I huffed. “How the hells did it get up there?”
There were trees throughout the aviary, and despite the cold winter outside, we kept the whole building warm with hot water that ran beneath the floor. It was the same water that fed into the public baths, only diverted a little.
I plucked up a stray branch and tried to poke the feather to falling. Tris and I had already gathered dozens, and I’d add them for safe keeping to the collection Aderyn had already made. Some went with him on the road, but so many stayed here in the Spires, with me. It was my duty to keep them safe, and if it gave him a reason to return to me? All the better.
“Lord Forov has made a request...” Tristram hedged, taking advantage of my distraction as I strained for the leaves above.
I paused mid-swing and stared at him. “What?”
“His wife heard you’ve read The Metaphysics of Steel. She’d like to discuss it with you over dinner.”
I frowned at that. “Fine.”
The book itself was dry and sharp, and it wasn’t my favorite, but my... well, my father had pressed a copy into my hands when I was very young, and for that reason alone, it’d seemed worth my while.
And perhaps I’d read it again recently, worried that I had missed some essential wisdom that would help me rule Llangard, as if my father had known anything about ruling well.
As if I wanted to be like any Cavendish king who’d come before me.
The Metaphysics of Steel laid out the discipline of kings, but it centered itself on brutality that had no place in my court. Still, I had opinions on it if Lady Forov wished to plumb them, so I didn’t understand at first why Tris looked so uncomfortable.
“Lord Forov’s trying to get a sense of your manners around a woman,” Bet supplied, cutting to the quick.
I scowled. “I know how to act around a lady.”
Tris cleared his throat. “Of course. But more... Emperor Joseph has a daughter who’s come of age. I suspect?—”
I huffed, straining once again for the feather. “I hardly think a discussion of philosophy is tantamount to a declaration of my intent to marry.”
Despite what I owed Llangard, I wasn’t sure I had any intention to ever do that, and certainly not to a stranger from a foreign empire I hadn’t gotten the measure of.
I gave my stick a particularly hard swing, and the feather slipped from between the branches and floated gently downward. I snatched it off the grass, triumphant.
“I’m happy to be seated beside Lady Forov if Aderyn and his family have not arrived by supper. If they have,” I grinned, flicking the feather so it danced shimmering through the air, “I shall be otherwise occupied, and you may feel free to tell them so.”
2
ADERYN
Riding on Bowen’s back was still a little strange, even after all the years I’d been doing it. To think that Bowen, staid, quiet Bowen, turned into a dragon big enough to carry not just me, but my brother and all my sisters at once, had always been befuddling, even though I had two forms myself.
Honestly, he could carry more than the five of us, and since Dorte was now staying in the monastery all the time, that made for even less of a burden.
Not that he thought of us as a burden.
No, Bowen was someone special that way. He loved the Wind Clan, and even more than that, loved being part of us. I thought even if we all grew up and married and had even more baby dragons, he’d happily try to carry us all until he simply couldn’t anymore. That would be the saddest day of his life, if also a happy one, because it would mean that we were more than a tiny family of six again.
But today’s trip on Bowen’s back was special, because this one was for me.
We went to Brynaf for Hafgan, so he could stay with the people who had raised him, who had become his family whenthe rest of us were thought lost to him. They had also become family to us over the years of spending time among them, even if the Wind Clan was not specifically part of the Summer Clan, but Hafgan was the one most attached.
We went to the monastery for the girls, because they trained with the mages in their new program designed to improve magic in Llangard, and more than that, to improve human-dragon relations. It was working well, and Dorte had even bonded nicely with a young mage, which was why she was now staying at the Hudoliaeth full time. The mage was interested in learning to ride a dragon in combat, which sounded awful to me, but they seemed to enjoy the training—which was admittedly a lot of swooping around in the air, laughing together like the children they still were. I’d only been ridden once in my life, and I didn’t have any interest in repeating that experience.
For me, we spent winters in Atheldinas.
Well, no, in the Spires. Hafgan didn’t really like it there, I knew, but I was willing to be selfish about this one thing. My hoard was in the Spires, after all, which was why Hafgan agreed to the situation at all. It was a whole room full of feathers and feathers and more feathers. Some from all across Llangard, because soldiers from the Battle of Windy Pass still sometimes thought of me, and sent them with messengers going to Atheldinas to add to my collection.
There was also an aviary with birds who grew entirely new feathers, adding more to the enormous room filled with them.
