Sir Callie and the Dragon's Roost, page 15
“Definitely not planning on it. Even for the sake of a cool scar.”
She thumps my shoulder. “Not funny.”
“Ow, El!”
“Oh, stop it. You’ve survived worse.” But she rubs my arm and plants a kiss on my cheek in penance. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
A tingling warmth blooms from the place her lips touched. “Yeah. Me too.”
Really glad.
“Come on,” I hear Willow whisper. “They’re not a ghost. You don’t need to be scared.”
“I’m not—” Edwyn freezes in the doorway when he catches my eye, one foot on either side of the threshold. The way he looks at me, you’d think I was some terrible specter.
I push for my biggest smile, trying to look as alive as possible, and wave him over.
I’m pretty sure he’s half a second from bolting when Willow grabs his hand and drags him to my bedside. He won’t look at me, even when I say, “Hey.”
All I get is a curt nod of acknowledgment.
Guilt curls in my stomach, except I don’t even know what I need to apologize for.
“Hey.”
I get another face-averted nod in return.
“Thanks for, you know, saving my life.”
“Of course.” He’s so terse, I wince. It feels like we’re all the way back to that first fight at Helston’s training grounds, when my mere existence was cause for the highest offense. I don’t know what I did wrong.
“How’re you doing?” I try. “You seem—”
“I’m fine. I’m glad you are too.”
“Yeah, sure sounds like you are.”
Edwyn stiffens at my tone, then makes a short bow with a muttered “Excuse me.”
Willow reluctantly lets him pass, and we watch together as he disappears into the hall, closing the door without looking back.
“What’s his problem?”
Willow twists his hair around one finger, which I guess is his new favorite fidget. “That’s the most he’s said since we arrived.”
“To anyone?”
“To anyone,” says El with a distinctly irritated sigh. “It took all three of us to get him out of our room to visit you today.”
“And it isn’t as though he hasn’t been worried,” Willow adds. “When you were unconscious, he made sure there was always someone with you.”
Elowen rolls her eyes. “He didn’t need to make small talk, so it was easier. He’ll be fine.”
“You sound annoyed at him.”
“I’m not annoyed, I’m…” She pauses, holding herself still as she picks out her words. “I don’t understand why he’s sulking. Everything is fine. More than fine. I understand that change is hard. I don’t like it either, but being like that isn’t going to make things easier.”
“He’ll come around,” says Willow, touching El’s folded arms gently. “Once he’s used to things. He always needs a little extra time.”
“A luxury we have never had.” She turns away with a tight, frustrated sound. “You’d think he’d know that by now.”
I catch Willow’s eye, and the look on his face confirms my thoughts: Whatever’s going on with Edwyn, he is not okay.
* * *
I’m half dozing as my friends chatter around me, when there’s a soft tap at the door, and it opens to reveal Teo and a stranger who has warm brown skin and is wearing a butter-yellow dress; long inky-black braids woven with bright multicolored threads hang heavy over their shoulders.
They beam when they see me awake. “Good morning, Sir Callie. I had a feeling you might be awake today. How’re you feeling?”
I’m running out of ways to say awful but alive.
“This is Nina, and her pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘they,’ ” Willow explains, hurrying to help Nina with a tray loaded with a whole collection of clean, folded bandages, a tiny vial of something sapphire blue and glittering, and—most importantly—food! I clamp my mouth shut just so I don’t start salivating like a rabid wolf. “Callie, did you know that some people have more than one set of words? I had no idea!”
My eyes go huge. “Really? I didn’t know that either!”
Nina laughs. “Many folks don’t feel like one particular thing, and that makes it hard to pick the right words to fit you.” They look at me, amber eyes sparkling, and I feel like they’ve had this same conversation with others before. “Your friends tell me your pronouns are ‘they/them,’ right?”
I nod slowly, stunned. There’s a weird feeling in my chest, like discomfort at not feeling discomfort? Because the way she asked me my words, it was as easy as asking my name. No question. No confusion. No weird look or demand for explanation. I’m not questioned, just…accepted.
It’s been such a long time since anyone hasn’t looked at me and assumed “girl.”
My eyesight goes wobbly.
If this is what normal is here, maybe The Roost is a good place for us.
With Nina’s help and Willow’s encouragement, I sit up and lean forward and let Nina carefully pull up my tunic so they can check my bandages. “Looks like you’re well over the hill into recovery. You had us worried for a couple of days.”
“Teo said you’ve seen worse,” I mumble, focusing on anything but the pain as the bandages fall away, exposing my wound to fresh air. “Can’t’ve been that bad.”
“Not the worst doesn’t necessarily mean good. You survived; not all do. But it was hard work getting there.”
“You had it easy,” Elowen adds. “You didn’t have to watch you nearly die.”
I guess that’s fair. In a very roundabout way.
“So,” says Nina, “how’re we feeling on the inside?”
“I feel…really tired. And hungry. Starving, actually. Like the concept of food is fictional.”
“All right, all right.” Willow hurries over with a shallow bowl and a spoon that looks it was made for mouths much larger than mine. “Say ‘aah.’ ”
I try, but it comes out more of an “oomph” when he shovels a heaping spoonful of I-don’t-know-what-and-I-don’t-care right down my throat.
