True to his word, Fáolan did not leave Veolar at the mercy of other young nobles. Though his watch over the dragonar could hardly be constant, he devoted much of his diminishing free time to keeping the Sparkcaller lord company.

  Much to Monny’s displeasure.

  ‘I thought this was going to be a temporary solution,’ he said as the two of them swerved around the academy’s twisting corridors. ‘Didn’t you say so yourself?’

  ‘I did,’ Fáolan admitted, averting his gaze. ‘I…’

  He was not sure what he should say. The excuse that half a year was not time enough to come up with anything better seemed weak, even to him. There was another part to it, though, one that Monny was going to like even less. Over the last few months there came a point, even if he could not put his claw on a single date, when spending time with Veolar began to feel less like an obligation, and more like something to look forward to.

  Monny sighed, seeing as Fáolan was not about to continue. ‘I will admit, it was interesting in the beginning, if a bit odd. But don’t you feel that by now it has lost its taste?’

  ‘We talked about this already,’ Fáolan said, raising his head to meet Monny’s eyes. Their dark yellow reflected the steady brazierlight as they passed the sparse fixtures.

  ‘Because you refuse to see reason! Honestly, Fáol, it sometimes feels like he’s the only dragon you care about and—’

  ‘Eamon,’ Fáolan growled, surprised by his own vehemence. The scales on his neck quivered. ‘Stop.’

  ‘Why?’ asked his friend, undeterred. ‘Because you’re the prince and you say so?’ He grinned. ‘Come now, you should know by now this is not enough to stop me.’ As he cast a look at Fáolan, though, his snout grew serious again. ‘Look, Fáol. I’m sorry. But for the past half a year it felt as though you were hardly there. We see each other nearly every day, and yet…’ He looked him in the eye. ‘I miss you, Fáolan.’

  Fáolan stopped dead in his tracks. As he looked over at Monny, his exasperation dissipated in a flash, leaving behind a vague sense of guilt.

  He composed himself and said, ‘Give him a chance. Ever since we have met him, you dismiss any chance of getting to know him. I am sorry if you feel left out, but perhaps you should invite yourself in.’ Fáolan looked Monny in the eye and unfurled his wings a little. ‘I want to keep watch over Veolar. For the whole time I have known him, he seemed more genuine than nearly all dragons in the court, save for my family and you. I do not wish to let go of that. The question now is, where will you stand?’

  Monny frowned at him. ‘So you’re saying it’s either me or him?’

  ‘No,’ said Fáolan, softer now, and sighed and he lowered his head. He tucked his wings back against his body. ‘I would never leave you. And I am sorry for almost doing that. But I do not want to leave Veolar either.’

  Monny sent him a long look. ‘Fine. Let’s go, then.’

  He flicked his tail and started in the direction they had been going before. Fáolan looked after him for a moment before briskly catching up. The rest of the way passed in silence.

  Some way down the twisting corridors of the academy they reached the meeting-point, and Fáolan saw Veolar waiting for them. He opened a wing in greeting, and as Veolar spotted them approaching he lit up in a way Fáolan had never seen in the couple initial months after their first meeting.

  Veolar made to greet them, and Fáolan thought, seeing the joy across the dragonar’s snout, he would not be the one to take that away.

  It had been three years since the king had begun assessing Fáolan and Taori as his heirs, both in rulership skills and academic achievements. Three years during which Fáolan had come to dread every new trial he was called for, as in most of them he had been doomed to fail from the start.

  Even as it seemed a looming shadow of responsibility, Fáolan did not want to lose, but set against Taori he had little chance of success. He would see her, at times, the light in her room flickering as he was retiring for the night, and then, the next day, she would be up before him. She would be absent for most of the day, and he would find her in the library, poring over old dusty books, and a cold weight would settle over him—that he was not putting enough effort in, that he was not taking the tests seriously enough.

  One night he came back late from Monny’s hatchday to find the light in Taori’s room still burning and, despite his weariness, decided to sneak a glance. She was slumped against her desk, her wings slightly open, resting against the floor, and her body hiding what she was bent over.

  Fáolan was about to draw back, wash himself and settle for the night, but something compelled him to take a step in. It was only then that through his bleariness he noticed something that should have been obvious the moment he saw her—unmoving save for the rhythmic breath-in and breath-out, Taori was asleep.

