I turned my back on the mountains and walked out of the terminal to the waiting vehicles.
I didn't look back.
PART II
OF COURTS AND PROPHECIES
21
KAILIN
I did the right thing, sending Alar away so he could live, not because I was selfless or noble but because knowing he was safe was more important than us being together. Keeping him would've meant losing him forever, and I'd rather grieve for our love than for him.
—From the journal of Kailin Strom
Conversations around the table had become a chore since Alar left, with Morek trying to cheer everyone up, and the rest of us pretending it was working while trying not to look at the empty chair where Alar used to sit.
Or maybe it was just me.
"Eat," Morek commanded. "I'm not slaving over a hot stove to improve breakfast just so you can look at it."
I'd been pushing the food around my plate despite my energy output during conditioning this morning, and despite it trulylooking delicious. Morek had added herbs to the bland eggs from the officers' kitchen, fried the potatoes until they crisped at the edges, and brewed a pot of paint-stripping caff because we all needed reviving. He'd been refilling our cups, pushing the potatoes toward Shovia and more eggs toward me, and narrating the whole time about Baila's dragonia and some maneuver Korthax had pulled during yesterday's training.
The rest of us were too wiped out from conditioning to talk, or was that just a convenient excuse to explain the lethargy that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with melancholy?
"Odinah is a sadist," I said, just to say something, and rubbed my aching thighs for emphasis. "Conditioning should be easy for me now that I can draw on Morgateth's power, but that's true for everyone else in our class, and Odinah just increases the level of difficulty to compensate."
"I've been saying all along that the woman is mean." Codric reached for another roll, but instead of stuffing it in his mouth like he used to, he just held it in his hand as if he'd forgotten why he'd picked it up in the first place.
"You should have seen her face after the stunt Korthax pulled." Morek picked up the thread while dropping a fresh stack of toasted bread in the center of the table. "She didn't even yell. She just stared at him, and Korthax stared right back. He told me afterward that he respects her. Dragons respect people who don't flinch."
"Most things respect people who don't flinch," Shovia said.
"Right? That's what I said." Morek beamed and slid another spoonful of eggs onto my plate without asking. "Eat, Kailin. You need protein to survive Odinah."
I looked down at the eggs. They smelled good, and I had no doubt they tasted just as good as they smelled, because Morek was doing everything he could to fix us the only way he knewhow. But the problem was that a full stomach couldn't knit what Alar's leaving had torn open.
I forced a forkful into my mouth, so Morek wouldn't feel bad. He was the only one of us who was happy, and he was working hard to pretend he wasn't, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to our misery.
Things were going well between him and Baila, and he fancied himself in love. Maybe he was, or maybe he was enjoying spending time with someone who actually smiled.
Codric was almost as miserable as I was.
He had his hands wrapped around a cup of caff, but he wasn't drinking it. He was just turning it slowly on the wood, round and round, his gaze unfocused. The guy who had always been ready with a comment or a joke had been nearly silent for the past week.
Everyone thought my grief was the worst because Alar had been mine, but he'd been Codric's for much longer. The cousins had been inseparable since they were little boys, closer than brothers, and I had a feeling Codric didn't know who he was without Alar at his side.
He'd lost his other half, and he was bleeding, but he was too proud or too gutted to let it show in any way other than that mournful silence.
Shovia had moved her chair a fraction closer to his. She wasn't touching him. She wasn't talking. She just sat there. Prickly, badass Shovia, who liked to pretend she didn't care too deeply for anyone but me, kept watch over him.
She caught me looking and gave me a small, sad smile that communicated an entire conversation.He's devastated, but he doesn't want us to acknowledge his pain because he doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for him.
I nodded and went back to my eggs.
Eventually, Codric would reach the same stage of grief as mine, which was numbness. The first days had been the worst, filled with the pain that doubled me over at night and sometimes attacked me during class or while walking from one place to another. I'd made so many detours to the bathroom to cry my eyes out that people must have thought I had a stomach problem.
At some point though, I felt as if I had no more tears left, and my mind had retreated into a merciful numbness. It was probably temporary, and the devastation would attack when I was least ready for it, but for now it made it possible for me to function without coming apart in front of my friends.
