Reeve grinned at her and Faron grinned back as she tugged him into the fray. Once she found a clear patch of grass, she whirled around to face Reeve, feeling strangely shy. With the moon lininghis face in silver and shadows, he looked like a different person, unknowable and strange.
But then he smiled and he was Reeve, frustratingly familiar. Comfortingly constant.
“Ready to watch me make a fool of myself?” he asked, squeezing her hand.
Faron squeezed back. “Youalwaysmake a fool of yourself.”
They danced. Neither of them was any good, but that just made things more interesting. More fun. Between her obligation to the queen, her obligation to the country, her obligation to her family, and her obligation to the gods, Faron rarely had time for something so simple and wholesome. To just be a girl, holding hands with a boy, bouncing up and down as if that were dancing.
Her cheeks hurt from laughing so hard, and, when Reeve tried to spin her, she nearly swiveled right off her feet and into the grass. He danced like a chicken with his head cut off, all flailing limbs and wide-open mouth, winking when she bent over cackling. Her cheeks hurt, her ribs hurt, but her chest was light, full of nothing but the music and the starlight and the surprisingly bright presence of this stupid, stupid boy.
Impulsively, she threw her arms around his waist between songs, pressing her cheek against his chest. “Thanks for this. I’m having a good time.”
Reeve froze for a moment, clearly shocked, but then he hugged her back. “I’m glad. I could tell that you needed it. You looked…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t like to see you look like that, is all.”
She didn’t have the words for how badly she had needed this, so she pressed even closer for as long as she dared before letting go. He was a good hugger, she told herself, and it had been ages sinceshe’d gotten one. That was all. She gestured toward a nearby bag juice cart and Reeve nodded, wandering closer to the band while she went to get them some drinks. There was a line at the cart now that the set had paused, and Faron joined it with a small sigh.
She tipped her head back to look at the stars and watched them twinkle uncaringly up above. She hoped that they were watching over Elara, too. She hoped that Elara was safely looking up at these same stars and maybe thinking of her. She was so happy in this moment that all she wanted was to share some of that joy with her sister. Faron smiled at the thought of how Elara would have nagged at her for sneaking out of the queen’s house just to go to some party, barely disguised and unnecessarily reckless. How she would have chided Reeve for going with her. How she would have gotten dragged along anyway and ended up having more fun than she’d be willing to admit.
Gods, she wanted her sister back.
Faron was somber by the time she collected the bag juices. Reeve took his with a grateful smile that fell when he looked at her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I miss Elara,” she confessed.
“I miss her, too,” Reeve replied. “Even though no one has ever broken a bond between a dragon and a Rider before, I thought for sure we’d have found something that would allow her to come back by now. Over there… she’s not safe.”
Faron bit a hole into her bag juice, let the cool, fruity flavor moisten her tongue. “You lived there for almost thirteen years, but you talk about Langley like an Iryan. Is it really so dangerous?”
Instead of answering right away, Reeve watched the band with a furrow in his brow. The musicians were mingling with thecrowd, taking requests, laughing as they prepared for the next set, but Faron knew that Reeve didn’t really see them. What she didn’t know was if he would actually share what was on his mind, even on this night when the tentative companionship between them felt fragile but real.
“Langley is my home. Even without…” He gestured into the distance, to encompass the pain the Iryan people still felt from the war. The wounds that Langley had caused. “It was all I knew for a very long time. But because it was my home, I know that it couldbebetter than it is. I see its flaws, its corruption.” His fingers tightened around his bag juice. “After the war, I looked up the names of the soldiers who had died in the final battle. I looked up their faces, their families. I see it all every time I close my eyes. I wonder if I did the right thing, if there had been a different way to do the right thing, if those deaths were worth everything that came after. If my country can truly be good, or if it will only find new ways to be cruel. If San Irie will ever feel like home. If I’ll ever be allowed to find a home here. If I even deserve it.”
Faron’s hand was on his arm before she’d made the conscious decision to move. Reeve’s smile was fleeting.
“I don’t mean to complain. I just… Elara is not seeing Langley at its best, and I don’t know how much worse it’s gotten since I left. That’s why I worry. She’s too good for a place like that.”
“You’re not complaining,” Faron said softly. “I asked. And you never… You’ve never told me any of this.”
“You’re the Childe Empyrean. If we stack our burdens against each other’s, you’ll win every time.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re not both carrying them.”
Reeve looked at her then, and Faron could no longer feel thechill of the bag juice in her hands. His eyes were bright, and for once it didn’t feel alien and alarming, that soft blue shade. Those were Reeve’s eyes, the same boy who had forgone sleep to help her sister; the same boy who had dragged her to this party because he could tell she needed it; the same boy who had taken the time to learn her, despite her barbed words and poisonous glances. This was her sister’s best friend, the Langlish traitor, the smug intellectual, the silent guardian.
Faron had seen Reeve Warwick almost every day for the last five years, but this was the first time she had everreallyseen him. The first time she had ever liked what she saw.
The band launched into another song, a fast-paced version of the Iryan national anthem. Reeve laughed and held out a free hand.
“Shall we dance?” he asked, azure eyes eclipsing every bright star in the sky.
Faron cleared her throat. Took his hand. Heard the pounding of her heart, louder than the steel drum. “Okay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ELARA
COMMANDERWARWICK HAD ARRIVED ATHEARTHSTONE, ANDElara, Signey, and Zephyra had no one to blame but themselves. When they had returned with Nizsa and her Riders safely slumbering after their recovery from the Fury, Headmaster Luxton had insisted on contacting the commander to give them some sort of commendation. Their protests had been waved off, their reputations elevated to heroic status. Warwick had brought his dragon, Irontooth, and his wife, the director, with him to convey the depths of their gratitude to Signey and Elara.
