The weekly inspections were the worst part.

They all had to be clean and bright, for those mornings. They would eat their silent breakfast, and then a call from upstairs would ring down, at which point they were all required to troop up like good little subjects. Standing in a line at the top, from tallest to shortest at the top of the stairs, they would wait.

Some weeks it only took a moment for the two women to come over and poke and prod at them, but the other kids had muttered that sometimes it could take up to an hour. Longer, if they'd been noisy during the week.

She hated it. Standing there, being judged by these two country nobodies, like a cow at market. If only her parents could see her now, she thought, quietly seething in anger, her dress too small and her feet bare, as she was poked and prodded like a piece of beef. She hated it.

What would happen if one of them didn't pass muster? None of them knew, but none of them wanted to find out either.

The two women never went downstairs, so this was the only time they saw the children, outside of Incidents. They lived their whole lives in that room, and they did their own cleaning, sending down rubbish and washing once a week for the children to do. Shortfire was the only one allowed up there, outside of inspection.

The women had taken a liking to them, and would sometimes call them upstairs in the morning. They would get little bits of cake and sweets, or be allowed to sit in the corner and look at the books. They hadn't even been told off for shouting on the day Rattleglass arrived!

Rattleglass had expected jealously to be the reaction to this, but most of what she saw was concern. Shortfire was the youngest of them, and the other children were surprisingly protective.

She had to admit, she was a little jealous.

Rattleglass missed books. She had loved reading, when she was younger and her brother was alive. One wall of her bedroom had been dedicated entirely to books, the shelves a rainbow of colours and sizes. She had taught Heartsdream to read the moment he was old enough, and together they had amassed their own library of stories. Some from the shops in town, others gifts from people trying to butter up their parents, and the final ones written themselves, in her own shaky handwriting.

She hadn't looked at those notebooks in years, not since she had lost her soul, but all of a sudden she missed them.

-

Inspection over for the week, and sitting in the branches of an old oak tree, she wondered where those books were now. Probably still on the shelves in their bedrooms, cold and dusty. Waiting for the roof to collapse, the windows to shatter and the rain to come and take them away.

A sudden pang of loss made her almost lose her grip on the branch, and it took her a moment to recover. She should have treasured them more. She should have insisted on taking them with her, should have made sure they would be safe. Those books were a connection to him, and one she would never have again.

In her chest, the Image ached, but she held onto it still, even as it got further and further away from possibility every day.

She had grown even in the past few months, and he had been dead for almost three years now. Thinking about it in such direct terms felt like a betrayal, but she had to accept it. He was gone, had been gone for three years now, and what was the image but a portrait of somebody nobody remembered except her.

She was still small, but not that small anymore, and she had been holding onto it for so long.

"Let go", the magic whispered to her, this isn't you.

She gripped the branch with bloodless fingers and glared out across the water. Fixing it back firmly in her heart and pushing the voices away.

No. She was better than this. She would survive, and she would hold on.

-

As she slid down the tree, her bare feet scraping against the trunk, she thought, with a mixture of grief and guilt, about her parents. She hadn't done well by them she was realising now. Blinded by loss, she had spent most of the last two years in silence. Barely eating and leaving her room only when coaxed.

Her tutors had been dismissed and then never called back, and she hadn't even ridden her pony, the poor thing, although she was sure that the stable-hands and grooms had seen to it that she was cared for. Poor Freckles, hopefully, she had gone to a good home.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She had been blinded by her pain, the loss of her soul, her Heartsdream.

She chewed the inside of her lip, staring blankly at the small stream for a moment. Where had all those animals gone? Her mother's hunter, her father's roan, the shires for the farm machinery. Even the falcons and dogs were gone. Within a day the stables were empty and she was alone in the house. Surely things couldn't move that fast without some sort of prior planning?

Had it been poison? She hadn't even considered it before now, but she wouldn't be surprised.

Rattleglass paddled into the shallow water, hitching her dress up so the hem didn't get wet, enjoying the contrast between the icy water on her feet and the hot sun on her shoulders.

Much like the books, she would probably never find out. She didn't even know what part of the country she was in. The accents were certainly different here, as well as the styles of the buildings. She had flown for a long time, but she didn't know how fast Dragon flew. It couldn't be that far, surely, the language hadn't changed.

