As Tasa whispers furiously, “Howdareyou?”
Tasa
Ican’tbelieveIthought he was different.
I can’t believe I let him into my home.
I’m so angry I don’t know where to begin, but I know if I wait for him, he’ll try to rationalize it, make me feel like I’m overreacting.
People always do.
So when Kovan—Sage Kovan—opens his mouth at last, I speak first.
“That dragon saved you,” I tell him. “That dragon has donenothingwrong—”
“You don’t know that—”
“You don’t know either! And it doesn’tmatter. You’re going to sacrifice aperson—and don’t you dare to try to tell me Zan isn’t a person—for your own gain. There isnoway that is not horrible,Sage Kovan.”
He flinches.
Good.
And then he says quietly, “I don’t know how to make your sanctuary safe again.”
Argh. That is so much worse for my righteous fury than trying to justify it to me.
But it’s also super not fair to make itmyfault that Zan is going to die.
Like if I hadn’t talked to Zan, if I hadn’t make him think he was safe to come back here when I can’t actually save anyone, least of all myself and certainly not a dragon, that he wouldn’t have risked himself.
I somehow squeeze the words out from my tight throat to ask, “Do you think I’m going to feel safe in a place that requires a person—dragonorsage—to be sacrificed?”
Kovan clenches his fists. “I don’t know what else you would have me do. Would you rather I die and then they kill Zan anyway?”
Nope, there’s the rage again! “Well for starters, you could have saidabsolutely notwhen that woman suggested it! ‘I don’t like this’—really? That’s all you’ve got?”
Nowhe meets my gaze again, and he’s beginning to look angry.
Unease coils through me, even though it’s what I expected from him.
But then, maybe I’d begun to believe he really was different. That Icouldexpect better from this one person.
“Learned Muka was right, Tasa,” Kovan’s voice comes, low and frustrated. “Ican’tstand up against the full might of the priesthood. Not as I am now, and definitely not here. Do you understand?I can’t do anything.”
“Everyonecan do something. Everyone. How dare you give up—and condemn someone to death—before you’ve eventried. You’re aware that other people who aren’t sages manage to do things every day?”
“Not like this,” Kovan snaps.
“Yes,like this—”
“Other people who aren’t sages cannot wreak the kind of damage I can if I am not perfectly in control and clear in my intention every moment of every day,” Kovan overrides me heatedly. “Other people are not walking weapons. You can walk away from your problems and hide in the mountains and no one will come hunting you. You have an endless array of skills that arenotabout being a weapon. It is easy for you to say I can simply try like any other person, but I amnotany other person.I am a sage.”
The heat of my anger drains away, leaving something very hard and brittle in its place.
“Yes,” I finally say. “You are a sage, aren’t you? I see that now.”
The gold in his eyes intensifies, recognizing the insult in my words.
