His silver gaze held mine without blinking.
“You’re not naïve,” he said evenly. “You’re a dreamer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You want change without bloodshed, without more death. But the wildweavers are beyond diplomacy. Their souls are tarnished by hate and greed, and the only way to stop them is through force. You defeat them by fighting them. By killing them.”
I swallowed hard at his words. Maybe I was a dreamer. Foolish enough to believe diplomacy could end a war. Maybe brute force truly was the only language the parasites understood. I turned my gaze back to the sky, no longer looking at anything in particular.
“And fighting is something I don’t master either,” I added quietly. “So, what does that make me? A princess who can’t use strategy or logic. Can’t wield magic for combat to win a war?”
“It makes you a princess who needs combat training,” he said simply.
Silence stretched between us again. The earlier anger that Lorik had shown, so out of character for someone usually controlled, now felt replaced by something steadier. I realized the mood had shifted, and without looking at him, I asked:
“Why are you here, Lorik?”
“I’m your counselor. It’s my duty to check on you,” he replied, though something in his tone told me that wasn’t the whole answer.
“And here I was thinking you came to apologize for losing your temper with me,” I said, letting out a low, humorless, and sarcastic laugh.
“I think even you know you deserved that,” Lorik responded with an edge of humor I couldn’t respond to.
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t know how to. So, with the flattest, most serious tone I had left, I said: “The island looks peaceful. People go on with their lives while a tower collapses across the Veil. They don’t know what happens out there. They don’t understand the threats. I didn’t either until I saw it with my own eyes. This isn’t a game. Wildweavers are powerful. Dragons are strong. And there was so much hate in that wildweaver, so much superiority. They despise us, they want our island, and they’ll never stop.”
“All of that is true,” he said, pausing for a moment, “but you can’t live in fear and anxiety. It will destroy you. A day like today can break you, and you can’t let it because there will be more. This may become your life if you choose Dragontail.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever truly get to choose what I want,” I said, the edge of sadness in my voice sharp enough that even Lorik could hear it.
“And here I thought you were this rebellious princess, different from everyone else,” he said, a thread of sarcasm woven into his tone.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I challenged him, finally turning to face him as I leaned against the glass guardrail.
“You’re annoyingly verbal and incredibly impulsive,” he said, “but you’re also brave and valiant. What you did today proved you deserve Dragontail.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?” I asked, unable to stop the smile that crept onto my face.
Lorik was trying to make me laugh, to pull me, even for a moment, out of what I’d seen and felt and even though I didn’t want to give him credit, it was working. Laughter and deflection had always been my way out of sadness and fear, and for the first time that night, the weight in my chest eased, just a little.
“If you learn to control your emotions in combat, you’ll improve and you’ll likely pass your trials. But you have to practice,” Lorik said, his expression stripped of any room for humor this time.
“And why would you care?” I challenged him. “You and Rory Rey made it very clear you’d rather see me beaten to death. You showed it to me on this very terrace the way you clenched your fist, practically excited to watch your girlfriend kick my ass.”
“That is not what happened, princess,” he said evenly. “And deep down you know it. I can train you.”
“No, thank you,” I replied with a smile as I stepped away from the guardrail. “Your friend Ugo happens to be an excellent teacher and an actually decent person, which makes it hard to understand how the two of you are friends. So no, I’ll pass and stick with him.”
I could tell he was enjoying the wordplay, enjoying the push and pull I had started, and a small, dangerous part of me liked it too but I wasn’t about to fall prey to whatever game he thought he was playing. Lorik Draventh was an enemy of my bloodline, even if this conversation momentarily made it easy to forget.
“Good luck with that,” Lorik said, a grin tugging at his mouth. “But I’m still your counselor, not him and you weren’t granted the swap you requested.”
I rolled my eyes because he was right. Professor Hog hadn’t approved the swap when I’d requested it after our unwanted forest encounter, but that hadn’t stopped me from training with Ugo anyway.
A long silence stretched between us. I just glanced at it without sarcasm, without insults, games or jokes, and I asked:
“Why did you ask Ugo not to aim at the dragon?” I asked him, my gaze fixed on him, asking for honesty without words.
Lorik opened his mouth, then closed it.
“I think dragons are slaves of those parasites. They are bound by force; they don’t deserve death,” he finally said, and I knew he meant it.
“Many would disagree with you, Moonveil.”