Page 97 of Court of Talons
“Shut up, Fortiss.” I pull his hand up and press it against the smooth plane of Szonja’s muzzle. The dragon, for her part, remains perfectly still.
Fortiss stands riveted to the spot. “What is this magic?” he murmurs, his voice heavy with confusion. I can feel the cool, slick scales too, solid beneath my fingers. Szonja twitches again, and the mist curls and scatters away, causing Fortiss to pull his hand back with a hard jerk. He turns on me.
“What’s goingonhere?”
“What do mean?” I protest, edging backward. There’s something different about his tone, now. He keeps shaking his hand, but he’s not looking to where Szonja is regarding us solemnly through the darkness. He’s staring atme.
“Who are you?” he demands.
The unexpected question catches me completely by surprise, and my hands go to my face, my hair, anything that might have betrayed me in the near darkness. “I don’t…”
“Your hand,” he says harshly. “I’ve touched you before, and not as a warrior. Here, in the First House. I’vetouchedyou. Iknowyou.”
I can’t hide from his accusation, but the panic in his voice would have made me smile in another situation, another time. Not here, though, not now. I can already feel Fortiss pulling away from me, doubt and suspicion replacing the comradeship in arms between us that had always been a lie anyway. He’s not my people; this isn’t my place. Could never be my place. The moments I’ve shared with him have been stolen and will stay that way, for all that I’ll treasure them for however long I have left to live.
“You have.” I draw myself up, saying the words that’ve been chanting in my head since I saw my father at the feast, echoing in my mind like a dirge. “I’m Talia of the Tenth House, Fortiss,” I say, stepping back almost unconsciously, as if he might take a swing at me. “Merritt is…was my brother. He died on the road to the Twelfth House. It’s been me all along. I’m sorry that I lied to you. I had no?—”
“Talia?” Fortiss stiffens in confusion at the feminine name, though he’s the one who called me out. “What are youtalkingabout?”
“I’m Talia, Fortiss.” I frown when he doesn’t say anything. “I’m female. A woman. I’m not sure how else to describe it.”
“No.” He does take a sharp step back from me now. “No, that can’t be possible. You have a Divh.”
I smile. This would get old, having to explain it to people. Fortunately, I won’t have to do it for very long. “I don’t know why or how it happened. I was with Merritt when a warrior, I don’t know of whose house, loosed the arrow that killed him. My brother died in my arms. When he did, his band slipped off his arm and traveled to mine.” I lift my right hand self-consciously to my left upper arm again, reliving the moment. “It moved of its own will. I didn’t know it could do that.”
“It can,” he says hoarsely. “If the son is with the father when the father dies. Otherwise, it can be transferred safely by the house lord’s will alone.” He shakes his head like a bear coming out of hibernation. “But you can’t—females areforbiddento control a Divh. By order of the Exalted Imperium. To do so is death.”
I gesture to the darkened abyss. “Which is why I’m in this dungeon.”
“But…” He struggles against the idea with too much fervor, the same way Miriam did. I eye him curiously. Have I simply grown used to my new reality because I’ve personally been living it these past few weeks? It no longer seems wrong or forbidden or even particularly special that I bonded with Gent. It seems right and true. The way it should be.
“You went to the plane of the Divhs,” Fortiss finally finishes.
“Yes. A field in a blue mist, with high walls all around. I couldn’t see the sky. I could barely see in front of me. Then the mist thinned, and there was a sound, a roaring. And all at once, Gent came out of a large opening, and?—”
“Stop…stop!” Fortiss slaps his hands to his ears and turns away, as if my words cause him physical pain. “What you say isn’t possible! Not foryou.”
Bitterness rings in his words, and I close my mouth to stifle my retort. Fortiss is a bloodline descendant of a great and proven warrior, and he doesn’t have a Divh. I am a woman born into a world where I am fit for nothing but service or motherhood. And Idohave a Divh. My band practically throbs on my arm, as if Gent is turning toward me across the vast distance from his island home.
But Fortiss has no band. He’s not yet a true warrior knight. He’s never been given the chance.
As if he can sense the change in me and recognize it for the pity it is, he pulls back farther.
“Have a care,” I murmur. “You’re close to the edge.”
“Don’t dare to tell me what to do,Talia,” he growls, his voice now harsh with anger. “You’ve lied about everything since you’vecomehere.”
Now it’s my turn to stiffen. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Youlie,” he snaps again, his rage coming at me like a wave. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t hold your brother in your arms and crave that which made him special. You can’t tell me that you didn’t secretly mourn the loss of the greatest gift your family has ever had, the one thing that singled you out among all the others in your house. You wanted that band more than life itself, didn’t you? You wanted what Merritt had by the right of his birth, that you could never have, not truly. You?—”
“You’re wrong!” I nearly scream the words, but I don’t care who hears us. The pain that wells up inside me is like a waterskin full to bursting, and when it does, it will send my body flying in a million different pieces.
“I didn’t want Merritt’s band, I wanted mybrother. My brother! Laughing, alive, free. I wanted his joy and his smile and his truth and his life, not his dead body slipping away from me. I didn’t want his band. I didn’t know I could have his band. Because you,” I jab a finger at him, “and people like you havespent your entire livestellingme I couldn’t. That I couldn’t stand and walk among warriors. That I couldn’t be strong enough to be chosen by a Divh. Well, you’re wrong, Fortiss. You’re all wrong. There are things that I see that you have closed your eyes to, refusing to acknowledge the truth. There are things I can do that you can only dream of, until you open those eyes.”
“You are adisgrace,” he snarls back. “The punishment for a female stealing a band, attempting to control a Divh, isdeath.”
“Then bring it! That’s Rihad’s solution, if you’re wondering. He’ll let me fight tomorrow because it suits him, but death is the assured result. Understand this, though: I’m not attempting tocontrola Divh, Fortiss, I’mconnectedto one. And it’s been noticed at your precious tournament—you know it has. I’ve won fairly in the trials, for all that they are supposedly barred to me. Rihad knows it too, which is the only reason why he can’t kill me outright. Instead, he’ll let the men who fight me do his killing for him.”