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ate,
As many suitors as stripes, but never to ma
Chapter 17
“In some months it blows out. In other months it blows in,” Ayafeeia said. “The Anklenes told me why once, but I’ve forgotten. All that matters is that you’ll have an easier time of it with the wind passing out.”
AuRon noticed that she looked at a high rock as she spoke. He searched, saw nothing, then glanced over at her.
“My sister was mated here,” she said. “To your brother.”
“I’d rather think him your Tyr than my brother. Nilrasha is lovely, though this seems an odd place. Is it because of the privacy?”
“Oh, no, it’s not a tradition. Mated dragons usually fly to the surface in the south, to the tips at World’s End.”
“Then why here?”
She told him, briefly. A crippled dragon and a sickly mate, jokes the whole way there and back.
“I was closer to Halaflora than—we don’t speak of my other sister. She saw a quality in RuGaard. Have you ever heard the expression ‘deephearted’?”
“No.”
“It’s one of the virtues we try to instill in the Firemaids. It means a dragon who thinks about others more than himself. I see it in our Tyr. I see the same in you.”
“I’d be curious to know how you came to that conclusion.”
“For whom?”
“Me. I’m curious.”
“I saw how you looked to your sister at the assembly.”
He should be saying good-bye, but he should probably rest a few more moments before attempting an ascent. “Is concern for a sibling so strange here?”
“One sometimes wonders. But not just her—that young dragonelle next to her, and the others. No fear, no anger, just interest. I never thought you were deciding which part of the hide was the most vulnerable.”
“It may have been that smoke in the air. It leaves one relaxed and fog-headed.”
“That’s oliban. Very valuable. Don’t be surprised that NoSohoth uses so much of it. It’s a rare commodity. His family controls the trade.”
“Fascinating. But I must be off.”
“Are you with us, then?”
“I delivered the Red Queen’s message. She owes me a reward. I’m off to collect it.”
“Don’t eat any gold of hers. She’d poison it.”
AuRon took a breath. “I’m after blood now, not coin.”
With that he launched himself into howling confusion.
He felt like a leaf caught in an updraft. The wind slid him this way and that, threatening to send him crashing into the side of the tunnel.
Perhaps if he’d been a scaled dragon it would have been an easier flight, since the wind roaring up the shaft would not have pushed him so easily. But then again, his weight allowed him to ride the current, follow it as it swirled through gours and sword-edged scars.
He took painful bashes to each wingtip as the current sent him careening toward the blue patch of night sky above.
