The field exploded in a second wave of cheers. Brynnek tilted his chin with gruff satisfaction, arms crossing as Tieren let out a rumbling roar behind him.
Commander Dareth raised both arms. “Mount up! Lieutenant Dareth and Colonel Winters will lead flight formations. You’ll receive updated roles and assignments after drills.”
Within moments, the dragons roused like waking thunder, wings stretching, talons clicking against stone and earth. Thorne swung onto Vornokh’s back with fluid ease. Thaelyn was hoisted by Nyxariel, who tilted her neck so Thaelyn could climb with practiced speed.
The sky opened wide and bright. Above the valley, the formations broke and reformed in seamless motion. Commander Dareth joined them in the air, mounted atop Razorth. The commander looped between wings with a precision that silenced even the boldest cadets.
They flew in unison, spiraling in staggered veils over the academy peaks, diving and reforming again in high-looping sweeps. The first year cadets struggled at moments, but Iri on Skael kept pace with uncanny agility. Feyra’s Razarok snarled smoke behind him as he executed a spiral twist. Garric guided his formation with Vaelion, who trailed a stream of glistening water from his jaws, marking the sky like a glittering scar. Thorne pulled Vornokh up beside Nyxariel mid-loop, and for a single breathless moment, he and Thaelyn matched wing for wing.
“You fly like you’re trying to show off,” Thaelyn called through the wind.
Thorne smirked. “I thought you liked it when I was cocky.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I like it when you’re distracted and get outmaneuvered by me.”
“Then I’ll try to look very distracted later tonight after dinner, he smirked. “Thaelyn, let’s not go in right away with the others. I want to show you something.”
She flushed, nodded, and looked away, barely catching her signal to dive. Nyxariel twisted in the air, plummeting, then leveled with a boom of wings as the formation completed the final pass. The rest of the dragon riders headed back towards the flight field. Thorne had Thaelyn follow him.
The sun had barely risen past the mountain ridges when Thorne led Thaelyn off the main flying path. The dragons landed, and he waited for her to dismount. His fingers laced through hers. The air was thin up here. They landed in a narrow valley flanked by twin, towering, jagged mountains.
“Are you sure this isn’t off-limits, and we can be up here?” Thaelyn asked, laughing softly as he pulled her past a thicket of wild briar.
He looked back, eyes bright in the light. “Everything worth seeing is off-limits.”
The narrow trail curved between two towering peaks, and then the world opened. Before them spread a hidden valley, green as jade, cupped in the hands of the mountains. A stream wound through the center, glimmering like a spilled ribbon of light. In the middle, stretching as far as the eye could see, bloomed a field of peonies; blush-pink and cream petals flowed in the breeze. The scent was soft, honey and rain mingled together.
Thaelyn stopped, breath catching. “It’s beautiful.”
They reached the stream. He jumped across a narrow place and turned, hands up to steady her. She leaped, and his palms bracketed her waist. Heat stirred through her despite the mountain air. She did not step away, nor did he.
“Is this where you vanish off to some mornings?” she asked. “Why you come back with dew on your boots and your hair smelling like flowers?”
His smile was brief. “Caught.”
She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him slowly. He kissed her deeply, like a promise kept at last. When they parted, the world had not changed, but something within her had.
“I thought you brought me here to show me a little path that no one else knows, but this is a sanctuary.” She wondered how this man could be so gentle with her and be so unyielding with others.
“It is a place where I did not have to be perfect or strong.” His hands remained at her waist. “Over the years, I have needed that more than anything.”
She was about to ask him more about his past, but he turned, moving deeper into the flowers. The peonies brushed his calves and swayed shut after his passing. He scanned the field as if looking for one specific star in a sky full of them.
“Come over here,” he said. His voice had changed. It held a softness that loosened something in her chest, making it ache. They reached a cluster of pale blooms near the stream’s curve. He crouched among them and chose one not for its size, but for the way its petals blushed deeper at the center. He freed the stem with a small knife, then held the flower in his hand and offered it to her. He lifted his gaze to her, then knelt on his knee before her. The mountain wind paused. Even the bees seemed to hang in the air.
“I am not good at expressing my feelings in words,” he said simply. “I can only try and tell you the truth of what I am feeling. I was broken before you, Thaelyn. I’ve spent my life chasing a standard that would never love me back. You make me stop running.”
He reached up, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek. “You’re my calm in all the noise. You have become my reason to breathe. You’re everything I didn’t know I wanted or believe that I could have. I’ve spent too much time in rooms where truth was punishment. I wanted a life where telling it could be an offering.”
He drew a breath. His composure was a practiced thing, but it trembled now at the edges, as if his control had chosen to stand aside and let the man speak. “I am broken, Thaelyn. Not the kind of broken that can be healed with time and a bandage. The kind that teaches you to stand still and bury the hurt. The kind that makes you chase perfection. With perfection or skills, I thought I could be seen, valued, or worthy of something. I thought if I could fight or protect without error, then I might not be struck for breathing too hard. My training as a child and a teenage boy was brutal and harsh. My father was unyielding. He said I must be strong and valuable to the crown, to Kaen. I never felt accepted by him. I learned that ruthlessness, coldness, and never yielding got me the approval that I desperately wanted from him.” Thaelyn continued to listen quietly.
“I wanted to share my special place with you,” he said, glancing at the field as if it could witness for him. “Here is where I learned I could escape to and put the pain down for a moment, and the world did not end. Here is where I learned that a stream keeps going even when a boy stops.” He swallowed and gave a rough laugh at himself. “I have always strived to be the best at everything because I could not bear the idea of being insufficient. I wore excellence like armor. I sharpened myself into something that could not be touched. I thought that if I were useful enough, perfect enough, I would be…” He searched for the word and found the oldest one. “Loved.” She did not realize tears had fallen until the wind cooled them against her cheeks.
“You changed me,” he said, and the faintest smile broke through the confession. “You stand in front of all my rough edges and faults, and you do not flinch. You look at me, not for what I can do or what my title is, but for who I am as a man. I did not know what to do with that. I have always known the pull of duty. With you, I have learned how to be different.” He lifted the peony between them. “You are my everything. I have never felt this way for anyone. When I am with you, I do not feel like a weapon or a title. I feel worthy and enough.”
Her knees gave. She sank before him so their faces were level, her riding leathers hitting the grass, and the flowers bowing against her calves as if in approval and with their blessing. She took the peony from his hand. Then she framed his jaw with her palm and kissed him, not to silence him, but to tell him how she felt. When they parted, she leaned her forehead against his. “You were always enough,” she said. “Before me and without me. I am honored to be the one who gets to say it until you can hear it as your own voice.”
His breath shuddered out. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, something in their depths had spoken. They sat together on the grass, the field rising around them in soft hills of blooms. The stream went on talking in its clear language. For a long time, they let the quiet do its work, the way light does not force its way through a window but arrives and changes with everything it touches.
