“You’re not leaving the country with my sister.I absolutely won’t allow it.”
“Empyrean,” the queen snapped, “please show the commander some respect.”
“Not for this! Didn’t you hear him? He’s trying to take Elara away!”
“For good reason. Not as a personal attack against you.”
Faron’s cheeks burned. Leave it to Aveline to make her sound like a child again. “It’s not that—”
“Is there any other option?” Elara murmured. “Can the instructors come here, for example?”
“They certainly could, but I don’t think your people would appreciate your dragon being here, let alone more than one. Especially after tonight. Unless Her Majesty thinks otherwise…?”
Faron wanted to slap his sardonic smile right off his face. She turned her head toward the wall to hide her scowl. It just seemed so ridiculous that a single night had dissolved into something that had changed her world forever. She and Elara had never been apart for the last seventeen years, and now her sister had to leave the country entirely? To train to be the very thing that Faron had become the Childe Empyrean to fight?
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’tfair.
“Regardless of the number of dragons, we cannot have what happened in the garden repeated,” said Aveline, but she was looking at Faron. If the clipped words were meant to be an explanation in lieu of an apology, then they were falling flat. Nothing couldjustify this. Not this. “If Elara needs training at Hearthstone to keep this under control, then she will have it.” Now her gaze shifted to Elara. “How soon can you be ready?”
It was a long time before Elara actually spoke. “I don’t know if I’m on leave since you—”
Aveline’s eyes were pitying. “We cannot have a dragon Rider in the Iryan Military Forces, Elara. Iamsorry, and I know I said otherwise, but it is true.…”
Faron glanced at her sister, who sat curled in her infirmary bedsheets like a baby bird with broken wings. She didn’t look surprised or even hurt by this. She just looked exhausted, as if the worst had already happened and there was nothing that she could do now but bear it. That was what Vincents did when they were hurt too deeply. They shut down. Faron would have done anything to take that look off her face, to share this burden with her, but she couldn’t.
All her divine power, and she couldn’t help her sister now when she needed it most.
“Please concentrate on healing,” said the queen. “Commander Warwick and I will discuss the details of this training after we all get some rest. A medical summoner will be by to check on you both in the morning.”
It was close to dawn. Moonlight peeked into the infirmary from behind the curtains that covered the windows on the other side of the room. The reminder hit Faron square in the chest, and weariness radiated outward from there until her body felt as if it could sink through the concrete floor. Even Elara was hiding a yawn behind the back of her hand, and she’d been unconscious for hours longer than Faron had.
Commander Warwick and the queen filed out, speaking quietly to each other. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, Reeve crossed the room. “Do you want some water?”
“Please,” said Elara, settling back against the pillows.
“And you?”
When Signey Soto realized that she was being spoken to, her lips thinned. “Not from you, traitor.”
Reeve let the barb pass unchallenged and went to get Elara water.
“Don’t worry, okay?” Faron said, taking her sister’s hand again. “I’ll talk to the gods, see if there’s a way to get you out of this bond. If anyone can fix this, it’s them. And if anyone can bring you home, it’s me.”
“You heard Signey,” Elara said miserably. “The bond is permanent. This ispermanent. I don’t—”
“Langley has never understood or respected San Irie’s magic or its gods. They can’t do it, so they don’t take it seriously. You can’t believe a word she says when they’re probably over there teaching everyone that we’re primitive upstarts who are going to drive our fledgling country into the ground.”
Across the room, Signey snorted. “I just want to point out that you’re currently the one showing a lack of respect for Langley’s magic and our gods.” She shot a glare over at Elara. “And could you please put up at least rudimentary walls between your thoughts and mine? I can hear everything you’re thinking, and it’s loud and sad.”
For the first time since she’d woken up, Elara looked more annoyed than scared. “I’m not exactly used to having to guard my thoughts. If it bothers you so much, put your own wall up.”
In response, Signey turned her back to them. Her hair spilled across the pillow like a wavy wall of its own.
Elara muttered a word that made Faron giggle. “You know what? All right. It wouldn’t hurt to at least ask the gods what they think.”
“Exactly,” said Faron as Reeve reentered the room with a cup of cool, clear water. If he noticed any tension between them and the other Langlish person in the room, he didn’t bother to comment on it. “I’ll talk to them. They’ll break the bond. You’ll be at Hearthstone for a week, maybe a month at most. Everything will be okay, I promise.”
