Given Read online

“I heard about what happened in Espanna with your father. The others were talking about you.”

  He stopped and whirled around to face Weysh, ready for a fight. “And?”

  “I know what it’s like to be fodder for gossip and ridicule.”

  “As if I care what any of those rat pricks think.”

  “Then why did you leave home?”

  “I . . . that’s . . .” Noriago sputtered, then laughed, disbelieving. “So what, you think we’re the same? What could you possibly know about it, Nolan?”

  “I know more than you think. As a child I had classmates spit at me, and make signs of warding, like I was some sort of demon—at least until I threatened to roast them if they didn’t stop.”

  Noriago scowled at him. “Spare me your whining. That’s a day at the seashore compared to what I’ve been through. Someone like you couldn’t begin to understand how much I’ve lost.”

  His maman, for one. To his surprise, Weysh actually felt sympathy for Noriago.

  “I’m sorry,” Weysh told him, and meant it. “Listen, this is the last year of schooling for both of us. We have a lot to accomplish and this fighting is an unnecessary distraction. I say we call a truce.” Weysh stuck out his arm.

  Noriago watched him for a long time, his bronze eyes hard and his hair fluttering in the wind.

  Weysh sighed. “I’m not trying to be your best friend, Noriago—I simply need to concentrate and get the best scores possible this year, especially now that I have a Given to support.” He thrust his hand at Noriago again. “Truce?”

  Noriago finally smirked at him. “I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s better than no, I suppose. And one more thing—when it comes to Carmenna . . . she’s not your Given, is she?”

  Noriago scoffed. “That dragon hunter? Not on your life.”

  Weysh frowned. Dragon hunter was a derogatory term for women who sought out dragons for dalliances. “She’s not like that,” Weysh said firmly. “We were something of an item once—”

  “You think I don’t know that? I only sought her out to get under your skin.”

  “En? Why would that get under my skin? I have a Given now.”

  “That never seems to bother men like you, Nolan.”

  Weysh bristled. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said, a low warning growl lacing his voice. He wanted to make amends, but his patience was wearing thin.

  “Likewise. You know nothing about me, Nolan. We are not the same, but you’re not wrong. I expect this”—he waved his hand to encompass the school, his face twisted in disgust—“is all that’s left to me now.” His face changed so fast Weysh thought he might have imagined it, except that the wind blew the quick scent of something bitingly bitter, rotting, rank, and wrong his way, an emotion he had no words for, and Noriago looked positively crazed for a moment. But when he turned to Weysh he fixed him with his characteristic sneer. “You stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”

  Without another word Noriago changed to dragon, looming over Weysh. He let out a couple of puffs of steam from his nostrils, then took off, blasting Weysh with warm air from his wings.

  23

  Yenni worried her lip between her teeth as she stared at her palms: worse. Her father’s health was definitely getting worse. The rune had faded steadily over the last week, and was now half as strong as her mother’s rune on her other palm. Her stomach had been in knots for days.

  I need to go home, she thought for the hundredth time. How will I live with myself if N’baba dies while I’m away?

  But I cannot! I pledged a year abroad to the Sha on this Orire N’jem. If I anger the holy ones by breaking my vow the whole tribe will suffer, including N’baba. My best chance to save him is here.

  “What exactly are you looking at, Yenni Ajani?”

  Yenni blinked and looked up into Carmenna’s confused brown eyes.

  “Oh. It’s nothing.”

  She stared past Carmenna’s shoulders at the soft light filtering between the trees of the library, illuminating the dust motes. I must focus, she told herself. I can’t fail again. It may be that my first failure angered the Sha, and that’s why N’baba’s health is in further decline.

  This was her first tutoring session with Carmenna since the new semester had begun, and the first time Yenni had seen her since the encounter in front of Yenni’s residence. She planned to make the most of her time with the older girl.

  But Carmenna took a deep breath and expelled it on a sigh. “I’m so sorry, Yenni Ajani. I wanted to tell you in person. I don’t think I can tutor you anymore.”

