Page 95 of Wings of Destruction

Then the coolness of the floor seeps up through the soles of my feet and obliterates the flush of worry.

I reach for Mozi in my head and pull up short.

He’ll be furious if I ask him again if this is the right thing to do. He’ll call me spineless, one of the nicest of his insults, and remind me of the stakes.

So instead of bothering a dragon, I remind myself.

There’s the potential to lose more people and our entire way of life if my father’s ambitions aren’t checked. And if no one is able or willing to stand up to him…

Who does it leave?

What am I not willing to do or give to take him down?

I steel myself and, holding my breath, pluck my bag from the slender table near the door before sneaking into the silent hall.

To the left is the secondary staircase leading to the cavern. To the right is the main corridor and the classrooms a floor below.

I turn right instead.

I know what happens when curiosity gets the best of you but there’s no stopping my legs. They carry me down the curling staircase toward the classroom and my cubby with the now desecrated textbook.

It’s a terrible idea, all around, to continue a conversation with a stranger who may or may not know that I’m the owner of the book. I’m giving myself away at a pivotal moment where discretion is the key.

But it’s… something. It’s a tickling brush at the nape of my neck when least expected, the first gust of a warm breeze heralding the oncoming spring.

It’s impossible to describe what the notations in the book do to me but I’m desperate to cling to the feeling.

My footsteps echo back as I round to the classroom door, dragging the key out of my pocket. Sweat slicks my palms and my chest tightens.

The classroom is exactly the way I left it earlier today. The walls vibrate with the memory of so many voices, like they absorbed the life it witnessed.

I like it better this way. Solitude has never scared me.

Neither do animals.

People are the ones who scare me. They’re unpredictable and irrational at times. They let their emotions or their ambitions drive their actions and they will promise to love you and care for you, to be your friend, all the while holding a knife at your back.

Sometimes, even good men are tested.

Hopefully tonight is a chance for me to really see what kind of man I am, without the trappings or the name.

The book is nestled in the cubby along with the rest of my personal library and I drag it out with slightly shaking fingers. It falls open to the exact page I want, like a universal wink.

New lines of scribble stretching down from my hastily asked question. A folded piece of paper drifts to the floor in lazy circles.

I snatch it between my index and middle fingers before it hits, prying open the edges. The first lines are impossible to ignore and pressed hard enough to the paper to nearly puncture it.

My loyalty to the crown is nonexistent. How can loyalty exist in the face of a mad general with too much power and his pet king? There is no freedom in this lie they shove down the throats of the common people, and yet they expect us to swallow it down willingly and choke on it.

My heart soars and I read through the letter fast enough to blur the words.

If I had the power to change our circumstances, I would.

The note is certainly a vastly different stance from what the person wrote in the margins of the book. The lines there are neat, the voice tempered by reason and rationality.

I’m not in the market for those things.

The scrawl on the letter, the ragged edges of the hastily torn page, speak to passion and fury. Those are the kind of character traits I’m able to harness into something useful but deadly.