Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Steiner shrugs. “I’m sure we can figure that out.”
I look to my father. He stares at the egg, his expression changing from discomfort and disappointment to that elated look again. Not as happy as when he thought he was going to become immortal, but close enough. He’s probably picturing a forty-foot dragon with him as its rider, laying waste to soldiers in some war that’s yet to come. If I really wanted to rub it in, I’d tell him that there is no way he’ll ever be able to train it and that Brynla will be the only one who can, or at least the only one the dragon won’t eat.
But because my father looks happy, deviously so, it means that the pressure is off me. I’m no longer his concern, nor is Brynla.
Chapter 37
Brynla
Three months later
“Snowball fight?” Andor says to me from atop Onyx, the horse dancing back and forth in anticipation.
“Only if you feel like losing again,” I say, gripping the reins of Juniper, the white mare I ride. She belongs to Steiner technically, but since the youngest Kolbeck has no interest in riding, she’s become mine by default.
Which is great, because she’s a lot faster than Andor’s horse.
He grins at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and I feel that flutter in my heart. How much I love this man. It should be a crime.
He knows it too. He uses his looks to disarm me.
“Hee-yah!” he cries out to Onyx, flapping the reins, and his horse takes off, galloping down the lane away from Stormglen.
He leaves me in a trail of dust and fallen leaves, but I only have to cluck to Juniper before she takes off like a bolt of lightning, her white mane flowing in the wind.
Lemi barks, joining in the chase, and he gallops beside me as we catch up to Andor just before we hit the main road. Once we go faster than he can run, he starts to shift and will merrily shift all the way up to Lake Efst.
Not that we’ve come back here since the original visit, summer having faded into shades of gold and bronze, autumn at our doorstep. A change in seasons is a new thing for me, since the only thing that changes in Esland is the path of the sun, and I’m soaking it up every chance I get. The first falling leaf from the mighty oaks outside the castle filled me with such delight, even though Solla lamented that it was a sign of the long winter ahead.
But winter isn’t here yet. Even though there will always be snowfall in the mountains, Andor says we won’t get snow at Stormglen for a couple of months. Until then I’m soaking in the long shadows and shimmering wheat fields and chilled nights that lend themselves to talking with hot pear cider by the hearth.
I’ve been keeping busy too. Andor and I have gone back to the Midlands twice, both to collect more suen and to visit my mother. Our talks are short—and strange, if I’m being honest. She’s my mother and yet she’s not anymore. But even just those brief sessions with her are enough to heal the hole inside my heart, knowing that she’s not quite gone from my life. She’s also been helpful with tips on how to raise the deathdrage, which should be hatching in, oh, about sixteen months. It turns out that the egg has a very long gestation period due to the dragon’s size. But that’s fine with everyone since we need the time to prepare for it. Well, fine for everyone but Torsten, who wants his damned dragon now. For what purpose, we aren’t really sure. One dragon that will want to kill everyone but me doesn’t really help the Kolbecks or the people of Norland. It’s not as if anyone can ride the thing into a coming war.
Speaking of the patriarch, ever since we returned from the heist, Torsten has begrudgingly welcomed me into the family. I know he doesn’t like me, I know he thinks I’m beneath him (though he thinks that of everyone), and Andor’s uncle still goes out of his way to make me feel uncomfortable, but at least I’ve been accepted. They know I’m here to stay. Andor waxed poetic about me while he held his knife to his father’s throat, something that would have been romantic if I hadn’t been so afraid for our lives at the time. But other than publicly declaring his feelings for me in a fascinating display of courage and vulnerability, things haven’t really progressed.
And I’m not complaining. I don’t actually expect Andor to want to marry me. I’m an Eslander, a Freelander, and I don’t know of any Norlander that has married into my people. We’re either fanatical dragon worshippers or rebels, and neither of those things is an asset to either the Kolbecks or the royal family of Norland.