Page 48 of House of Ashes
Once I’d reassured him that all was well.
Somehow, that thought warmed me even through the cold skies and the downpour that opened on us over the mountains, even if the reassurance I gave him was a complete lie.
Chapter
Ten
Ipressed a thumb against my hip bone, examining myself intently in the mirror.
The sludge was working.
It wasn’t a drastic change, but my ribs looked softer, and my hip bones no longer jutted outwards quite so savagely. The hollows of my cheeks had filled in.
Now I was merely quite thin, rather than cadaverous.
Since I’d laid eyes on Maristela, the fear of failure had been a worm infecting my body, wriggling through me to gnaw on both mind and soul. If I allowed it to rule my mind, it would eat holes through me entirely, leaving nothing behind.
Only with discipline and determination could we win, and I was the weak link in our chain. Only by becoming stronger, harder, reforged into iron, would we make it through this alive and victorious.
When we’d returned to the eyrie, I’d asked Viros to go over the harness with me. He’d been a patient instructor, taking me over every harness in the training room until I could buckle them as swiftly and effortlessly as Maristela had done.
It was only when Rhylan and Kirana interrupted, forcing me to eat dinner, that I stopped. My hands were a little sore, still tender from the rope burns, but it was nothing that would stop me.
The flight to Jhazra had given me plenty of time to work on my plan. I wasn’t doing nearly enough.
The tight bands of fear squeezed around my chest every time I thought about it, how each minute spent resting was a minute wasted. Not a single second could be allowed to fly by without me doing at least one thing to become the iron draga I needed to be.
Rhylan left after dinner, but I’d pulled Kirana back, asking her for a private word. She hadn’t refused my request, though she’d been concerned about the wisdom of it.
From now until the First Claim, I would drink two jars of the sludge a day. My stomach could handle it, if only because I’d force it down if I had to. She’d prepared a second jar that night, and I’d made myself sit awake to go over a map, pinpointing the village Maristela had visited between horrible, shuddering draughts: Winterhill, a small but busy outpost for wyvern-riders.
That was worth keeping in mind; anyone would be able to send a message through them and it would be nearly untraceable, given the number of postal riders who flew through on a regular basis.
Thinking about who Maristela might be courting—and why, when she had deliberately harpooned her own chances of taking the throne—made it easier to ignore the rancid flavor on my tongue.
And on this morning, five days later, I saw the results of suffering through it. Kirana had assured me it wouldn’t hurt in the short term, but within a month I’d have to taper off on my intake. She’d been particularly stubborn that I couldn’t live on sludge alone, and if I weren’t careful, that I’d become dangerously dependent on it.
I pinched my stomach, no longer sunken in, then began braiding my hair into a crown.
The day after the harness work, I’d asked Viros for a sword from the armory. In the Koressis Training Grounds, my highest marks had been earned with a sword; he found a thin, rapier-like steel weapon, heavier than it looked, more function than form.
Kirana was my new practice partner.
I finished pinning my hair and pulled on clothes for training: thin cotton trousers that clung to my skin, a sleeveless tunic with a wide sash to belt it. Like all the clothes Jenra had created in the last several days, mumbling sourly about letting out seams the entire time, they were in shades of black and soft dove gray.
My black boots nearly reached my knees, and I finished with my sword-belt, the weight of a weapon already familiar and welcome. It was a relief to drop my hand and feel the density of solid, cold steel, instead of a stick sharpened with rocks.
There was no sign of anyone as I left my room. Rhylan had his own practice hours, but he chose to train outside the eyrie, in the less forgiving terrain of the mountains. Nilsa had been conscripted by Jenra to prepare for the First Claim, and Kirana was likely already waiting in the eyrie’s training court.
I took the spiral staircase down nearly six levels until I came across an arched doorway, a symbol of a silver sword inlaid in the keystone of the arch.
On this level of the eyrie, ensconced within the windowless, well-protected corridors of the mountain, there were multiple training rooms. Some were simple practice courts, with polished floors and armories of weapons; others were larger, entire obstacle courses created by past generations of the Obsidian Flame dragonbloods.
Kirana had chosen a single training court for our daily evening sessions, a simple room of stone walls and wooden floors, but when I arrived, there was no sign of her. The only sign of life was the fact that the light crystals set in the ceiling overhead were all ablaze—Erebos knew we were here.
The eyrie was too massive to go searching for her. Instead I unbuckled my belt, balanced my sword against the wall, and began to do the series of sit-ups and push-ups that I’d started four nights ago.
Sweat dripped down my face, splattering on the floor as I pushed myself up again on shaking arms, gasping for breath.