Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (6 page)

“I want to understand why, Jae.” Beckah whispered. The emotion in her voice surprised me. I noticed there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked haunted, and her voice trembled when she spoke. “I don’t believe what they told us, that it was just some kind of plot by the Lord General. They didn’t choose my daddy at random. It was planned. There’s a reason they tried so hard to kill him twice. If it was only a plot to use him as some kind of a sacrifice, they could have picked anyone. They could have plucked someone else off the street and no one would have even noticed. They came after him for a reason, and now I think he’s afraid they’ll try it again. I think that’s why he moved us like this. I think he’s trying to hide from them.”

I could tell she’d been beating herself up over this. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for her, but I wanted to make her feel better. I put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward me to hug her again. “I don’t believe what they said, either. It’ll be okay. Your father is the best man I’ve ever met. You have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

Beckah hid her face against my shoulder. “I’ve felt so alone,” she whimpered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

My face burned and I was glad she couldn’t see it. No one had ever said that to me before. Not like that, anyway. It made me blush until the tips of my ears felt like they were on fire.

“What about Felix?” I have no idea why I even said something like that. It was stupid, and I knew it the moment the words left my mouth. I regretted it immediately.

She pulled back and looked at me strangely, like I’d suddenly grown a third eyeball. “What about him?”

I swallowed hard. “Well, I mean he was there with us through everything. Do you miss him, too?”

Beckah frowned. “That’s different.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t get a chance. She grabbed my chin and kissed me on the cheek.

It seemed like the world was moving in slow motion. I just sat there, staring at her. At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. But as the seconds passed, I realized I liked it. I
really
liked it.

“We should go back to the house,” she said as she stood. She offered me a hand to help me up, and then started folding up the quilt. “Momma’s probably already gone to bed, but Daddy will still be up. We have to tell him you’re here.” She sighed shakily and looked at Icarus. “Do you think you can get him to leave me alone?”

I was still having a hard time thinking about anything except that kiss. But I looked at Icarus, and he shot me another disapproving dragon glare. “I’m not sure. I guess we’ll try to discuss it in the morning, though.”

I took my one bag off of Mavrik’s saddle and followed Beckah across the grassy dunes. The moonlight was bright enough to see by, and the wind was strong coming in off the ocean. In the distance, I could see the lights of the city a few short miles away down the coast.

The Derrick’s house wasn’t small, like Beckah had made it sound. At least, not to me. It was two storeys tall, made out of dark stacked stone, and there were a few candles burning in the arched windows. I could barely make out a stable behind it as we walked up the sandy drive toward the front door.

I started to get nervous because I wasn’t sure how Sile was going to react to me being here. I was anxious to see him and talk to him about what had happened. I might even get some real answers this time. But at the same time I knew he might slam the door in my face and tell me to mind my own business. Beckah also looked nervous as she opened the front door and let me go in ahead of her.

The house was nice and cozy on the inside. There were pictures on the plaster walls, and rugs on the floors. A narrow entryway led into the parlor where Sile was sitting with his feet propped up by a smoldering fire in the hearth. He didn’t even look back at us as we stood in the doorway.

“I’ve told you about sneaking out, Beck.” He grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Beckah muttered back. “Daddy, we have a guest.”

He turned and looked back then, his piercing glare hitting me full force. At first, I was definitely afraid he was going to come at me swinging. When he saw it was me, his expression changed into confusion and frustration. He seemed annoyed that I was here.

He shot Beckah a punishing look. “We talked about this.”

She cringed and looked way. “I know, Daddy, but—”

“Go back to bed. Right now,” he growled at her.

Beckah nodded, gave me a worried smile, and hurried away up the stairs.

The silence was uncomfortable. I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, wondering what I was supposed to do or if I should even stay. Maybe these were valuable minutes he was giving me as a head start before he forced me out the door. Then I heard him sigh, and he settled back into his chair to stare at the fire again.

“I was hoping you would have at least grown an inch by now,” he muttered.

I was instantly humiliated. “S-sir, please don’t blame Beckah for—”

“Sit down,” he cut me off.

