After his scary speech, Rosalea half-expected the dragon to stay around, but he left her there. He did not come back. She only got dinner from Oralee that night. “Did you have any questions for Lord Kaylar?”
Rosalea glanced at her right hand. She had been trying to decipher the lettering in it most of the afternoon. She wanted to know what he wanted with her now that she had healed Rhainnon. You only wanted me to heal Rhainnon, I think. With that purpose fulfilled, she felt that perhaps the dragon did not know what to do with her, and perhaps did not want her. “No,” she informed the maid.
“Very well. Someone will be back a little later to remove your stitches.”
Rosalea nodded and watched the woman leave and close the door. She flopped back onto the bed, staring at the faraway ceiling. Not wanting me would be fine, except he branded me and said I had to stay here.
She sulked. She thought back about Mire, about the crow that she had seen before getting picked up by the men and brought to the dragon. Would the Ieshans assume she was dead?
It was what she had assumed about Rhainnon, but it was becoming clear that most of what the dragon probably took people for involved maintaining this oversized castle he lived in. Haidi hated me so much for killing her daughter that she tried to kill me. All for what? So she could come here and work with sheep?
She looked at her right hand again, the empty circle the dragon had said would fill in when she got a liana, and she wondered how that could even happen with her being trapped here. She had not had freedom to move around Mire, and it was impossible to imagine it being any better here.
She leaned and picked up the hand mirror from the bedside table and looked at herself in it. She could clearly imagine the angry red mark over the top of her nose, and the splatters she had seen on the image of herself in the window. How would I be seeing myself? She looked at the brand again, and tried to think what had filled in the circle for her liana, but she couldn’t remember it, or maybe it had not been in focus.
She remembered in the Uryan camp, one of the teenage boys had suddenly just stopped what he was doing and wandered off into the woods. No one had stopped him; they had just watched him go almost a little solemnly. Vetoka explained to her that he had heard his familiar’s call, and privacy was needed to make a proper bond. Will that even be possible here? The dragon taught me to heal, but does he understand about Uryans and liana bonds?
They believed anyone who did not answer a liana’s call for you would go mad because your black magic would eventually twist because it was never fully developed. The liana was an anchor point and a lifeline to the gods. To refuse such a gift was the worst sin imaginable.
But, would this dragon understand? What would happen to Rhainnon?
She wished she had been able to see Rhainnon. She spent the evening pacing the room. Oralee came back with an elf. He nodded to her, “I am Maliff,” he introduced himself. He had green skin with brown patches, intense pink eyes, long dark brown hair, and he seemed to be wearing robes made out of herbs and flowers. “Please, have a seat.”
He gave her some salves and kept her distracted talking to him about camping in the wilderness somehow as he pulled stitches. He had apparently grown up in a thick and swampy forest far away from here. Oralee asked again if she needed anything; she would be happy to let Kaylar know. Rosalea shook her head no. Then they left, and they locked the door. Rosalea sighed. Oralee is the cell-keeper and this is my jail.
The next day, time dragged on. There was very little to do in the room, and she got to where she didn’t find the lavish meals as interesting as she had the day before. She spent most of her time sitting at the only desk in the room, the only piece of furniture by the window. She was reading some book Oralee had brought for her only half-heartedly, and spending a good deal more time staring out the window.
Oralee arrived with food dinner, and when Rosalea just moodily looked away from her, she would make a small humming noise. “Can I bring you anything else? Something new to read? Do you draw perhaps?”
Rosalea shrugged silently. She drew a little, but only as much as the Ieshans had ever mandated that she must draw. She was much better at things outside than she had ever been at things inside. Furthermore, she was heartily sick of things inside.
“Here is your food. I really must encourage you to eat. Can I get you anything to do? Would you like to talk to Lord Kaylar?”
Rosalea frowned. This was the third time she had asked her that. “Could I please take a walk outside? Fresh air would be nice,” she tried not to plead, but she felt so bored and trapped, she could not quite help it. She used to climb out windows to avoid reading and desks just like this one.
Oralee grew very grave. “I am sorry, Rosalea. You shall have to ask Master Kaylar about that. I could bring you something for here, maybe?”
The denial made her want to cry. Then she felt suffocating rage nearly overwhelm her. For a second, she was paralyzed by the injustice of it all, she could barely breathe through how tight it felt over her chest. She shook her head no. She was not going to ask for anything from that entitled monster. If this was a test to see how long it took her to break down and beg him for basic things, then they could wait forever. She held herself still and tight inside as she felt herself coming near tears. She would not cry in front of this woman. She would not cry anywhere within these walls. She bowed slowly in her seat to Oralee and shook her head no again. The maid retreated.
