The questions seemed rhetorical, but Faron answered anyway. “I think you’re doing the best you can, and that’s all anyone can ask of you, Your Majesty.”
Aveline inhaled sharply. Faron had never called the queen by her title before, not unless under duress, not without being forced. But even on their worst days, when it felt as if Aveline blamed her for everything wrong with her life and ignored Faron’s own struggles, Faron had never doubted one simple truth: Aveline loved her country. She wanted to do right by it. She wanted to exceed her mothers’ legacies.
She was young, and she was imperfect. She’d lost her temper, and she’d made catastrophic mistakes—especially in that first year on the throne. Those were also truths. But she’d never once considered ignoring her lineage, running back to her farm, and maintaining the lies she’d been told her entire life. Her country had needed a queen, so a queen was what Aveline Renard Castell had become.
Faron would always respect her for that.
“Thank you for the update, Empyrean,” Aveline said, her voice surprisingly thick. And then: “Have a good rest of your day, Faron.”
The fire banked itself, leaving Faron to her thoughts. She hadn’t believed they would be able to keep Elara’s absence a secret for long, but she also hadn’t thought anyone but she and her familywould care. Then again, when people had already taken to the streets in protest, anything and everything could be another spark. Maybe they thought Elara was a hostage. Maybe they thought Elara was a traitor. Maybe they thought Elara was a victim of Aveline’s incompetence.
No matter what, things would only get worse if Faron didn’t break her bond. The gods already wanted her to kill Elara, to get rid of the dragons. She couldn’t stand it if the Iryans wanted Elara dead, too.
“Aveline can handle this,” Faron said to herself, pressing the backs of her hands against her eyes to stave off a headache. “She’ll talk to them. She’s good at that. They love her. They’ll listen. Everything will be all right.”
Hollow words, hollow comfort. But she clung to the gilded promise anyway because the alternative just might break her.
PART III
SINNER
CHAPTER TWENTY
ELARA
DURING HER FIRST MONTH INLANGLEY,ELARA ABSORBED INFORMATIONlike a dish sponge. Most of it was contextually interesting yet virtually useless, but she reported it all back to Aveline, regardless.
She learned that there were four breeds of dragon. Carmine dragons, the largest breed, came in different shades of red; medallion dragons, the second largest, came in shades of yellow; ultramarine dragons, blue-colored and more aquatic than all the other breeds combined, were the second smallest; and then there were sage dragons like Zephyra, small and green and scarily intelligent. Hearthstone uniforms were color coded, Elara’s pine-green cuffs and shirt symbolizing to anyone and everyone that a sage was her mount.
She learned the differences between Firstriders like Signey and Jesper, and Wingleaders like her and Torrey. Firstriders led the dragons into battle and maintained an active offense. Wingleaders fought on the ground and provided a ranged defense. Humans didn’t know which one they would be until they bonded with their dragon, and only dragons seemed to know what made a soul more likely to be one than the other.
She learned that her class schedule required her to take some courses with Signey, some courses alone, and even some courses with the den. Each one fell under the heading of one of the Five Fields—history, theology, politics, etiquette, and combat—and were divided among five professors whose sessions seemed to run long or short based on nothing but a whim.
She learned far too much about the biology of dragons every time she and Signey spent their weekends at the National Hall. Each weekend, they were separated until sunset, exchanging information on the flight back to Hearthstone before, tentatively, beginning to share the details of their days through the bond instead.
What she didn’t learn in those first few weeks was how to deal with her classmates.
Signey’s pointed, public barbs were one thing, but the rest of the students weren’t satisfied unless Elara literally felt the piercing edges of their hatred. There were small wounds, like someone leaving a claw ring on her chair so it stabbed her when she sat down, or someone locking eyes with her as they spat in her soup. Then there were the larger attacks, like when she woke up in the middle of the night to someone holding a dagger to her throat and threatening to carve her open if she “tried anything,” or when someone set fire to a tree while she was sitting under it. It got so bad that, after the first couple of weeks, her professors began escorting her from class to class.
It was clear from the first day that she was a museum exhibit to these students, who had rarely seen an Iryan on this side of the Ember Sea. Elara stood out in every conceivable way. She spoke what sounded to everyone like accented Langlish, thanks to Zephyra, but it was not an accent they were used to. She wore her hair in long dark brown braids that tumbled down her back, but herclassmates’ rainbow hair ranged from pin straight to curly and made the texture of hers a subject of whispered conversations.
Her skin was darker than that of any other Rider she’d come across, though the Langlish Empire spanned so many regions that there was no single skin tone to make her feel completely othered. Some students were pale, some had olive complexions, some had golden undertones, and some had the copper Lindan hue of Signey and Jesper. The gorgeous shades of brown from San Irie, a prism against which Elara’s own umber skin would have blended, were just less represented.
“The Langlish Empire comprises almost fifty territories across the world,” Professor Damon Smithers said in one history class. It had become her favorite class, admittedly because she’d done so well from the start that Professor Smithers had praised her to Commander Warwick. Her need for validation had won the battle with her dread. “Although different, these Langlish territories are all united by their people’s freedom to maintain their individual cultures and to move freely throughout the empire for work or residency. Thanks to that, the Langlish people are a diverse group within the larger Langlish identity.”
He said this as if it were supposed to be a good thing, but all Elara could think of were the “almost fifty territories” that hadn’t yet been set free. How many of them actuallywantedto be part of the empire? And what happened to the revolutions that, unlike San Irie’s, had failed? During one class, she’d gotten brave enough to ask that question, and Professor Smithers had smiled. “Let’s explore that,” he’d said.
It had almost been worth the extra homework.
Soon, the only place where Elara truly felt at home was the three-floor Hearthstone library. It was also, she quickly discovered,the best and least suspicious way to get information. As far as she could tell, there was no topic forbidden for Hearthstone students to learn about. Her politics and theology classes alone required her to do so much reading to catch up that she could use the high stacks of books as a makeshift barrier between her and everyone else. No one could see what she was really studying, and, best of all, no one could throw anything at her.
And no one dared throw anything at her when Signey joined her, lending them the illusion of privacy. With their heads bent over their respective tomes, they were able to talk,reallytalk, and this seemed like the best time to reveal one thing that she had been holding back.
“GaelSoto?”Signey didn’t look up at her, but Elara could feel her shock as if it were her own.“The Gray Saint is myancestor?”
“It could be a coincidence,” Elara mused.“But it would be a rather big one.”
“But are you sure he’s the Gray Saint? A god? Or… can the Childe Empyrean summon Langlish ancestors?”
