“Ten years ago.”
“Oh.” I remembered reading about the duke’s wife’s death, but that was only a year or two ago.
Reading my pinched brow, he added, “That was his second wife. She died, too. But hers was a freak accident on a fox hunt.”
Two wives, both dead? My brows lifted in surprise. But then I quickly turned away, avoiding eye contact with Rush. He had lost his mother, his first dragon, and a brother he’d never known. The headlines I’d read about him, all the wild nights and embarrassing mishaps with the law, suddenly struck me as sad. For years, I’d thought of him as spoiled and ridiculous, but now I knew better. Spoiled in the material sense, maybe, but he’d lost so much too. And he lived with a man heknewcould kill his own flesh and blood. I wasn’t sure what that would do to someone. Part of me wondered if Rush Covington had become the wayward son because he figured it was better to leave his father in constant disapproval than to ever try to gain his love in the first place.
Biting my lip, I looked back at Rush. Now his dreams of becoming a pirate and sailing far, far away didn’t sound so strange.
He looked down at the journal again. “My mother left me this, but she also left explicit instructions with the bank not to alert me to its existence until I turned eighteen, probably because she knew how dangerous this was and how careless I was as a child. Always leaving my things all over the house.” His voice softened to a raspy whisper. “It was like she’d reached out from the grave when I got this.”
After the silence stretched a little too long, I said, “So, we don’t have a guidebook. But what about the books you destroyed to get those gems? What did you find in them?”
“You think I’ve read that many books in a week?” He elbowed me, the heaviness of the moment fading. “You have too much faith in me.”
I exhaled. “Then we’ll start there.”
CHAPTER 31
Professor Enplencourt stood at the classroom door to welcome us back after the break. Scarlett and Mabel had bobbed their hair over the break, and I caught Enplencourt emitting a small gasp when the girls appeared in the hall. Subconsciously, the older woman touched her hair, which was tied up in an elegant knot on her head, as the two girls strolled into the classroom.
An hour into the lecture, Enplencourt drifted down the aisle between desks, her arms crossed, her robe smeared with chalk. “So, you are saying the war was a necessary step in our success as a society?” She paused, her long fingers resting on the edge of Prescott’s desk.
“Yes, ma’am. The war showed everyone what dragons without flame can do.”
A subtle chuckle sounded from the front row, where the top student in the class, Walt, a boy from Sapphire, sat. “Everyone knew what flameless dragons could do; it was thebondswe learned about through the war. That’s the reason our society succeeded.”
As Enplencourt turned her attention to Walt, Prescott flashed him a threatening glare.
“The historians all agree that dragon bonds were not fully understood until this war, yes, Mr. Holmstadt.”
The boy smiled, clearly not hearing the faint note of boredom in Enplencourt’s voice.
“But do you think the cost was worth it?” Vanya asked, sensing Enplencourt’s desire for pushback. She winked at me when Enplencourt lifted her hands outward toward Walt and Prescott, awaiting an answer.
Prescott jumped in first. “Sure it was. Progress never comes without some pain.” He ignored Vanya’s disappointed head shake and pressed on. “We knew dragons could be destructive, sure, and that’s why the skeptics hated them. It’s the same way we feel about wild dragons now.” I flinched, but the only person who seemed to have noticed was Rush, whose attention floated quickly back to Prescott, who was still talking. “But we learned that dragons—bonded dragons—could be so much more effective in battle than a dragon with flame who just torches everything.”
“Like a gun that aims rather than fires in all directions at once,” Rush concluded, elbowing Prescott beside him.
Enplencourt slowly closed her eyes—her equivalent to an eye roll—and waited for someone else to take up the discussion.
“That’s true, but I think we’re missing something vital about this war when we only study what came from it,” I said, heat flaring up my neck as all eyes turned to me.
In the front row, Walt snorted. “What could we possibly be missing? This war happened over four hundred years ago. Historians have studied it dry by now, don’t you think?”
Nodding politely at Walt, I looked at Prescott as I answered, trying to keep my attention off of Rush. “The skeptics hateddragons—that’s what the history books all say. It wasn’t just the dragons themselves the skeptics were against.”
That drew a slight frown from Prescott and the telltale eyebrow-lift of approval from Enplencourt.
“Explain,” Enplencourt said, nodding at me.
“Like the text said, the people who thought we shouldn’t have anything to do with dragons are the real reason the war started, despite their claims that dragon riders had grown violent and domineering. But if you look at the burning of the library, the ransacking of the dragon lairs, the pattern of violence started with the skeptics.”
“People often fear what they don’t understand,” Vanya supplied.
Prescott dropped his fist on his desk. “Exactly. Without the war, the general public wouldn’t have come to see dragons as good.”
Enplencourt lifted her hand toward Vanya and me, waiting for a reply.