***
Kaylar sighed as he watched Oralee leave the room. She looked up at him. “She asked to go outside. As you suggested, I told her she must ask you.”
Kaylar nodded to her. He could feel the tangible anger she was feeling powerfully enough that he felt his own heart feeling the squeeze of it. “Thank you, Oralee. Continue with the current plan for just one more day.”
Oralee looked doubtful. She bowed to him. Kaylar stood where he was and looked down the hall at the door to Rosalea’s room. Oralee was thinking, I know she does not want to talk to Kaylar, but I am not sure she will ever give in. She looked positively crushed that I had to tell her no about going outside.
Kaylar was glad that all the other people on his manor did not know he could hear their thoughts. He realized that he had been quite annoyed that Rosalea was able to know he could hear hers. It would have made things simpler if she was not so guarded. Of course, I somewhat set this up by leaving her behind in Mire. After all, she spent several weeks thinking I had killed Rhainnon. Worse, I clearly put her in a situation that has brought about her current state of weakened health.
He ignored his guilty feelings as he turned away.
***
Rosalea awoke the next morning feeling more frustrated and angry than she had upon going to bed. She felt odd. Like her whole body was a little tingly, but she didn’t know what could be causing it. Maybe too much rest and not enough room to move around in. Breakfast was already on the table. She didn’t eat it. She was sick of sitting around, reading, and eating. She went and sat in the corner, where the sun was lighting the room, and put her head on her arms, propped up on her knees.
She still wanted to cry, but she was doing all she could to bury the need so far down she never felt it again. I am not weak, and I will not break.
After a while, more nothing happened. And she got bored of sitting in the corner. And her stomach informed her it was hungry. So, she relented and got up and started eating the food on the table.
Time dragged on into little eternities… She read her book, paced, read her book, got brought a new book and lunch. She wasn’t even half done with the first. She paced. Paced some more.
She started to feel so angry that she wanted to beat the walls with her fists… or the door. She even thought about antagonizing the dragon to kill her. If he didn’t want her, why did he make her stay?
“I can see you are agitated,” the maid said that night. “All you need to do is ask our Master Kaylar for what you need.”
Rosalea refused. She suddenly understood exactly what this game was, and what the dragon was doing. He wanted to force her to rely on him. I bet if I attack my jailer, he would do something pretty swiftly about that.
She let Oralee leave unscathed. The woman was nice enough.
***
“One more day did not get us anywhere, and this time I saw her look angry at me. I think she knows you are trying to get her to ask for you, and I can see she is resolved not to do that,” Oralee said.
“I see. Then, if that will not work; we shall have to do something else.” He took a deep breath in and slowly let it out.
“Does the law really require that we keep her?” Oralee asked. “She seems maybe off or dangerous to me.”
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“It was decided a long time ago by the dragon council. I took her, so I am responsible for her now.” He put his head down to her, pushing her with his nose a little. “Do not worry. There are things I have not tried yet.”
She nodded and clearly felt relieved as she hugged his face. It was a little bit of a lie on his part though. He actually did not feel confident he could win a personality like Rosalea’s over. She was too guarded, and this showed she was also aware of the kinds of things he might do to try and win her over. She knew he wanted her to ask him for something, so he could encourage her to develop some trust and rapport with him, and she had clearly committed to refusing to do that.
It irritated him that she was ahead of him, and he wished she was not so magical that she had caught him listening in on her thoughts. She had too much self-control and could stand there and refuse to think… which put him at a disadvantage getting her to think through their interactions and come to any kind of positive stance.
If her liana opted to call for her, it would break his control over her, and then he would have to do an unspeakable thing he had avoided all his life. After all, when he was a young dragon just helping to set up the kingdom of Myraduil, he had thought it a good idea that they have their pick of the best humans, and to stop humans from trying to fight to get their loved ones back, the idea would be to persuade them that sacrifices were food or something not worth going after.
No one was allowed to let their “sacrifices” go as a result.
He was older now, and he wished he had been wiser back then. Well, let us go try something else with her then.
***
Rosalea paced. She wanted to tear her skin off rather than be trapped here another moment. She was fed up with this. She was finished with waiting for nothing. Hmm… the dragon said it would displease him if I broke the window. But, I want outside, and I am not sure if I care whether or not I incur his displeasure… as long as I make it a few seconds outside in the fresh air.
She looked around the room, eyeing different objects and trying to choose which would be most useful for shattering a window. At that moment, she heard the door move. She started to move toward the desk to pretend to be sitting and reading, but it was not the smaller door that opened. It was the big double door that slowly swung forward. Her heart slowly sank in her chest. That could only mean one thing: the dragon was entering the room. She looked down and felt frozen.
