3. Spitfire: Rekindled | Chapter One: The Anniversary

Feon

The sun blazes in an open sky, a hot, bleak star in a sea of serene, uninterrupted blue. It glints wickedly down the length of my sword, a searing reflection mirrored not two paces before me. Caed’s blade meets mine with a crashing precision. It reverberates all the way up my arm.

He presses me back several paces into the cool shadow of the manor. All the while, he holds my gaze, unwavering and utterly unhurried, as he forces my retreat. He’s so focused, so intent, I could almost believe the yard empty save for us—if it weren’t for the excited murmuring of our impromptu crowd. A bead of sweat drips down my brow and into my eye. I flinch.

The length of metal I wield makes me feel clumsy and unbalanced. The leather grip slips uncomfortably in my grasp, my hands sandwiched end to end to fit together on the hilt.

“Your form needs work,” Caed says.

“Your face needs work,” I spit back.

It’s a lie. He’s stupidly pretty and even more stupidly tall like some tragic hero of old, all sharp cheekbones and a jaw kept rigid by years of swallowed feelings. He’s got a gravity to him, a strange depth to his dark hooded eyes that lends itself to brooding. I should know—he does more than enough of it.

Caed’s blade sits firmly in his right hand and he moves with all the surety of one born to wield. His sword meets mine and he thrusts forward, the barest hint of a grin tugging at one corner of his thin-lipped mouth.

I jerk my body sideways. His blade skitters across mine and past, its edge grazing my bicep.  If it weren’t for this big old hunk of metal or these tiny human hands I’d be fine, but the extra weight throws off my balance. I turn the stumble into a roll, crushing the well-manicured lawn beneath me. My nostrils flare as that sharp, sweet, vegetal scent hits me: crisp grass and fresh earth and the promise of spring in the air. I scrunch my nose up and valiantly fend off a sneeze.

Back on my feet, I turn and only just catch Caed’s small bark of laughter: a quiet, caged thing that falls off into silence almost immediately. He carves a striking figure, the golden sun glinting brightly in those dark, earthy eyes, the distant blue mountain range framing him before me.

“You should wear the practice armor,” Caed says, gesturing to my exposed arms and the cut that is already halfway to mended.

“Don’t need it.”

His stance is relaxed, daring me to approach. With a snarl, I lunge forward, my sweaty palms slipping against the smooth leather. Caed meets my blow readily. The bitter clash of metal does nothing to shake his composure. I attempt to yank my blade back, but he stalls me and with a quick twist of his wrist, he wrests the sword from my grasp. He does it so casually, it feels like choreography. My blade drops with a dull thud onto the dewy grass, the hilt coming down hard on my slippered foot.

“Fuck!” I swear, scowling as I cautiously wiggle toes that seem to have just escaped being broken. I shift my footing a bit, wincing—definitely bruised, though it’ll heal soon.

Caed grins down at me, one of his long, sharp brows arched expectantly. Those scant few millimeters of movement contain a truly unbearable amount of self-assurance. I can’t decide if I’d rather punch him or kiss him. The edge of his blade moves to my throat, all of a fly’s leg from my skin.

“Well?” he asks. His voice is low and confident; expectant. “Do you yield?”

When I swallow, I can feel the metal’s kiss. Before he can press any further, I step out of my slippers and stretch forward. My head elongates as flesh turns to gleaming golden scale. It’s always like this when I take my true form: material first, then function, then form. All the things I’ve folded and refolded within me come bursting out, my long-suffering seams split in one sudden slice.

Caed’s eyes get all big and buggy. My transformation throws his sword wide, drawing sparks as it grazes my scales before I promptly shove him away. His pathetic human strength is no match for that of my true form. Spluttering, he topples backward into the thick grass.

Someone shrieks from the sidelines but I ignore them, my eyes meant for Caed and Caed alone. He struggles against me, but it’s like holding a kitten by the scruff of its neck: it can wiggle and swipe with its claws all it likes, but its efforts are, at best, annoying. I could sever his carotid with one finger-length talon, could fit the whole of his head in my dagger-toothed mouth. At this point Caed is more of a threat to himself than to me. I leer over him, one set of talons splayed across his chest, and snort a plume of smoke directly in his face.

“Eugh!”

