“While I can appreciate your steadfast adherence to tradition, in this case—”
“No, Prince Navin is right,” the king interrupts Father Yamin, his voice sharp. “Administer the lashings, and then we can all get on with our day.”
It’s as simple as that. It brings me a small amount of joy when Father Yamin’s expression stumbles, unable to hide his anger and embarrassment for a few heartbeats before composing himself.
Assuring my veil remains, the two brethren who dragged me here make quick work of removing my robe. The air is cold as it hits my skin, my hands rebound around the wooden pole. From the corner of my eye, I watch as my brother leans over to our father, whispering something harshly in his ear. The king just sends him an icy glare in response. Navin flexes his jaw, his eyes dropping to the floor where they stay as the sound of the father’s whip uncoiling brings my own focus forward. Metal scrapes along the stone as he slowly drags the iron-tipped endsof the whip back, and my body reacts and draws taut at the sound.
“Princess Myla Ryuu, you are being punished today for lying to the brethren of Khaos, god of Time and Void, about your whereabouts three evenings ago. As decided by Khaos, and the gods that rule with him, you will receive twenty-five lashings.”
My breath trickles in through my nose as I stare at the unfortunate passage burned into the wood in front of me.May Solana’s light guide you to the Afterlife.
The rustling of Father Yamin’s robe seems to stop time itself, a distended few seconds where there is nothing but the beat of my heart and the hiss of breath between my clenched teeth. The words on the pole blur as my mind begins to flash through random memories as a distraction. Sunis and the dragon fields. The men who left bait for Bali. Aria and the way her hair glints like a jewel beneath the dappled sunlight of the cavern. All at once, everything fractures, the impact of the whip slicing through my skin luring me back into the present with world-shattering agony.
My eyes snap closed as my chest pushes against the pole, my nails digging into it. The next lash chokes air from my lungs. The next makes my eyes sting. I stop counting around ten, my body sagging against the pole enough that the father pauses for me to be repositioned.
“Get up,” someone calls, feminine but not my voice. At least, I don’t think it is. A snap rends the air as warmth trickles down my back and pools at my knees. “Get up!” they say more urgently. I groan, the scent of iron heavy with every gasp, churning my stomach as blood drips down my torso and hips.
“Get. Up. Myla.”
My eyes fly open, strands of black hair covering them as my fingers grip not the wooden pole but something softer—a pillow.
“Come on, you’ve been in bed for three days. You need to get up.”Navin. He brushes the hair away from my face, concern forming a wrinkle on his forehead. “You’re covered in sweat. It’s even soaked through the bandages.” He has the audacity to look slightly ill at that. “Let’s get you cleaned up and moving.”
“I’m not healed enough to move,” I argue, my voice raspy.It had only been three days since the whipping?But I shouldn’t be surprised by that, time moves differently when pain is the only thing you can feel.
“No,” he sighs, tying his long hair back. He’s wearing his sparring leathers and a plain white undershirt. “But you must.”
“You cannot expect me to train in this condition,” I murmur, closing my eyes and sinking my face deeper into the pillow.Snap. Another drag of the barbs against my ravaged back.Snap. There’s no air, and I can’tbreathe.Snap.
“I expect so much of you, Myla, and this is no exception. You aren’t weak or helpless or unworthy. You never have been. Now get up. We have work to do.” The bedsheets rustle as he stands and leaves my room, the door remaining open behind him. I groan, but when the sound of the whip cracks again in my mind, I move.
And just like he did the last time the whip met my skin, Navin gets me out of bed and forces me to meet a new day.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Myla
Fivedayslater,Lan’swings beat hard against the wind as we soar to my meeting with the siren. The sun reflects off of his blue scales, flaring directly into my fucking eyes. My back screams at the jostling as we fly, but I clamp down on the pain that rolls through me and instead focus on the next task at hand. This will be my third lesson with the female who had saved my life, having missed last week after the lashings. At least now she would know what it was like to wait alone on a beach while the other didn’t show.
Navin’s shoulders tense where he’s sitting in front of me, and I watch him place a hand on Lan’s scales as he and his dragon communicate. I scan the black mountains surrounding us, misty clouds hovering close to their peaks. I haven’t been able to visit Sunis in a week, and the thought that my father could be trying to capture her mother is an incessant alarm in my mind.
“Lan has a lot of concerned energy today,” Navin shouts over his shoulder. “He keeps pushing it through the bond.”
I lean in closer so he can hear me over the wind. “Any idea why?”
“No.”
I look past Navin to Lan’s head, watching as he tilts it to the side as if he’s trying to get a better look at something.
A different set of wingbeats cleaves the air to our left, just as a low rumble vibrates down Lan’s body. My stomach hollows and sharp pain shoots through my back when we bank right, Lan tucking his wings in with a leatherysnap. Then we’re in a freefall, diving through the mist as air stings my eyes. Fighting against the force of the fall, I crouch low over Navin’s back, gripping tightly to the leather strap holding me in place. As abruptly as the dive began, it ends when Lan flares his wings out, catching his weight as he moves into a glide.
“There was another dragon,” Navin says after a long bout of silence, both of us needing a moment to catch our breath.
“Any idea who would be this far out?” It isn’t unusual to have smaller units of King’s Riders patrolling near Khargis. But I hadn’t known them to travel this far. At least, I hadn’tassumedit from my father’s meetings that I had snuck into.
“No idea, but whoever it was, Lan didn’t seem familiar with them. His energy bordered on nervousness, and that’s only the case if he’s around a bigger dragon or one that he doesn’t know.”
Interesting. While it would be foolish to assume all bonded dragons know each other, Lan had grown up on the dragonfields, much like Sunis, before choosing my brother as his rider. Most of the bonded chose to stay on or near the fields because its landscape makes finding livestock easy. Yes, wild game is plentiful too, but out in the mountains is where the unbonded dragons roam. While fights between dragons are rare, hunger can make even the most docile among them irate. Was it an unbonded that Lan had sensed? Or simply a larger black dragon that had flown too close?
“We’re almost there,” Navin shouts, jerking his head forward where I can already see the ocean through the Spell. It only takes a few minutes for us to reach the magical border, the tingling sensation of passing through drawing goosebumps over my skin. Lan circles the beach as he prepares to land, and I turn my gaze out to the shore, where I catch a glimpse of dark skin and ruby-red hair. “Aria’s here.”
