AURORA
Was I really going to do this?
The question surfaced in my mind as I stood before the mirror with the scissors in one hand and a hank of my long, white-blonde hair in the other.
It wasn’t too late to change my mind. I could still offer myself as a bride to some minor Nobleman who would be happy to add the bloodlines of a Great House to his own. True, I wasn’t much to look at—my features had grown even sharper with the hunger that gnawed my belly day and night and my breasts had shrunk to the size of unripe peaches for lack of food. But I might still find a place for myself, somewhere in the kingdom.
In fact, that had been my father’s plan for me. He’d been looking into getting me married off in the year before he and F’lorn had plunged to their deaths. But once the madness took him, everything else fell to the wayside.
I had been glad he hadn’t found me a place—I didn’t want to be parted from Auren. But now there was no one in the echoing caverns of my ancestral home but me. I didn’t even sense any ghosts, though conventional wisdom said my father’s spirit should have lingered if he died in madness. There was just nothing—just loneliness.
I wanted to be around people again—I was normally a friendly and outgoing person. There would be lots of new people to meet at the Academy.
There would be people at a Baron’s house too, whispered a cautious little voice in my head. Or a Duke’s, if you should marry one.
But I had seen the portraits of the men my father had been considering for me. Not a single one of them was less than twice my age and most were paunchy and balding, except for one emaciated fellow who looked like a grinning skull. Even his portrait made me shudder—I couldn’t imagine those long, skeletal fingers caressing my skin.
And that was the difference in the two fates I had before me, I thought. If I wrote to the men my father had chosen and let one of them have me, I would have to submit to him sexually. Once we were married, my body would be his to do with as he pleased.
I didn’t like that idea—didn’t like it at all. Though I had heard all my life that a woman’s calling was to submit herself to her husband, I had never believed it was fair or right. Why should I submit, just because my husband was bigger and stronger than me? Did his superior physical strength make him my better mentally or morally?
I thought not. I was a better scholar than my brother, often picking up the concepts the tutor tried to teach him much quicker and understanding them more completely. In fact, I often tutored Auren before the tests we both took in order to help him pass.
I didn’t believe my twin was stupid—quite the contrary. But he had so much boyish energy it was difficult for him to sit still and learn. And his mind was difficult to train on ideas that didn’t interest him. He only wanted to hear about the flight classes from my father—the aerial maneuvers, and the way the Noble Drakes flamed as one on command. He had no use for flight mechanics or formations—nor the advanced mathematics and physics that were considered of vital importance at the Academy.
I, on the other hand, grasped such complex concepts with ease. And I didn’t believe that any pudgy Baron or skeletal Duke was better than me just because he was a foot taller and had a penis between his legs. Why should I submit to a husband when I could be flying the skies on dragon-back, just as I did in my dreams?
“Why indeed?” I said aloud and made the first cut.
As the first long strands of my pale blonde hair floated to the flagstones, I knew there was no going back. The pale purple eyes of the girl in the mirror were determined, even if her cheeks were pale and hollow and the hand holding the sheers shook.
I was going to do this—I was going to the Academy and I was going to take my brother’s place. I would live the life that Auren had been denied—I would do it in his honor and for his memory. If he was looking down on me from above, I would make him proud.
“For you, brother,” I whispered, and cut again…and again and again.
I was going to the Academy, I told myself firmly. I had no choice in the matter anymore—my fate had been sealed.
4
AURORA
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have misgivings yet again the next morning as I stepped out onto the ledge wearing Auren’s best suit with my hair all ragged and bandages binding my breasts under the too-big dress shirt I wore. Not that they needed much binding. I had never been big-chested and the lack of food in the past few months had shrunk my meager assets until they were nearly non-existent. Still, I wrapped them to be safe, securing the wide, thick linen bandages with a pin under my arm.
Along with Auren’s suit, I was wearing my own scuffed and worn dress boots. I’d tried polishing them with a bit of melted candle wax and some soot from the stove, but the scuffs were still all too visible, especially around the toes. I hoped they didn’t look too girlish. None of Auren’s footwear had fit me—my hands and feet were much daintier than my brother’s had been, even before he got his growth spurt.
I had wrapped myself in his old winter coat—which was ragged but clean—and far too big for me. But I had no winter things of my own. My father deemed them unnecessary since a woman’s place is in the home. What need could I have for a warm coat when my place was by the hearth, cooking and cleaning all during the cold season? And the hot season too, come to that.
So it was Auren’s coat or none at all. Honestly, I was glad to have it. It still smelled faintly of him and the ghostly scent comforted me.
To complete my Receiving Day outfit, I wore the most precious thing of all—the Dragon Glass pendant that had been passed down from father to son for generations in my family. It was the most valuable thing we owned—the one asset my father had refused to sell off, even as we drowned in gentile poverty.
“You’ll wear it when you go to the Academy,” I remembered him telling Auren. “It’s magic you know—the Dragon Glass was forged by a Pure Gold dragon—one of the last ever seen before they all disappeared.”
“What does it do?” Auren had asked, his pale purple eyes wide with interest as my father fastened the pendant around his neck. It had been fashioned into the shape of a dragon’s head, lifted as though to breathe flame, and the obsidian was liberally speckled with flecks of gold, as all Dragon Glass was.
“Ahh, it’s magic is subtle but real,” was the reply. “It makes you into what you believe yourself to be—into what you want others to see when they look at you. So if you believe yourself to be courageous and competent and strong, why, that’s what you’ll be and that’s what they’ll see.” He had pounded Auren gently on the shoulder. “Wear it always—never take it off,” he told my brother. “Especially at the Academy. But remember—the amulet will work on humans, but not on dragons. The Noble ones are the only drakes with fire hot enough to forge the Dragon Glass, so they can see through its glamour. With them, you just have to be yourself and hope that they approve.”
It was that last part that made me nervous. I hoped that my family’s Dragon Glass pendant could help me pull off my deception among the professors and the other students, but with the dragons, I would be on my own.
