The Princess of Trelian (29 page)

“What’s wrong?” she asked from where she’d stopped, just inside the door.

“Sit down, Meg,” said her father.

She sat. She tried not to imagine what new terrible thing could have happened now. The king was holding a piece of parchment in his hand.

“A courier from Lourin brought King Gerald’s response this morning,” her father began. “He seems to be somewhat recovered from Sen Eva’s influence. But he still isn’t certain he believes we are not behind the attacks. He is willing to discuss matters, however, and will hold off on a formal declaration of war pending our negotiations.”

She looked back and forth between her parents. “But — but that’s good news, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But there are certain . . . conditions.” The king sighed, then looked at her squarely. “Meg, he is insisting that you and Jakl be confined to the castle grounds, at least until matters are sorted out. I realize you —”

Meg jumped back to her feet. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Meg,” her mother said, “given all that has happened, and especially given how things must seem from Lourin’s perspective, it is not at all unreasonable for King Gerald to ask for this. And we will agree, and graciously, because our priority must be to prevent hostilities from escalating.”

“I will not —”

“Sit down, Meg,” her father said. When she hesitated, he added, “Right now.”

Meg took a deep breath and made herself sit down again.
Stupid,
she scolded herself. She was supposed to be showing her parents how responsible she could be. How able she was to put Trelian’s needs before her own. And her dragon’s.

She tried to make her voice calm and reasonable. “Father,” she began, “I understand. I do. But can’t we tell King Gerald that we promise not to approach his lands? Surely that’s all he really cares about. . . .” Her father was shaking his head.

“King Gerald was very clear about what he wanted,” her father said. “He does not want to take our word for it that the dragon will not approach his boundaries. He does not want to risk harm to his allies, either. He is sending an army to wait at our borders, Meg, and he will have soldiers stationed here, watching the sky and the roads. I believe he sent outriders along with the courier, in fact, so some of his men are already here. We cannot refuse him this, not if we want to avoid sparking hostilities. Jakl must not leave the castle grounds. Not to fly, not to hunt, not to go for a stroll along the Queen’s Road. He will stay right here, and so will you.”

An army. Oh, gods. Jakl had been slowly stirring again as she had responded to her father’s announcement, and she could feel him fully focused on her now, aware of her agitation. She tried to soothe him through the link, but it was hard to do while she was so upset. And frightened.

“But it’s not fair,” she said. She heard the whine in her voice and hated herself for it. “Jakl didn’t do anything! They’re punishing him for something that’s not his fault!”

“Fair has nothing to do with it,” her mother said. “Of course it’s not fair. Ruling a kingdom is not about what’s fair and what’s not. You must learn that, Meg. If you are to be the princess-heir, you must be able to put the good of the kingdom before everything else.”

“I know that,” Meg said, trying to stay calm, trying to ignore the “if” in her mother’s last statement. “I just —” No.
No.
No arguments. She had to show them that she could do this. She took another deep breath. “All right. Of course, if that’s what we need to do. I’ll try to make Jakl understand.”

Her father sat back in his chair. “Well . . . good. Thank you, Meg.” The relieved glance that passed between her parents was irritating but, she supposed, not undeserved.

“With the Lady’s blessing, we will have this sorted out soon,” her mother added. “It’s only temporary, Meg.”

Meg nodded and rose to leave, trying to focus on feeling glad to have pleased her parents rather than on the heaviness in her heart. Jakl wouldn’t really understand, and he would not be happy.

She went out through the gardens, past the neatly manicured shrubs and delicate trees and then to the outer ward and the path to Jakl’s paddock. He was out in his field, waiting for her.

She could feel his inquiry, wondering what was wrong. Underneath she could feel his desire to take her flying. It made her want to weep.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We won’t be able to go flying for a while.” She pressed her face against his warm scales. “We have to stay here. Both of us. Because of . . . because of that nonsense happening in Lourin. It’s not fair, but we have to. Do you understand?” She tried to send him images from her mind, visions of them here together, not being miserable.

“It won’t be so bad, really,” she said, trying to convince them both. “At least we’ll be together. And it’s only for a little while.”

Please let it only be for a little while.

A flicker of his attention through the link made her turn to see what he was seeing. Maurel was standing a few yards behind her, rocking slightly on her feet in the tall grass.

“Hi, Meg,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Meg said, sighing. “Nothing at all.”

Maurel came the rest of the way over and reached out to pet Jakl’s nose. He bent to make it easier for her to reach. “Are you going to go for a ride?” Maurel asked hopefully.

“No,” Meg said. “We’re not — we’re not allowed.”

Maurel stopped petting and looked up at her. “Did you get in trouble?”

“Not exactly.” Meg didn’t know how much to explain. “Do you know about what’s going on with Lourin?”

“That they’re mad at us? Yeah, I know that. But it’s dumb. We didn’t do anything to them, did we?”

“No, we didn’t. But they think we did. And they think Jakl in particular did some very bad things. So until Mother and Father can work everything out with King Gerald, Jakl and I aren’t allowed to go flying.”

“Oh,” Maurel said solemnly, taking this in. “I’m sorry. I know you like flying.”

“Thanks, Maurel. I’m sorry, too.”

Meg sat in the grass and leaned back against the dragon. After a moment, Maurel sat beside her.

“Is it hard, having a dragon?” she asked after a while.

Meg looked at her. “What do you mean?”

Maurel shrugged and plucked a piece of grass to play with. “I don’t know. You don’t always seem very happy, since Jakl came. You get angry a lot.”