  Yenni blinked. “What? But why?”

  Carmenna closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to fall for Weysh. I knew it was foolish, but it didn’t seem to matter. I fell anyway and now . . . now this hurts.”

  Yenni fought to hide her alarm—she needed Carmenna’s help now more than ever!

  “Carmenna,” she said patiently, “the other night was a mistake. Weysh was only trying to comfort me after—”

  “That horrible attack. I know. I was sorry to hear about it. I’m very glad that you’re all right,” said Carmenna.

  Yenni touched her hand to her chest. “Thank you, and whatever Weysh says, I cannot be with him. I’m already promised to another.” Well, almost promised, but Carmenna didn’t need to know that. “Please, Carmenna, I need your help.”

  But Carmenna shook her head. “You ask too much of me. Think, imagine our positions were reversed. Picture Weysh holding my face in his hands, smiling down at me, kissing my lips like he used to.”

  Yenni did, and a terrible cold feeling stole through her whole body. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  “I . . . no . . .” Yenni stammered.

  “Yes,” Carmenna said sadly. “That feeling right there, that’s why I can no longer tutor you, Yenni Ajani. I’d be doing you a disservice if I did.”

  Yenni looked away. Mother Shu who tends the fires of the heart, stand with me against the trickery of Father Esh, who now tries to sow within me a false and unobtainable love. Help me douse this false feeling, and instead stoke the flames of something true.

  Life would be better for everyone if she could just fall in love with Prince Natahi.

  “I gave you my word that I wouldn’t fall for him,” said Yenni, her own voice disbelieving.

  Carmenna shook her head. “It wasn’t your word to give.”

  “But I don’t want to marry him!” Yenni hissed desperately, trying to keep her voice down in the quiet library.

  “As long as your scent calls to him, and as long as he senses the smallest chance you return his feelings, he’ll never want to let you go.” Carmenna stood, and Yenni saw her eyes were wet with tears. “Farewell, Yenni Ajani. I wish you all the best. Sincerely.”

  There was nothing more Yenni could say. She watched helplessly as Carmenna exited the library.

  Weysh waited until the end of that week to seek Yenni out, in dragon of course. He called to her from outside her residence, and waited close to an hour, but she refused to appear. All the next day he tried to speak with her, but she dodged him, taking her meals at home and avoiding the library. Finally Weysh camped outside her Practical Application of Magic for Battle class and waited for her to come out. When she did, she took one look at him and marched the other way.

  “I never took you for a coward, Yenni Ajani,” he called after her. It hit the mark, as she paused, though she kept her back to him.

  “I am not a coward,” she snarled.

  “Truly? Because you certainly run like a coward.”

  She whirled around and marched up to him, hitting him with a plume of peppery irritation. “I am not a coward!” she shouted.

  “Then why do you refuse to face me?”

  She threw up her hands. “What is there to say that has not already been said?”


  “Well, to start, you could admit your feelings for me.”

  She took one short, sharp intake of breath, and that terrible scent of sadness, like algae, swam past his nostrils. He was about to reach for her when her scent changed, alarmingly quick, to acrid, smoky rage. Yenni darted her eyes left and right, taking in the nosy crowd forming around them from the dismissed class.

  “Come with me,” she said, and marched off. Weysh jogged to catch up with her.

  “Where are we going, lovely? If you give me a moment to change I can get us there much faster—”

  “No,” she snapped.

  Weysh clenched his teeth to keep from snapping back. She certainly wasn’t easy to deal with when she got this way, but he used the memory of her upturned face, her long lashes brushing her cheeks, her velvety lips against his, to help him hold his tongue.

  She led him to the rows of outdoor study nooks on the lawn east of the training sands. They were comprised of stone tables and benches enclosed by matching stone partitions covered in creeping ivory. Yenni stomped under the archway to one of the benches and slid roughly onto the seat while Weysh smoothly took the seat across from her. Yenni placed her palms on the table and her eyes flashed at him. Weysh had never seen her so undone.

