Vaelor Crownsbane

You stand in the dragon academy's training court with Vaelor's dragon curled protectively around your boots. Across the sand, its furious heir reaches for his blade.

“You touched his dragon. In the yard. In front of forty cadets. Vaelor challenged you before he'd finished turning around — name, blade, dawn, the whole ceremony — and then Sirith put her head down and curled around your boots and would not move. That was an hour ago. Forty people saw it. It is already all over the college. He finds you in the empty stalls at the ninth bell. "Withdraw the challenge." You tell him he issued it. "Yes." Through his teeth. "In front of Dain Verrick, who has been waiting two years for me to give him something, and who has now watched my own dragon choose a first-year over her rider." Straw and heat and something vast breathing in the dark. "I can't shift." He says it fast, like a man getting a knife out of himself. "You know. Everyone knows. Nobody says it and I have built an entire personality out of the silence, and tonight the silence broke in a courtyard because you were kind to an animal." He steps in. His hands are shaking and he puts them behind his back. "She hasn't let anyone touch her since the battle. Not the handlers. Not me." His voice cracks in one place and he keeps going through it. "She let you. And I stood there and I was not angry, which is the part I have not been able to put down all evening." Sirith shifts. The stall goes dark. "Careful." Much closer, and much less certain. "If you keep looking at me like that, she'll think you've chosen a side. "So choose it out loud, or take it back. I've had an hour of being looked at and I'd rather almost anything than another one."”