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“Those are words I never expected to hear you say to me.”
“They’re words I never expected to say to you when we started. Butyou train, all these months now. When you fail, you try again. You complain, that’s for certain, but you keep trying. You’ve fought and bled, and still you pick up the sword. What else is a warrior but this?”
“I’m… surprisingly flattered. But no, I won’t wear the braid. When this is over, I really hope to hang up my sword—in a place of honor, of course. But I don’t think a warrior ever does.”
“The choice is yours.”
“I disappoint you.”
“You don’t, no, I promise you that. Come now.” He took her hands again, kissed her fingers, healed them. “We’ll go down as we came up.”
“You said you practice.” With absolute confidence, she walked to the edge and stepped off with him. “You hadn’t levitated before.”
“Inches as most can and do. But I thought of what you said. I have all the tribes of the Fey in me. So I called on the Sidhe in me, and the Wise, always, as that’s the dominant.”
They floated down, through the clouds, on the air. Of the air.
“A few feet at first, and tiring, I’ll admit. Then more, and not so tiring. I like having the skill, and might never have thought to hone it if you hadn’t said what you did.”
“I like the skill,” she agreed when her feet finally touched the ground. “But I’d rather take the air with a dragon under me, or stand on the solid ground. I guess you’ll start trying out other skills, from other tribes.”
“Ah well.” He glanced to the woods toward the west, and ran.
In seconds she lost him in the trees, then he bolted back to her.
She let out a surprised and delighted laugh.
“Fast!”
“Not elf fast, but surely twice what I could do before I drew on it. You’re fast as well, not fast as this,” he added as they walked to the horses. “But fast, and with endurance. That’s from the jumping around you do every morning as well as what the fates gave you.”
“Cardio, and it’s not just jumping about.”
“You look good when you’re at it, and wearing those snug little bits of things. And for all of that, good training.”
Amused, she mounted. “Can you become a tree—or I guess it’s more go into one?”
“Not for lack of trying. But I can feel it, and the stone, the earth, the way I couldn’t before. Or never thought to.”
“Were?”
“This is my form, and my only.”
“It’s a good form.”
That had him grinning at her. “It’s the dragon that calls me, as it does you. Now I find, with practice, with effort, I can call to them. Not only Cróga, though that’s different. It’s—”
“Intimate. A shared heart and mind.”
“It is, aye, but I can call others now—those not bonded with another—and they come. This is, I think, from the Were blood in me. Not taking their form, but being one of them, in some way. I’m grateful to you for putting this thought in my head.”
“I’d love to see you call them.”
“We’ll find time for that if you like.”
“I’d very much like. That leaves Troll and Mer.”
“As for the Mer, I’d as soon wait for warmer before testing the waters, so to speak, and seeing what might be. And I’d as soon keep my legs. For the Troll blood, it’s strength I think’s coming. If I put my mind on it, I can lift and carry more. At least a bit for now. Although…”