  “We. Cannot. Be,” she said through her teeth, as if it was all she trusted herself to say.

  Weysh met her glare unflinchingly. “We already are,” he said. “Honestly! Do you really plan to spend the rest of your life like this, in longing, denying what you feel? Why torture yourself?” And me, he added silently. “Do you feel for this other man the way you feel for me?”

  He wrestled back his climbing panic at her hesitation, staring her down as he waited for her answer. No matter what Yenni said, nothing could change that she’d let him hold her and kiss her. Nothing could erase from his mind the rich, intoxicating scent of her desire. She wanted him, he knew she did. De woman is a confusion, his grandfather would have said. On the one hand, she was a rebel who very much disliked being told what to do. On the other she was fiercely loyal to the idea of this marriage, if not the man she was intended to marry. What would it take to get her to shift that loyalty to him? Was the decree of the almighty not motivation enough? What could this other man provide her that he, a dragon, could not?

  Yenni glanced away. “No,” she admitted, answering his question.

  Triumph bloomed in Weysh’s chest, but instead of lunging across the table to embrace her as he wanted to do, he simply nodded. “And you never will. No man will match you as well as I will. We are Given.”

  “Carmenna will no longer tutor me because of you,” she said angrily.

  “En? Byen, I’m sorry about that, lovely. Truly. But I’m always available to help you. And I’m sure Harth and Zui will pitch in as well. And what of your friend Diedre? And you can always get another tutor.”

  But her face was long with sorrow, and she stared at her palm.

  “Why are you always looking at your hand?” Weysh asked her. “You do it all the time, even before you were injured.”

  Suddenly she thrust both her palms in his face. “This is my mother,” she said, waving her right palm. “And this is my father.” She waved her left palm.

  “En?” What was she talking about?

  “Do you see these runes?” she asked him. Indeed, two white runes twisted along her palms. The one on her right hand was solid, the one on the left quite faint, split by an ugly red welt. “These runes represent the lives of my parents. The one on the right is my mother’s, the one on the left my father’s.” She stared at her left palm again. “Every day my father’s rune fades a bit more,” she said softly.

  Ah, poor thing. “I’m sorry, my heart. What can I do? Should I fly you to see him? I can make arrangements to leave as soon as possible—”

  “Stop!” Yenni said, and it came out strangled, pained even. “Stop being kind. You cannot help me. My father’s death will affect not only my family and me, but the entire Yirba tribe, as he is our chieftain. And my marriage will affect not only me, but the entire Yirba tribe, as I am their princess.”

  Weysh sat back, positively blown away. He looked Yenni up and down and slowly pointed at her.

  “This explains so much,” he said, punctuating each word with a slight jab of his finger. In his world princesses were delicate, fluffy things meant to be protected and cooed over. They were not warriors who could disarm three thugs in a dark alley or throw around men twice their size. And yet, of course Yenni was a princess, and not simply because she was clueless about the value of money. It was in that irresistible confidence of hers, the way she unthinkingly commanded respect. The way she assumed she would be obeyed.

  Yenni turned her head to the side and squinted at him. “Do you see now why we cannot be together?”

  “Nope,” said Weysh, and he smiled at her. “Princess or not, we’re still Given.”

  “This is not a laughing matter!”

  “Who’s laughing?” he said. “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. We’ll work this out together.”

  “Dragon—”

  “Of course your intended will be disappointed to lose you, but surely he’ll see reason. A Given bond trumps any other union.”

  “Dragon—”

  “And if not, well, I’ll just have to make him see reason, en? By whatever means possible—”

  “WEH-SHEH!” Yenni shouted. It was a voice he had never heard her use before, high and desperate. “How?” she continued in that same tortured tone. “How am I supposed to take you, a man of no political standing, and a Creshen no less, back to my family, my tribe? My intended is a prince, the second son of our most powerful ally and you, Weh-sheh Nolan, are nobody.”

