My room is too big. Every time I wake up, I feel more like I'm camping without a tent than sleeping in a castle. If it weren't for the protective field that keeps rain from soaking in, I might as well be.

  The low light from the storm outside makes it drearier than ever. The walls and ceiling are so high, I can't even hear the patter of rain against the field. The space between each notable segment of the room—my bed, the chairs, my desk—seems to stretch on and on, the insurmountable distance making it just that much harder to convince myself to get out of bed.

  As I’m laying down, failing to come up with a solution, I consider moving into the walk-in closet. At least that would feel a little more normal.

  Eventually I force myself up and make the trek to get ready for the day. It’s as awkward and exhausting as ever. But I have somewhere to be, and looking forward to that helps keep me moving.

  With the rainy season in full force, the halls of the castle are lit only by their sconce-like bulbs. Yellow light dances over the floors while dark corners remain unlit.

  The Queen is in the small hall today, waiting for me on one of the couches, clearly eyeing the trays of food that have been set out for us. We’ve eaten lunch together fairly consistently since the Eclipse Festival. She brightens when I walk in, making the room a little less dismal.

  I try to give her a smile, but my mood has dropped with the weather. It's another one of those days. I sit across from her. "What's on the menu?"

  She opens both the trays, revealing things that look a little like dumplings on each plate. The ones on her plate are dripping blood, and the scent of raw meat makes me scrunch my face and lean back.

  "It's a traditional dragon dish!" She explains. "Different ingredients make up the batter, and the inside is filled with bear meat."

  Bear meat? Bear meat? "Sounds…interesting."

  She picks one up, leaning forward to bite it so she doesn’t drip blood on the couch. "Don’t worry, we made sure yours were adequately cooked."

  Well. Down the hatch, I guess. I grab one from my plate and take a bite. The meat is extremely tough, and I feel like an animal as I fight to tear off a piece. It's a little like beef, but somehow sweeter. Very strange.

  "What's on your mind, Ashura?"

  I look up at her. She's giving me a pointed look. I assume she means something other than all the mental effort it takes to eat this. "Not much. Why do you ask?"

  "You looked a bit sad when you walked in."

  Burrs and weeds. How does she read me so well? I don't have a tail or ears to give away my emotions. Am I just that obvious? "It's probably the weather,” I say. “I never feel quite right when it’s dark outside.” I glance away from her and scratch my chin.

  "Hm." She looks back at her food. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

  Why am I lying to her? She's not going to be mad at me if I tell her about my room. The reflex is too strong. After all, what if she blames herself for my unhappiness? Or takes it on herself to—

  "Actually…" my words fight with the doubts in my mind. "There is one other thing."

  Her ears perk up attentively. "Yes?"

  "My room." I pause. Why is this so hard to explain? All of a sudden, I'm fidgeting and shifting in my seat. "Um, if it's not too much trouble, I really wish I had a smaller one. Something a bit more human-sized." The monumental effort it took to say those words is concerning.

  She tilts her head, thinking. "That can be arranged. Where would you like your new room to be?"

  "I don't know."

  Her tail flicks, and then she brightens. "I have an idea! Why don't you move into my room?"

  "What?"

  She looks at me for a long second, like her words made perfect sense. Then, she furrows her brow. "Oh, sorry. I mean, what if we built your human-sized room on one of the platforms in my room?"

  That's…an idea. Am I comfortable with that? Can I handle the proximity? At the very least, it doesn’t fill me with as much dread as what I thought she was suggesting at first.

  "It would be easier to spend time together," she continues. "And of course, you would still have all your privacy." She taps the table with her bloody claw. "If you don't want to, I understand. It's an out there idea."

  I try to imagine what that would be like. Immediately, the question of whether I trust her that much presents itself. It would be a big step in this relationship. In the past, my room being entirely my own—inaccessible to anyone else—has been a lifesaver.

  But that’s the thing: in the past. Other than my initial panic when everyone learned I could speak Draconic, I’ve never felt the need to truly escape, to lock myself behind closed doors. Nobody here demands my time. Nobody here has ever attempted to breach my solitude. But if anyone did, it certainly wouldn’t be Lantana.

  I look at her again, meeting her striking blue eyes. And I realize that, right now, I don’t just need to trust her. I don’t just want to trust her. I already do.

  "Well," I begin. "If…it's something you're okay with, it might be a good first step.”

  She smiles. "Wonderful! I will get Alcina right away. She loves building things. How do you want your room to look? And how large? Oh, we should look at platforms first, shouldn't we? I have a few ideas—"

  I can't believe I'm actually doing this. It feels like one of those insane ideas that dies in the water after a couple of days. But somehow, I’ve convinced myself to commit, and now I'm standing in Lantana's room with Alcina to choose a platform.

