Page 63 of House of Ashes
Rhylan’s gaze swept around the overgrown balcony, the riot of jasmine hanging overhead. “They’ll come back. I can’t imagine who wouldn’t. But I wonder why your Ascendant wasn’t enough to keep them here under her protection.”
His gaze was shrewd when it came to rest on me. I self-consciously tucked a loose lock of hair behind my ear.
“Myst? Maybe she…” I sighed deeply, unable to speculate. “I don’t know. There’s no use speculating until I see her with my own eyes. Maybe she went into the Dreamlands with no descendants to watch over.”
It was common for Ascendants to enter the Dreamlands when their nest was empty, or when peacetime guaranteed they wouldn’t need to go to war. It was a state close to hibernation, allowing them to dreamlessly slumber away the decades. Thanks to the history lessons I’d had as a child, I knew that scholars had speculated that the Dreamlands allowed the Ascendants to maintain their sanity over the millennia, that watching their bloodline incessantly cycle through living and dying would cause any sane creature to eventually fracture.
If Myst was in the Dreamlands, it would be nearly impossible to rouse her. I could only hope that she was only in a normal slumber, awaiting her bloodline’s return.
“Maybe.” Rhylan narrowed his eyes at the doors to my eyrie, the tall, elegantly carved slabs of white ash wood. “But let me go first, all right?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, simultaneously elated and deathly nervous to open those doors. It would be preserved exactly as I had left it when I was sixteen. “What, do you think I’m afraid of my own eyrie?”
Rhylan raised a brow at me. “No, but if another dragonblood with even a hint of Silvered Embers bloodline moved in, there’s every chance you’ve got an unfriendly reception waiting for you. If you’re killed, the next strongest of the bloodline inherits all this.” He spread his hands wide, encompassing my eyrie, and the miles of territory around it.
“Myst wouldn’t allow anyone to harm me in my own eyrie,” I scoffed.
But…it was true, there were other dragonbloods with a touch of Myst’s blood in them. Distant cousins, bred into other Houses, and it was possible that another House had produced a scion of Silvered Embers. They would have a claim if I didn’t establish myself as the Princess of the House immediately.
“Can we be realistic again for a moment, Sera? It’s your eyrie, yes, but you haven’t been here in years. You need to reestablish control before you let your guard down,” Rhyland said, repeating exactly what I’d just thought.
I looked at him oddly for a moment, wondering if he’d heard me…but no. The inside of my head was silent except for me.
It almost made me laugh aloud, to think even for a second that a non-physical bond might’ve formed between us during the flight. Of course it hadn’t; it was just the obvious thing to conclude.
I had certainly not felt a tendril of hope bloom inside me at the idea, though.
Shaking my head at my own absurdity, I stepped towards the doors. “Fine, fine...you get to go first. But I get to open the doors. I want Myst to feel that it’s me.”
I took a deep breath and looked up at the doors, at the dragons carved into the snow-white wood and embossed in silver. So many times I’d come bursting through these doors. So many times I’d peered off the edge of the dragon terrace and dreamed about my first flight.
A lump rose in my throat as I braced my hands on both doors, the touch-worn wood as smooth as glass under my palms.
One of the jagged crystals on either side of the doors flickered briefly, then went out.
“Yes, I’m home,” I whispered to my Ascendant, but they didn’t flicker again.
No eyrie would remain locked to a welcome scion of the bloodline. I braced myself, and pushed.
Almost too hard; the doors abruptly swung open in welcome, and I would’ve gone sprawling if Rhylan didn’t immediately loop an arm around my waist and haul me upright.
He kept a grip on me as he gently pushed me aside, nose raised to breathe the air.
If not for the open windows of the terraces, it would’ve smelled terribly stale, but even in the sealed eyrie, the breeze and jasmine permeated. I took a deep breath and couldn’t hold back the wide grin that stretched across my face.
“Just like always,” I said, luxuriating in that scent. I wanted to bottle it, to never again be in a situation where I couldn’t just uncork a stopper and take a deep, calming breath of home.
“I don’t smell other dragonbloods,” he said doubtfully, examining the dusty floor for footprints. Sadly, the breeze had done nothing to prevent the build-up of dust and pollen over the years. “But that doesn’t mean it's empty. They could have entered through the base of the eyrie.”
“Whatever you say, Sir Suspicious,” I said cheerfully, reaching out to run my fingers over the inlaid-marble walls. Rhylan’s eyrie was a dark jewel, encrusted with gems, warmed by a volcano. My eyrie was light and bright, filled with breezes and night flowers, a dream world encased in a spire. “Ahh, I missed you so, so much.”
Rhylan prowled ahead, peering into the sitting rooms that had once been filled with dragonbloods taking tea and gossiping, and wyvern-riders passing through. My mother had loved to entertain at the top of the spire; during her time as the Drakkon’s concubine, when he bothered to visit our eyrie, she always entertained him up here, with a view of Aurae’s Tears sparkling below.
I passed a parlor where a tea service was still laid out, covered with dust, the tea long since dried to a brown film in the bottom of the porcelain cups.
“How come you never say you miss me with that same wistfulness?” Rhylan complained playfully, but he kept his voice low.
“Because you’re always around. How can I miss you if you’re constantly underfoot?” I asked sweetly. “Maybe you should leave me here for a while. They do say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”