The Priory of the Orange Tree

Sea sisters, Susa had called them once. Two pearls formed in the same oyster.

“To be kin to a dragon,” Nayimathun said, “you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.

He has the heart of a lambkin.”

“He might be the very picture of a lambkin,” Ead said, “but monsters often have soft faces. They know how to mask themselves.”

He cut an arresting figure.

You wear so much armor by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even the flesh of a queen is prone to fear.”

Sabran was listening. Her pupils were large enough to almost blot the green from her eyes.

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”

And he realized.

He wanted to feel the sun on his face. He wanted to read books and walk through the cobbled streets of Brygstad. He wanted to listen to music, to visit museums and art galleries and theatres, to marvel at the beauty of human creation. He wanted to travel to the South and the North and drink in all they had to offer. He wanted to laugh again.

He wanted to live.

“I suppose some things are in the blood. Perhaps one day, the honored Sea General will realize that dragonriders are born, not made.”

Tané set her jaw as an ostler took her stallion. Its coat was dark with rain and sweat.

“Ignore him, Tané,” Dumusa said, dismounting. Her hair coiled wetly about her shoulders. “The water runs the same in all of us.”

“I’ll make a pirate of you yet.”

“Fuck me, if it isn’t Arteloth Beck.” Estina Melaugo slapped her hands onto the side and grinned at him. “Didn’t think we’d see you again, my lord.”