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He wouldn’t have liked to hear what I had to say anyway. I blew out a breath and turned back to the hay, my breath exploding in white clouds before my eyes.
Neither of us said anything as I went back to bundling. The only sound in the barn was our breathing, the swish of a cows tail, and the snip of my clippers.
“Ray,” Da said after a moment, my nickname a whisper. “I know I sound harsh, but if you did become a rider, or a dragon… no matter what you are, I will always love you and be proud of you. If you stay as you are, I’ll be happy. If you awake as a rider, I’d love you and support you. Nothing will ever change.”
“Then why do you seem like you want me to remain as I am?” I turned as I spoke, Da stood there, his wide hands twisting a length of rope into knot after knot as he stared at me with blue eyes wide and wet as the sky before rain.
“Because I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” he said after a minute, all gruff gone from his voice now. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I want you to have a life full of love and children and happiness. Being a dragon or a rider, stuck fighting this endless war, where is that happiness?”
His voice cracked on the last word and I blinked at him. I knew he meant what he was saying, I had never seen him be so earnest. I knew it should seep inside of me like some kind of grand revelation and make me change my mind, but it didn’t. It couldn’t, because my happiness was not in bearing milk lickers children and sucking his cock when he got pissed off.
“Is it wrong to seek happiness by protecting the people I love? Protecting you, Ma, Ellie, this village?”
Da shook his head, his face pulled into tight lines as he finally stopped twisting the rope only to put his wide hands on my shoulders, like he was trying to keep my feet on the ground.
“I want you safe, Ray. Being a rider is the most dangerous out of anything.” His voice had regained its usual gruffness.
“Because of the war?”
“You grew up lucky,” he barked, his hands slipping from my shoulders to grab the sheers off the ground. “Fae attacks here are rare. We never had a rider, and that’s why the Fae have never showed interest in us, the only reason Ynxi would come under attack this far into the land is because they have a rider.”
“What?” I blinked at him, I could not have heard that correctly.
“The Fae, they want the riders. That’s why we are at war, not because they are hunting us for food. Although they might eat us, like hell if I know. They attack our villages, our lands, our dragons, all to try and steal the riders. A dragon is nothing without their rider, so if they take them then we have no army. They take them and they… they…” He stared at me, jaw tight and then went back to bundling hay, but that seemed like the least important thing anymore.
“You're saying that if I become a rider, the Fae will come for me.” It felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs. Like there wasn’t any left of the earth to inhale.
“Yes. And me. And your mother. And Elodie. None of us will be safe. That’s why they train the dragons and their riders in Fyre, the capital is the only place safe enough for them. The only place that could protect them. The only place a rider can find their dragon.”
I knew about the school, I knew about training and going to the capital, but now it sounded like some kind of epic quest.
“Why does getting there sound like a life or death thing?” I swallowed. My throat had gone dry.
“Because it is. You will be hunted by the Fae every step of the way.”
Da looked at me with his storm cloud eyes and I could almost feel my daydreams go up in smoke.
I wanted adventure, but at what cost? My family was definitely worth more than me flying through the skies.
But on the other end… if the Fae attacked our village, who’d protect them? We didn’t have dragons here. We were so far away, that no one would be able to make it here in time. Everyone would be destroyed, just like in Ynxi.
I kept going in circles with my thoughts as Da patted me on the shoulder with his usual ‘I trust you to make the right decision’ look and he left the barn.
Leaving me to my work, and my thoughts that were quickly going into overdrive.
All those daydreams about being a dragon rider, finding my mate, and fighting Fae warped into something more dangerous and deadly as it overlapped with my village burning, my family and friends calling out for help, and me hopeless to save them all.
Goddess curse me! Why couldn’t he have told me all of this years ago!
About halfway through bringing the smaller bales into the hayloft, I yawned, needing a break. Going and going like that was exhausting, especially since each square bale that I made weighed about fifty pounds each and I had to carry them into the barn and then use our pulley to get them into the loft.
I laid down on the hay, letting my body cool down, and my muscles relax. Before I knew it, I fell asleep, but this time my dreams weren’t of dragons. I got lost in a dark world where I kept falling and falling, lights flashing around me. Whooshing filled my ears and while I tried to scream, it felt like no one could hear me. There was a distant roar that sent my skin prickling. More roars all around me, circling me, closing in on me. Was I going to die?
I reached out for something, anything. At just the tip of my fingertips, it felt like something fluttering there, something so close that all I had to do was lean forward slightly and then I’d brush against it.
“Baby girl. Wake up.”
I snapped my eyes open to see Da hovering over me, he had that same dark look as before.