Coughing, Caed finds the curve of my sternum and pushes futilely against me. I bear it with what I know to be a look of utterly infuriating smugness. It’s an expression I’ve spent years perfecting. Once, Caed told me begrudgingly that he hadn’t known dragons could look quite that self-satisfied. I always take immense pleasure in proving him wrong.

After several moments of struggling, he collapses back into the grass, his whole body going limp as a soggy noodle. Tiredly, he raises a hand to pat the side of my snout.

“Alright, alright. I yield,” he says, exasperated.

Satisfied, I close my eyes and let my body knit back in on itself. I fold myself again and again until I’m small and soft and human-shaped. Every bit of me threatens to overflow, my stuffing straining at the seams. Our tether keeps me grounded. I find the part of me that has been shaped by him and I mold myself to it.  It’s like quenching a fire, only the fire is me.

When I open my eyes, I’m seated just beneath his sternum, one hand planted on each of his shoulders, my awkward human legs splayed on either side of his body. My bare knees dig into the wet grass. The remnants of my torn clothing lay scattered around us. Pity, I liked that tunic. 

A cool breeze stirs, raising goosebumps on my naked human skin. I feel Caed’s breath hitch, feel the stutter of his chest and the deep, heated embarrassment in his heart. His face has gone all red and puckered and stupid. I cock my head to one side as I gaze down at him, a lazy smile pulling at my lips.

One of the onlookers whoops and when I glance around I find that our small gaggle of admirers has swelled to a modest crowd. While some of our hangers on gawk openly—whether in fear, shock, or awe I can’t tell—many of them have averted their eyes from my nakedness. One of the so-called modest onlookers peeks at me through her fingers when she thinks I’m not looking. I wink and she all but dissolves on the spot.

Caed sits up abruptly. I topple backwards and barely manage to thrust out a hand in time to catch myself. Palm smarting, I scowl back at him. He gives me a pointed look, heaves a sigh, and then stands and gestures to the sidelines.

“Someone—Sir Sieglinde, lend Feon your cloak, please, so he may cover himself.”

I’ll never get sick of the way he sounds out my name, his tongue dipping at the head (“fé” like “fae” or “stay”), lips puckering for the close (“ōn” like “bone” or “stone”). Like any human, he can only fit his mouth around the basest iteration of my name, but he does it better than most.

Dusting the dirt off my hands, I hop to my feet. My right foot still smarts a little and I have to favor it when I stand.  The grass tickles my bare feet. Sieglinde unpins her thick cloak from where it attaches to her traditional red brigandine. She leans down and drapes the garment around my shoulders.

The largest of Prince Caederyn’s guard, Sieglinde is a towering figure. Brawny and thick about the waist, she stands over seven feet tall and wears a massive greatsword strapped to her back. Despite this, she never quite manages to look intimidating, what with her big head all haloed by a frizz of dirty blonde baby hairs that have sprung free from her ponytail. Sieglinde drops a callused hand to my shoulder and gives me a broad smile from her perpetually sunburnt face.

“I guess I should congratulate you on your win against the prince, Your Grace,” Sieglinde says to me, laughter on her breath.

I grin and shoot a meaningful glance past her to where Caed is stripping off his padded practice armor. A pretty girl with dark hair steps forward from the crowd to offer him a towel, which he accepts after a moment’s hesitation. “You were magnificent, Your Highness,” she says breathily. To our left, one of Caed’s attendants stands with a bemused expression and conspicuously towel-less hands. I snort.

“Thank you,” Caed says, smiling uncomfortably. He wipes his brow with the cloth and one of the girl’s companions looses a wistful sigh.

“If I could be so bold as to offer you a refreshing drink after your match—” the girl begins, but I’ve seen enough.

Wrapping the cloak around my waist, I step up beside Caed and rise onto the balls of my feet so I can plant my chin on his shoulder. “Seems like excessive adulation for a loser.”

Caed’s gaggle of admirers gawk at us openly. I wink at one of them and she all but melts on the spot.

Caed frowns down at me. “You cheated.”

“Did not!” I chortle.

“You brought a dragon to a sword fight.” His eyes flit down to my bared arms and torso before he shrugs me off of his shoulder.

