Traitor (7 page)

It was almost impossible to look at Prax when he was grinning at me like that. It was like seeing a much older Felix sitting across from me, giving me that same grin he always did when he was about to try to steal something off my plate.

“I do know him well. Better than anyone. We’ve been in training together since we were fledglings. I’m proud to know him.” I tried to sound confident.

Prax elbowed Jace a few times, nearly making him spill his mug of ale. “You hear that? A noble who’s befriended a halfbreed! Forgive me if I sound condescending, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. This Felix must be an interesting fellow indeed. I look forward to meeting him.”

One glance at Jace’s uncomfortable scowl, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who was dreading that meeting.

“Y-yeah,” I stammered nervously. “It’ll be great. I’m sure you two will get along … really well.”

Thankfully, the subject changed quickly after that. We drank and ate for several hours while the rest of the riders in Emerald Flight introduced themselves. Most of them were seasoned lieutenants who had seen more than their fair share of battle. But there were a couple of other riders who hadn’t been out of the academy for very long. Even though they all made an effort to be friendly, I could tell they were being cautious. No one wanted to be the first to ask about my mixed racial heritage.

Finally, Prax was the one who couldn’t hold in his curiosity anymore. “Jace warned us about, well, you know.” He leaned in toward me and lowered his voice. “The ears ’n whatnot.”

I smiled at him. “I’m glad he did. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have been this nice about it otherwise.”

Prax nodded in agreement. “I’ll be first to admit it, we were all pretty put off by the idea, at first. I mean, no one likes for the lines of loyalty to be blurred. But he said you were a fine rider—finest he’s seen in a while. He told us about what happened during your battle scenario. You’ve got guts for a rider who hasn’t even seen battle yet.”

I tried not to blush because that definitely wasn’t manly. The amount of ale I’d been drinking didn’t help me much, though. “I’m glad you approve. Honestly, I was surprised Jace asked me to be his wing end in the first place.”

“If you’re as fast as he says, then we’ll be glad to have you and that wild dragon of yours running point for us,” another rider from down the table chimed in and raised his mug. “A toast, to the newest blood in Emerald Flight!”

We all raised our mugs together.

“May the enemies of Maldobar hear legend of the mighty dragonriders. May they shake in terror! May they twist with dread! And may they all remember this battle cry—for it brings a fiery death!” Prax’s voice boomed so loudly everyone else in the tavern started staring.

“
Thunder
!” All the dragonriders at our table shouted in unison. We clanged our mugs together and took a drink.

I couldn’t keep from grinning as I joined in. It was the first time in my life I’d ever felt truly accepted by this brotherhood. I’d been a student, which did count for something. But this was entirely different. This was where I belonged. I was now and forevermore one of them. These men were my brothers, and we would fight and die together.

I had assumed that the goal of the evening was for me to get to know all the other riders in my flight. I’d expected the eating, the drinking, and the voluminous debates over pretty girls and battle scars. But that, I thought, was where it would end.

I was wrong.

The goal, which I only became aware of after it was
far
too late, was to get me as drunk as possible without killing me—and that last part was iffy. It was another rookie tradition, evidently. And the riders in my flight must have been having a blast watching me because they laughed and cracked jokes the whole time.

I barely made it back up all those stairs to our room. Jace walked behind me the whole way with a hand on my back to keep me from falling to my death. It was a good thing, too, because it felt like the whole world was spinning. Or maybe I was spinning. I couldn’t tell the difference. My head lulled beyond my control. My face felt hot. When we got to our room, I couldn’t even figure out how to open the door.

“You’re not much of a drinker,” Jace observed under his breath as he pushed me out of the way. He herded me farther down the hall to a different door.

I guess I was at the wrong one.

Once we were in our room, I staggered to my bed and fell face-forward onto it. “This hurts,” I managed to groan. “I feel sick.”

“You better not throw up on your bed,” he warned. “It’ll reek in here for days. Here, use this.”

A bucket hit me in the back of the head as I tried to sit up.

The room was still spinning all around me as I turned around to sit on the edge of the bed and position the bucket between my feet. “Jace, did you notice Lieutenant Prax—”

He cut me off immediately, “We are not talking about that right now.”

“But they look exactly alike—and, and I would know!” My stomach was swimming and churning dangerously.

All three of the Jaces standing across the room from me rolled their eyes. “Just hurry up and puke so I can get some sleep.”

I obliged.

My stomach rolled painfully and the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back with a cold, wet rag draped over my face. All I could do was groan. My head was throbbing, but at least I didn’t feel quite as sick anymore.

“You need to drink some water.” Jace appeared over me with a cup.

I sat up slowly, gritting my teeth against the painful knots that twisted in my gut. Sipping the water did make me feel a little better, although it still looked like the room was sloshing back and forth whenever I tried to look around. It made me nauseous all over again, and I was fully expecting to reunite with that bucket at any moment.

“Felix is going to be so upset when he finds out.” I could only imagine how that moment would play out. It was bound to be world-shattering for him. “Do you think maybe they won’t notice?”

Jace gave me an exasperated stare. “Only if they’re both blind, deaf, and brain damaged. Look, it’s best to just stay out of it. Family matters are for family members. Let them take care of it. As far as I can tell, Prax isn’t even aware he has a child. He never married. For all we know, they could be cousins. And Felix’s mother is a high noble. Slandering her name in any way is a punishable offense, even for a dragonrider.”

