I flushed. “I’m working on it.”
“It’s been a year.”
“Yes, well, you’ve had a lifetime to master it.”
Ironically,helooked away, as though the sight of me, the sound ofme, was too much, beyond frustrating, beyond his ability to understand. Which was howIalways felt here in this world away from the world.
I was this strange and unknown variable. Not quite dragon. Not quite human. Not like the rest of them. Unable to grasp the ways of dragonkind quickly enough.
He looked at me as though he thought I would fall, break, splinter into bits that could never be patched together again.
And more than that. In his eyes, I could see that he worried that it would not just be me lost … that it would be all of them, the whole pride—becauseof me. I read it in the frost of his gaze. I was as unreliable and unpredictable as a squall gathering force outside the caves.
The training I’d put in this last year didn’t matter. They were not impressed. Vetr, along with everyone else, thought I was doing it wrong.
Itbeing everything.
My indoctrination had been immediate. There had been no time to mourn Fell. I was plunged into the ways of the pride: the inner workings, the hierarchy, the customs—to say nothing of training to fight, to work the minns, to master the art of bytte, to patrol, scout, forage, and hunt. Oh. And how to properly fly. Evasive maneuvers in air and on land.
The only thing I hadn’t been taught was how to go on rekons and gather information among humans. I was excluded from those excursions. Their trust in me did not run so deep that they would put me back in the path of their greatest enemy.
Humans weren’t the only threat, though. There were the other dragons who considered dragonkind truly cursed. The skelm: dragons unhappy with their—our—evolution. They preferred the old ways, when dragons were dragons and not this watered-down version. The enemy was all who were against them.
Even with the truce, we avoided them. They might not attack us with murder in mind, but they were hungry to increase their numbers, so there was no stopping them from taking any youth or female they might catch roaming the Crags.
Years ago, Brenna’s sister had been caught alone and taken. It was a cautionary tale related to me in whispers when I first arrived. No one ventured out alone, and every foray must be approved by Vetr or one of his skeppars.
Vetr’s gaze pinned me in place. “Survival and the continuation of our kind is everything.”
Our kind.That stumbled through me.
I didn’t know what surprised me more. That he counted me as one of them or that he believed I had done anything that went against that principle. Like it or not, I was a dragon, too. I wanted all of us to survive. Of course I did. I didn’t want our extinction.
Vetr went on. “This world is a dangerous place. Life here is not easy.” I released a puff of breath. Did he think it was all roses where I came from? “If Nayden comes at you with fire, then you return fire.” His teeth flashed very white in the gloom of my den, the rainbow of light from the gems mottling his skin. “It’s the only way to teach him that he can’t do that to you. Don’t let him push you around. Protect yourself at all costs.”
“Is Nayden not also … valuable?” Would Vetr be standing in front of Nayden had the situation been reversed? “Should his life not be protected, too?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Not at the expense of yours.”
I frowned, wondering why. Why shouldIbe more important?
Nayden was a fire-breather, too. He would be instrumental in a battle, in defense. I supposed I would be, too. Eventually.
Except, presently, I was untried in comparison to Nayden, who had already been tested in skirmishes with the skelm and the packs of wolves that prowled the Crags, their hunger for dragon meat still a driving force within them.
When Vetr found me and Fell together in that cave, he had fixated on Fell—his brother, of course. Me? I was an afterthought.
Not much had changed.
Sometimes his gaze would sweep right over me like I wasn’t there at all. Which was why I didn’t understand why he was in my den right now insisting that I was someone valuable.
Vetr angled his head, examining me in a way that unnerved me, that felt more animal than man. I resisted fidgeting beneath his scrutiny.
“Did you attend school in Penterra?” he said at last.
“School?” I echoed, bewildered by the unexpected question.
“Yes, isn’t that what humans do with their children? Send them to schools to be properly educated by those they deem qualified to do so?”