I clasp both hands over my head and stretch, pressing my palms up towards the sky. Caed is very resolutely not looking back at me, his sharp face turned to stare past the crowd and towards our lodging. It’s not exactly up to our usual standards, but it’s the best Cindwick has to offer and Caed isn’t the type to complain.

Elske, the captain of Caed’s personal guard, helps him stretch out a tight muscle in his shoulder. She’s a flinty silver fox of a woman, tall and muscular with short, choppy hair, a strong jaw and a prominent mole on her nose. Her face and body have been forged by decades of discipline under the brutal sun, but the hard-set lines don’t entirely disagree with her. She’s hot in a I-will-break-your-wrist-if-you-so-much-as-breathe-in-my-direction sort of way.

“Well, Caed, to be fair…” I lay a hand on his upper arm, just beneath the shoulder. His eyes flit to that point of contact and then he finally looks back at me. I wait until I’m certain I have his full attention before I conclude my gloating: “I didn’t bring anything. And you didn’t say a word about dragons not being allowed.”

“I thought the notion was implicit when you challenged me to a sparring match, but I can see I was mistaken,” he says dryly. He holds my gaze for several heartbeats and then, as if he can’t help it, a small smile creeps onto his lips. “I should have known better.” I don’t think anyone else—not Caed’s guards or attendants or even his adoring crowd—catches the way his voice softens. Caed reaches forward and ruffles my hair before turning away. “Regardless, I think it is best we ready ourselves now, else we’ll risk tardiness.”

With a wave and a few stilted words, we make our departure. I grin unabashedly at his back and fall in behind him as we enter the De Lisle manor. It’s an ancient, outdated building, fit with heavy furnishings in muted earth tones. Just looking at it makes me feel tired. Much like the rest of Cindwick, everything in here is old and abused, from the once rich velvet seating that’s long since worn thin to the hefty oak table whose numerous gouges can’t be hidden no matter how many layers of varnish are applied.

To the servants’ credit, they made a valiant effort given what they had to work with, but if anything the blatantly fresh coat of red paint all over the walls only makes everything else seem even more run down by comparison and the heavy scent of lemon can’t entirely cover the musk of disuse. Ostensibly, this is the De Lisle’s main house, but it must have been years since anyone actually lived here. Still, it wasn’t as if we had much choice in lodging. This is the only building central to Cindwick with the space to house the king’s entire retinue.

One of the maids, a boy maybe three or four years my junior, approaches Caed and gives him a clumsy bow, a bundle of large towels held tight in his arms.

“Good, umm, good morning, Your Highness. Your Grace. There’s a bath drawn for you in your room, if you’d like to umm. To use it.” The poor boy’s eyes flit to me and my near nakedness for a scant moment before shying away. Thereafter, he keeps his gaze resolutely lowered.

“Thank you, lad,” Caed replies.

I eye the boy speculatively. He’s charming in a common way, all rough edges and country manners. He’s out of his depth.

“W-will you be requiring attending, Your Highness?” he stammers.

“No, thank you.”

When we reach our adjoining rooms, the boy fumbles with the door and the towels spill out of his grasp. Caed catches them neatly and takes them in arm despite the lad’s protests. The attendant stands just outside the doorway, visibly grasping for words. With one last grin in his direction, I gleefully shut the door in his face. Caed eyes me as he sets the towels on a scuffed-up dresser.

“That was quite rude, Feon,” Caed chides. He unclasps the kamarbandh from his waist and lets it fall to the floor before moving on to the buttons of his tunic.

“He was annoying.” I drape myself across the brown velvet chaise lounge. It’s not as comfortable as it looks, its padding long since gone flat. Like much of the building, this room is decked out entirely in dark wood and furs, and all of it rendered in deep browns and charcoals like some sort of depressing, overgrown hunting lodge.

“Everyone annoys you.”

“If I hadn’t done it, he’d have kept stammering on until you properly rejected him or fucked him. And I know how terrible you feel rejecting people, even mouth breathers you’ve no desire to bed. Really, I was doing you a favor.”

Caed pulls his undershirt over his head and starts unlacing his boots, his shoulders hunched in embarrassment. I eye his bare skin covetously. The expanse of lean muscle is touched by a smattering of scars—some small and nearly invisible, and others, larger and darker, whispers of a violent history. Only I know all of his scars, only I have been there for the making of most of them—and only I can tell that Caed is not truly displeased with me. His quiet amusement reverberates through our Bond, a light note plucked on the tether between us.

