"Formations," Shovia repeated. "It's like dancing. We all need to be synchronized."
I was not training with them because I would never be required to fly in formation. But I was still a rider, still needed instruction, and I was being tutored by one of the best riders on the force.
As I emerged on the roof after all the cadets had flown off, Morgateth was already waiting for me, and the sight of him eased the ache in my chest. Or maybe it was the influx of sheer power I experienced every time I was near him. He could feed me energy through the bond, and he did, but there was no substitute for this.
"Had a nice lunch with your friends?"he asked, and there was a note of jealousy in his mental voice.
"Yes. We reminisced about theater groups visiting Skywatcher's Point. Have you ever seen a performance?"
He uttered a sound akin to a grunt."Why would I bother with human nonsense?"
Why indeed?
According to Onyx, dragons had their own type of drama, their own politics and cliques and secrets, but they didn't share any of it with humans, so I couldn't comment on it.
After checking the straps and buckles, I climbed up to my place between his wings and settled into the saddle. Ravel was going to check them again, so I hadn't done a thorough job of it despite Alar's insistence that I do. I took his letter out of my pocket and unfolded it. I had read it four times already, and this was going to be the fifth.
It had arrived yesterday with the regular mail, and it was the first I'd received from Alar since he'd left. It wasn't written in the cipher because he'd sent it from the first outpost his convoy had stopped at, and he had no great secrets to tell me. He missed me, saying it in three different ways, as if he didn't trust the first two to convey his meaning. He described the journey and how the landscape had flattened, and how much he missed the mountains.
Be careful. Please. Check your harness twice before every flight, every strap, every buckle, even when you are certain. I know you'll roll your eyes when you read this, but do it for me so I can sleep at night without worrying for you.
He'd done that for weeks, checking his harness twice before every flight and reminding me to do the same. The two dreamsI had of him falling to his death were about the saddle getting loose, so I couldn't fault him for being paranoid. I'd been paranoid as well, and that was why I'd been grateful when he had been summoned home.
I missed him like crazy, but knowing he was safe in Catonia was worth the pain.
"I will not let you fall,"Morgateth said in my mind."You can write a letter back to your prince and tell him that."
His certainty was my bedrock. I folded the letter and put it away.
"I know."I put my hand on his warm scales."I trust you with my life."
I had started my reply letter last night, but I didn't finish it. I would finish composing it tonight and add one of the sketches I'd made of him since he left.
I'd tell him that I'd been pulled from the regular training and was now under Saphir's tutelage, and that I was practicing giving speeches to a disapproving Moki.
It would make Alar smile.
I would not tell him how much the quiet of our room got to me in the nights, and how much I hated it every time I reached for him in sleep, forgetting that he wasn't there, and the crushing sadness of realizing that he wasn't sleeping next to me and perhaps never would.
He had enough on his plate and didn't need to feel the pain of my loneliness on top of it. My gift to him was telling him only the good and the warm and keeping the sad and the cold to myself.
I sensed Onyx approaching before I saw him.
Morgateth shifted under me, and I wondered if he'd felt the flutter in my chest. I'd put my shields up, hiding my thoughts from Onyx and Morgateth, but I couldn't hide them from myself.
I'd given up pretending I didn't feel anything. I just excused it as insignificant, not even worth acknowledging. It was just asimple instinctive response to the sight of a striking man on the back of an extraordinary dragon, and it meant nothing. I loved Alar with all my heart, but I'd stopped lying to myself that my pulse didn't quicken when Ravel and Onyx dropped out of the sky.
It had started five and a half years ago, when I'd first looked into those dark eyes with flakes of gold, and the memory of that moment was forever etched into my mind.
32
ALAR
“Forged by fire, brotherhood endures; softened by comfort, it crumbles.”
—Elurian proverb
Arlen had been moved to our paternal grandmother's old wing. It was on the third floor, at the quiet end of the palace, a set of rooms our father's mother had kept until she died, and no one had resided in since.
