After breakfast, I raced to the lair, pulled Myth’s face into my hands, and commanded him never to flame outside again.
Between my ribs, an ache throbbed, the way it felt when Evie and I had fought in the past. Heartbreak. Myth hung his head and curled toward the wall.
“Oh, Myth, I…Come here, I’m not mad.” I walked around him until he met my gaze again. “I’m worried about you. There are Hunters here, and they’re looking for a dragon with flame. You can’t use your fire. Ever. Well, unless I command you to.” I waved a hand, frustrated as I thought of Covington’s tests he wanted to run. “Do you understand?”
Myth blinked slowly at me and lay down, tucking his snout under one clawed hand.
I slipped out and headed to class, hopeful that Myth did understand and that he trusted me enough to obey.
Each time I went to the library that week, Covington was there, which was odd considering I’d rarely seen him studying the first several weeks of school. I tried to check out books on dragonfire, but all I could find about it were the accounts of how damaging it was, research on the way dragonfire altered a dragon’s capacity to bond, and fictional stories in which dragons with flame were the villains.
One sunny afternoon, bright but cold, I tucked myself against Myth’s warm body as we flew in circles around the lair. We’d finally graduated from lessons on the ground to lessons in the air, only flying in small loops around the lair outside, per Bryce’s instruction. The Hunt was still on campus, but they had cleared us to train again, claiming they’d found no signs of any wild dragons on the grounds. The rest of the first years were executing small commands with their dragons: lifting higher, edging left or right, or practicing tilting sideways in turns.
“For Ender’s sake, Miro,” Bryce shouted from his perch on the lair’s roof. “Don’t lift your rear that high unless you want to be food for the crows.”
Only a dragon trainer could shout at a woman about her rear and not lose his job. Prescott chuckled at me as he swept past on his sleek gray dragon.
“I, for one, was enjoying it,” he teased, showing off as he tilted into a turn to bank around the lair.
Covington shot past in a flawless, dangerously sharp turn, Azeron’s wings vertical. I watched him, the way he leaned away from the ground, his arms and legs in the textbook position Bryce had been trying to drill into us before we could attempt turns like that. He made it look easy.
“Ogling instead of paying attention, Prescott?” Covington shouted, his voice loud. He wanted Bryce to hear. “That’s why you’ll always be second best.” He pressed low to Azeron, and the two of them shot forward, cutting off Prescott and his dragon as if they were in a real race.
Despite Bryce’s words about me having an advantage here, he kept me close, hounding me with reminders to lean forward, lift my rear—but not too far—squeeze my legs, loosen my fists, and not throw up. I’d only done that once, when Myth decided to plummet straight down to land, but I’d never stopped hearing about it from the other students or from my instructors.
Myth soared effortlessly through the air, attempting the things I commanded him, but he never seemed to be letting go, stretching into his potential. I worried it was my endless discussions with him about the importance of hiding his flame while in public, of hiding what he could do. He’d transferred that command to flying, as well, holding back, staying obedient but cautious, and I saw my hopes of placing in the end-of-year race slipping away. I couldn’t figure out how to tell him to hide one part of who he was but to let loose in the skies.
What made it worse was the letter I’d received from Fairfax asking how my progress in training was going. I hadn’t replied yet, hoping I could have something good to relate.
“Okay, boy, this time, we’re going to gain height, then shoot down to make up some time. Got it?” Ever since Bryce had said words helped when it came to communicating with Myth, I’d taken to speaking my commands out loud while flying. Bryce said the words didn’t have to be audible, but I found that Myth responded best when they were. Especially when airborne.
I pulled on the handles that straddled Myth’s neck, indicating I wanted him to rise. He beat his wings and climbed, but lazily, as if there was no hurry.
And there wasn’t. Not really. Bryce had told us we wouldn’t start timed trials until after winter break. But in my mind, we were already training for that end-of-year race, the race that would determine everything.
“Now, go!” I tipped forward, urging him to tuck into a sprint, shooting toward the ground to gain speed. He flapped his wings two more times. “Myth, go! Catch him!” I was staring at Clarence, who was floating along not much faster than we were. His dragon was in no hurry either, but she was decidedly faster than Myth.
Myth tucked his wings, dipped his face toward the ground.
A shriek peeled from my lips as we bulleted downward. He leveled out so close to the roof of the lair that I could see Bryce’s hands fisted on top of his head in a mild panic.
Myth shot past Clarence’s dragon and settled gently on the ground behind the lair, where the others were dismounting.
“Bloody graves, Miro!” bellowed Bryce from above. “What was that?” As he descended the seemingly infinite ladder from the roof, I dismounted and stood beside Myth, legs a little shaky. When he finally reached the ground, Bryce marched toward me. I tensed, ready for a tirade. “You pull a move like that and you want to tell me you haven’t been training outside of this lair?”
“No…no, sir, I haven’t.” Myth’s heaving breaths kept stirring my hair into my eyes. I swatted at him and stepped away from his snout.
Bryce assessed me a long moment, his expression as hard and inscrutable as ever. “Then that was a brilliant move. Well executed.” My chest swelled. “But next time, Miro, I’ll expect more from you earlier. Don’t wait until the end to kick him into gear.” He peered up at Myth. “Knew you had it in you.”
At that, he stomped off to shout at Vanya, who hadn’t noticed one of her saddle straps had fallen and was dragging through the dirt as she hauled it back inside.
That night, I wrote a reply to Fairfax.
In it, I told him of my progress in classes, reporting my midterm grades per his request. Hopeful that he would feel his money was being well spent, I finished with the news that Bryce had complimented Myth’s flying as “brilliant.”
The following day, Vanya and I lay on a blanket in the sun, books spread before us that we’d checked out from the library on our assigned monarchs. A strong storm had sawed its way over the grounds in the middle of the week, leaving several trees down and a carpet of red and yellow leaves in its wake. Crews were out chopping the trees into moveable pieces, making reading outside a little more difficult.
Vanya slapped her book shut and picked up a red leaf, twirling it by the stem. “It’s our day off. I don’t want to spend the whole thing studying.”
