Page 84 of A Matter of Destiny

“Will I—” I begin, then fall silent.

She turns back to me, her pale face furrowed in expectation.

“Will I fly again?” I ask.

“Oh, I imagine so,” she says, airily.

“I-Imagine?” I stammer.

She nods.

“Not everyone does, of course,” she says. “Recovery from a serious wing wound isn’t easy, you see. Relearning how to fly requires a lot of effort. But from what I’ve seen of you so far, you’ll have the claws to do it.”

I nod, wondering if having the claws to do something is a compliment or not. The white dragon dips her head in that strange sort of deferential motion, almost like a bow.

“There is something else,” she says, and there’s an uncertain edge to her voice that I haven’t heard before.

My chest squeezes around my lungs. I twist my neck, running my eyes over my body. White bandages loop around my legs and tail, and my back is peppered with angry, raw spots. A memory surfaces, Rensivar’s unforgiving claws raking down my body and scattering my red scales across the blue grass of that strange place that lay on the other side of the hole in reality. Still, I seem to be more or less intact. I exhale slowly, and my breath ripples the edges of the curtain the white dragon pulled aside.

“When you feel ready,” she continues. “Doshir needs to speak with you.”

Doshir? Another memory slides through my mind, Doshir and Wendolyn flying together into the mountain cirque, her brilliant emerald scales catching the evening light as she settled onto the grass as gingerly as a butterfly alighting on a rose. Doshir and his one-time lover. Doshir, who I’d last seen flying low over the mountains and screaming my name after I’d vanished.

It takes me a moment to realize that the low whimper of pain and fear sliding across the curtains is coming from me. I clamp my jaw shut, then shake my head, although the motion sends a fresh wash of agony through my wing.

“I’ll tell him to come back tomorrow,” the white dragon announces.

There’s the clip of claws on stone as she spins away from me.

“No,” I whisper.

Her scales ripple with something like a shiver, tossing off the golden light from the torches along the wall.

“I’ll talk to him,” I say.

My voice sounds like it’s been dragged through something sharp, and I let the rest of the words I was planning to say die on my tongue. She doesn’t need to know that I’d never be able to fall asleep with the knowledge that Doshir needs to speak with me hanging over my head, ready to torment me with every possible horrendous outcome those six little words could hold. The white dragon turns back to me with a bob of her head.

“As you like,” she says.

Her wings twitch and rustle at her sides, and she turns to look over her shoulders until they lie flat once again. It’s a gesture that seems equivalent to coughing politely and then changing the subject of a conversation. When she’s done, she tips her head toward a small screen in the corner.

“You may change into your human form, if you wish,” she declares, her voice once again bristling with confidence. “The pain will be more manageable, but the healing will be slower.”

I nod, then shift my weight onto my legs. The wooden scaffolding beneath my wing groans. Pain throbs through my skull and pulses in my teeth. The white dragon moves closer.

“Allow me,” she says, in a way that doesn’t sound much like a question.

It takes a long time for the white dragon to remove the bandages wrapped around all the various parts of this new, strange body. Once she does, I can make out hundreds of fine stitches on my wings, four parallel lines holding together the places Rensivar sundered.

“Now,” the white dragon announces. “You may shift.”

It takes a moment for me to find my human form, to stretch forward through the throbs and aches of this stitched-together body. And then, with a rush of air, I’m lying face-first on an enormous white cushion. Naked.

I groan, then roll over. The white dragon is watching me impassively. I glance down at my left arm, some dull flicker of hope beating in the back of my mind like a moth against the glass of a lamp. But of course, the scars I’ve hated for my entire life are still there, although now they’re covered with a fresh layer of bruises. And with four nasty red cuts, neatly stitched together with thread so tiny it might as well be invisible.

“Are you able to walk?” the white dragon asks.

Her voice sounds different to my human ears, louder and sharper. I push myself off the cushion and come to my feet, the world swaying around me. When she seems confident that I won’t collapse, the dragon gestures again toward the screen in the corner.

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