“What?” he asked, dragging his mind to the present. “Oh, yes. I’ll come directly.”
She cast him one last imperious glare and turned toward the festival lights dancing among the trees.
Sighing, his head in a fog, Evander strolled to the barn and unlocked the storage room he’d converted into his bedroom. It wasn’t much bigger than a closet, but it was dry and offered enough space for his bed and a chest of drawers for his clothes. He’d chosen it because Hera, his pet hydra, slept in the stall next door.
After scrubbing the blood from his hands and face, Evander donned a forest-green shirt and shrugged on a brown tweed waistcoat. He never wore a formal jacket; it restricted his range of motion when he worked with the dragons, and he couldn’t abide the stiff shoulders. He left his hair alone—it waved where it waved, and there was no point getting in its way—settled an ivy cap on his head, and rolled his sleeves to his elbows.
A tie lay at the bottom of the drawer, challenging him. He hated ties; they made him feel like he was being strangled and reminded him of his very unpleasant years at school, where his tie had been used, more than once, to actually strangle him. He left it and hesitated before taking his glasses from a box beside the bed. The festival would be noisy, with uncertain light. If he didn’t wear the glasses, the headache would keep him awake all night.
Before he left, he glanced at the tin of wyvern bone powder beside the bed. He debated taking some tonight—it had been two days since his last dose—but when he unscrewed the lid, there was only a dusting of creamy white at the bottom. He replaced the lid, slipped on his glasses, and left the barn.
A warm velvet darkness lay over the dracorium, with a breath of spring chill in the air. Lights sparkled in the trees, and the usually overwrought keepers milled about in their finest clothes, laughing too loudly, drinking too much, talking too quickly.
Garlands of flowers hung from the lamp posts, tables were strewn with glowing gold orbs, and smiling women weaved through the crowd, trays of food balanced on their hands. Cheerful fiddle and pipe music echoed from somewhere in the trees. Evander removed his glasses and passed his hand over his eyes. Fiddles, especially, were like shards of glass in his temples.
A woman passed with a tray of goblets filled with fizzlewine. He took one and lifted it to his lips, but someone snatched it from his hand. Irritated, he scowled down at the thief. Valenna stood beside him, sipping his drink, her eyes sparkling over the rim of the goblet.
She wore a shimmering lilac dress overlaid with sheer smoky gray organza. The straps draped off her toned shoulders, and her hair hung in loose waves, crowned by a chain of small, white flowers.
Evander forgot his headache and gazed at her in an agony of regret. If she’d meant to make him miserable, she had succeeded.
“Are you alright, Vander?” she asked. “You look tired.”
He slipped his glasses on again and cleared his throat. “Sorry. No. Yes. I’m tired.”
“Then you shouldn’t be drinking this.” She set the drink on a table.“Do you still take wyvern bone powder?”
“Sometimes.”
She creased her brow. “Why not always?”
He didn’t reply, his attention following a pixie bug dancing overhead.
“Why not?” she persisted.
“I’m busy,” he lied.
Valenna rolled her eyes. “The physician said that they’ll keep getting worse if you don’t take the powder. He said you might bleedinside your head.”
She was right. During their happy year together in Largotia, he had tried to hide his headaches from Valenna, but since they ate all their meals side-by-side, and he didn’t like to take the potion in front of her, he began to neglect his daily dose.When two weeks passed without a draught, the pain became so unbearable that he took the potion, but by then it was too late. He and Valenna were training two little yearlings together, soaring in the clouds, when Evander felt a warm tickle on his neck. He scratched it and drew back his hand, his fingers tipped with blood.
He’d pushed the dragon into a dive so steep his stomach rose. He knew what was coming, and he had to land. He was ten feet from the ground when the world went black.
He awoke a week later in hospital.
Valenna, the physician, the master dracologist—they all believed the bleeding inside his skull was the result of his fall, not the cause, and he let them believe it. How could he explain the truth? Valenna would never see him the same way. She was too pure, too innocent.
Valenna had been sitting at his bedside when he awoke, and she’d written instructions on how often to administer the wyvern bone powder to stop the bleeding, which apothecaries mixed it, and what types of tea best covered the bitter taste.
She saw to it he never missed another dose.
Now, as the powder in the tin grew thinner every day and the pain fluctuated from a dull ache to blinding, he took the potion twice a week. Something deep inside told him that he deserved the headaches. It was his punishment for leaving her. Now he got to suffer, and the suffering felt right.
“Vander?” Valenna hissed.
“Have you met Haldir yet?” Evander asked abruptly.
“I hope to meet him tonight.”
