“Do you feel shame for what your father did? You said you felt it follow you…but what your father did was out of love. There’s nothing shameful about that.”

“I wish he hadn’t stolen the eggs,” I confessed. “He should’ve known better, but I also know how much he hated watching her suffer. We both did. He was desperate. Desperate to help the person he loved.”

She nodded against me, though I couldn’t see her expression. “Whatever happened to Tyzar? Did you ever find him?”

I smiled as I dragged my fingers down her arm. “That is a happy story, at the very least. He fled north, as my father commanded him. After I claimed Zaridan, I made it my mission to find him. He lives close to Muron’s Spine. A peninsula in the North, a sacred place. He has a mate. Two hatchlings that are growing strong by now. Soon we might see them at Tharken, and I hope one or both will choose a Sarrothian rider.”

Maybe even our child, came the sudden thought. How fitting that would be.

I dragged in a deep breath, feeling how much the knowledge pleased Klara.

“I still visit on occasion, if I’m ever in the North to meet with the Kylothian,” I informed her. “One day I will bring you to meet him too.”

“I would like that,” she whispered. “I would like that very much.”

Silence stretched between us, and I heard the distant, dulled sounds of the celebrations of our horde. Klara sighed, reality flooding back in.

“Can I write your story?” she asked quietly. “Your father’s story?”

Something tightened in my chest. Longing? Grief?

“I believe very strongly in recording stories. Putting them to parchment. They are our history, after all,” she said. “How many stories would have been lost if not for scribes who took the time to record them…and I think it would be a shame if yours was lost too. People should remember your father, your mother, and Tyzar.”

I clutched her to me tighter, my heart speeding in my chest. I’d done everything I could to build a careful, impenetrable wall around me after the losses of my life.

How had she wiggled between the cracks?

I repeated her words. “I would like that very much, aralye.”

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Chapter 38KLARA

The meadow was familiar.

I felt the wind brush across my face as I trailed my fingers through the grass at my ankles, seeing it light up beneath my touch.

I was in the starfall meadow, the one Sarkin had brought me to. I could still see the indent of our blanket, pressed into the grass. The night sky was quiet though, the stars hanging perfectly still.

I was dreaming, I knew. The sensation of it was familiar. But it also felt more real than other dreams had. As if I was really there, standing in the meadow, alone, on that dark night after the illa’rosh had come to an end.

There was a sound behind me, and I turned slowly.

Lygath.

He was sitting, watching me, halfway between where I was standing and the twinkling lake down below that trailed along the edge of the forest.

His silver scales were gleaming. His wings were lightly colored, a gray that seemed translucent, especially when he flared them wide. With the moonlight behind him, I could see the outline of his thick bones within them.

He was smaller than Zaridan, though not by much. But he had her eyes. Gold like the statues in Dothik. Gold like the pieces of metal—Kakkari’s gifts, we called them—that we unearthed in the soil in the wildlands, using it for weapons and tradable goods.

“Lygath,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

I knew he might not be able to understand me, though Sarkin had once told me that Elthika were more intelligent than we were. That they had their own language, but that they might understand ours.

The Elthika shifted when I began to approach. My heart was thundering in my chest, but I wasn’t afraid. There was a dreamlike quality to this reality, an extension of my gift, my magic that I had yet to fully realize. I might never, I thought.

I stopped on the small hill that overlooked where he was sitting. There was an edge to him, and I halted my approach, not wanting to scare him.

And so I sat, right on the grass. I was in the shift dress I’d gone to sleep in, and the grass tickled my bare legs. I waited until Lygath settled again, though he never took his gaze off me.

“I see you in my dreams all the time. I have since I was a child. I still remember the first time,” I said, talking to him even though I didn’t know if he could understand me. “I thought you were so fearsome…but so sad. You were calling out, this mournful cry, as you flew. I think you were in the Arsadia, from the landscape I can remember. I think, now, that maybe you were looking for Zaridan. Only…that hadn’t come to pass yet. I saw your future without her.”

His ears twitched at his sister’s name. Those eyes were so piercing that if I looked into them long enough, I felt goose bumps pebble over my flesh.

“Sarkin says that you don’t want a rider,” I continued, dragging my knees up to my chest. “If you don’t, that’s all right. But I have this feeling inside me that you don’t want to be alone anymore either.”

A sound rose in his throat, a gruff chuff, that had the edges of my lips curling.

“And I know what it’s like to be alone,” I confessed. “I know how frightening it can be. Maybe you’re not scared. You are a Vyrin, after all. One of the most revered and fearsome of your kind, from an ancient bloodline. But even though you’re a Vyrin, it doesn’t mean you’re not lonely. Elthika like companionship, don’t they?” I shrugged at him. “So, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of your sister’s rejection? Were you angry that she chose Sarkin? Did you feel that she left you behind? Abandoned you? Or do you feel shame, that you have hidden away for so long?”

His tail thumped on the earth, but I didn’t flinch, even when the hill trembled with the force.

“She looks for you all the time,” I told him. “Sarkin told me she’s always looking for you.”

Lygath went still. Then he huffed out a breath, and I thought I saw another tendril of ethrall, making me swallow.

Then he lowered himself to the ground. No longer sitting but lying down, the starlight grass illuminating and rippling beneath him. His head came to rest on his forelimbs, the wicked gleam of the talons reflecting in the moonlight. And when he turned his head, I saw the mark of Muron. On the lower right side of his neck, it looked like black ink was spread over his silver scales. Like wild, untamed roots of a tree, though I knew now it was the mark of heartstone lightning.

Still, it was a familiar shape that I could trace in my sleep because I’d studied it in the mirror—cursing it—for nearly my entire life.

“Zaridan chose her rider well,” I told Lygath, feeling a smile stretch over my lips. “Sarkin is…he’s…”

I didn’t know if there was a single word that could describe him aptly.

“He was the best choice she could make,” I said finally, thinking that I felt that way too about him. “He’s a good leader to his people. Fair but honorable. And he has a kind heart, though he holds it close. Your sister chose well. She loves him. And so do I.”

The quiet confession felt easy slipping from my lips, especially to Lygath.

I took a deep breath and stood. The Elthika’s head raised to regard me, his eyes watchful as I approached, but he didn’t stand. He stayed in his position as I drew nearer and nearer.

“You smell like home. Like the wildlands. One day, I hope I’ll show them to you,” I cooed to him softly when I was close enough. I smiled, raking my eyes over him, observing the way his silver scales tapered to points like teeth. “You’re very beautiful.”