He slowly entered and the door shut behind him. He looked down at her. She could feel his eyes measuring her. She was very still; she did not know what to do. She wondered if he had heard her plot against his window. He answered that immediately, “I told you before, not to damage my window,” the dragon said. His voice seemed excessively mild. “Very well, so that I can prevent crimes against my glass windows, let us go outside. Where are your shoes?”
She was silent. She was so very still. She slowly bowed to him. “I am sorry I thought to break the window, sir. Also, I do not have any yet.”
***
The title sir bugged him somehow. He didn’t know why. From someone else, it would not have bothered him in the slightest. As he watched her maintain her partially bowed to him pose, he felt he knew why. She clearly had training in manners, even if they were Ieshan ones, and she was endeavoring to slight him by not calling him “Lord.” He let it alone. One battle at a time. “No matter. Come along.” He opened the door and waited for her to go out in front of him.
***
Rosalea tried hard not to think. But she could feel herself wanting to try to reason out what he was up to now. Yet, she couldn’t bear the idea of him reading her mind. It was maddening enough he could pry into her inner thoughts as it was. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. She could hardly master the feeling of rage she felt for being locked up by this creature for so long, and how he could act as if he was just waiting for her to ask for things, as if it was not part of a game he was playing to force her to be dependant on him or be locked in.
“I know you are not thinking because you are afraid of me hearing, so you cannot possibly have changed your mind about going outside. I will accompany you,” he insisted.
She flushed as she felt the ridicule in his tone for her approach, but it did not make her feel inclined to change her mind in the slightest. She felt he would not like it if she was in his head listening to his inner thoughts.
He stared at her. She felt all the pressure of the silence and his eyes on her. She did find herself giving in at least one way; he got her to talk. “Please, I would very much like to go outside.” Stiffly, she began to walk forward toward the open door, finding it difficult to go near him or to put him behind her.
***
Despite all the rage she felt at him, the rage which intensified because she had to ask him for so simple a privilege, he felt a true plaintiveness inside her. A true desperation to be in the fresh air and out of the castle. Was it because she was desperate to escape? He wasn’t sure. She had all the nature magics, and that often led to cravings to be around those things… and her weather and plant magics were both quite strong. It could be just that.
He turned himself around, and as he moved behind her, she froze again. Interesting, not just angry at me, but also afraid of me. He plucked her off the ground with magic, eliciting a little squeak that would have been cute if he did not find her to be such a difficult emotional savage. He placed her quite deliberately up on his shoulders, where she would have slid off if he had not slowed it with his magic because she was so slow to grab onto him. “There, no need for shoes,” he tried to tease her a little.
***
Rosalea’s heart would not stop pounding. She carefully tried not to hang on too much, but she did not want his invisible magic touching her again in particular, another reminder of how she was missing what felt like more than half her senses. She looked at the castle as they walked, but she was careful not to stare or seem too intently interested. She felt more at ease as she was able to distract herself by the observation that everything else was very much oversized, big enough for a dragon to move about in freely. Also, like her room, it was filled with costly things. Thick, jewel-encrusted, gold and silver woven in, tapestries hung all about the walls. Where there were tiles, there were finely wrought stones, such as quartz or granite, and the carpeting was lush and thick everywhere else.
At last, they had passed through the hall and into the receiving room, and finally out the large doors and at long last outside. It was as she expected from looking out the window. An army of gardeners and very probably plant mages tended this place. The whole area was grassy, but the grass was uniformly the same height. Rich mazes of different trees and flowers spilled everywhere as far as she could see away from the house, and each were clearly meticulously maintained even in the fall weather.
Rosalea felt not what she hoped upon coming outside. She had hoped that the building tension… the strange feeling under her skin… that sense of being off and overfull, would alleviate when she finally felt the sunshine on her skin.
But it didn’t change. The world looked as dull and flat in reality as it had been through the glass of her window. Her magic was still heavily blocked, and things were still lacking the usual vibrant colors she was used to seeing. The grass was literally a great deal less green. She remembered how it had first scared her to see so much extra color in the world… and now, she really missed it and wouldn’t have it any other way.
The dragon was silent. She was silent. They walked around the garden. The dragon watched her, and she watched him. Each was measuring the other. Each was struggling to come to conclusions. Each was annoyed by the other’s existence.
Despite the disappointment she felt, it was still nice to be outside, and she found some of her energy for being angry ebbing a little.
***
I wish she was not so good at not thinking, Kaylar thought, having to make guesses about what he could feel from her mood. She did seem significantly improved by going outside. He noticed hesitation in touching him, and he felt that was not just because she did not like him, but perhaps linked somewhat to that fear she had. After all, some animals when they were cornered, would just fight.