  We laid down a few privacy ground rules to keep in the spirit of my previous “taking things slow” comment. I had nearly forgotten I said that, but it’s nice to be around someone who thinks about those things.

  Really nice.

  "What about right there?" Lantana points to a platform a little up the wall and close to the stairway, just short of the pillow area. "It won't be a tall climb, and we can easily connect it to the stairs."

  I don't have a strong opinion about where the room should go. I'm more concerned about how the inside will look. "Sounds fine to me."

  Alcina nods thoughtfully. "Yes, it should be an easy build. Let's go and see." She transforms and flies up while Lantana and I take the stairs.

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  I steal a glance in Lantana's direction. She told me she’d try to stay out of my space, which I appreciate, but truthfully, I kind of like the idea of seeing her every day. Saying hi in the morning, seeing her during her studies, generally not having to trek half the castle to find her...I might need to be the one who promises not to bother her after all this.

  Alcina has wasted no time. Her arms are out, her eyes closed, manipulating the plants from the wall and bringing them around the platform. It's a respectable size as far as human rooms go, though still not as large as my closet, or even my room back home.

  Home…can I even call it that anymore?

  I would never in a million years want this kind of arrangement with her. Seeing her every day is laced in my worst nightmares.

  Ugh. Thinking about it brings my mood low again. I focus on the walls Alcina is building around the platform, watching the wood grow, shift, and weave around itself to make up the structure.

  In no time at all, she brings the plants upward and begins forming a ceiling. It’s flat, and the budding staircase in the back of the room tells me she’s going to make a second story. I didn’t ask for one, but I don’t mind the idea.

  She finishes the first floor. There are two open doorways, one leading out toward the stairs and another in the back. I step in and examine the room.

  It's wide and round and a little dim without lights, but sunlight creeps in from a couple of small windows. It's empty at the moment, but I can already imagine where I'll want my bed, my desk, a chair…

  I turn to Lantana. "When can I move in?"

  She looks at me in surprise. "Well, as soon as we get your things. Did you want to, so soon?"

  I pause. I probably sound desperate. But…maybe that's okay. "Yes, please."

  She smiles. "Okay! Why don't we head over while Alcina finishes?"

  I nod enthusiastically. "Yeah!"

  A little while later, we’ve already moved most of my furniture into the new room. Although, it’s hard to work around Alcina, who is completely taken with getting the last details of the building right. Every few minutes she’ll dash in or out, walk up to a wall regardless of whether we’re currently trying to fit a desk against it, and start waving her hands around to change the pattern of the vines. Though her face is stoic through all this, her tail twitches excitedly, so I can only assume she’s having fun.

  I spread my blankets over the bed. It’s odd being in a human-sized room. For the first time since I arrived, I’m in danger of bumping into people again.

  Unlike Alcina, who is currently muttering under her breath and staring at the staircase to the second story, Lantana has been careful to clear the way for me. She’s been very...aware of my personal space. Although it brings me relief, it’s also a bit embarrassing, like she has to dance around the room just to please me.

  I wipe the thought away with the folds of my blanket. Lantana walks over and examines my work. “How do you like the bed? You’re sure you don’t want a smaller one?”

  “This is plenty human-sized,” I assure her. Fleetingly, I think about how if it weren’t so big, I wouldn’t be able to fit in it alongside her. No, no, she has her own bed. And we’re clearly far from that possibility. My hands drop a little on the blanket, but I turn away before Lantana can notice.

  She nods thoughtfully and examines the wider room. “And you’re sure the closet is okay?”

  The closet attached to my room isn’t a hundredth the size of my last one, though it’s still large enough to walk around in. There’s plenty of space to fit the dragon garments I’ve found most comfortable as well as the human ones I brought from home, and it will be easier to get dressed without being overwhelmed by the literal thousands of combinations I used to have. “It’s great, thank you.”

  I push my desk chair aside and head toward the window. But as I do, my toe catches on the thick leg of my bed, stubbing it. Hard.

  I swear in Tiantish and grab my foot, hopping slightly like an idiot. Ow. OW.

  Lantana gasps. “Are you okay?!” She rushes over, and I sit on the bed. “Oh, you’re in great pain. It isn’t broken, is it?”

  Probably not. The shock gets me more than the stub. I guess now that my furniture is close together again, I’ll have to be more careful moving around my room.

  “Um, would you like me to—?” Lantana leans in front of me and holds out her hand. Orange magic sparks around her claws.

  My breath catches in my throat as the space between us narrows. But the pain in my foot overwhelms my fear, and I nod.

  She crouches to the floor and holds her hand out to my shoe, then lightly touches my ankle. As my thoughts begin to race, I try to convince myself it’s not awkward, how she’s leaning in front of me. The heat in my face rises more out of embarrassment than discomfort at that thought.

