A heavy door creaked open in the building behind her.
“Get up,” a woman snapped, standing in the doorway’s shadows. “You’re not broken. Not if you can still sit.”
Reyla sucked in a breath but didn’t flinch. She pulled her knees in tighter.
“I said up.” The broad-shouldered woman dressed in dark leathers bristling with weapons came into view. “Beasts don’t wait for little girls to feel better.”
Still, Reyla didn’t move.
A long sigh bled out of the woman. “I get it. It’s hard. Well, it’s hard for all of us. Do you think I’m any different than you? I once sat on those steps, feeling beaten down, scared. But you knowwhat I did? I turned those feelings into strength, and I used them to survive. Because cowering will kill you when lifting your fist and scorning the world could very well save your life. Up, girl. I’m saying it for the last time. If you can walk, you can train. And if you can ride, you can fight. If you can’t do either, you’re no use to anyone. It’s that simple.” Her voice didn’t sound cruel, just tired.
She went back inside without another word, closing the door with a shuddering boom.
Reyla stayed frozen. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The scent in the air shifted to damp stone, iron, old fear. I could almost feel the cold of the fortress walls, the weight of silence pressing down like armor too big to wear. A stable hand passed by in the open courtyard in front of her and paused. He looked at her like he wanted to say something but didn’t. Just nodded and kept walking.
When she finally stood it was slow. Her legs shook, and she nearly fell backward, only avoiding hitting the stone steps by grabbing onto the rail to steady herself. Without wiping the blood from her face or looking back at the door, she took the stairs to the bottom and started across the dirt-strewn courtyard, aiming for the aerie beyond.
She never stopped shaking, but she didn’t let it show. Not when she passed others. Not when she reached the aerie and stepped inside.
I’d bet anything that was the last time my wildfire had revealed this side of herself where someone might see.
Jerked back into the present, I reeled, nearly falling onto the jumble beneath my feet.
“She was a child,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Just a child, and that woman walked away.” My chest burned with helpless rage. “No one was there for her. Not the way she needed.”
When she'd told me about training dragons, I'd picturedcareful lessons under watchful eyes, not this brutal forge of abandonment where children learned that survival only came with silence.
If only I could reach through time and pull that broken child into my arms, tell her she was already enough. She should’ve had someone fighting for her, not teaching her that love could only be earned through suffering.
Another fragment caught my eye, jutting up from the path, light dappling unevenly across its surface. Stooping down, I ran my fingertip across the smooth surface, and I was sucked away.
In this memory, Reyla was fully grown. As lithe and strong as she was today. She stood in a smoldering village, dressed in black leathers and adorned with weapons. She held the sword Kinart gave her, and her arms were braced, her face slicked with sweat and dirt, her mouth open in a silent shout.
A hiss rattled through the air, and a monstrous creature with a thick hide, glistening fangs, and claws longer than her forearm lunged at her. She fought with only the sword. No magic, just metal and muscle and raw tenacity. As always, her form was flawless, every movement guided by years of training. I’d known she could fight. But I’d never seen what it cost her to learn.
I knew this woman almost as well as I knew myself. She fought perfectly because any slip could not only kill her but reveal that inside, she wasn’t as strong as she appeared. That need for perfection came from a place of deep fear.
She worried she’d be seen as expendable.
The dreg struck out, and she ducked, but its claw caught her shoulder. Blood flew, too red, too fast. She didn’t stop or even wince. Only twisted, slammed her sword up through its throat with a scream wrenched from deep inside her body. Another slash across its neck, and the beast toppled.
She staggered but caught herself before her knees buckled.Her hands trembled badly, but she glanced around, her jaw tight, before quickly wiping them on her leathers and adjusting her grip on the hilt of her blade. She checked her stance. Squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin.
She wasn’t only fighting the beast. She was fighting the quake in her own limbs, the need to look invincible.
Another rider approached from behind, also wearing leathers and soot covered. He stopped beside her and grunted. “Good. You’re standing. Almost time to move out. Clean your blade.”
That was all. No checking her for wounds. No pausing to ask if she was alright, if she needed anything.
Reyla nodded and tugged a cloth from her pocket, swiping the blood and grime from her blade.
Why did no one teach her that survival should come with rest, comfort?
She turned toward the wreckage of the village, moving slowly between the scorched huts, her eyes darting, scanning the ground. A hand lifted to one collapsed roof as if she could will it back into place. Her lips moved.
That’s when I realized that instead of celebrating their victory, she was counting the dead, taking on that burden along with everything else.