She leant over, holding her dress up with one hand, and using the other to splash her face with the cold water, half-remembered lessons in her mind. The iciness of it indicated a glacier somewhere along the line, snowmelt, probably somewhere southern, right? Or was it northern, it was all so long ago.

She hadn't seen any mountains nearby, but it was hard to see anything through the trees. She would have to check next time she was in the village, it was a bit more open there.

With a sigh, she clambered out, almost slipping on the smooth pebbles of the streambed, and started back towards the den. Maybe Shortfire was free by now.

-

Shortfire wasn't free, but Icecoat was there, splayed out on the cushions like a downed stag, all long limbs and sharp angles in the afternoon light.

She ignored him, and instead wandered over to the remains of the fire, nudging it with her toes to see if there was any warmth left. It was cold and dry, so she left her foot in the ashes, enjoying the way the little chips of carbonised wood crumbled under the grinding of her heel.

They were still a little damp from the stream, and the ashes happily absorbed the water, turning her feet a dusty grey. She never would have been allowed to get dirty like this, back at home, and it still gave her a little thrill of rebellion.

Icecoat looked over at her, pushing himself up on sharp elbows, and she studiously ignored him. She hadn't interacted with the boy much, he mainly hung around with Cloverstep, but she got the impression he didn't like her.

He sighed loudly, an exaggerated exhalation of breath, and flopped his head back to where it had been before, his arms and legs spread out.

"Suppose you want me to deal with that, eh?" his voice sounded strange from the angle, like he wasn't talking to her at all.

She shrugged and shook her head, not saying anything. She didn't have any clue how you lit a fire, but the sun was too hot for it anyway.

He groaned and pushed himself up into a proper sitting position, "if you want me to help, ya gotta speak up, y'know."

"I'm fine." Her voice came out harsher than she meant, and she hid her wince with another shrug, rubbing the sole of her foot in the ashes of the fire.

"And stop that" he sighed, "you'll muck it all up."

Rattleglass stopped mucking it up, and instead sat down on one of the logs that had been dragged in as seating, watching his face as he returned to his previous position. Should she apologise? Probably not.

She could still see her footprint in the remains of the fire, and she stared at it for a while, thinking about nothing.

"How did you end up here?" She surprised herself almost as much as him, the question coming out of her mouth unbidden.

There was a beat of silence, and then "I walked 'ere, from the house. Same as you did."

She glared at him in annoyance, but he was crawling to his feet, and had his back to her now, so it was a little wasted. "You know what I mean."

He shrugged, walking over and crouching down to pick up some sticks from the rim of the area. "Parents din' want me around, so they paid this place to take me, same as you, same as all the others. Simple as."

"Paid?"

He turned his head, looking at her for a brief moment, one arm full of twigs, the other hand still in mid-air for a moment, "Yeah, like, with money, you know the stuff?"

His response was a little heavy on the sarcasm, but it gave her a start, "I thought… The government paid for me to be here?"

He laughed and rose out of the crouch in one smooth motion, "nah! Government wouldn't care. They'd just send you to the workhouse or something, toss you out on your arse. Somebody paid money to have you looked after here."

He must have seen something on her face, because he trailed off and the laughter went out of him, his expression morphing into a frown, "ya really thought you just ended up here by like, luck?"

She shrugged, "That's…" she bit her lip, how to word this, "the people who found me said I was going to an orphanage, I thought…"

Rattleglass didn't know what she'd thought, if anything. Orphanages were places that looked after babies, right? When their parents were too poor to raise them? She had read books about children adopted from orphanages by rich families, it wasn't an uncommon theme.

She stared into the ashes of the cold fire, jumping a little as Icecoat dropped his gathered twigs onto its remains, "everyone else here has parents?" she asked hesitantly.

Icecoat nodded. "Not parents who want us mind, but yeah?"

"Huh." She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again with no idea of what she had been going to say, "huh."

He watched her for a moment, before shrugging. "Guess somebody out there must've been lookin' out for you, anyway."

"I guess."

He nudged at the firepit a little and then disappeared, away through the willow curtain. She watched him go, and then sat more heavily on the log, pondering.

It made sense when she thought about it. Why would they put her on the back of a dragon and fly her for weeks across the country, if an orphanage closer to home would have done?

She hadn't been in any state of mind to question it during the journey, or after her arrival, malnutrition and grief making her blind, but now that she was in a better place…

What was being hidden from her, or what was she being hidden from?