Meg thought about how to answer that one. “Well, it’s complicated sometimes,” she said finally. “But mostly I really like having a dragon. I know that I’ve been angry a lot lately, but some of that — some of that was . . .” Meg was again unsure how much to say. She didn’t want to upset her sister unnecessarily. “Some of that was because I was having bad nightmares. They made me feel very angry even when I didn’t have any reason to be. It wasn’t real, but I didn’t know that.”

“Was Jakl having them, too? Is that why he was so angry last night?”

The queen had already put Maurel back to bed by the time Meg and her father had finally gotten back upstairs last night. She had thought her parents would have explained things to her this morning, but maybe they hadn’t. Or maybe Maurel just needed to hear it again. From Meg. She probably suspected by now that grown-ups didn’t always tell her the full truth about everything.

“Yes,” Meg said seriously. “That’s exactly what happened. But we fixed that. Calen and Mage Serek did some magic to protect us from the nightmares. So it won’t happen again, okay?”

Maurel nodded. “Okay.”

They sat quietly for a bit, Maurel twisting pieces of grass into a chain, Meg just sitting and thinking. After a while Meg asked, “Do you wish I didn’t have Jakl?”

Maurel didn’t answer right away. “No,” she said finally. “I like him. And I know you like him. But . . .”

“But what?”

Maurel looked up from her grass twisting. “But you’re different now. Sometimes I wish you could have stayed the same.”

Meg reached over and pulled Maurel close to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and squeezing. “Sometimes I wish that, too,” she whispered.

They both got quiet again after that. Meg leaned back and closed her eyes. She wondered what Calen was doing, and if he was still mad at her. Then she decided she didn’t want to think about that. She would just sit here in the sun with her dragon and her sister and not think about anything unpleasant for a little while.

“Meg?”

“Hmm?”

“If I found a dragon, would it make me different, too?”

“Probably,” Meg said, her eyes still closed. The sun was warm and soothing on her face. “But I thought you wanted to have a link with Lyrimon.”

“That’s just pretend,” Maurel said, a little reproachfully. “I want to have a link for real. Plus Lyrimon can’t fly.”

“That’s true,” Meg agreed. “Also, he is very grouchy.”

“If I had my own dragon,” Maurel went on, “he could be friends with Jakl, and we could all go flying together.”

“That sounds nice,” Meg said. “Jakl would probably like to have a friend.”

“Maybe there’s still other baby dragons in the woods somewhere. Jakl’s probably not the
only
one.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up, sweetie. Dragons are very rare these days, remember?”

“But rare doesn’t mean just
one,
” Maurel said. “Jakl must have had a mommy and daddy, right? Maybe he had brothers and sisters, too.”

Jakl was dozing, but Meg felt him stir sleepily at the idea of other dragons. Meg had never really wondered before if he might be lonely for others of his kind. It must be strange for him, to be all alone like he was. He had Meg, of course, but that wasn’t the same.

She tried to picture it: Jakl with other dragons around him, flying, playing — would they curl up to sleep together like giant, scaly kittens? The thought made her smile. It also made her feel a little . . . jealous? Jakl sent something warm and reassuring and slightly amused at her through the link. Which made her smile again.

She still wondered, though. She had human companionship in addition to her connection with Jakl. Those relationships were very important to her. Did Jakl wish for the companionship of other dragons as well?

M
EG DIDN’T SEE CALEN FOR THE
rest of the day. That wasn’t really so unusual — it wasn’t as if they spent every moment together, after all — but the argument they’d had made his absence feel conspicuous and significant.

Her thoughts of dragons in the paddock had dissolved into an unplanned but not entirely unwelcome nap. Maurel had wandered off by the time Meg had awakened, and Meg had gone back inside and tried to keep herself busy and distracted. But she still had spent most of the afternoon and evening wishing Calen would appear.

She refused to go seek him out herself, though. He was the one who had stormed off. It was up to him to come back to continue the conversation.

But he didn’t, and she woke up the next morning feeling both grumpy and sad.

At breakfast, her parents mentioned that Serek had some vistors: other mages who had come to discuss important events at the Magistratum. Apparently they had arrived a couple of nights ago. Serek had come to see the king and queen yesterday evening to let them know and to alert them that more mages might be on the way. Maybe that’s what Calen had been coming to tell her about the day before. Before he’d gotten so angry about that misunderstanding with Wilem.

Meg seized upon this new information as a good excuse — a good
reason
— to go talk to Calen. If he wanted to bring up their argument, that would be his choice. Her only intention was to find out about Serek’s visitors. That was it.

She still didn’t understand why Calen had gotten so angry in the first place. She knew he didn’t trust Wilem, but she thought it was the hand holding — the hand
touching
— in particular that had set him off, not just the fact that she was considering Wilem’s offer to help them fight his mother. And that didn’t make any sense at all.

Calen was right about one thing, though. Meg was definitely finding it harder to hate Wilem.

She
wanted
to, but somehow she didn’t feel the hate burning inside her as she once had. She knew he could be lying to her, knew he could still be pretending . . . but she couldn’t believe that whole scene on the rooftop, when Sen Eva’s secrets had come spilling out and Wilem had been so shocked, so horrified. . . . Meg couldn’t believe that had all truly been just an act.

But if she didn’t hate him, that left . . . what? She couldn’t
like
him. It wasn’t as though they could be friends. So if they weren’t enemies, and they couldn’t be friends . . . she didn’t know what they were. She didn’t want them to be anything! But he was here, possibly for a long time to come. And she couldn’t just ignore him entirely, as much as she might want to.

Wilem had truly seemed sincere about wanting to help. But she knew she couldn’t really trust him.

She just wished he didn’t sometimes make her feel as though she could.

As Meg approached the mages’ chambers, she could hear voices coming from inside. Loud voices, and many of them.

She knocked, and after a moment, Calen opened the door.