House of Shadows (Royal Houses 2)

“Made it,” she huffed, breathing heavy. “How’s training going?”

As to be expected, Tieran said.

“Great. Yeah. Mine sucks too.”

He shot one golden eye her way. You look like you’re going to perish at any moment.

“That is not inaccurate.”

Kerrigan flopped back onto a chair at the back of the room and took a slug from her waterskin. Tieran watched her, a slight look of disdain on his face.

Why have you called me here?

“Well, we have three weeks to get this together before we walk into dragon rider training. No one else knows that we’re not bonded. We’re going to have to be pretty convincing about it. And I thought we should train before we do it in front of everyone else.”

Tieran looked skeptical. You think that we can fake a bond?

“You’re the one who said that we had to try. Do you want to be kicked out of the program? I don’t have anywhere else to go. You could always go back to the Holy Mountain …”

No, he said automatically, glancing away. No, I won’t go back there.

He’d made similar comments when they first finished the tournament together. She didn’t know what had happened at the Holy Mountain, where he’d been born, but whatever it was, he clearly had no interest in talking about it and definitely no interest in returning. That was good for her because she had nowhere to go. It wasn’t like she could set up home in the House of Shadows. Not with what Wynter wanted from her.

“Then great. Let’s give this a try.”

Do you even know what the training entails?

“Not really,” she said with a shrug. “Flying?”

He snorted a breath of hot air in her direction. You are so incredibly naive.

“Hey! It’s not my fault that I don’t know what this training entails. Three weeks ago, I didn’t think that I’d ever even have a dragon. I wasn’t exactly listening in to find out how they trained competitors.”

Tieran made a sort of shrug. You just admitted your own incompetence.

Kerrigan jumped out of her seat in a huff. “Fine. I don’t know why I expected this to work with you. If you want to berate me for not being the person that you wanted, then you shouldn’t have agreed to this meeting.”

But it’s so much fun.

“I’m going,” she snarled. “I’ll do research on the bonds in my spare time instead. Maybe it’ll tell us why we weren’t bonded.” She headed toward the entrance, a deep fury rushing through her. “I’ve worked too hard to let you ruin this for us.”

Tieran’s tail swept out of nowhere, blocking her exit. We can train.

“Why should I bother?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

You need me, he stated simply.

A fact. She did need him. She couldn’t dragon train without a dragon.

Though I believe that researching the bond will be satisfactory as well.

“Yeah, I should probably do that in all my spare time,” she teased. “So, you think we can train?”

I think we have no other choice.

“Right. Well, we have a month to try to get this right. Why don’t we get started?”

Four merciless hours later, she and Tieran were no better off than when they’d started. In fact, she stormed out of the aerie in such a fury after her failure that she overturned a servant carrying a dinner tray. She apologized profusely to the human working within the mountain. Still, she couldn’t shake her anger.

It would be one thing if they weren’t any good at this. It was another that they both had sharp tongues and knew when to properly wield them. After her bouts with Lorian, she didn’t have it in her to deal with Tieran too. It had been a long week. Maybe it would all be better after she slept off the muscle aches.

She pressed the door to her room open, ready to collapse face-first into her bed until she realized someone was standing in the middle of the room. Her danger senses hadn’t even been triggered. She was too tired to even recognize who was standing there.

“Go away and come back later,” Kerrigan grumbled.

The person laughed. “What in the gods’ names happened to you?”

Clover. Right, it was Clover. “Oh, hey.”

She laughed. “I haven’t seen you all week.”

“Training,” she said, dropping onto her bed and unlacing her shoes.

“You didn’t say hi when you got back?”

“Knocked out.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Clover asked. She sank into a seat and lifted her feet to rest on the bed.

Kerrigan kicked her shoes into a corner, stripped out of her training clothes, throwing them into a pile of neglected laundry, and changed into something clean. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to check on you. No word for a week after you were supposed to be back from the House of Shadows. Hadrian and Darby were worried too.”

“I’m alive.” She sank down on the bed and winced as her legs and back protested. “Barely.”