I close my eyes and luxuriate in the sweet simplicity of his good mood. When next I look, Caed is fully naked and sliding into the steaming bath with a contented sigh. He is a beautiful man, tall and dark-eyed and somber. He has the sort of face that inspires people to read poetry, if for no reason other than to impress him. Even I’ve considered it once or twice, but luckily Caed isn’t dull enough to find pleasure in academia.

“Will you be requiring attending?” I ask with mock obeisance. I look at him from under my golden lashes. “…Your Highness?”

Caed pulls a face, his skin gone pink from the hot water. He aims a splash at me, but it falls short.

“Oh, haha, very funny, Fae.”

I roll onto my back and grin at him. Lazily, I raise my hand into the air and brandish the bottle of soap I nicked from beside the bath earlier. Caed glowers at me from where he sits chin-deep in the water, his knees pressed to his chest.

“You’re a damned magpie, you know that?”

I rise from the lounge and approach the burnished copper tub, bottle of soap in hand. “What else am I?” I move behind him.

“A larcenist,” he replies. I lean forward and dip my cupped hands into the hot water. “A no good filcher.” There is no bite to his words. I smile.

I dribble the water over his head so that it cascades down his neck and shoulders. Caed sighs and tilts his head back. His lips are parted oh so slightly and with his eyes closed he can't see me looking. Water kisses the sides of his face and the short beard he’s recently grown. All is silent save for the sound of falling water as I gently wet him from the shoulders up. There’s a charge in the air where my fingers skim just shy of his skin. I wonder if that eager tremor I feel is mine or his. Eventually, Caed submerges himself in the bath water.

When he resurfaces, he says, “Thank you.” His voice is small and it hitches slightly, like fabric caught on a splinter.

I pour a generous amount of soap into my hands, rub them together to form a lather, and sink them into his hair. The soap’s spicy perfume fills the space between us.

“For what?” I ask.

I coat the length of his hair. It’s grown out recently and now it’s the longest it’s ever been, the gentle waves falling just below his chin. Maybe he’s trying to emulate his father.

“You knew I was feeling… tense.” His arms tighten around his knees, the lean muscles pulling taut.

“You’re always tense.” I run my soapy thumb down the vertebrae in his neck before settling upon a knot in his right shoulder. I press on it. Hard.

“Ow! Feon—”

I work the knot until it loosens and his shoulders slump.

“Better?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I get the left one too. Caed makes a strained, stifled sound. I grin. “Yes, it’s better, thank you. Now please stop.” He’s looks a bit pink around the ears.

“Someone’s gotta get you limbered up for later. Can’t have you go all wooden on me, can I?”

Caed huffs out a sigh but doesn’t say anything.

“You’ll do fine. You always do. You just need to stand there and look pretty and then ride me like—”

“Feon.”

I cackle.

“If you fuck up, I’ll cover for you. And if you fall, I’ll catch you. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

I massage more soap into his scalp, pressing my palm to the back of his neck as I get the hair at his nape. There is a weight in the air between us, a space where things unspoken lay just barely concealed. I wonder if he feels the way the tenderness of the moment has stretched languorously, lulled by the heat of the bath and the scent of his soap. His breathing has turned slow and gentle, and finally—finally—his body has gone lax.

“You’re uncharacteristically contemplative today,” he says. I can hear the smile in the contented rumble of his voice. His hair clings to his nape in dark, glistening coils. A line of suds drips slowly down his slick neck.

My pulse quickens. I curl my fingers in his hair. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” I lie.

I pull, dunking him backwards into the hot water. He comes up red-faced and spluttering. By the time he’s halfway out of the tub, slipping in his haste, I’m already at the door to the next room, my hand on the knob.

“Feon!” he cries, suds dripping down the sides of his shocked, pretty face.

“Don’t forget to rinse!” I promptly shut the door between us.