It’s the best something I’ve ever eaten, rich and savory and spicy, with enormous chunks of soft vegetables.
Willow grins as I groan in bliss. “Good?”
I open my mouth again. “Aah!”
Willow feeds me like a fledging while Nina continues their healing, changing the bandages and testing the flexibility of my muscles. Every touch burns, my body filled to bursting with tension. Like all the fear and anger seeped into my muscles and stayed there.
“You are doing well,” Nina says finally, letting me lie down again. “Sleeping for a week probably helped you far more than anything else. By all accounts, you’re not one who sits still easily. A few more days, and you’ll be allowed to be up and about. However”—Nina fixes me with the sternest eye—“your body took a beating and the only way to get back to normal is to be kind to it. That means no pushing yourself, no fighting, only rest.”
I snort. “That’s a big ask.”
“Not asking, telling,” says Nina firmly, and she sounds so much like Neal, a smile tugs at my mouth. “Your friends have given me their most solemn vows to help you sit still.”
I glare at Elowen and Willow and mouth, Traitors.
They just smirk at me, entirely unrepentant.
“Drink this once you’re done eating,” Nina continues, holding up the vial of blue stuff and swirling it so it shimmers. “This is going to help you get your strength back quickly. Make sure they drink all of it,” they tell Willow, handing it to him. Then, to me: “I will visit you every day to make sure you’re moving in the right direction and following your healer’s orders.” But despite the severity of their tone, Nina smiles warmly down at me. “We’re glad you’re here, Callie. All of you. I hope you can find a home with us.”
Nina leaves, closing the door behind them, and Elowen perches on my bed with a smirk. “So,” she says in a distinctly I-told-you-so tone, “what do you think?”
“What do I think of what?”
“Nina. The Roost. All of it.”
I squirm. “Hold your horses, El. I’ve been awake for, what? Two hours?” Truth is, I don’t know what I feel about anything. It all feels good, but in the way dreams do. Like I’m waiting to wake up to a colder, harsher reality. And the more I fall for this fiction, the harder it’ll be.
“What about the stew?” Willow asks.
Okay, he’s got me there. “The stew is really good.”
“Wait till you try the biscuits!”
“There’re biscuits?”
“The best biscuits,” Elowen promises with a glint in her eyes. She knows exactly what she’s doing. “Better than any I’ve ever tasted.”
“And you didn’t bring me any?”
She gives a light shrug. “I suppose you’ll just have to do what Nina says and heal enough to make it downstairs. No biscuits in bedrooms. That’s the rule.”
I glare. “Whose rule?”
“Mine.”
“I knew it! Traitor!”
“Just because you keep saying it,” says Elowen primly, “doesn’t make it true.”
I glower, sinking back into my pillows. I guess doing what I’m told might be worth it for biscuits.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Recovery is just about as long and twice as tedious than I feared, and I have absolutely no choice at all but to stay still and behave. And my friends are not on my side. No amount of begging, whining, or being generally obnoxious makes them relent even a little. They dangle the promise/threat of biscuits over my head like I’m some kind of belligerent donkey. Worst of all, it works. I rest and I heal, and I do the exercises Nina teaches me and I don’t push myself even when it feels like progress is so slow I want to scream.
“Everything in its own time,” she reminds me when I get close to snapping, and whenever she does, I think of Neal. It’s hard to imagine him here, but this was home for him longer than I’ve even known him. I want to ask Nina if they remember him, but every time I think I’m going to, his name gets stuck in my throat.
I miss him so much my chest aches. Him and Papa. They should both be here. They should’ve come with us.
I wonder where they think we are.
My dreams are filled with Helston as I wish it had been, and I always wake up full of longing and homesickness. The dreams are so sweet and real, there’s always a moment where I think I’m back in my bed in our apartment, with Papa’s snores filtering through the wall and the smell of Neal’s cooking drifting in from the kitchen.
But the snores are Willow’s, who has taken to sleeping curled up beside me, and the mouthwatering smell of breakfast wanders up from the world withheld from me downstairs.
Every time I wake up, my back twinges, the wound between my shoulders never letting me forget for a moment what happened and why I can never return. And every time I wake up, I grieve my long-treasured dreams all over again.
It’s hard to let go of something you wished for for so long, even if that something became twisted beyond recognition, even if it was never going to be the thing you wanted, even if your wish could never come true.
Helston was still the dream that fueled me, through life with Mama, through the impossible puzzle of working myself out in Eyrewood. Even after we arrived in Helston itself and nothing was as I’d expected, I still hoped, I still believed, I still clung to the single thing I had always known about myself: I want to be a knight.
I don’t know that anymore.
I don’t know anything.
You can’t be a knight without a kingdom to serve.
Willow and Elowen don’t talk about Helston or Adan or anything approaching serious, and I don’t know how to bring it up. They’re so happy here, safe in this magical bubble that feels like it’ll pop if I dare speak my fears out loud. I don’t want to ruin it for them. But not talking about problems doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Even if we pretend everything’s fine, Queen Ewella is still preparing to ride against Dumoor, and Adan is still out there. He made it perfectly clear that he wants us dead, and he is not the kind of person to admit defeat after one loss.
