Page 15 of House of Ashes
And all I had to do was stop complaining for a few minutes and figure out how to make the impossible work.
I exhaled slowly, watching my breath rise in a white cloud and drift off into the night. The wind carried it east, towards the Empty Sea, like it was pointing me home.
I could do it for home. I would risk it all, even my life, for a chance to go back.
“Forget Maristela,” I said, turning around to face him. “I can pretend.”
Rhylan’s slow smile was enough to turn me inside out. All I had to do was let the animal attraction of a draga to a dragon do the work for me, and keep my mind separate.
My mother would have approved of such cold calculation.
He held out his hand.
I took it and shook on our agreement, ignoring the warmth and roughness of his calloused palms and focusing only on the spirit of the agreement.
I’m coming, Varyamar.
Rhylan released me first, dropping my hand like a hot coal. “Eat and sleep, then. The ruse begins at dawn.”
I spent the night in the storage room, wrapped in dusty old blankets, and wished I could have just slept in my cave.
Even with the doors to the rest of the interior locked, there was something bone-deep disturbing about an abandoned eyrie. There were miles of empty halls and rooms beneath me, threaded throughout this mountain, all of them cold and dark and lifeless.
Somewhere in those depths was the corpse of an Ascendant. I wondered how long this eyrie had been abandoned and forgotten.
It was like sleeping inside a dead body.
I dutifully ate the plain travel-food Rhylan had packed for me, washing down bread and dried beef with small sips of water.
Even that fare was much better than I’d usually get. My stomach knotted a few times, unused to the amount it was taking in now, but after a rest I’d eat a few more bites.
I needed to fill out quickly. Nobody would take a bony little draga seriously, not against my willowy, gilded sister, nor Maristela.
Afterwards I slept restlessly, waking almost every hour to check the doors, as though I expected a ghost to open one and walk through.
Rhylan remained outside on the eyrie’s outer platform, beneath the open dragon door. He claimed he was keeping watch for Kalros, but it was just as likely that he was avoiding my presence.
When I emerged from the interior, my hair mostly combed out and tied back, the gray pack over my shoulders, I found Rhylan glaring out at the horizon again.
I didn’t bother to ask if he’d slept well, because I didn’t particularly care. There were circles under my own eyes from the restless night in the eyrie.
Instead I began working on another piece of bread, nibbling dried berries for the extra energy. The tangy taste of cloudberries from northern Akalla made me salivate almost uncontrollably.
“We’re flying to Jhazra Eyrie first,” Rhylan informed me, still frowning at the mountains of Mistward. “We have to work out the specifics of our bond before we’re seen anywhere else.”
I desperately wanted to fly straight to Varyamar, but once more, I could concede to his point. If we were to run across members of any other Houses, they’d take one look at us right now and know we weren’t bonded.
“We also need to practice flying without the mind-speech,” he continued, and I shot him a sharp look. “I’m not carrying you across the sea. You’re going to ride.”
I grimaced, turning away so Rhylan wouldn’t see my expression.
“Don’t make that face. If we don’t practice, this won’t work.”
Gods, did he have eyes in the back of his head?
He left me there, bringing the darker pack out of the interior and closing the door behind him.
As much as I disliked him in general, I was pleased that he closed the door quietly and respectfully. The eyrie had been unpleasant to sleep in, but the Ascendant somewhere below us deserved respect, even in death.