I do as he says, and I stay with myself for a time. I envision the dragon inside me taking up space, though I sense she remains asleep. When she doesn’t tangibly do what my mind conjures, my thoughts wander again, drifting to what will happen next. I begin to question; if taking down the Sar Dyeus is the right thing for my people, if the Realm dragons are in fact the enemy I’ve always known them to be, and Alixor was just one man, one dragon, who couldn’t keep his promise among many that did. But a promise to keep us safe from something that was never really a threat is no promise at all. My mind swarms, wondering what will happen if this works. Wondering what will happen if it doesn’t.
“Doubt has no home here,” Ozias murmurs, soft and low.
“Do you have the power to read minds too, then?” I ask, snapping my eyes open and rising up on my elbows.
There’s a long pause, then a restrained laugh, held deep in his chest. “As curious as I am to see the inner workings of your brain, no. You’re very expressive. It doesn’t take much to figure out what you’re thinking.”
I purse my lips towards my nose, septum piercing moving along with the motion as I relax back down and close my eyes. I fooled Alixor, my mother, and countless others by having control over my expression. I don’t think it’s simply that. I try again to relax my features, but my mind spins towards the curse that forces the rogues to change at night, the one that, if they’re outside the Realm, turns them savage. I think of my mark, slowly fading. It forced me to stay in my human body all these years. Any silence I found drifts away, these questions taking the full force of my focus.
“What’s the difference?” I ask, and I hear the soft shuffle of Ozias’s steps pause. “Between those who come hereand the children? Why can they shift at will, but many of the others can’t?”
There’s movement from him again. I open my eyes as he sits down near my shoulder, legs crossed, bare forearms draped casually over each knee with his golden eyes focused on the mark below my breastbone. “The children who are born here don’t trigger the curse. As long as they don’t cross the barrier I’ve cast over the Realm, they continue to have the ability to shift at will.”
I turn on my side, propping up my head with my hand. “That doesn’t explain how those who enter from the outside can overcome being savage. Or how you or any of the original draconem here were able to do that, for that matter.” In part, I’m looking for a lie. Some gap between what he’s already told me and what he’s telling me now to uncover any deceit. I want him to trust me, but Ineedto trust him.
Ozias casts his gaze down. There’s a heaviness to the air as I wait for his reply. “There’s another barrier I cast over the Realm. One that happened days after I made the first. Those days…they were so dark. We found any way we could to restrain ourselves, to keep ourselves in the Realm. To keep us from attacking one another. Then, there was someone Zhoric reversed the curse on.”
My blood stills in my veins. “He reversed the curse on someone? Why would he do that?”
“The question you should ask is forwhomhe would do that.”
I wait a beat for the answer, my mind spinning. A bond perhaps? “And?”
“It was his sister.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “She wasn’t on his side?” A pang in my chest hits me hard, remembering when Kalixta and I were at odds after her selection and all the ways we did and didn’t support each other during those times.
“Their relationship was complicated, but they loved each other. He couldn’t stand to see her like that, so he lifted the curse from her. When she made it here, I replicated it as well as I could. But I couldn’t replicate on every individual,over and over. I was only strong enough to expand the magic across the Realm like a net and give the draconem who trigger the curse the ability to find the opening to the light beyond the savagery.”
Scanning his face, an idea bubbles in my mind.
“I don’t understand. If Zhoric has a god’s power, couldn’t he have stopped you? Then? Now?” I don’t have the courage to say the wordkill.
“That was his intention, once.” A shadow settles across his face and I suddenly have the sense that I’m looking at the real man behind the swaggering front I’m accustomed to.
I lay my hand over his, my thumb pressing the inside of his wrist. “What happened?”
The muscles along the side of Ozias’s neck tighten and I slowly run the pad of my thumb against his pulse point. “His sister was killed by someone close to him soon after he took power. Following that, he wasn’t much inclined to eradicate us lest he ever needed to use us against the draconem who follow him.”
My mouth tightens at the notion. Things must have gone according to the Sar Dyeus’s plans if he didn’t go forward with that. Although, the fact Ozias could meet with him safely suggests the Sar Dyeus is still keeping the rogues in his back pocket.
“Then the draconem who followed him found us more useful alive than dead by using us to influence the Nevobans, so they no longer called for our deaths. To the Sar Dyeus, that meant everything was under his control.”
I work my teeth over my lower lip. “How did we end up like this? What happened to the women back when the Sar Dyeus took control? Why didn’t we fight back?”
Ozias sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Anyone who defied Zhoric and his followers in that first divide of our people was cursed, one way or another. His power was like a dust storm; wholly consuming and unstoppable. Everyone who followed him, or didn’t choose a side at all, fell to his whims. The women who were lucky, if you could call it that, fled here. The others who weren’t so lucky had themark placed upon them, suppressing their dragons. That first generation of your people were cursed so they couldn’t speak of the past and what you are. So when the second generation came and stories were passed down, truths were told as well as they could through fables and legends, but even those changed with time. We became the monsters, and eventually the dragons of Dyeus donned the shepherd’s skin to make you feel safe and secure for nearly a century.”
My throat is thick as I swallow. A hundred years seems like both an eternity and no time at all for such a significant shift, but Ozias lived through it. Atlanta experienced an early phase of that new world. A deep valley of sorrow carves its way across my heart. So much lost. So many women who came before me living abbreviated lives. The ones who knew what they were supposed to be, silenced, their wings clipped from ever reaching the full extent of who they were again. That valley in my chest fills with heat and hate.
I clench my teeth so tight they could crack. “I want him dead,” I say, so low that I wonder if Ozias hears me, but of course he does. His next words stun me.
“We can take his power. We can reverse the curse and mend things back to the way they ought to be, but he needs to live, at least for a while yet. He has too many threads of magic woven into the world. We don’t know what would happen if he were to depart from this plane too soon. He has much left to do before he can pass. Things he needs to answer for.” Ozias’s words hold a tenderness, but his face is severe, leaving not an ounce of space for argument.
So I don’t. I also won’t let his words control my ultimate decision when it comes time to do what he asks me to do. I vow to myself that the last dragon I kill will be the Sar Dyeus. I search his expression, seeing something familiar. Protective. I pull my hand from his wrist and press my fingers to my lips, then tuck them under my chin. “He’s your friend,” I guess, as if that both settles the matter and accuses him of something. “Or once was.”
Ozias doesn’t dispute my claim, causing me to wonder over their relationship. His face has turned cold anddistant, his mind elsewhere. “I said I would answer your questions. The answer to that is…it doesn’t matter what he once was. He’s the enemy, now.” He juts out his chin. “Back on the floor. We’ll do these exercises every day until you can focus for at least an hour.”
I lie back down and try to settle into my skin that feels like it could burst at any moment. “And when I master this? How will I get close to the Sar Dyeus to enact the bond?” I tilt my head back to see him.
