“I disagree. The earliest dragons on the continent had burned farms and killed people. They disrupted life as we knew it. The general public knew to fear dragons. The first riders were what told people weno longerhad to fear dragons.” I glanced at Vanya. “Even before the war, there was a growing admiration for dragons, at least those with riders. I don’t think it was that the skeptics hated dragons—it was that they hated the idea of a society where dragons weregood, but only for the chosen, the privileged few. They wanted things to return to the way they were—with dragons on one side and humanity on the other, unified against a common enemy.”
Prescott sniffed indignantly and looked out the window, where cold rain tapped the glass. Enplencourt’s mouth turned up faintly at the sides.
Vanya scooted forward in her seat. “Okay, I can see that. The fear wasn’t toward the dragons, but toward the disparity forming between social classes.” She nodded, glancing up at our professor, who watched us with intensity.
“Some have posited the same thing,” she said, moving back to the front of the room. “Can anyone think of a reason why burning a library would be a smart move on the part of the skeptics if it was indeed their goal to trigger a war?”
When no one answered, Rush finally said, “Because people deprived of knowledge are always easier to control.”
“And more fearful?” Vanya concluded with a shrug, missing the way I’d stiffened at Rush’s words.
I gave Vanya a curt nod, trying to shake off the feeling of Rush’s stare pressing into me. “And fear causes people to focus on the here and now, the day-to-day struggle. Make a people afraid for tomorrow, and they stop asking questions about what will better society. They worry about how to feed their families.”
“Bottomsider,” Scarlett coughed from the back of the room. A few people chuckled.
Enplencourt pretended not to have heard Scarlett. “Very good. So, the skeptics, desirous of a world where dragon riders couldn’t rise above the rest of the population, sowed discord in the city long before the first battles broke out.” She rubbed her hands together. “Certainly an opinion held by some historians. Mr. Holmstadt, what do you think?”
From the back of the room, Scarlett grumbled, “Sounds like she wants to bring down the godborn to her level…”
The class discussion continued, but Rush’s words nagged at my mind. I wasn’t in favor of what the skeptics had done, but I at least understood their reason for doing it—if, in fact, the theory was right. The majority of historians disagreed, saying the war was indeed started by the riders, hoping to prove, once and for all, that the dragons were staying. But Rush was right:people without knowledge were far easier to control. And the existence of magic had been erased from common knowledge by an organization growing rich through their means of controlling races. Though I doubted dragon races were the only things affected by magic.
With the startof second semester and the arrival of the duke’s extra security, Rush’s and my investigation of magic was relegated to the books he’d pilfered from his own house. At first, he would leave them, deprived of their covers, stashed in various places—crammed behind my saddle in the lair, under my sheets, or, one time, in my trunk, atop my drawers.
I had no idea where he was keeping them, but he assured me no one searching his room would find them. I slogged through one that was nothing more than a genealogy of dragons from three hundred years ago. Someone with more knowledge of dragon bloodlines might find something earth-shattering in it, but not me.
Then we shifted to keeping the simple, coverless books tucked discreetly within covers he’d ripped off old copies of our textbooks, which he’d found in the school’s basement. That way, we could carry them around, read them in the library, set them on each other’s desks, without drawing attention. The weeks dragged on, and even though flying lessons were increasing in pace and difficulty, despite the frequent snows and the icy temperatures, the books became the thing I looked forward to the most—or more specifically, the notes Rush would leave tucked in the pages. Notes on what he’d discovered or things I should pay particular attention to. He never said anything in them that wasn’t strictly related to our clandestine study ofmagic, and he never outright used the word magic, just in case our notes were misplaced, but I could tell by his penmanship how excited he was about what he’d found, and that alone felt like we were talking. Because outside of the few times we passed each other in a deserted hall, we hadn’t spoken at all. At school, we were still no more than classmates who had nothing to do with each other.
The snow finally melted in early spring, the first patches of grass visible in weeks. I’d skipped the most recent night race to read another book from Rush. He’d gotten a half dozen more, though he hadn’t said where they were from. One was a biography I devoured about a mortal who’d lived through the War of the Ancients, and who’d witnessed the first generation of the godborn settling in our lands. It read more like fiction than history, and I entirely forgot to take notes on magic through the chapters that discussed the woman’s romance with one of the Ancients. But in the biography, dragonfire was used to heal a grave wound. I smiled as I scratched out a note that said, “Chapter 23 might explain the bottle you used after the pipe incident.”
At least we were getting closer, finding out a few ways dragonfire magic could be used. I still didn’t know how I was going to beat Rush in a race, but that part felt far away, a distant worry.
One afternoon the sun shone over the thin veil of snow that still blanketed much of the grounds, warming the air slightly as Myth and I sailed over the forest. Ahead, Scarlett lay low in the saddle, her blond hair whipping out behind her as she urged her dragon to zig-zag, hoping to cut me off. We’d moved on from basic maneuvers to more advanced flying techniques. Today, we were charged with collecting a small cage that Bryce had placed somewhere in the forest. Inside the cage was a dead rabbit, a reward for whichever dragon found it first.
Myth cut left, then right, trying to get around Scarlett’s dragon, Riva.
“Come on, boy,” I urged, remembering the way Scarlett had laughed when the dung had hit me. I’d slipped him another emerald today, wanting to test if it affected his flight. So far, we couldn’t figure out what the stones changed when Myth ate them—or why he chose to eat them in the first place. I jerked the handles on the saddle upward, then rolled to the right. I left my stomach behind, but as we shot upward, we rolled so that we flew directly above Riva, my head dangling down close to Scarlett’s. She swatted at my braid as it tapped against her face, but before she could grab it, I curled myself up and Myth righted himself, angling straight down, forcing Riva to halt in midair.
Her wingbeats sent a wave of air around us, but in a heartbeat, we were too far away to distinguish Scarlett’s shouted curses.
I smiled as we plummeted toward the forest floor. The cage was somewhere nearby, and Myth was salivating at the scent of rabbit. A few branches slapped my arms and legs as we broke through the trees.
“There!” I shouted, knowing Myth had smelled the cage long before I’d seen it.
He dipped low and scooped the cage up in his claws.
Scarlett and Riva burst into the clearing a moment later, my classmate’s face purple with rage.
Bryce congratulated me as I dismounted in the yard by the lair. Myth swallowed the rabbit quickly, and I shook my head at him the way my mother used to when I ate too fast.
Rush stood in line with the rest of our class, his arms crossed, a faint smile on his face.
Reading the extra books,on top of all the classwork, was taxing but also invigorating. Somehow, the drive I put toward investigating magic spilled over into my history assignments as well, even chemistry, which seemed the only subject likely to shed light on how magic could be bottled or distilled from flame. My grades in those subjects, as a result, went up.
“And the top score on this essay goes to…Arivelle Miro.” Professor Enplencourt beamed as she floated toward me, dropping my most recent essay on my desk. It had been six weeks since Rush and I had started our extra reading, and my obsession with history—realhistory—had risen like a dragon on a strong breeze. Looked like it was paying off.
The rest of the students leaped up to shuffle through the papers in stacks on the table at the front of the room. Vanya clapped and hugged me, but I received several scowls from the Sapphire students who were accustomed to receiving the top score. Walt looked particularly put out as he slipped his essay from the stack ofexcellentpapers. I didn’t even bother containing my smile as I stared out the window at the bright, cold day, looking forward to our riding lesson later.
Clarence squeezed my shoulder and gave me a hearty grin as he walked by. “Well done, Ari.”