❖    

Caed being Caed, the moment he leaves the tub he has to go and ruin all the good work I did getting him nice and mellowed out. In between having his hair combed, his beard trimmed, and his body dressed, he scours document after document. Jasper, one of his primary attendants, takes note of the required revisions while Mikul, the other one, makes a despairing noise at the state of Caed’s ink-stained fingers. They make such a funny pair: Jasper with his short, round stature and elegant style, his long locs tied back with a ribbon; and Mikul with his bawdy jokes and rakish grin and a body that’s all elbows.

“Caed, what the fuck are you doing?” I ask, ignoring Jasper’s disapproving tongue click as I sit on the desk. “It’s literally a national holiday.”

“Exactly,” Caed answers as Mikul slides another golden bangle onto his wrist. “I have to handle the work that was delayed in favor of preparing for this trip. I won’t have time to play catchup when we get home.”

Jasper tries to gently pry the papers out from under my ass, giving me a stilted grimace that I think was meant to be a smile. I cross my arms and glower at him until he gives up and busies himself with some other form of inane paperwork. Really, if all these sanctions and budgets and petitions are so important, Caed should have at least double the staff at his beck-and-call so he can have some semblance of a life instead of being stuck in a perpetual cycle of road blocks and deadlines. But apparently I’m the one who doesn’t understand the true gravity of their work or the sacrifices necessary to facilitate it.

After what feels like forever, we escape the room and its horrible papers. As we exit, a cheer rises from the crowd of commoners amassed beyond the manor’s gate. Caed stiffens and raises a hand to acknowledge them before moving aside to discuss logistics with one of the aides. I stoke the heat in my chest until it flares so bright and hot I can’t keep it bottled any longer. I tilt my head back and loose a small gout of flame and the onlookers gasp and whoop. Grinning, I turn away.

Much like the manor’s interior, its lawn has all the hallmarks of recent attempts at rehabilitation. The shrubs are freshly cut, the grass recently shorn, their clippings clumped in inconspicuous corners, the path newly filled with mulch. The spiked iron fence at the property’s perimeter has a wet shine from recent scrubbing that still can’t hide the spots of rust that have penetrated too deep to be solved by superficial cleaning.

Upon the manor’s lawn rests an ornately decorated palanquin decked out entirely in Nadaran red and gold, with an appropriately fierce-looking dragon as the figurehead. And beneath the palanquin, its cargo strapped securely to its girthy body, is a gleaming, gilded lesser wyrm. It’s the landlocked sort, paunchy and low to the ground, and lacking even vestigial wings, but it is kin all the same, however distant. The beast is massive, perhaps two horses long, with a gummy maw large enough to swallow a man whole and a tail that leaves a foot wide groove in the earth behind it. Four mounted handlers, all of them armored, surround the wyrm, keeping a wide berth between it and the much smaller crowd that stands within the gated premises.

They’re a mixed group, but all of them well-to-do: locals of some repute, a number of palace courtiers, several representatives of lords from further north, and those nobles who joined our procession eastward to Cindwick. Most of them I only recognize in passing or not at all, save for Ilaria Valance: dressed, as always, fully in black, her brown face powdered to a ghastly gray, she’s too much of an eyesore to be forgotten.

“Sun’s greetings, Your Highness, Your Grace,” she says, curtsying deeply. Dour as she is, her mother is important enough that there were once talks of betrothing Ilaria to my prince. I’ve hated her ever since.

“Sun’s greetings,” Caed replies.

Beside Ilaria stands another woman dressed prettily in pink. She’s short—shorter than me, even—and busty and she has these big, round eyes like a baby seal. She looks vaguely familiar but it’s not until she attempts to introduce herself and I hear that coquettish voice that I recognize her as the girl who gave Caed the towel earlier. The calling of the horn cuts her off and as she retreats, head bowed, she offers Caed a honeyed smile. I roll my eyes.

As the fanfare continues, King Rynnwald exits the manor to raucous cheering, a swarm of retainers on his heel. He nods briefly to Caed, the sun glinting on the simple golden band that circles his brow. As he approaches the wyrm, his aides fall back, none of them daring to draw closer. The king ascends the stair affixed to the wyrm’s side, no hint of hesitation in his stride, and takes his rightful seat high above the crowd. At our place directly behind the king, Caed and I mount our ruby red swiftwyrms and the rest of the procession falls in line after us.