  He stood there for a few moments, unsure of what he should do. His own mind was working as though through a fog, but at last he reasoned she could use a better position than this to rest. He shuffled forward and nudged her with his wing. After a few tries she stirred, grumbled, and blinked open her eyes. She looked up at him, unfocused, and squinted, trying to make out her surroundings.

  ‘Fáolan?’ she asked, remnants of sleep lingering in her voice. ‘What…?’

  ‘What are you doing? Why are you sleeping with the light on, on your desk?'

  Stupid questions, he knew as soon as his mind caught up.

  'Taori…' he said before she could answer. He wanted to say more, but words eluded him.

  'Do not look at me like that,' said his sister, trying—and failing—to look fierce, but her drowsiness made it look almost pitiable.

  He did not respond for a while. Then, 'Why?'

  'Do you really need to ask?' she snarled. 'Look, I am not going to explain—'

  'No, I meant… Why all this? Why are you working yourself into… this?' He gestured at her with a roll of his forepaw. 'Day and night, all the time I see you here, or at the library, or somewhere else, but almost always working, and then… Then Father calls us for trials. And you always come out on top, because of course you do. You work yourself until exhaustion, you… And then I see you, I see how good you are at this, at everything. And for every moment I could use like you, but I do anything else, I wonder if I should feel guilty about it. And I still do work for this, I want this. I think I do…' He sighed, a tad shakily. ‘I feel like next to you I can never be good enough.’

  At once, he stopped. He hadn’t meant to spill as much—indeed, until voicing them now he had not been aware of how tangled and tumultuous the feelings were growing inside him. He looked at Taori with some trepidation, but she seemed to be no less taken aback by his outburst than he was. He braced himself for anger, and saw a promise of it flash across her snout, but then it shifted and, despite fatigue dominating her expression, he saw other things too—hesitation and doubt, the clenching-tight of her jaw and briefly averting her gaze.

  Fáolan did not want to extend this conversation any further. Too much had been said already, and he was growing more tired by the moment. He made to leave, but as he was passing the threshold she said, ‘I wish it was not like this.’

  He turned round; his sister was looking at him intently. ‘Taori...?’

  ‘Don’t you see? This... We used to be so close, Fáolan. How did this happen?’

  ‘You’re dead-set on winning.’

  ‘I want to rule,’ she said, looking pointedly at him. Her tail swished stiffly behind her. ‘Do you not?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it does not matter. Next to you, how could I? You always demolish me in the trials like it was the easiest thing—’

  ‘Easy?! What about this—’ she pointed at her desk strewn with books and scrolls— ‘looks easy to you? Maybe if you put in some effort, you would not have fallen behind!’

  ‘Do you think I never tried?’ Fáolan’s sleepiness was gone, its place taken by a sudden seething. ‘Do you think I want the king to consider me a failure? Do—’

  ‘He is our father. You can call him that.’

  Fáolan flared his wings in exasperation, their full length enough to bump against the walls. ‘For you he is! I wish he looked half as favourably at me as he does at you.’

  Taori blinked a few times, and opened her maw as though to speak, then closed it. Their gazes locked and Fáolan found he was breathing hard, his heart hammering.

  ‘Fáolan, I…’ She sighed. She seemed to struggle with words, and much the same he found his throat tightening, his tongue as dry as sand. He let out a long, shuddering breath, closing his wings back. All at once he felt tired again, and he swayed on his paws, almost falling.

  ‘I think we should both head to sleep,’ he said.

  Taori looked back at her desk, clenched her jaw. ‘Right.’

  That night had long ago passed, but it refused to leave Fáolan’s mind. It kept coming back as he sat in his room, looking at the books sorted into neat, untouched piles on his desk. He could not find it in himself to crack them open. What was the point? He had tried, first at the beginning of the trials, and then one more time when he had fallen behind, attempting to catch up. Not once had he managed to best Taori in more than one out of four trials.

  His revery was interrupted when one of the palace staff knocked on his door and, before his reply, it opened a crack.

  ‘My prince.’ The dragoness bowed. ‘The king requires your presence in the west wing’s meeting-room. There is to be a trial in an hour’s time.’

  Besting Taori in one of the trials was near-impossible, but he would rather not incur more of the king’s disapproval by arriving late. Fáolan left his room with time to spare and headed down the palace hallways.

