“I’m sorry, I should have asked if you remembered who they were,” Upalo said, gesturing to the midnight haired one first, and then the one with hair as white as snow. “This is Canyon and Kestrel.”
“Kes is just fine,” Kestrel said. “That’s all you could ever say of it anyway.”
I stared hard at him now because his voice was familiar, even if his face wasn’t, but then, I think I’d have remembered a man in an eyepatch like the one he was wearing now. His snow-white hair fell loose over his shoulders and hung to the middle of his chest in beautiful, shimmering waves.
“Kes,” I muttered, testing how the name felt on my tongue. “I remember your hair.”
He chuckled at that. “You liked to braid it. Said that it reminded you of icicles.”
Nodding, I smiled, because I remembered now that the strands had always been cold, like ice, too.
Because he is an ice dragon, my dragon reminded me.
Smiling, I nodded across the table at him. “And you always let me. Thank you for being so kind. I was probably an annoying kid pestering you guys all the time.”
“The opposite,” Kes said. “Well, not about the pestering part, you always wanted us to take you on adventures, but you were never annoying. You were always running around giggling and leaping into leaf piles, insisting that they were your own special places to nap. I can’t tell you how many times we had to pick you up out of one to carry you home.”
“I hated being in the house after mom left,” I muttered, somberness hitting again as I remembered what our home was like after she was gone.
Wee!
Leaves everywhere.
Mama and me leaping into the piles together.
She loved to play silly games with me. The memory was sent straight from my dragon and I would cherish it forever. Someday, when Ruby and Opal were as big as the other dragonets, we’d rake a big pile of leaves in the yard and leap into them together the way my mother and I had done.
“She didn’t leave us of her choosing,” Upalo said. “That man who ordered us to call him father, Foley, drove her out of the mountains with talons and fangs. He felt that her presence was undermining his ability to run the household and that the ideas she was putting into our heads would make us too tenderhearted to be of any use to him. I don’t know what sent him into a rage that night, but he was determined to make her go.”
“Are you sure she survived?” I asked, stomach twisting at the viciousness she must have endured.
“I am,” he replied. “I’ve spoken to elders who aided her and helped her heal. The presence I felt was her, but no matter how long I circled above the waves, she never emerged, and I could not dive deep enough to follow.”
“Why would she stay hidden?” I asked. “Couldn’t she sense you too?”
“I wish I could answer that,” he replied. “I’ve wondered the same thing.”
“Why did this happen to us?” I asked. “Why would Foley want to raise sons who weren’t his own? Why keep us from our mother?”
“The answer to why is one of many we’ve sought over the years,” Kes said. “The dragons who raised me were not my birth parents either, but they are the only ones I remember clearly. Sometimes it feels like the ones I had before are just a wistful dream, but I know they existed, if only because my abilities never lined up with anyone else’s in the village.”
“Mine didn’t either,” I mumbled, remembering that now.
“No, our lava was unique among them,” Upalo said.
“It was the same with my ability to harness the wind,” Canyon admitted. “That I can forge it into the edged weapon of my choosing was of particular interest to them.”
“They are collecting,” Ionus barked, banging his fist on the table.
One of my precious deviled eggs flopped on its side, half of it’s beautiful filling spilling out, and I shot him a scathing look as I scooped the filling back into the egg and ate it.
“My apologies,” Ionus said, looking sufficiently chastised, though I doubted it was my glare that did it.
The look on my mate’s face threatened violence if Ionus forgot to keep his voice at a dull roar again. That bellow was completely unnecessary.
“The delivery might have been a bit unnecessary,” Larkin declared. “But there’s no denying that is what they are doing.”
“Which tells me that at some point, they’ll return in greater number to try to retrieve the errant pieces,” Ionus said.
