Chapter Two
Bryn tamped down on her instinct to snark back and waved Jaxon into the room. He spotted Clint and Ivy and frowned.
“Bryn,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Nope. “We were heading down to breakfast. Whatever it is, it can wait until after I’ve had coffee and bacon.”
“No. It can’t.” When he spoke to her using his holier-than-thou my-father-is-Speaker-for-the-Directorate tone, she remembered why she had once shot a fireball at his head.
“Do you really want to come between me and my coffee?” Bryn asked.
“Fine. Then I’ll accompany you to the dining hall and we’ll eat breakfast together.” Jaxon said this like he was issuing a challenge.
She could see where this was going. He’d insist on joining them if she didn’t give him his way. At this point she’d rather hear him out than spend breakfast with him. “You have five minutes to speak your mind, and then you’ll go away so I can eat in peace with my friends. Deal?”
“Deal.” Jaxon glanced at Clint and Ivy. “Do you mind?”
“Do we mind what?” Clint asked, like he didn’t realize Jaxon wanted to speak with Bryn alone.
“Why don’t you guys go to the dining hall and save me a seat?” Bryn said, just to move them along.
“Sure. We’ll fly from your terrace.” Ivy grabbed her boyfriend and pulled him down the hall.
Once they were gone, Bryn said, “What’s on your mind?”
“I think you should change rooms.”
That wasn’t what she expected him to say. “I’d love to change rooms, but is that what my grandfather would want me to do?”
Jaxon’s gaze traveled toward the door where Rhianna used to live when she was Bryn’s roommate. “If it was just due to your knight, I’d agree, but I believe he’d understand why I’d wish for you to relocate.”
When he put it that way—more about Rhianna and his feelings than about her not wanting to be reminded of Valmont, it made sense. “If you put in the request rather than me, I’d be more than happy to move.”
“Thank you.” His upper-class Blue demeanor slipped. “Being back here at school…there are so many memories…it’s harder than I thought it would be.”
And now she felt like a total jerk for giving him crap. With a normal person, Bryn’s first instinct would be to hug him. She didn’t think Jaxon would be okay with that maneuver, though, so she settled for touching him on the shoulder. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
…
Bryn caught up with Clint and Ivy in the dining hall and explained Jaxon’s request.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak and then stopped, blinking her eyes furiously. “I can’t even talk about the attack without crying. God forbid if something had happened to Clint… I have no idea how Jaxon is holding himself together.”
“It’s our senior year,” Clint said. “And not to sound petty, but I never imagined death and destruction would be a part of my high school experience.”
Bryn stirred sugar into her cup of coffee while she thought about something. “My grandmother says our job is to remember the ones we lost while moving forward and trying to make the most of what and who we still have.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about what we have.” Clint pulled out his class schedule with a flourish.
“That’s not what I meant.” Bryn laughed. “But go on.”
“Give me yours so we can compare,” Clint said.
She and Ivy both passed over their class lists and watched as Clint lined them up on the table.
“We have Mr. Stanton for Advanced Elemental Science first hour. Ivy and I have History second hour. Bryn you have Beginning Quintessential Medicine.”
“I can’t wait to start learning Quintessential medicine for real.” Everything she’d done up to that point had been based on a small amount of training and a lot of instinct. The results hadn’t always been optimal.
“Third hour we have Basic Movement,” Clint said. “Next is lunch and then all of us end the day with Proper Decorum.”
“How many more forks can there possibly be?” Bryn asked.
“Maybe we’ll learn something exciting this year,” Ivy said. “Like how to fold napkins into origami swans.”
Bryn sipped her coffee and tried to be subtle about checking out her fellow students because her grandmother had been on her all summer about staring at people. The tables seemed emptier than normal. Orientation wasn’t until tomorrow, so some students might not arrive until then…still, it seemed like they were missing a third of the normal crowd.
“Why do you think we’re missing so many students?” There had been casualties among the students, but not this many.
“Some students finished their college degrees so they won’t be coming back,” Ivy said. “Plus Orientation officially starts tomorrow, so maybe some students aren’t coming until then.”
“Not to sound ungrateful to my grandparents for all that they’ve done, but I couldn’t wait to come back to school.” Bryn leaned in close and spoke in a quiet voice. “I spent every waking minute with Blues, and I had to constantly be on my best behavior, which was exhausting. I mean, why does anyone care if you put your elbows on the table?” To make a point Bryn put both her elbows on the table.
“You’re such a rebel,” Ivy said.
“I’ve been going on about myself,” Bryn said. “Tell me about your summer.”
“It was pretty good,” Clint said, “but it felt like there was a layer of sadness and disbelief floating in the air.”
Ivy sighed. “I keep feeling like I can’t relax or have fun because that would be disloyal to the dragons who are no longer with us.”
Bryn had heard the phrase survivor’s guilt but hadn’t really understood it until now. “During the battle, if I had been faster…” She blinked her eyes rapidly to hold back tears. “If I’d managed to intercept the second dragon attacking Jaxon, then Rhianna would still be here.”
“You can’t think like that,” Ivy said. “Rhianna did what she did out of love.”
Clint put his arm around Ivy’s shoulders. “I’d sacrifice myself to protect Ivy and she’d do the same for me. It was Rhianna’s choice.”
Bryn nodded because her throat felt too thick to speak. Several nights a week, since the attack on campus, her brain had replayed the battle. Over and over again she’d seen Rhianna fall from the sky. What Clint said was true. Rhianna had thrown herself between Jaxon and the second attacker because saving him meant more to her than her own life.
It was a sad realization that there was no one in the world who cared about her like that, and there probably never would be. She and Jaxon were legally bound together by a marriage contract, but she had no delusions about him ever truly caring for her—or she for him—as anything more than a friend.
“Let’s talk about something happier,” Ivy said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating the beginning of our senior year.”
“I’d love to do something fun,” Bryn said. “What are our options?”
“We could go to Dragon’s Bluff,” Ivy said. “And shop for cool stuff for your new room.”
Dragon’s Bluff was a town populated by humans descended from knights. The town had a symbiotic relationship with dragons and the Institute. They protected the dragon’s secret and in return their businesses prospered. But there was more to it than that. Every person in Dragon’s Bluff carried a latent magic spell in their blood. If they stepped up to defend a dragon, to protect them from a perceived threat, they were transformed into a knight and became magically bonded to that dragon. Valmont, a waiter in Dragon’s Bluff, had performed an act of chivalry and become Bryn’s knight. The magical dragon-knight bond she’d had with him had been wonderful, but then they’d fallen in love which had been awesome at first, until everything had gone to hell.
“I managed to avoid seeing Valmont all summer. I don’t think I’m ready to see him yet,” Bryn said. She may have broken their dragon-knight bond but that was only after he’d broken her heart.