’d be in the air again. Expected to kill dragons, when at least one dragon now felt as close as blood to me. And I’d have no more time to search for Essa… ‘
And yet at the same time, I was an ace. That was my identity, who I was.
How did I feel? What did I have to say? I didn’t know, and I had no words.
But I wasn’t born yesterday. This was a war. In a war, you were either one of the good guys—or you were an enemy.
I managed a weak smile. “Hooray.” I said.
The officers all grinned, their stony facades melting. Two of them broke into applause.
“Yeah Charlie!” one of them said. “Honestly, I’m a big fan of the Silver Wraith,” he said.
“We all are,” the colonel added.
I turned to find General Peckham had entered; he stood near the back door, giving me a thumbs-up.
“The Silver Wraith is back!” he said.
I was outside the MP building, about to climb back on my motorcycle, when a voice called my name. “Charlie!”
I recognized that voice. It was the person I least wanted to see.
Kitty Rowley. The most prominent reporter at the biggest newspaper in the country—the Ironberg Times. And my ex-fiancée. She flounced up to me, her mane of short blonde curls bobbing, her heels tapping fast across the concrete.
With a sigh I turned to her, “Hello, Kitty.”
Her big blue eyes, circled with eyeliner like an actress in a moving picture, welled with dramatic sadness, and her red lips pouted.
“First you dump a girl, then you ignore her? Come on, Charlie. I thought I meant more to you than that.”
“Ignore—?”
