The months she spent at the training camp were a leisurely stroll compared to the tutelage she received from the dragon doctor. Worthan did not suffer fools very gladly, and he seemed quite convinced that war was coming sooner rather than later. He had many medical texts which he had brought with him, and he shoved them unceremoniously into her hands. He gave her “surprise” quizzes almost daily.

She stayed up late at night reading and memorizing, and spent most of the day with Worthan as he reviewed surgical techniques with her. When she had first asked if she would not be a liability, given her inexperience, he had shaken his head solemnly.

“My own assistants, doctors and nurses I have personally trained were called away to other duty stations. They could not be sacrificed to send to Kaaltendt, not when our very shores are in such danger. You are my first and last resort. It may be that you will have to train others to be nurses as well.”

Agadart nodded at him, unsure of what to say. War was always a distant notion for Kaaltendt, and there had not been an invasion force on its shores in over a thousand years. Despite being several generations on from Mad King Maganrad, the kingdom had very few dragon doctors. Those they did have were either elite specialists in the capital serving the Queen’s flight, or very low-ranking medics assigned to military posts. It occurred to her that Kaaltendt was far more unprepared than the Isle of Watt for true warfare, but she said nothing and focused on her studies.

She drifted between her quarters and the doctor’s study for the first two weeks, with meals brought to her by the fort’s kitchen staff on Worthan’s orders. Undisturbed, she read for hours and asked questions of the doctor when he was present. She thought often of her father, and the life she had been raised to that was, perhaps forever, lost to her.

When she had first proposed to be a spy against her husband, she had meant it in exchange for the lives of her parents. Her mother had died unexpectedly from an illness not long after, and sometimes Agadart wondered about that; her mother had grown to dislike Agadart’s husband, and had just enough clout with Queen Theaedra to cause him trouble. But whatever the case might be, it left her father in a precarious position. Agadart loathed her husband as a man and as a nobleman, so betraying him was less of an issue than her concerns that the political backwash would drown her father.

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Being punished by being sent to the Dragon Maids Corps had not been on her radar, but in the end, it too was an easy exchange to make. She had personally never expected to inherit her father’s title, anyway. Part of her had honestly always been infatuated with dragons, as unseemly as it was to admit. She remembered fondly the portrait of her uncle Hrecht, her father’s elder brother, stately and somewhat mesmerizing, as he stared out of the painting. His flying form was represented behind him, a particularly stunning beast of orange and brown and blue. Truly a son of the Orange Hills of Battenruck. She had never met him, as he had fled Kaaltendt years before she was born, but she secretly wished she could have asked him what it was like to fly.

Reading dry textbooks about the physiology of dragons was as close as she was ever going to get to the dreams of her younger self, who had once thought that being a dragon maid would be the height of drama and excitement.

The drama and excitement of the royal court had cured her of her desire for adventure, but she knew it would be a long time before she would ever know the peace of feeling safe at home anywhere.

A memory floated up, unbidden: the admiral and his guardian, as they stood on the train station platform, at ease with each other, so different in looks and style and yet so perfectly matched. They had clearly found their “home” together that fit like puzzle pieces into each other’s lives, no matter how unlikely it had happened at all.

She wasn’t jealous, exactly. It was more that she was sad she would never know such affection or love from anyone. She of course had gotten a few propositions for affairs while at court, and one lord had offered her the “asylum” of his bed when the scandal of her husband’s treason had finally been revealed. She had accepted none of the invitations, well aware by then that no one was honest and every offer of “help” came with a high price, whether it was stated upfront or not.

Being a dragon maid with no background meant that she was, at long last, removed from the heated politics that had defined and nearly ruined her life for the past ten years, but it also removed her from proper society in general. Alive or dead, her fate was sealed.

She focused on the text she had been reading again, grateful at least for the chance to challenge her mind and focus on something other than her own sorry, lonely story.