We threaded through a pass, and I leaned into the turn instead of away from it. She corrected for a crosswind, and I followed her movement instead of fighting it. The difference was immediate and profound, like the difference between swimming against a current and surrendering to it.
"That's better,"she said.
"Much better."
"Don't sound so surprised. Despite my young age, I know what I'm doing. I've been flying since I could first leave the nest. I'm a dragon. This is what we do."
I chuckled."Yeah, you are right. It's only me who is new to this."
She climbed toward the final waypoint."Kailin is a powerful dreamer, and her visions should be taken seriously, but the correct response to a warning is never paralysis. We will train not only harder but smarter. We will practice emergencymaneuvers in narrow passes until they become second nature for both of us. And you will learn to trust me."
For the first time in a week, the knot in my chest loosened, not completely, but the grip was no longer as tight.
"By the way, once we begin formation training, you should no longer worry. What Kailin saw happened during a solo flight, not five dragons flying together and learning to be a team."She chuffed."Solo flights will become rare."
I had been counting the days until formation training started. There were only seven more solo flights left after today, and then I could stop worrying, at least for a few weeks until they resumed.
15
IDRILIA
"Duty is the tax royalty pays for the privilege of its birth. It is non-negotiable and always due."
—Queen Margada of Tarina
The Silver Princess was dying.
Not dramatically, the way it had nearly died on the mountain when the avalanche had crushed my pack against the rocks. That death would have been quick and violent. This was slower, subtler, and arguably crueler. The luminous petals that had glowed so brightly on the mountain ledge were curling at the edges, their light fading to a dull translucence. The metallic root filaments that had woven so eagerly through the magnetic substrate of the mountain rock now hung limp in the enriched soil I'd prepared for them, reaching for something that wasn't there.
The plant was homesick. It had evolved to thrive in freezing temperatures and powerful magnetic fields, and my private garden in the palace offered neither. The afternoon sun beatdown on the courtyard with a warmth that was pleasant for me and would have been equally pleasant for any other botanical specimen, but not for the Silver Princess.
I should have known that it wouldn't survive outside of its natural habitat, but I'd hoped that the extra measures I'd implemented would be enough for it to survive and perhaps even produce offspring. I needed more of her to conduct experiments, maybe even by splicing it with a hardier specimen to help it thrive. But so far, none of my extra measures had helped.
I knelt on the flagstones in my gardening trousers and linen shirt, both still clean and smelling of the laundry detergent my maid used, even if old stains made them look filthy. My mother would pop a vein if she saw me in those rags, as she called them, but what she would deem acceptable was not suitable for this kind of work.
I replaced the ice packs that comprised the cooling system around the protective glass enclosure I'd built for the plant. The concept was simple enough. The ice was wrapped in insulating cloth and arranged around the glass walls to lower the ambient temperature without shocking the roots. I'd calculated the optimal configuration based on the rate of ice melt relative to the glass's thermal capacity, and I'd been adjusting it twice daily for the past week.
Regrettably, it wasn't working.
The temperature was manageable. I could keep the enclosure cold enough to approximate the mountain conditions the Silver Princess favored, at least during the cooler parts of the day, but I couldn't replicate the magnetic fields or the magnetically enriched soil of the Elucian Mountains. The Princess's roots needed that magnetism the way other plants needed sunlight, and without it, no amount of ice and careful tending was going to save it.
I needed to build a magnetic field generator, which was theoretically possible but in practice, beyond my capabilities or resources. The university's physics department might have the equipment, but I doubted it would be possible to build it in time to save the Princess.
"I don't understand what you are trying to do," Gavon said from the shaded bench where he'd installed himself, his splinted ankle propped on a cushion and a glass of chilled lemon water sweating in his good hand. "If you keep rearranging those ice packs, you'll eventually arrive back at the configuration you started with, so what's the point?"
"I'm optimizing the thermal distribution."
"You know that those fancy scientific terms go over my head. All I know is what I see. The ice melts, and the flower wilts."
His simplified assessment of the situation wasn't wrong, but I hated when he dumbed himself down on purpose. As a courtier and my paramour, he was expected to be good-looking, charming, but not too smart, and he was playing the part splendidly, but I had told him countless times that he didn't need to hide his smarts from me. I liked having intelligent conversations just as much as, if not more than, watching his perfect body naked in my bed or enjoying what he could do with it.
But Gavon was a lost cause. He claimed that I was trying to see things in him that weren't there. He was just as shallow and vacuous as he appeared.
"Life is simpler and more enjoyable when you don't push your mind too hard and into places it shouldn't go. Pushing the body is healthy. Pushing the mind is not." He usually accompanied that statement with flexing his impressive biceps.
I repositioned a pack and checked the temperature gauge I'd mounted inside the enclosure. Still two degrees too warm. "I'll keep fighting for the Silver Princess as long as it takes. Twomen died on the expedition to find her. I need to honor their memory." I sat back on my heels and wiped my forehead with my sleeve, probably smearing dirt across my face in the process. "I plan to name whatever medicines I can derive from this plant after them."
"That's so noble of you." Gavon saluted me with his lemonade.