If he decides to come looking for us again, I don’t know what we’ll do. I’m not in any state to fight, and I have no idea what The Roost can or will do to protect us. I don’t care how adamant Teo is, or how kind Nina appears; when it comes down to it, we’re just Helston runaways, bringing trouble to their doorstop.
I wouldn’t blame them if they turned us in just to keep the peace.
The more I rest, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more my head clears. And that’s not fun for anyone, because once the worries start rolling, they don’t stop, and lying in bed doing nothing as trouble brews like encroaching fog is…not my natural state of being.
By the time Nina gives me the all clear, I feel like I’m going to pop.
My legs are still wobblier than a newborn foal’s, and it takes Elowen on one side and Willow on the other, with my arms slung around both their shoulders, to help me up and out and down the stairs into The Dragon’s Roost itself.
* * *
I don’t know what I was expecting from an establishment called The Dragon’s Roost—probably some kind of communal nest thing? But it turns out that The Roost is a pub. A really big pub. Like, Great Hall–sized, but half the height. Chandeliers made out of carriage wheels and dripping candles swing from fragile-looking chains; strings of tiny sparkling lights are woven across the ceiling like spiders’ webs, and there is so much magic, the air glitters. Enough tables for everyone are spread out with plenty of room to walk between without having to shove or apologize with every step.
A few people glance our way, and a few of them wave in greeting, but most pay us no mind, more focused on their own conversations. We are inconsequential. We are normal.
I stand between El and Willow and just stare. I don’t realize how hard I’m smiling until my face aches. This place is beautiful.
“Over here!” Far across the other side of the room, Teo stands on a chair and waves to us with both arms.
My entourage guides me carefully all the way to a blazing hearth surrounded by huge armchairs and sofas half filled with curious grown-ups. Just the short journey is more than enough to wipe me out, and I collapse into the chair nearest the fire with a grateful sigh and close my eyes. Music and magic and the smell of cooking herbs fill the air, and all I want to do is breathe it in until it’s all that I am.
With the crackle of the fire, I feel like I’m back around the campfire at Eyrewood as Neal’s sweet singing voice conjures pictures in the embers and Josh dishes up supper. The armchair is deep and holds me like a familiar hug.
The music shifts, picking up the tempo and turning into an upbeat ballad about a traveler who gets led into a bog by an attractive yet vengeful spirit. A deep baritone voice takes the lead and, one by one, more voices join in until the whole of The Roost is filled with raucous singing and clattering of dancing feet on wooden boards.
I open my eyes to see Willow and Elowen trotting into the fray and joining the dance—bouncing and twirling completely uninhibited, keeping pace with a tempo that gets faster and faster and faster until it stops abruptly and they collapse with laughter and applause.
I watch hungrily. I don’t dance, not in regular life, where there are steps to memorize and an expectation of delicacy that I do not possess. But this isn’t like any dancing I’ve seen before. This looks…fun.
I can’t wait to be well enough to join in!
“So, what d’you think?” Teo asks, perching on the arm of my chair like some kind of bird. I wonder if dragons have hollow bones too.
“It’s amazing,” I tell xem. “Is it really as good as it seems?”
“It is,” xe replies with total sincerity. “I know it’s hard to believe. Most folks who find their way here struggle for a long while, because how can it be? How can anything be this good?” Xe looks fondly around The Roost. “It was hard for me too. But it’s real, Callie. What you see is what you get.”
I follow Teo’s gaze, absorbing it all. I want it. I want to be part of this. I want to live and grow here with my friends. But there’s still a hard knot of doubt in the middle of my chest that refuses to loosen.
“I don’t understand….”
Head tilted, Teo sits forward with an easy smile. “Wanna talk it through? Maybe I can help.”
I suck my lip. I don’t think I can find words that won’t spoil everything the moment they leave my tongue. This place, these people…they’re supposed to be the enemy. Not just Helston’s, but the way Papa and Neal talked about Dumoor made it sound like a secret cave filled with bloodthirsty wolves in the middle of a cursed forest. Not a warm inn, an unconditional sanctuary to any and all who wander this way. A haven for the lost.
The two pictures in my head are so drastically opposed, they ping right off each other.
Finally, I manage, “Are you…sure this is Dumoor?”
Teo’s ears twitch. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean…I thought I knew Dumoor. I’ve been here before. Twice. And it was awful both times. I’ve heard so many stories—even from someone who used to live here—and this isn’t at all what they made me imagine. I know I don’t have the greatest imagination, but it’s not that bad! There’s got to be something else. Something you’re not telling me.” I meet Teo’s eyes, begging the dragon to tell me the truth. “I just want to protect my friends,” I tell xem. “That’s it. Please help me do that.”
Teo’s smile never falters. If anything, it only gets warmer. “I know it’ll take a long time to really believe, but you have nothing to fear here. That’s the point of The Roost. Even the fighting and everything going on with Helston, it’s all kept separate up at Pioden.”
