“You shifted.”
“Yes, I gathered as much. But why?”
“I’m unsure,” he says, his hands moving to undo the locks.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“I know it’s early, but I’m beginning to think our questions for one another have rather obvious answers.”
“Ozias,” I chide. “Itisearly. Aren’t I at risk of…shifting back?”
“Even if you did, you passed the stage of savagery. You’re no threat to anyone now.” He throws the chains off my back. I press up to my hands and knees, and Ozias grabs one of my arms to help me stand, holding me steady. “Well, strictly speaking. What I meant is, you’re not going to tear anyone apart without intending to at this point.”
I sigh, long and steady, trying to quiet the image of me shifting into a feral, bloodthirsty creature and tearing apart anyone within range, him and Ninon included. In the next enclosure over, I hear the disquieted caws and frustrated grunts of Ninon’s dragon form, the clanking and clattering of her chains as she moves her body to free herself. I frown, wishing I could see through the wall to her. She’s been here far longer, yet she’s still not settled into her dragon.
Ozias takes my chin between his fingers, guiding my attention back to him. Once he has it, he removes his hand and I realize how cold my skin is absent of his touch. “What happened?” he asks gently.
I catch my lower lip between my teeth. Instinctively, I don’t want to share that I dreamed of the Sar Dyeus. It felt realer than any dream I ever remember having. Ozias wants me to help him take down the Sar Dyeus and telling him I’m dreaming of our common enemy could be a conflict. I decide to go with a variation of the truth.
“I had a bad dream.”
Ozias stares at me, his eyes moving across my face before he nods. “Come with me.” He doesn’t wait for my reply. He wraps my hand, cold and clammy, in his warm and dry one, and leads me out of the enclosure. I cast a glance behind me to Ninon. She left me to come here, so why does it now feel as if I’m the one leaving her behind?
Through the dark corridors and walkways, my eyes struggle to adjust. It’s the time of day that turns everything blue and shadowy, and I wonder what my dragon eyes would pick up if I were wearing them instead.
Ozias leads me all the way to his private rooms at the top of the Alcazar. He’d been silent the entire way and nowhe turns to regard me with a keen look.
I fidget under his attentions. Does he know I’m lying? If he waits another moment to speak, I’ll fold. I’ll tell him everything and beg to keep my place here. “What’s all this about?”
“Your energy,” he says. “I can’t figure it out. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt.”
My chin falls towards my chest as I loose a breath before looking up at him. “Is that a good thing?”
His head tilts as he considers. “It must be a good thing.”
“Said with all the confidence in the world,” I quip.
His smile is slow and lazy. “It has something to do with your elahi, which is a good thing. We just need to figure out what it is.”
Turning from me, Ozias gestures over his shoulder for me to follow him. “I want to show you something.”
We move to the center of the room and the table where the model sits, along with scattered parchments and maps. Instead of addressing it though, he catches my gaze with his stunning amber eyes.
“I’ve asked you to help us bring down Zhoric by bonding with him,” he says and I tense at the sound of the Sar Dyeus’s name so soon on the heels of dreaming of him. Instead of asking me about my reaction, though, Ozias’s next words are aimed to ease my tension on what he assumes is my discomfort. “The power you emit is evidence that you can do it.” He gestures to the mess with widespread hands. “This is our plan to make everything that comes after seamless.”
I pull my lips into my mouth, then open with a pop. “Looks simple enough.”
He laughs, moving closer to me, his arm pressed against my shoulder as he points to a thick manuscript sitting at the center of the table. “There we’ve compiled all the possibilities of what could go wrong when Zhoric falls from power, and our plan for dealing with the fallout.”
The moment he mentions the possibility things could go wrong, my shoulders pull taught. I agreed so easily before, when I thought I would take the Sar Dyeus down andeverything would be set right. Nothing is ever so simple and I flush with shame that I didn’t consider all that could happen otherwise. I was so desperate to help make things right. To give my people back this incredible thing that’s been stolen from us. And now I really think of my people, of having everything they’ve ever known suddenly ripped from them.
“All the Nevobans know is the rule of Dyeus,” I say, shaking my head. “Most like the way things are and those that don’t are not suffering in a way that is unbearable.” Even as I say the words, I think of the wailing mothers and tired girls. I think of restless huntresses. I think of shoving my dragon back down into myself, never connecting with it again, and my stomach clenches. But my people don’t know that feeling. Changing their whole world, their entire way of living for something they never knew? I don’t know if that’s saving them at all. “How can liberating them from a life they understand to one they don’t cause anything but cause chaos? It’s all they know.”
“We will prepare them.” He casts his hand across the table. “There are a thousand steps in this plan, and we will do everything in our power to help your people transition. But none of it,none of it, can happen until you are ready. The path we were on before you was long and toilsome. One we recognize may have never had an end. It was a dream. A wish. With you, we have a real chance. Not everyone will change easily, but change they will. It is inevitable. Without it, the deaths of both our peoples will continue. It will grow worse by the day. It already is. Being draconem is their right. It’s part of who they are. Whether they are aware of it or not, whether they ever accept it or not.
“There’s a lot of history that you don’t know of yet, Kaisa.” Ozias’s tone is low, meant to soothe. I straighten my spine. “There’s much that happened before you, and more that will happen yet. I want us to have a true partnership. One built on mutual trust and respect.”
I bristle at the word trust, my shoulders drawing up towards my ears.
