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“They didn’t make it in time, they pushed them back before they could cause too much damage. But the village... The Fae never get this close. Not unless…” Da’s voice faded off his eyes dark as he looked at me.
I knew that face, and I knew better than to ask.
He was keeping something from me, and for the first time I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what.
Chapter Two
We had been bundling hay for hours, my fingers ached, but I didn’t feel the cold anymore. I had been doing this work since I was a child, it was familiar in its own monotonous way. I just kept moving, kept bundling, kept tying.
Even though my mind was one village over, on the dragons fighting the Fae.
“Rayna,” Da’s booming voice exploded behind me and I jumped, whipping around with a small shriek as I held the dull sheers and twine out like they were musket and sword.
“What?” I shrieked, still holding them out even though I could clearly see who was talking, and that I was not, in fact, under attack.
Okay, maybe I had been daydreaming a bit too long. Something Da had warned me about on more than one occasion, and something he was still scolding me about judging by the height of his raised brow.
I dropped my arms to my side.
“You’re going to be twenty soon, an adult,” the way he said ‘adult’ was a scold all on its own. “Have you thought any more on the arrangement? On your next steps in life?”
If that’s what he was going to ask me then I might as well go back to daydreaming.
I snorted. “You talk as if there are options to begin with. I thought you were arranging the marriage to Kile.” My stomach flipped, my skin prickling uncomfortably.
He shrugged. “Nothing has been signed.”
I dropped the sheers, the damn things hitting the toe of my leather boots. Dull or not, that hurt. I probably would have been stomping around in a panic if it wasn’t for what he had just said.
“You mean I have a chance not to be impregnated by the milk licker?” I shrieked, realizing too late that I should have thought through what I said.
“I’m going to ignore the fact that you just called Kile a ‘Milk Licker’. His father is the wealthiest farmer in our area. Imagine what would happen if we joined our lands!”
Oh I did. Which would be why I took a roll with him in the hay… Ew.
“I know. But…” I hesitated, he really wasn’t going to like this. “There is still a chance I could be a rider.”
I turned back to my work before I caught sight of the look he always gave me when I mentioned it. Not that it mattered, I could see it in my mind's eyes anyway.
He sighed. “You’re still on that? You know the chances of that are miniscule.”
I bit my tongue, forcing myself to calm and not fly off the handle like I had a tendency to do in these situations.
“I do,” I turned back to him, knowing I couldn’t escape the conversation. “But wouldn’t it be cool to have a rider from our village? It’d make it easier on everyone.”
“Or put everyone in danger.” Da shook his head, frowning hard. “The last time we had a dragon shift in our village I was only a boy. He blew up his home, and his mother with him. Nothing about it was amazing or beautiful. It was scary. For everyone. He could have burned this whole village to the ground.”
I was quiet for a moment, just staring at him. I knew dragon’s exploded in their first shift, I knew it was dangerous, but the way Da was talking about made it seem so much more dire. So disgusting.
“But he gotta go fight in the war. Protect us.” My voice was soft.
“The war? You mean the war that has been going on for so long that there seems to be no end to it?” Da asked. “The war that only knows how to take life? Some reward.”
I was frozen, the hay and everything turned to smoke around me as I stared at my father. I had never heard this from him. I had been wishing for this for years and he had never said anything, and now…
“So what?” I snapped in frustrated confusion. “We should just open our gates and welcome the Fae on our knees, ready to kiss their feet? We are a delicacy to them, Father. A meal. The dragons are all that keeps us safe and you–”
“Rayna,” he cut me off. The warning shutting me up, my teeth clanking together.