I shuffled across the room and sat down in the chair across from him. His expression was unreadable and intense. He had the same dark circles under his eyes Beckah had, like he’d sat up every night just like this, waiting for someone to come pounding on his door to take him away again. I noticed his arm wasn’t wrapped up in a cast anymore.

“She thinks I don’t know about the dragon,” he said darkly.

I was too surprised to answer.

“I may be old and retired, but I’m not stupid. I’ve been around dragons longer than you’ve been alive. I know when there’s one stalking around my house.” He glanced at me again, looking me up and down like he was searching for any sign of growth since last year when I’d started training. “Well, there’s a little more meat on you, at least. Not enough, though.”

My face burned with embarrassment again. “I’ve been training every day.”

He nodded. “Good.”

“She asked me to come here because she wants me to… tell Icarus to go away.” I blurted. I sincerely hoped Beckah wasn’t hiding outside the room eavesdropping on us. I felt like I was betraying her by telling him everything.

“He won’t listen to you, boy. Maybe you can talk a king drake into rebelling against a rider he didn’t choose, but when a dragon picks its companion the way Mavrik picked you, there’s nothing you can do to change it. It’s like fighting gravity.”

Sile always had a way of teaching me things even when he didn’t mean to. I’d never questioned Mavrik’s attachment to me, much less tried to understand it. Hearing that Icarus, the most powerful drake in the world, had picked Beckah—that was amazing news.

“She’s a dragonrider,” I whispered under my breath.

He shot me the same punishing glare he’d given her earlier. “No. She’s a girl. Women are forbidden to join the brotherhood of dragonriders. You know that.”

“But… I thought you said that being chosen automatically made someone a dragonrider, regardless of who they are,” I argued. “What if she wants to be one? How is it any different than when Mavrik chose me?”

“Because there are some things women are not meant to see, let alone experience,” he snapped angrily. “You really want my daughter, my precious little girl, holding a sword and riding into a line of enemies that want to slaughter her? As her father, I am supposed to protect her. That is my duty as a man. It’s not something a boy can understand.”

I bit my tongue. He was right. The idea of her doing something like that, something that would most likely get her killed, cut me right to the core. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I wanted to protect her, too.

“Things are the way they are for a reason, Jaevid,” he said. “They may not be fair, but we must choose our battles wisely. We have to do what we can to protect what matters most.”

I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about Icarus anymore. Everything Beckah had said to me about how he’d moved them here in secret started nagging at my brain again. “What are you protecting them from?” I asked. “Beckah said she thinks you’re hiding out here—that you’re afraid someone is looking for you.”

He flicked me another irritated glance before he reached over to a table beside his chair and started filling a pipe with tobacco. “You know everything you need to know right now,” he answered coldly. “You should be less worried about my affairs and more concerned with the training that awaits you this year. The avian year at the academy is the most difficult, and it’s the year when the weak or stupid often die. Everything they do is to prepare you for what might happen when you step on the battlefield. They will beat you hard because war is going beat you even harder.”

Felix had said something similar to me about what lay ahead in our avian year. He had mentioned that we’d have to endure interrogation training and how to survive in Luntharda if we found ourselves stranded behind enemy lines. That put a hard knot of anxiety in my chest as I sat there, staring down at the tops of my shoes.

“I was hoping you’d have at least gained an inch or two, or a few more pounds of muscle. Maybe then you’d be less of an easy target for them during the interrogation portion.” Sile sighed, shaking his head some before he started to light his pipe and puff rings of gray smoke into the air. “They’re going to come for you, Jaevid. You’re the weakest link. You need to start asking yourself if you’re ready for that.”

I clenched my hands into fists. “I’ve been the weakest link my whole life, sir. I can handle it.”

He snorted, and I saw the corner of his mouth twitch at a smile. “That’s why I like you, boy. You’re brave to the point of insanity. You’d walk into the abyss without a second thought.”

I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult. It kind of sounded like both. “I just do what I think is right, sir.”

