“Now, having said that, I’m quite certain that some of you probably sustained some injuries,” she went on. “Some of you probably engaged in acts you’d never done before and weren’t prepared to do either physically or emotionally. Listen to me—if you are injured, come see me.” She looked across the sea of faces, her own face earnest and intense. “Don’t try to go on without treatment. Injuries—especially internal ones—can become very serious if left untreated.”
I saw several cadets wince and shift in their seats and I understood what the Healer meant.
“That’s all I have to say,” Professor Zephyr told us. “I’ll be in the Infirmary all day today. Please, if you’re hurt, come see me.”
As she left the Mess Hall, I saw several cadets get up and push their half-full trays through the rectangular window on the side of the wall. Many of them were walking with a kind of limp, as though they were in pain, but no one laughed at them, which surprised me.
Not that I thought it was funny myself, but by now I knew how the boys around me behaved. They liked to joke about everything—especially if the joke was at the expense of one of their friends. Everything was funny and the more personal and private, the funnier it was.
But not today.
I had the feeling that the whole Academy was shaken to its core by the events of last night. And worse, no one really knew why it had happened. What had caused the Mating Flight to be ten times worse than it usually was?
No one knew. Which meant no one knew how to prevent it from happening again. Now that was a sobering thought—especially since a Mating Flight could occur at any time.
At last, lunch was over and everyone moved to get back to their classes. It had been announced that—for today only—we only had to go to classes if we wanted to. The Head Master had made a fumbling announcement about how he understood if we were “too fatigued to function properly” but that tomorrow everything would be business as usual.
I left a silent Toady, Bugs, and Leaper—Jorn-o had already left awhile ago with Greer—and moved to take my try to the window.
“Here, I’ve got that.”
Ryse suddenly appeared beside me. He took my barely-touched tray in his hand and pushed both our trays through the side window together.
“Are you going to class?” I asked, as we left the Mess Hall.
He shook his head.
“I want to spend some time in the library to see if I can find an explanation for what happened last night.”
“Don’t you think the professors are already doing that?” I asked.
He frowned.
“Maybe, but I’m not sure they’re looking in the right places. Most of them are talking to their dragons—or asking riders whose dragons rose for mating last night to question them. But I don’t think the explanation for what happened lies in the present—we need to look to the past.”
I gave him a surprised look.
“You think this kind of thing has happened before?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said grimly. “Unfortunately, there was a fire around a century ago that destroyed a lot of the Academy’s records, but I’m hoping I can find a few that survived.”
“And you really think you’ll find an explanation?”
He frowned.
“I don’t know, but something’s going on here. For years we’ve had milder Mating Flights and the dragons’ numbers have been declining. Now, suddenly, we have a flight like nobody in living memory has experienced before—a flight that’s certain to result in a lot more eggs in the near future. The more intense a flight is, the more eggs the females lay.”
“They’ll have to get more riders then,” I said doubtfully. “Or maybe relax their standards some.”
The Academy was barely at a quarter of its capacity—maybe less. But part of that was the fact that the Head Master preferred to take mostly sons of Noble Houses if he could. But you didn’t have to have Noble blood to be a rider—it just meant you were much more likely to Impress and bond with a Noble dragon.
“Something’s going on here, Auri,” Ryse said, frowning. “But it’s not new—I’d bet my life on it. With dragons, there’s nothing new—there are only cycles that repeat again and again.”
“You think we’re in some kind of new cycle now?” I asked him, surprised.
He shrugged.
“Don’t know. But there has to be some explanation for what happened last night.”