His hypothesis became that she was that cornered animal, looking for a fight because there was no other choice. I think this is not the best way to help you calm down. What I should do is take you out of the corner. If I put you around positive people, maybe you will see that I am not as threatening to you as you have imagined, even if you are desperate to hide your thoughts and true self from me.
“I think I know what to do with you now,” he informed her. Since it was a brief flight to the shepherd’s fields and a little cold out, he summoned her to her gem storage - gems he kept in a pouch around one ankle. Rhainnon will be pleased to have her back. Rosalea may learn from Rhainnon how to behave.
***
That was all the warning she got. There was a sudden movement of his paw and all the world went the same green color it had when she got here. She felt seriously jolted and knelt down. However annoyed she felt for the lack of warning that she was going to be placed in this world, she felt relieved at the knowledge he most likely could not pry into her thoughts here.
This must be gem storage. The books Ulric made me read said only very powerful deep mages could use it. It is similar to the vitae mage earth-storage. Rosalea looked around. She observed that yes, she did seem to somehow be inside a gem. The world was deep green, and angular around her, like she was in a room in which the walls were put together at odd angles. She folded her arms and closed her eyes. She did not feel like there was a block on her magic for the moment, but at the same time, she did not feel her magic at all. When she tried to reach into her pool, it almost felt as if she had none.
She opened her eyes. Which means, he has a way to neutralize me at any time, should he want to. I am worse than completely powerless in this space. I am-
There was a jolt. She blinked her eyes as the bright setting sun shone on her face. It seemed, just as quickly as she was placed in the gem, she could be brought out. Which meant she would not be able to see such a thing coming, until it happened, and she would not be able to fight back either. So, the best method was to wait and see if she could understand how close he needed to be to her to actually use it.
She took in her surroundings. She was up on a hill. The forest was pressing close to one side, the trees thick and untouched. The other side of the hill was sharply different. It was a clear valley, though the pine forest ringed close all around it. In the bowl of the very large valley, she saw sheep, a few horses, a couple of dogs, and several people moving around. She also saw outlandishly large houses dotting the edges of the bowl. Someone was coming up the hill toward them. Kaylar moved and blocked her vision of whoever it was, and that person’s vision of her.
“Rhainnon,” she heard the dragon say. “How have you been doing these last couple of days?”
“Master Kaylar,” Rhainnon greeted in a polite tone, but she sounded excited to see him. “I get a little tired sometimes, still. Everyone has been very understanding and helpful to me.”
“I see. I thought that might be the case, so I brought you someone else that gets tired easily, and perhaps the two of you together can help one another.”
Kaylar suddenly moved to the side. Rosalea tensed as Rhainnon ran at her and flung her arms about her. “Rosalea! You are well! Kaylar said you had some trouble…”
She was searching Rosalea’s face as she awkwardly hugged her friend back. “I… played with some plants I shouldn’t have,” Rosalea said softly.
“You poisoned yourself? I thought you were good at survival!”
Rosalea flushed a little as she tried to think up a passable lie. “I wasn’t too familiar with swamp area… I was tired.”
“Good that Kaylar was able to save you!” Rhainnon grinned, taking her hands. Rosalea nodded awkwardly. That part was a little true, at least; if not for Kaylar, she should certainly have died. Yet, if not for Kaylar, she would have been in the position that she got poisoned in.
“Rhainnon, I want you to go ahead to your home and make a place ready for Rosalea. I brought her here on an impulse, so I will be bringing her along the rest of the way since I brought her without shoes.”
I… Rosalea flinched and managed to stop thinking. It was making her head pound terribly.
Rhainnon grinned and practically skipped down the hill.
“She is more happy to see you than I can express,” Kaylar said.
Rosalea made herself stand still.
“It is harder on you to be so guarded and not to think.” She looked away from his stare and looked at the ground instead. The dragon sighed. “Have it your way, I will not quiz you about what you choose not to say in any form in my presence. I think you give me too much credit toward being nefarious with what you think. You are a lot safer than you are willing to let yourself feel. That being said, I am absolutely certain you are not the one who put that herb into the wound on your hand.” Rosalea didn’t answer the unasked question. She just remained as blank and still as possible. “It was probably a kind lie,” Kaylar said after a moment. “Come along. I want you to work hard to do well. I would hate to have to move you away again.”
As he scooped her up with magic again, she could not help but be very frustrated at his open willingness to offer her something she would want… and then be clear he could take it if he did not like how she behaved. “I understand,” she made herself say.