  It doesn’t even take her a minute to reduce the throbbing pain to nothing at all. “Is that better?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I just want her to stand up again so I can stop burning alive.

  She does, then dusts off her clothes. “If I may ask, what language was that? It didn’t sound like Suthic, and certainly not Draconic.”

  Ah, so she caught that. It’s a good thing she doesn’t recognize it. She might look at me differently if she knew exactly how foul the word I said was. “It was Tiantish. I sometimes say things in my mother tongue when I’m surprised. Sorry.” Why am I apologizing? Force of habit, I suppose.

  Her ears flick. “Suthic isn’t your first language?”

  I shake my head and stand up. Unlike Lereon-Siv, which is mostly united by Draconic, the human lands are home to many languages, and it’s not at all uncommon for humans to speak two or three. “My parents hail from Tiant, a province in the East. My father brought us to the capitol, Suthin, to work in the castle. I was young, so I picked it up easily.”

  “Wow,” Lantana breathes. “Tiantish, Suthic, and Draconic? Draconic and Suthic are the only ones that come easy to me, and I barely speak any Oceanic.” Her ears droop with this. “It’s hard to find time to learn between everything else.”

  “Don’t feel too bad,” I say. “Learning a new language is hard.” I don’t have the heart to tell her that I actually know eight languages. And that I’m fluent in both Shore and Deep Oceanic, though I’m not sure which one she’s referring to. “It helped that I had special lessons for my job, too.”

  She follows me to the window, and I peer out into the wider room. “Ashura,” she begins, “I don’t believe you’ve really told me about how you were raised. What kind of training did you have?”

  “Scholarly for the most part,” I explain. “A lot of reading, tests, memorization. Most of it was boring.” That’s a lie, actually. I’m a sucker for facts about boring stuff. Geography, politics, vocabulary; I’m a little embarrassed with how much time I spent outside of my lessons learning because I wanted to. “And of course, miscellaneous other things, like self-defense and fine arts.” But not much gardening. I had to learn that by myself.

  “Fine arts?” She leans against the wall, glancing wistfully out the window as if it’s showing a beautiful landscape and not her oversized bedroom. “Like what?”

  “A little bit of everything. Sculpting, music, poetry…I think Mother secretly wanted me to be an artist.” I feel a little bad that those studies never interested me as much as my other classes, as if I let her down in some way. “What about you?”

  “A lot of politics, as you can imagine,” she says. “Likely stuff you’re familiar with. Trade routes, negotiation, war, communication and the like. But also magic.”

  Stuff I’m familiar with? I’m tempted to ask if she could use my help more often, but I don’t think I’m that trusted in the castle yet. Here I am, having all the time in the world while she’s struggling to find seconds she can have to herself.

  I nod thoughtfully anyways.

  “My father was an artist, though,” she continues. When I glance at her, she has a soft smile on her face. “He taught me a few things, though I was never any good at painting or sculpting or weaving. He used to display every amateur piece of art I made in the castle until Mom finally let me take them down.”

  I let out a chuckle, imagining the image. “And what was she like? Your mother?”

  Lantana leans back and closes her eyes. “Oh, intimidating as they come. When she had a plan in mind, she put it into motion. Dad always said it was because she had a strict father, the king before her, but she never liked to talk about him.”

  “That sounds like a lot to live up to.”

  When Lantana opens her eyes, though, her smile hasn’t dissipated. “She was. But she was also a wonderful mother. I rarely saw her as ‘The Queen of the Dragons.’ For most of my life, she was just...Mom.”

  Steadily, Lantana’s smile disappears. A part of me wants to reach out. To comfort her, to apologize for her loss. But like it’s stuck to the sill, my hand refuses to move toward her.

  With the space between us non-negotiable, I say something to break the silence instead. “Do you think they would have liked me?” Hm, was that the right thing to ask? I probably sound insecure to her, now.

  But she doesn’t balk or give me a strange look. If anything, a bit of her grin returns. “I think they would have loved you.”

  “How so?”

  Lantana tells me more about them. She says her father would like me as long as I made her happy, and that her mother would have appreciated my intellect. I let her go on, though I’m not entirely sure I buy that.

  Either way, it’s nice to see her smile again.

  Lantana sighs suddenly, and I look at her. Was that an unhappy sigh? Or a wistful sigh? I can’t quite tell. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all.” She shakes her head. Then, she looks me in the eyes, and she leans forward ever so slightly. “I’m glad you agreed to this room arrangement. I feel like I’m already getting to know you better.”

  My face grows warm. The shadow of that awful feeling hangs over my head, like a bird of prey threatening to swoop down at any moment, but it hasn’t descended quite yet. I return her smile but break eye contact to look out the window again. “I feel the same way.”