Page 100 of To Fight and To Fold

"Are you Thea's wife?" one of the girls stopped to ask.

Aaryn choked on a laugh. "No, not at all."

"Then why are you living together?" a small boy followed up, and was immediately elbowed by the tallest.

"Not everyone who lives together is married. We live together. We're not married," he pointed out with logic only children could use.

The small one opened his mouth as if he had come to a conclusion. "Ohh, so your family was hurt too?"

Aaryn paused, a reply caught on the tip of her tongue. Before she could organize her thoughts into an answer, he stepped forward and thrust his drawing at her proudly, big eyes turned up to her. "Sorry about your family. Here. I'll make Thea another one. This one can be for you."

Aaryn slowly took the paper and flipped it over. In streaks of color and elementary, scratchy drawings were dragons with stick people on the back, flying away from an inferno of flames.

He leaned around the paper to point. "This is us being saved. We can pretend you were there too—right here," he said, and tapped another dragon with less defined stick figures.

Her chest went tight.

The tallest one pulled him away. "You made her sad," he hissed, and Aaryn realized her eyes were wet with unshed tears.

She smiled and dashed them away before they could fall. "I'm not sad," she told them. "Promise. I'm very thankful for your drawing, that's all. Thank you very much," she told him, and laid a hand on his head, ruffling his hair.

He grinned. "Since you're staying with Thea, you can show her too."

"That's a great idea," the small girl said. "Here, take this. You can give it to her."

"Yeah!"

And that's how Aaryn ended up with a handful of six drawings, as the giggling kids scampered away.

She watched them make their way around the corner before she slipped back inside.

As the door shut behind her, she wished it was just as easy to shut away whatever emotion was bubbling in her chest.

With a shaky breath she spread the drawings out on the small table. The one gifted to her stood out, its inferno somehow still threatening despite the messily drawn flames.

The others were more… peaceful. One of them was actually a surprisingly detailed drawing of a dragon napping in the sun, which she found quite charming. The others were sweet, like Thea holding hands with them—denoted by the tiny purple horns on top of the figure's head—or themself on a dragon's back, or holding hands with their family beneath a blue sky with a bright sun.

She swallowed tightly.

What happened to them? Their homes?

Were they from Timberscale?

Aaryn braced her hands on the table and hung her head. The idea that she had been so at peace and living such a lavish life full of ignorance while Evergale was razing the homes of kids like these…

Surveying the land for weak spots to take advantage of? On the back of her own dragon?

Bullying towns out of their resources and taking them by force when they couldn't come to an agreement?

What kind of ruler did such things?

Indignant heat rushed to her face. She had sat at the king's table. With Jarrick, while these things were happening.

They lied about so much.

She turned her palm over, her scar dulled by time but still pink, still obvious. In Evergale it was an honor; it proved her worth as a Tethered. She'd lifted it to countless guards to grant her safe passage through the city, through the castle.

But now she knew the truth.