Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
The best way I can describe it is what might happen if you were born seeing the world only in black and white and someone suddenly gave you glasses that allowed you to see color. L’eesha’s power—the power of a Golden Queen—flowed into me and through me, opening a whole new world of possibilities. It was a golden river of light—light that could cleanse the impurity that was spreading through Ryse’s blood and rid him of the Madling’s evil curse.
“Heal…heal…be healed,” I chanted, channeling the power of my dragon directly into him. I felt L’eesha chanting with me, her breath hot against my back as she concentrated on sending me her power to heal the man we both loved.
And slowly, it began to work.
I watched as the gray lines on his skin began to fade. Then the tiny needle-punctures left by the Madling’s teeth began to heal. The color came back to his face and his eyes—which had turned a dull copper—were gold again.
As the pain and impurity left his body, he looked up at me in wonder.
“Auri,” he breathed. “What…what did you do to me?”
“Healed you,” I said and leaned down to kiss his forehead. “Please tell me you feel better.”
“I think I feel better than I ever have in my life!” He sat up and flexed his shoulder experimentally. “You really did heal me—the bite is gone!” he exclaimed.
I laughed in delight and I felt L’eesha echo my joy. Everything was all right! Ryse was going to live! The Madling poison had been expelled from his blood and his wound was healed—not even a single mark remained.
Then a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and someone spun me around.
It was the Head Master, glaring down at me with angry, incredulous eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “And what is a girl doing at my Academy?”
73
AURORA
“They’re ready for you now.”
The guard’s voice made me jerk my head up. I’d been in the brig for a week, and every day was like the others.
My cell was a dark, cold cave located under the Old Drake and the flickering lamp high up near the ceiling threw barely any light over my bare surroundings which consisted of a cot, a toilet, and a sink.
My uniform had been taken, and I was dressed in a dirty gray jumpsuit that was made of a scratchy, burlap material that irritated my sensitive skin. I wasn’t allowed to take baths, but I washed myself in the sink as best I could. My meals were bread and water—sometimes some clumps of cold, fatty meat in congealed gravy. I bitterly missed the delicious food from the Mess Hall—especially the Dragon Custard.
I wasn’t allowed to have visitors, but I was keeping in touch with the outside world through L’eesha, who was in an absolute rage that I had been locked up.
At first she’d wanted to flame the Head Master, who had ordered me locked away. I had to order her not to in the strongest terms I could and make her understand the consequences of her plan.
“If you do that, they’ll have you destroyed!” I told her, keeping our communications strictly mental so none of the guards would know I was having to talk my dragon out of committing homicide. “And then I’ll be without you—I can’t live without you anymore than you can live without me. You have to behave and be patient. I’ll get out eventually.”
“Ryse says the stupid Head Master is mad at you, just because he thought you were a boy and you’re a girl instead!” she told me. “what a stupid thing to be mad about! anyone could tell you are a girl—he only had to smell you to know it!”
“The Head Master doesn’t go around sniffing his students,” I said dryly. “And they don’t allow women riders. I did break the rules.”
“but you helped them win the battle,” she said plaintively. “we both did. without us, the Madlings would have won.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I had been thinking the same thing, myself. “But I still broke the rules.”
“Ryse is angry too,” L’eesha informed me. “he has been to the Head Master many times but he says the Head Master won’t listen.”
She gave me other tidbits of information too—which was how I learned that I was going to be tried in front of the whole Academy for “treasonous behavior.”
Apparently today was the day of the trial—not that anyone had bothered to tell me.
“They’re ready,” the guard said again as he unlocked my jail cell.
He led me down a long, underground tunnel that gradually headed upward until at last we were on the First Level of the Old Drake. I walked behind him, wishing I’d been able to take a bath and wash my face before I left. Though I had taken a cat bath the night before, I didn’t feel clean or presentable at all.