Guards open the spiked iron gate, corralling the common folk out of the lesser wyrm’s path. They make way for us, all wide eyes and jubilant faces, some of them crying or praying or both. As we pass through the gate and onto the road, our people fall in behind us until we form a proper procession: our solemn king at the head and a crowd of boisterous citizens at our tail.

There’s no paving in Cindwick, just the muddy road (now bisected by the drag of the lesser wyrm’s tail) and the brush around it. We pass field after field of crops, all in the early stages of growth. The vivid greenery of the surrounding farmland is peppered with the occasional ill kept building, many of them scorched to black and so tragically maligned they’re crumbling into their ancient foundations. And scattered between these houses are tents, no doubt housing the folk who’ve traveled from all over the country to be here for the anniversary. As we pass by, more and more people leave their tents to join our crowd until our number has swelled to well over ten dozen.

The closer we get to the town’s center, the newer the buildings look and the more densely packed the tents become, ’til they’re practically sandwiched side-to-side down every potholed alley. But even the mass of tents and the new construction and fresh paint can’t disguise the rubble from which these buildings were raised.

The entirety of the town’s heart is packed with people, so many our entire procession must come to a halt. Cindwick has swollen far past its capacity and is splitting at the seams, like pipes bursting after a freeze. And it’s not just the streets that are filled—from every building, faces poke out of windows and doors, and those buildings topped by plaster rather than thatching boast their own spread of eager onlookers. Already, the anxious tremors of Caed’s heart are plucking frantically at our Bond. Our guards ferry people forward and between them and the menacing hiss of the frustrated lesser dragon, we finally make headway.

A small stage has been erected in the center of Cindwick’s so-called city square. It’s a simple structure, maybe five or so handspans tall, and is only moderately less shabby than the rest of the town. This is where we stop, the awestruck crowd now parting so readily before the lesser wyrm that the front guard is left without much to do.

We dismount and step unimpeded onto the dais, following in our king’s footsteps and filling the stage behind him. The rest of our procession, those nobles not officially with our party, push their way to the front of the crowd, looking less than thrilled at the lack of reserved space. Regardless of status, they stand elbow-to-elbow with the rest of the folk, some of them so strikingly humble it’s almost hard to look at them. The commoners watch us eagerly, something like reverence in their wide eyes—well, most of them, anyway. Some, mostly those old enough to have lived through the scorching that still mars their oldest structures, have a sour hunger about the hard lines of their mouths.

Caed nudges me and I fall in line behind him, shuffling onto the stage and into my spot as rehearsed. I stand, arms crossed, at the back of the dais and toe at a spot where the red paint has chipped slightly, revealing the soot-stained wood beneath it. Soaked too deep into the wood to be stripped away, it was instead hastily painted over. Caed shoots me a brief disapproving glance before returning his gaze to the ceremony before us.

In the middle of the stage, the king stands bare-chested and resolute, his robe recently removed by an aide. His hands are clasped behind his back, his muscles taut. Rynnwald Solem Sa’Nova, Ruler of Nadara, The Righteous Sun, King of the Blaze, is a man made of marble, enduring and unflinching. He is the cliffside, weathered by time and all her tools, but not worn down. There is a scar that runs the width of his face from one temple to the opposing cheek, bridging his nose. It is the first of many. A figure cloaked from head to toe in blood-red velvet cuts into his skin with a drachenglas dagger. The bloodletter’s face is veiled; only her bone white hands are bared. Though the king’s skin is pocked by scars, none are as bold as the one that now blooms across his chest.

“Remember,” she intones. She draws the knife slowly from his upper arm, just below the shoulder, across one pectoral and down to the base of his sternum. “The gift.” Her blade echoes that same movement from the other side. The watching crowd is deathly silent, barely a breath drawn. It's a strange grouping of people, the contrast between the locals and the royal entourage so obvious it's awkward. Not all the finer folk are with our retinue—some traveled from up north, some fell in behind our party on the short trip east—but the Cindwick residents have stuck so close to each other and have such a distinctly beleaguered look about them it’s hard to miss. “The sacrifice.”

Caed and I stand several paces behind the king. We don’t need to see the marks carved to know the shape of them. That very same emblem stains my own skin, drawn in blood some twenty years ago.

