“Fine,” I said again and rolled over, wondering what was wrong with me and why I felt so bloated and sick.
After he left, I managed to get back to sleep. L’eesha was safe in the nursery, and I didn’t have classes to get to, which was nice.
But when I woke up, I felt a strange, sticky wetness between my thighs. What was going on?
I stumbled to the bathroom and pulled down my Academy issued underpants, which were white with blue stripes.
To my horror, I saw a new color on the familiar fabric—dark red.
Oh no—what’s happening to me? What’s wrong? I thought, panicked.
It took me a moment to remember that if I had still been having my cycle, this was the day of the month it usually started on. The red was blood. I was apparently having my monthly courses, which had stopped months ago, never—I had thought—to return.
But here it was, back again to try and give away my secret. What was I going to do?
I looked at the blood and wanted to cry. What could I use for sanitary napkins? I bitterly missed the bandages I’d used to bind my breasts—I could have ripped them up and used them, but I had no idea where they were or what I was going to do.
I could cut up one of the two towels I had been issued (they were washed daily by the laundry service) but how could I explain the missing towel? Also, I needed both my towels for when we went to the Cook-pot to bathe. I had to have one to wrap around my waist and the other to drape around my neck, so it covered my breasts.
I knew the Dragon Glass pendant was hiding who I really was, but I felt uncomfortable being topless in the company of the opposite sex. My breasts had gotten too big and sensitive—I didn’t want to walk around with them bare, even if the men around me had no idea what I was doing.
Other than towels, we really didn’t have many spare clothes. We had work-out outfits, which again, were washed every day and undergarments and socks. Maybe I could use socks…except they only issued us two pairs, and they were only washed every other day…
As I was doing mental calculations and wondering what I was going to do to hide my period, my cramps hit, and they were bad.
I’d always had painful menstruation—even back in the very beginning when I first got my monthly courses the pains had made me double over and cry until my father angrily ordered me to “shut up!”
My mother had died too young to teach me anything about a woman’s body. If it hadn’t been for the dour old housekeeper from the village my father had kept until we could no longer afford her, I would have thought I was bleeding to death.
But she had showed me how to cut up old cloths to use as sanitary napkins and brewed me willow-bark tea for the pain. It helped but only a little—my cramps had always been grinding, crushing pains that stabbed through my lower abdomen, making me feel like I was dying—at least during the first day of my period. They eased up a little after that, but my flow was often heavy and difficult to deal with.
I had been so glad when my period stopped coming…and now it was back and I had no idea how to handle it. The grinding pain that felt like someone was scraping out my insides with a dull shovel were beginning and I was bleeding, and I had no way to deal with either problem.
And that was when L’eesha decided to check in on me.
Because we were bonded, my dragon and I were mentally linked—so much so that she could see through my eyes on occasion and I could see through hers. Now I felt her in my head just as I was staring down at the bloody horror that were my ruined underpants.
At once, she began to panic.
“my Auri, why are you bleeding?” she demanded, sounding scared. “and what is this pain, i feel you having? oh, it hurts…it hurts!”
“No, no, L’eesha—I’m fine, really,” I sent her quickly, trying to block off my pain and keep it from her.
But the mental and emotional channel between us was wide open and there was no stopping my little golden dragon.
“HELP! HELP!” I heard her broadcasting. “MY AURI IS BLEEDING TO DEATH!”
I begged and cajoled and wheedled as I stripped off my stained underpants and buried them in the trash can before hobbling back to bed.
“L’eesha, I’m fine—I’m fine. Stop it—stop it!” I begged, but nothing I could say or do would make her stop. She just kept broadcasting and calling for help. No doubt she was causing chaos in the nursery, but I was too sick to go comfort her—which she picked up on, of course, and that made her even more agitated.
I was just deciding that I would have to get out of bed and find a way to go to her—even if it meant wadding my one spare uniform shirt between my legs and hoping nobody noticed—when Ryse burst into the room, his eyes wide with fear.
“Auri, what’s wrong?” he demanded, coming to me at once. “M’alex says you’re bleeding and dying!”
“I’m not—he’s wrong!” I protested and then groaned involuntarily when an especially strong cramp hit.
Unfortunately, this only seemed to reinforce the idea that I was dying.
