I arched a brow. "All because you saw him flinching at a dropped tray? Are you sure you didn't say something offensive? Sometimes you don't know where to stop."
"He looked like he was being shelled," Aden said. "For half a second. Then he turned white as a sheet." He shook his head. "We didn't know what to do or what to say, so we just sat there and looked at him, and he turned from white to red and screamed for us to leave."
For a long moment, none of us spoke, which wasn't unusual for me but rare for the twins.
Then Aric, who could never bear silence for long, slapped his knees.
"Enough about Arlen. We want to hear all about where you've been. You vanished for five months, Father won't say a word about where you were, and now you turn up suntanned, packed with muscle, and not a gram of fat on you." He leaned forward, eyes bright with the hunger for a secret. "Where were you, little brother?"
"Elucia," I said, because that part seemed to have been sanctioned by our parents.
Their mouths fell open in an identical way.
"Elucia?" Aden repeated. "How did you get in? You need a special permit to enter, and you are a prince, so you need to coordinate it through official channels. How in the seven hells did you do that without the papers being all over it?"
"It was arranged in secret," I said, and that was true. "The Federation needs a Dragon Force, and someone had to open the conversation quietly."
I was rather proud of my ability to adhere to the Precepts of Truth and still twist my words to fit the version my father had sanctioned.
"It's slow work. Diplomacy with Elucians always is."
"But how did you even get in?" Aric demanded. "They don't let outsiders in without thorough vetting, and if they approved you, they would have a cadre of guards on your ass twenty-four-seven. The Elucians are super paranoid. Not that I blame them, they have a perfectly good reason to be like that, but I still don't understand how a prince of Catonia gains access and does it in secret."
"That part is confidential," I said. "I can't discuss the details of how it was arranged."
They both leaned forward in identical moves, their eyes alight with curiosity. To them, a secret I couldn't share made me more interesting than any scandal.
"What about Codric?" Aden said. "We assumed you two were off whoring on the coast together."
"Codric stayed in Elucia. I was called home because of Arlen, but there is a lot of work still to be done there." None of my words were lies, but the way I shaped my response was.
Dancing around the Precepts of Truth was an art that I had perfected in Elucia. I'd never cared much for them, but being with Kailin, who did care a lot, I had to do better.
"So, you actually saw dragons," Aric breathed. "Up close."
And there it was, the one subject that could blow my cover, because the moment anyone said the word dragon something in my chest pulled toward the northeast and the cold and the bright vast presence that had gone thin as a thread inside me.
"I did," I said, and heard the timbre of my voice change. "They're enormous, terrifying, and magnificent. Seeing them on the television screen or in pictures doesn't really convey their grandeur."
I stopped myself before I said too much, and what triggered the halt was the twin looks on their faces, rapt and oblivious. My brothers believed to their very bones that they were pure Elurianstock, never suspecting that our line carried the blood that made my bond to Veynathei possible.
They couldn't know how much I really knew about dragons, because the drop of Elucian blood that had allowed Codric and me to become dragon riders was the oldest and most carefully kept secret in our house, and if it ever came out, it could mean the end of the Tekumuton monarchy.
"They are remarkable, but I can't really say more than that."
Aden chuckled. "You sounded like a boy describing his first love."
"They're impressive beasts. You would say the same if you saw one up close."
"I would have shat my pants," Aric said. "I'm perfectly happy admiring the magnificent beasts from afar."
29
IDRILIA
“Shared blood creates a bond. Shared burdens strengthen it.”
—Elurian proverb