Sile looked at me then, and there were a thousand thoughts in his eyes that I could sense, but I couldn’t understand any of them. Somehow, it made me feel very small. There was a lot he knew, a lot of things he wasn’t telling me. And when he looked at me like that, it made me wonder what would be waiting for me back at the academy.

“Sometimes what you know is right isn’t what everyone else wants to do,” he said. “Then you have to ask yourself if you’re willing to live with the consequences of doing what you know is wrong just to keep the peace.”

I swallowed hard. “I couldn’t do that.”

He smiled darkly. “Is that so? Why?”

I tried to square my shoulders and look more confident than I was. “Because I’d rather be seen as a traitor by everyone else than betray myself like that.”

Little by little, the edges of his grim smile began to fade, and I saw those hundreds of thoughts come rushing back like an ocean tide. “I hope you always feel like that, Jaevid,” he said softly and turned away to look back at the fire again. “There’s a guest room upstairs. Third door on the right.”

“S-sir?” I hadn’t expected him to ask me to stay.

“I suppose it’s good to have someone as idiotically brave as you are around now and again. If anyone can change that dragon’s mind, it’s you. We’ll address it later.” He wafted a hand at me, waving me out of the room. “Goodnight.”

I started for the doorway with my bag in my hand. My head was still spinning like a top after everything he’d said to me. I was almost out of the room when he cleared his throat to get my attention again.

“And if I catch you sniffing around my daughter’s room, I’ll pull those pointed ears right off your head.”

Being in Sile’s house was weird. He had never talked about his family to me before, so everything I knew about them had mostly come from Beckah. I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to touch, or where to go, but I found the guest room right where Sile had told me it was. The room was spacious and a lot better decorated than my house. There were curtains on the windows, a big bed with comfortable looking blankets, and a soft wool rug on the floor.

I shut the door behind me as quietly as I could, and put my bag down on the floor at the foot of the bed. The two tall windows faced the front of the house. In the distance, I could see the ocean glittering in the moonlight. I cracked one open to let the cool, salty breeze flow in. The house was so quiet that I could hear the surf. It was a beautiful sound that slowly lulled me to sleep.

The lonely cawing of seagulls woke me up early the next morning. I rolled over, squinting at the beautiful view of the sea over the dunes… and that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. I saw a few locks of golden hair peeking over the blankets in the bed next to me. Suddenly, I was aware that there was a very warm, very alive
something
sleeping next to me.

I bolted upright in bed. Before I could figure out what had happened, I was sitting nose-to-nose with a big shaggy dog. He looked at me with warm brown eyes, and swiped his slobbery tongue right up my face.

From the doorway, I heard someone giggling. I looked to see Beckah standing there, watching us with the bedroom door cracked open. She whistled and the dog bounded off the bed, trotting to her with his tail wagging. She ruffled his ears as he went past.

“I forgot to warn you last night,” she laughed. “Eddy can open doors… and he also really likes to sleep on the bed.”

I laughed. “Smart dog.”

Beckah shrugged a little and started twirling a lock of her dark hair around her fingers thoughtfully. “So Daddy talked to me this morning. He told me he knew about the dragon already. And he’s going to let you try to convince him to leave.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “We sort of discussed that last night.”

She stood there quietly for a moment, still twirling her hair, and finally looked up at me with a hesitant look in her eyes. “I’m not sure I want him to go.”

I was afraid of that. Icarus had chosen her. He listened to her. They had the potential for the same kind of bond I had with Mavrik. And for me to step in and try to drive them apart, well, it felt wrong. I wasn’t sure I could do it, or if Icarus would even listen.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked her.

She sighed shakily and nibbled on her bottom lip. I could see that she was struggling with this. For her to keep Icarus was definitely counterproductive to Sile’s efforts to keep his family hidden. People were already talking about the king drake in the city. He was sure to attract all kinds of attention. Not to mention the fact that she was a girl, and girls weren’t allowed to be dragonriders. But at the same time, I couldn’t think of any better protection than an angry dragon. Icarus wasn’t going to let anything happen to Beckah—not if he could help it.