He flinches at that, but he doesn’t look away. “If I’d come to your barracks while I was still with Elder clan, then yes, there’s a good chance you’d be dead. It makes me sick to think that, Virginia, but it’s true, just like how if your sister could kill everyone here, she would. Only I doubt she would feel any qualms about it.”
A shuddery feeling twitches down my spine, because he’s right, she wouldn’t. If Celeste had the chance to kill a whole clan of dragons, she’d take it. She’d murder them all, in cold blood, for no reason other than that they’re dragons, and it wouldn’t bother her. She’d come home, and my father would throw her a party and put some heads up on the wall, so everyone would know what a good job she’d done. And not that long ago, I would have thought slaughtering dragons made her amazing, too. But now it just kind of scares the hell out of me.
“We targeted the most dangerous settlements, the ones where the paladins were especially aggressive and relentless, and yours was about halfway down the list. I like to think I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you, but I can’t say for sure how things would have played out. It was an important job, but an awful one, and I’ve wrestled with my thoughts on it for a long time. What I did saved lives. The lives of dragons,” he adds, when I give him a questioning look. “Ash clan was nearly wiped out by paladins. A whole clan, a society with its own culture and way of life. The humans there wanted to expand their hunting grounds, so they encroached on Ash territory and started picking them off without provocation. And I don’t know if what I did was right or not, but I know that that clan still exists today because of me.”
“Not all paladins kill dragons unprovoked.”
“No, and not all dragons kill paladins out of self-defense. There’s good and bad on both sides. I never killed anyone directly, but I don’t know if that makes me better or worse than the dragons who did.”
“You saved my life. You didn’t have to. You could have let me marry Lothar, or you could have left me there to get ripped apart after you made him transform. And I know I’m not a paladin, but I’m still a St. George, and . . . My point is, Celeste would never save a dragon. No one at the barracks would. And they wouldn’t think twice about killing one, let alone getting one killed. Before I met you, I wouldn’t have, either. I’m not saying I like that you tricked people, because I don’t, but I don’t think you’re a bad person. A bad person wouldn’t struggle with it, or be bothered by it. St. Georges hurt you and your mother. They tortured you before you were even born, but you still saved me. And if the situation had been reversed, I can’t say I would have done the same. Not back then.”
He studies my face, his expression hopeful but wary, like he’s not sure I mean that. “By the end of the second year, I wanted out so badly. Everyone who got close to me ended up dead, and I couldn’t take it anymore. But the Elder king was adamant that what I was doing was right, and . . . If I’d insisted on stopping, I don’t know if he would have forced the issue, but I also didn’t want to disappoint him, so I didn’t.”
“But you were mostly on your own, right? Couldn’t you have run away?”
“Not without putting my entire clan in danger. It would have destroyed the delicate peace we’d established with the hostage exchange. And it probably would have gotten Raban killed. Not that I knew him, and not that it mattered in the end, because he died and the peace was broken anyway, but I didn’t want to be responsible for that. Not for his death, and not for potentially starting a war. It was complicated, so I stayed. Until it all fell apart, and the Elder king faked my death. After that, I lived on my own for six months, unable to go home or tell anyone I was still alive. I was free from having to betray anyone I got close to, but I didn’t settle anywhere. I knew Lothar had been talking about capturing a St. George, and he’d been boasting that he could actually do it. I thought it was just something he’d said to try and show me up, but when I discovered he was at your party, I knew he must have meant it. I decided I wasn’t going to let him succeed, and if I could get the paladins there to kill him in the process, well, so much the better. Then I met you, and you know the rest.”
He falls quiet, and neither of us says anything for a while, though he keeps glancing over at me.
I think about how he got hundreds of people killed. Paladins, and others with paladin blood, like me and pretty much everyone I know. He was a dragon posing as a human and gaining people’s trust, just so he could turn on them. He’s the embodiment of everything I was so afraid of, the reason I couldn’t leave the barracks all those years.
But he’s also the reason I was finally able to leave. He’s the reason I’m not afraid of dragons anymore. He taught me magic, and he’s the only one who’s never made me feel stupid for not being able to do it. He’s the only one who’s ever even believed me about not being able to leave the barracks. And he’s the reason I no longer blame myself for my mother’s death.
What he did was horrible, and being torn up about it doesn’t change that. But hurting paladins saved dragons. Doing nothing would have meant more dragons getting hurt. No matter what, somebody would have died. And if I’d been in his position, if I’d had the opportunity to collect information that would mean Celeste and all the others could destroy the dragons who wanted to hurt us, wouldn’t I have done it? And wouldn’t I have felt useful, and like I finally mattered?
“Virginia,” he whispers, his voice tight, “please say something.”
But there’s nothing to say. Nothing, and too many things, all at once.
So instead I put my arms around him, and I hug him like I’m never going to let him go.
33
HOW CAN YOU HOLD SOMETHING WRONG IF IT’S IMAGINARY?
Amelrik seems really nervous as we walk through the halls a couple days later, on our way to meet up with Odilia. We’re supposed to watch her friend rehearse for a play, but I don’t think that’s what’s bothering him. He keeps glancing over at me, looking like he has something to say, and then staring down at his feet instead.He puts a hand on my arm when we get to the theater entrance, stopping me from going inside. “Virginia, wait. I, um . . . I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.” I pretend like I have no idea what he’s talking about, as if I haven’t noticed how preoccupied and fidgety he’s been all day. Because whatever he needs to tell me, I get the impression it’s personal. Like, just between me and him. And it’s something that’s obviously not easy for him to say. Something he’s had to work up the courage for.
Maybe something he’s never told anyone else.
“It’s just, we’ve been together here for a while. And I’ve really enjoyed it. You. Er, not that I’ve enjoyed you, but . . . I’m not saying this right.” He rubs his face with the heels of his palms. “You know how I feel about you. At least, I think you do, but that doesn’t make it any easier to find the words for this.”
“Come on, Amelrik. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Especially if he wants to elaborate a bit more on how he feels about me.
“What I’m trying to say is—”
“Finally,” Odilia says, coming out of the theater entrance and interrupting him. And possibly the most important moment of my life. “I thought you were never going to get here, and then I find you standing around outside like an idiot.” She shakes her head. “Slight change of plans, though. Your father wants to talk to you.”
“Right now?” He sounds annoyed, but maybe also a little relieved.
“Yeah. He said to send you his way as soon as I saw you. You’d better go. It sounded important.”
He sighs and says he’ll meet us inside when he gets back.
While he trudges off, I follow Odilia into the theater. We come in from the side, in front of the stage, and my first thought about this place is that it’s huge. I guess it has to be, since it needs to accommodate a whole audience of dragons, but still.
There are giant tiered steps carved into the stone to sit on, overlooking the stage, where Odilia’s friend is rehearsing with a couple other dragons. We climb up a few tiers, and I wonder why we don’t sit in the front row.
“So, Bryn was totally lying,” Odilia says, a sly smile on her face.
I kick out my leg, letting my foot bounce back against the stone. “She wasn’t going to the party with Osric?”
“Oh, no, she was. But only because she practically begged him to ask her, because she couldn’t go otherwise. He wasn’t interested in her—he was just doing her a favor.” She pauses and shouts something in Vairlin at the stage. I have no idea what she just said, but it sounded encouraging. “I went right up to him and told him it was either me or Bryn. He had no idea what I was talking about. So then I bit the back of his neck.”
“You bit him?”
She flips her hair over her shoulder. “My mother would say it’s too bold, but I wasn’t going to wait around for him to make a move. Besides, she wasn’t there.”