Solar felt Zara shrink back into the trees, away from the men.
“He was wrong,” said Solar. “Head back to camp and see if the armory needs help with weapons maintenance.”
The two young pledges followed his directions immediately. But when Solar turned back, he found that Zara had gone as well. Not even a leaf quaked on its stem to show where her escape route had been.
CHAPTER TWO
Just breathe, Zara, she told herself. She followed her own directions and felt a tiny bit better, calmer. It was ridiculous to be so scared to talk to somebody she’d known practically since she was born.
Zara stood outside of Solar's hut. The moonlight turned her pale skin silver. The whole camp was silent. Sleeping. She knew she should be, too, and she’d tried. But it was no use. She had to talk to Solar. She had to get his promise. A promise that would mean everything to her. She didn't know what she would do if he didn't say yes. Well. She did. But she didn't want to do it.
She padded softly through the camp, past each hut that held her sleeping comrades. She slept in the infirmary, always had, because there was always an extra cot in there. And though she wasn’t a trained nurse, whenever someone was injured, they always seemed to want her around. She supposed she had a quiet, soothing way. She was glad she was quiet as she passed by all the darkened huts. Though each one was highly moveable, the nature of a temporary camp, they were also sturdy. There was the kitchen hut, where food for the Surgere was prepared. Then the armory. The war hut, where Solar, the Oracle, and Javi, their second-in-command, made decisions regarding the revolution. It was like a little village of revolutionaries. And for Zara, it was home. No matter where they camped. Over the last four years they’d camped in the mountains, on the beach, and finally in the jungle. She loved it here the best. The canopy always teemed with life, noise, colorful flowers, and dripping water. So different from the stony, silent palace where she’d been imprisoned for so long.
Her life with the Surgere was messy, loud, simple. And she loved it. She didn’t want a single bit of it to change. Which was why she was standing outside of Solar’s tent, wringing her hands and preparing to ask him a monumental favor.
Zara tucked her long, chestnut hair neatly behind her back and stared at the door to Solar's hut. She supposed she wasn't actually scared of him. He just threw her off. She never had her footing around him. She was always a little jumpy, a little nervous.
It hadn't always been like that. When she'd been a child, playing in the palace yard, there had been no one she’d rather have spent her time with than Solar. He'd been a teenager then, and deeply patient and indulgent with her. It would take barely more than a request from her to get him to flop down in the grass beside her to play with her dolls.
She'd wept for a month when Solar disappeared from the castle. She wouldn’t learn for years that it was because he had refused his status as a serf and servant. That he had left to lead a revolution against the king. That was about the same time that Zara had learned that she wasn't just a castle servant, that she had been selected at birth to serve as one of the king's wives. And at around twelve, she'd had to start dressing the part. The king kept his distance from her, but she was clearly still marked territory. And doomed to either bear him an heir or be executed.
The jungle air was balmy, but Zara shivered as she pulled her thin night dress tighter around her as she remembered the night that Solar had rescued her from that fate. Well. Technically it had been the revolution rescuing her. But it was Solar that Zara remembered, bursting through the roof of the castle’s great hall in his midnight blue dragon form.
At that moment, the greatest moment of her life to date, all Zara was thinking was he came back for me. She had shifted to dragon form to fly alongside him instantly. It was the easiest decision she had ever made. And Zara never regretted it for a second.
But it hadn't been like she had dreamed it would be, to see Solar again.
Gone was the goofy, amiable teenager who made silly voices for dolls and ruffled her hair. In his place was a hardened, stern leader. And gone was the easiness that Zara used to feel with him.
The second she'd been taken on by the revolution she'd felt underfoot, a burden. So she'd made herself useful. She was as good a nurse as any of the other trained dragon shifters and she pulled her weight in every other way as well. Cooking, cleaning, packing up and moving the camp whenever they had to. At first, the soldiers and workers had treated her like she was fragile, made of glass. As if she were royalty. But it didn't take long for Zara to prove she wasn't scared of hard work and couldn't be happier to be free of the royal life. Sure, her life in the castle had been opulent. Defined by gorgeous clothing and delicious meals. But she'd been a slave to the king. She was infinitely more at peace in the crude, rough and tumble camp, pulling her own weight and working hard. Living as a free and independent soul.