The king bears the kiss of the blade with unrivaled stoicism. If the dagger’s bite pains him, I wouldn’t know. He has taken this mark every spring for the past twenty-five years, giving his flesh and blood to honor the death of his closest ally and dearest friend. It is at once a celebration and a memorial—of the end of the war, of the valley reclaimed, of the many lives lost. Grief and joy mingle, intertwined and inseparable. Typically, we herald this anniversary in the capital. This, being the quarter century, is a special occasion and so we commemorate our victory a scant hundred paces from where the battle ended.

The glass dagger cuts its final line, and its bearer withdraws, blood dripping from her shining blade. It runs over the guard and down the hilt, seeping under her nails and staining her fingers.

“We do not take in vain what has been given freely.”

Her voice is a rasp, the rough scraping of bone on glass, but it is so deathly quiet in the square that even that sound carries. She kneels and her velvet cloak pools around her like blood. It’s a moment that feels strange and thin and too long, a breath stretched taut by too much silence and too many waiting eyes. The patchy plaster buildings and the dirt road pocked with pot holes feel too shabby for the occasion.

The blooodletter raises the drachenglas dagger over her head with one hand, the other kept cupped beneath it, and there the blade flares to life, an echo of the sun above, so bright the humans all around must turn their eyes. My pupils shrink to slits, but even with my speed there is a moment when everything is white, and my shift cannot keep up before the light dies. There, in its wake, a pile of blood red ash is left cradled in her hands. With the pad of her index finger, she presses the ash to his mouth, leaving a sanguine stain down the center of his bottom lip.

“Like the earth beneath us, we persist; and from the ash, we are born anew.” As the bloodletter raises her hands, King Rynnwald bows his head and accepts both her words and the sprinkling of ash that showers him like a strange red snowfall.

Caed glances at me anxiously. I step forward, already shedding my robes. I shift eagerly, unfolding into my true form with a sigh that expands with me. The leather harness I wear grows as well, though it does a terrible job of it. Considering that it was imported from Voswain at no small expense, it should be better, but I suppose that without any innate magic of their own, humans are only capable of so much. The harness expands only as I stretch it, and so the process is never quite comfortable. It feels like I’m trying to squeeze into clothes that are just slightly too tight, like I’m constantly outgrowing it.

Caed leaps astride me, feet sliding into stirrups as he grips the handholds. I unfurl my wings and bound into the air, roaring for the sheer pleasure of it, of flight, of freedom. It’s a feeling so boundless, so raw, a human could never understand it. I loose several gouts of flame for the benefit of the mesmerized crowd.

From this high up, they’re tiny, like pebbles at the bottom of a crystal clear lake. And from here, I can see Cindwick anew: the buildings that have fallen and been repaired and fallen again, the colorful tents that crowd the town like a swarm of jellyfish, the dirt roads carved laboriously from the encroaching greenery, the distant fields with their young plants, the rivers that hug the valley on either side before merging just before the ocean.

I can barely hear the cheers through the howling of the wind whipping past me. Caederyn lays himself flat along the length of my body. I fold my wings in against myself and twist into a tight, spinning dive. It’s exhilarating and awesome—for me, at least. Though Caed can feel my delight, I know his joy is restricted by fear and discomfort. The air up here is too cold for his thin human skin and the ground is so very far below. His poor, fragile body can only handle so much, so I do my best to emit enough heat for the both of us.

Tonight there is feasting and fireworks. Everyone from the king himself to the humblest of his subjects comes together to eat and drink and mourn. The tables buckle under the bounty they bear, the wine is poured often and with a liberal hand. One after another the people come, to bow their heads and give their blessings, to kiss our fingertips and proffer their cups. We fill them, each and every one, ‘til the wine hugs the rim and threatens to spill.

We drink with them, over and over, until Caed’s face is brightly flushed and his hands grow unsteady. I wrest the pitcher from his grasp and take over. Fireworks boom and shriek overhead, the colored sparks reflecting in the golden scales that bloom across my skin. There is a special form needed for this sort of celebration: not human, not dragon, but a middle thing, human-shaped but undeniably different. The people watch me with awe in their eyes, they bend their heads and beg for my blessing, they brush their lips against the sharp points of my claws.

Through it all, our king sits composed at the epicenter, a single point of stillness in an ocean of celebration and grief.