"Isn't that obvious? She can do what only Nyxath could do up until now, and the dragon queen might see her as a threat. Kailin joked about not coming back and told me to tell you that she loved you, but I don't think she was kidding. She was really scared."
"She'll be fine," Codric said, though he was frowning. "Kailin's too valuable to harm. The dragon queen will not do anything to her."
"Someone like Nyxath will want to control or contain Kailin," Morek said. "People never give up power voluntarily, and dragons are no different."
"You are not helping," Alar growled. "I should go down there."
"And do what?" I asked. "Interrupt a meeting with the dragon queen? I'm sure that'll go over well. Besides, she might have taken Kailin on a ride."
If Nyxath wanted to get rid of her, she wouldn't just immolate her on the terrace. She would take her somewhere private and do it there.
Alar ran a hand through his hair. "I can't just sit here and do nothing."
"You can, and you will because you have no choice."
Alar sank onto his bed, elbows on his knees. "I hate feeling helpless."
We all did.
"I hope Nyxath doesn't know about Kailin's dream," he murmured.
"Which dream?" I guessed he meant the one about calling riders across worlds, but I wasn't sure Kailin had told him about it, so I wasn't going to volunteer anything.
He glanced at me. "She told you about it, didn't she? The Circle of Fate dream?"
I nodded. "Pretty wild stuff. And you're right. If Nyxath knows about it somehow, she might see Kailin as even more of an asset or a threat."
"The problem is that we have no idea which one it is," Alar said.
I hated the waiting, the not knowing.
Morek groaned. "Curfew is ten minutes away. I should head to my room or I will be stuck here."
"You can sneak out later," Alar said. "That's what I'm going to do." He shifted his gaze to me. "I need to make sure that Kailin is okay when she gets back. I have to believe that she's fine and that the worst thing that can happen to her is a case of rattled nerves."
I smirked. "Is that what we're calling it now? Making sure that she's okay?"
He glared at me. "Of course."
When my attempt to lift the mood crashed and burned, the four of us sank into a brooding silence once again.
Perhaps I should bring up our investigation to get everyone's mind temporarily off Kailin and Nyxath's meeting and use thetime for something constructive. "So, about the dragons with all those dead riders." I twisted the end of my ponytail between my fingers. "On the remote chance that the other three dragons haven't bonded with new riders yet, we should somehow warn the other cadets to stay away from them during the day of Volition, but without telling them why."
We were five weeks away from the day we would meet the available dragons, and the courtship began, so we had to spread the rumor cautiously.
Naturally, it wasn't called courtships, and I was probably the only one who thought of it in such terms, but in my humble opinion, it was more fitting to call it The Day of Courtship or The Day of Presentation than the Day of Volition.
"Maybe these dragons are defective somehow," Codric said. "Traumatized by not being raised by dragon parents."
I snorted. "That's stupid. None of the post-Extinction War first generation of dragons had parents to raise them, and there were many more than four. They were all hatched from the eggs Saphir managed to hide from the Shedun."
"That's a good point," Codric said. "We need to check if these four dragons are part of the original group Saphir hatched or if they're of the second generation. If they're all originals, that might mean something."
"Like what?" I asked.
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Maybe something about how they were hatched or the order of hatching. We need more information."
"Maybe they're looking for something specific in their riders," Morek suggested. "Some trait that most riders don't have but Captain Odinah does."