“You did it before,” I reminded him. “At the officer’s ball. You said you courted her.”

His mouth scrunched up like he’d tasted something sour. “That was supposed to be a joke, and the lot of you were too stupid to know any better.”

I couldn’t answer. I was too busy throwing up into the bucket again.

“Just drink the rest of that water and go to sleep,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You’ll have a ripping headache tomorrow, but you’ll live.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” I groaned again.

He chuckled on his way back across the room to his bed. I watched him sit down and start unlacing his boots, trying to focus through the way everything still seemed to be swirling and twirling around me. I managed a bit of clarity just in time to see him taking off his tunic while he changed into his bedclothes.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

Jace had scars all over his body. His skin was literally an anthology of violence, and it told a long, gruesome story. The worst by far were the ones around his wrists and neck. I wasn’t sure, after all things were still hazy, but those marks almost looked like they had been made by shackles.

I tried not to stare, but it was impossible. I had seen wounds before. I even had a few scars of my own. But judging from the size of some of those marks, Jace was lucky to be alive. It was a sobering thing to see.

“You know, I don’t know anything about you.” I tried to sound casual as I looked away. “We’re going to be partners from now on, so maybe we should get to know each other better. Do you have a family somewhere?”

“No,” he answered sharply.

“You mean you’re not married?” I tried again.

“No.” His unwelcoming tone didn’t change.

“So how did you become a dragonrider?”

“I was given a dragon.” His answer was sarcastic, and I couldn’t understand why. He said it like it was some kind of bad joke. He wouldn’t even look my way as he pulled a clean shirt over his head and settled into his bed.

He was putting up walls faster than I could come up with ways around them. But I wasn’t giving up that quickly. If I was going to be fighting side-by-side with him, I wanted to know something about him. “What did you do before you were a dragonrider?”

Jace made a noisy, annoyed, growling sound. “Jaevid, let it alone. What I was or what I did before this doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.”

“We’re supposed to be a team. We’re supposed to watch each other’s backs,” I countered. “So it’s relevant to me.”

He was silent. After a few uncomfortable minutes, I decided he wasn’t going to say anything at all.

“I just want to know if I can trust you,” I added.

That must have made him angry because his tone became venomous. “I will do my job, rookie. Don’t insult me by doubting that.”

“What happened to your last wing end?” It was a bad time to ask about that. I knew it even as the words left my lips. But I still tore open that old wound shamelessly. I wanted to make my case. I knew his last partner had been killed in combat—that was the whole reason he’d gone to Blybrig to be an instructor in the first place. He had been scouting for a new wing end.

“He fell behind.” I couldn’t see Jace’s face, but I could hear the tension in his voice. It sounded like he was clenching his teeth. “I told you that already. He couldn’t keep up.”

“So you just let him die?” I pressed. I don’t know why. Maybe I was too drunk to be sensitive. Or maybe I was hoping he’d get caught up in his emotions and tell me something useful about himself on accident.

“No,” Jace snarled furiously. He turned over to give me a smoldering glare. “Are you always this obnoxious? Shut up. Go to sleep.”

I saw what looked a lot like grief cross his face. Whatever had happened with his last partner, it had damaged him somehow. And he wasn’t over it yet.

I didn’t ask any more questions. Even though I couldn’t fall asleep right away, I stayed quiet and listened to the sounds of the tower. Men walked past our room with their armor clinking. Unfamiliar voices echoed down the hallways. The faint roar of dragons lulled me to sleep, and for an instant, I almost forgot where I was.

Then the battle horn sounded.

Fear shot through my body like a bolt of cold lightning. At first, I thought it was real. And then I noticed that I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t even in the tower anymore.

I was clinging to the back of a shrike, sitting in a saddle made from layers of soft animal hide.

Even in a dream, riding on a shrike felt completely different from riding on a dragon. They were much smaller, and so fast it was downright terrifying. The saddle fit down the length of the shrike’s back, and flexed with its spine as it zipped through the air on translucent feathered wings. I could feel every movement the creature made, and I had to press my body down against its back so we could fly together without becoming unbalanced. I had to move as it moved, as though we were one with our balance and weight in perfect synchronization. It was a lot more difficult than sitting in a dragon’s saddle.

All around me, the Kingdom of Maldobar spread out like a carpet of familiar landscape features. I’d spent so much time as a fledgling memorizing all the different parts of Maldobar, right down to the last mountain peak and river bend because it was part of my training as a dragonrider. I wasn’t going to be very effective or useful if I got lost. Judging by the landmarks, I knew we were on the northern battlefront—somewhere very close to Northwatch.

It was hard to pinpoint my location exactly because of what I saw right in front of me. There was a lot on my horizon. The rolling hills of the valley rushed up to meet the ominous boundary where our two kingdoms met. The dark forest of Luntharda, the land of my mother’s people, looked like a sea of rippling green leaves and white snow that stretched on forever. Even from a distance, I could sense the power of that place. It was like a wild, untamable beast crouching on the edge of Maldobar. Seeing it like this made my body shudder with anxiety.