“You know—the usual things. Sent feelings of hunger, mostly.”
“Yes, mine did that too,” I said, nodding. “She made me so hungry I felt like I could eat a horse!”
I was hoping for a laugh or at least a smile, but they were all still looking at me with pity and disbelief.
“Look, Auri, you don’t have to do this,” Jorn-o said in a low voice. “You don’t have to pretend that egg talked to you when everyone knows it’s permanently dormant.”
“I’m not pretending!” I exclaimed, frowning fiercely at him. “I wouldn’t lie about anything this important. I heard her in my mind, calling to me!”
“Yeah, sure you did.” Toady rolled his eyes.
“Look, just come clean, Runt,” Leaper said to me. “Nobody will blame you if you admit the egg didn’t talk to you now. But if you keep dragging it out, people are going to get angry.”
“So none of you believe me?” I demanded, looking around the table.
“Master Yarsmouth thinks you want a dragon so badly you’re making it up,” Jorn-o said in a low voice. “Maybe if you went and talked to the Healer, she could give you something to help.”
“That’s it.” I stood up from the table abruptly. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said fiercely, staring at each of them in turn. “And if my best friends at the Academy can’t support me, then I guess you’re not friends at all!”
Taking my still-full tray, I stalked away from the table.
I kept my head high, but inside I felt like breaking—like curling up in a corner and bawling my eyes out. I felt more alone now than I ever had when I’d first come to the Academy and hadn’t known anyone at all.
Why wouldn’t they believe me?
I put my tray through the slot and left, walking stiffly as though my body was made from glass and might shatter if I moved the wrong way. Inside I ached like I hadn’t ached since Auren had died.
In losing my friends, I had lost part of myself, and I didn’t know if it would ever come back.
But I knew something else as well—I would never disavow the little creature waiting for me inside the golden egg. She was mine and I was hers as surely as the sky was blue and the grass was green.
I knew in my heart we were meant to be together and would never, ever give her up!
37
AURORA
“So I heard you Impressed a golden egg,” were Ryse’s first words to me the next time we were alone, during our morning work-out the next day. He’d been quiet and watchful the night before at dinner, not saying a word but only giving me his bowl of Dragon Custard as usual.
When one of the other Second-years started to tease me about my “fake egg,” a single look from Ryse had shut them up. And so, we had eaten in silence.
But now he was breaking that silence.
I took a deep breath and looked up at him.
Not you too, I wanted to say. Please, Ryse—not you too.
Instead, I said,
“Yes, I did.” And left it at that.
“I see.” He nodded and didn’t say anything. He was doing pull-ups like they were the easiest thing in the world while I curled some weights and for a while we exercised in silence with only the occasional grunt from Ryse as he pulled himself upward, over and over, like a machine.
At last I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“It’s a little girl,” I said, glaring up at him defiantly. “And she already has a name—L’eesha. She named herself.”
“M’alex named himself,” he said.