  Nobody? Did his Given, the woman he was bonded with, the one he was meant to build a life with, the one person in this world who was supposed to unconditionally accept and love and support him, just call him nobody?

  As he took in her glare, cold fury rose within him. He closed his mouth with a click of his teeth and stared down his nose at her. “Apologize.”

  “No! It is true.”

  Weysh felt even his dragon-mind stir from slumber at the back of his consciousness to growl in righteous anger. Perhaps that was why he placed his hands on the table, leaned forward until their faces were inches apart, and snarled at her. “You will apologize to me, Yenni. I would never treat you with such disrespect.”

  “It is Yenni Ajani!” she fired back. “And haven’t you already? Assuming I would fall at your feet simply because you are a dragon and because you say I am your Given. What was it you said you had in store for me? ‘Women’s duties’? How are you different from any other man? Why should I spurn a prince, risk war, for you?”

  Weysh’s breath was coming in ragged pants by now. The dizzying scope of his anger alarmed him. Not even Montpierre could get him this riled. Only this woman, his Given, could cut him so deep. Emotion rumbled and built inside his chest until it spewed forth like a plume of flame.

  “APOLOGIZE!” he roared at her. “This instant! Or I swear by all that is holy you will never hear from me again!”

  She was shaking, and he caught a trace of sickly-sweet dismay among the smoky heat of her anger, but all she said was, “Good.”

  Weysh gawked at her, and something inside him seemed to snap and crumble. She couldn’t possibly be serious, but her face was hard and unyielding. Why? Why was it always so easy for her to dismiss him? Weysh rose, weak and weary like a man three times his age.

  “So be it. Good-bye, Yenni Ajani,” he said, and stormed away, ignoring the salty, brackish scent of her tears on the air.

  Later that evening, Yenni ran a finger along the plush velvet of the armrest of her common room armchair, lost in thought.

  “You seem distracted,” said Diedre. She gently took Yenni’s left hand across the l
ow tea table between them, tracing a finger along the welt left by her cut. She tsked her tongue at it. “How are you holdin’ up, mams?”

  Yenni sighed. She knew Diedre was referring not only to her injury, but to how she was coping since the attack in town. Over the last couple of weeks, people Yenni barely knew had been coming up to her in all her classes to ask for the gory details, and also to ask if she was truly a dragon’s Given. Her nerves were already stretched thin with worry about her father, and she had snapped at her classmates more than once for their intrusive and idiotic questions. She knew she was making a terrible impression, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  “I’m doing my best to stay focused. I must pass the next set of exams,” said Yenni. “And you? Your shoulder?”

  Diedre waved dismissively. “Is all patched up. An’ don’t fret yourself over exams, they’re not for over a moonturn, an’ from what I see of your study sessions with me you’ll be jus’ fine. Watch, is only a couple weeks pass an’ already you’re better at almost all the spells was givin’ you a hard time. Uhad’s Retrievin’, Fenton’s Body Bind—”

  “Yes, I definitely wanted to master that one. But I need to master Mereena’s Unbinding,” said Yenni. She gestured to the knotted piece of rope on the table before them. “I’m almost certain it will be on Mainard’s next examination.”

  “Ah, well, you know magical theory is my thing. I’d say the problem is you still strugglin’ to connect the spell and the outcome. How are you comin’ along with Uhad’s sixty-seven laws?”

  “I’ve memorized them all,” Yenni said with pride. “Uhad’s First Law: the Law of Source and Seven. All incantations must contain the word source and have exactly seven syllables. Uhad’s Second Law—”

  “All right! I believe you, mams. Is no need to recite every las’ one. Hmm, then try this: imagine the sound of the rope slidin’ out of the knot.”

  “Oh! All right.” Yenni breathed deep, doing her best to clear her mind of all worries about her father and all thoughts of Weysh. She concentrated on hearing in her mind the hiss and scrub of the rope sliding against itself. And then she pulled ach’e, focusing on the short, knotted rope on the table between them.