  The private chambers of the royal family were located in the central part of the palace, the only one not accessible from outside, neither by wing nor paw. The structure was built into a mountain, extending, from its central point, two expansive wings—east and west—each with a few entrances for airborne dragons scattered symmetrically across them, and a large entryway accessible by paw.

  Not many dragons had reason to visit the central part, and most of those who did worked there, making only scant trips into the wings through the day, so it was no wonder Fáolan found himself alone in the comparatively narrow, modestly lit hallways separating the west wing from the royal suites. He let his thoughts drift as—

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  ‘Young Lightbringer.’

  Fáolan stilled as a voice he did not recognise came from one of the side corridors and he spun to find a dragonar walking up an otherwise empty passage. He frowned at the approach, and the stranger stopped at the corridor’s edge. Only then did Fáolan notice his eyes—they were shining as though he were accessing, but despite him looking Cavrian through and through, his eyes were aglow with a colour that was not of any of their gems, but a shade so light it looked almost white.

  He took an involuntary step back, neck-scales rising. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, trying his best to make it sound like an order. He could not shake the feeling he had seen the dragon before, but could not put a claw on the memory.

  The strange dragonar tilted his head. He wore a bemused half-smile that looked almost like a crack on his snout. His scales were a blend of light and dark grey. Golden stripes ran along his neck and sides, and small ragged lines of gold adorned the edges of his wings. ‘Ah, I am but a humble servant of Unity,’ he said. ‘You might call me Lugus, but my person is of little importance next to you, young Lightbringer.’ His voice was odd, as though he was speaking with two of them instead of one, overlapping.

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘To help,’ said Lugus in his twofold voice. ‘You vie for the throne against your sister, and keep falling more and more behind. Keep at that, and Aodhan Lightbringer will see to it that you get your due.’

  A cold shiver ran through Fáolan. He felt rooted in place, unable to move. His heart thudded a frantic rhythm against his chest. ‘How do you know this?’ he managed weakly, barely above a whisper.

  ‘I know a great many things,’ said Lugus, slow and smug, unperturbed by the effect his words had on Fáolan. ‘Knowledge is power, after all. You would do well to remember that when Aodhan Lightbringer calls you for another trial.’

  His mind was spinning, looking for an anchor. Young Lightbringer. Aodhan Lightbringer. Such forms of address were neither used nor appropriate, but Fáolan did not have it in himself to try correcting Lugus.

  ‘Do not tell him, though, that we have met,’ Lugus was saying. ‘Let it be our secret. Can you promise me so?’

  Fáolan stood still.

  ‘You need not fear me, young Lightbringer. I do not wish you harm. I only want to steer you onto a path whereupon you can rise above your sister in the fight for the throne.’

  ‘Why?’ Fáolan asked cautiously. ‘What do you get out of this?’

  In the corridor’s half-gloom he almost missed a twitch on the dragonar’s snout. ‘Is it not enough that I should want to see you flourish?’

  ‘Lies,’ Fáolan spat out. ‘Taori is better, she always has been. She will make a better monarch.’ Deep down he knew the words to be true, but openly admitting them hurt more than he had expected, a wound torn into himself by his own claw.

  Lugus scoffed. ‘Is that it? Have you given up?’ Fáolan looked into the dragonar’s glowing white eyes. It was not as bright as a usual accessor’s glow. ‘A shame. I saw potential in you, young Lightbringer. Perhaps I was wrong.’

  ‘You were.’ Another wound. But it made for a tolerable excuse. ‘I should be leaving now.’

  The dragonar gave him a long look. ‘Of course, if you must.’ Fáolan turned to leave, but before he could exit the passageway he heard Lugus say, ‘I regret it ends like this. If you knew the things I could tell you. I could lead you to where you belong.’

  ‘You say you know a lot?’ Fáolan said, his tail to Lugus. Why was he still talking? ‘Allow me to try you. Do you know what became of the king’s siblings, Iona and Lorcan?’

  A heartbeat. Two. And then, ‘What if I do?’

  Fáolan stilled.

  ‘You do not.’

  Lugus chuckled, the sound creeping up behind Fáolan, then up his spine. ‘How quick you are to dismiss me.’

  ‘Tell me, then,’ Fáolan said, whirling back once more. ‘Where are they?’

  Lugus was already shaking his head. ‘Patience, young Lightbringer. Some answers need to wait. For now you need to focus on—’

  ‘The trial!’ Fáolan’s head snapped up. How much time had it been? ‘I need to go.’

  Not waiting for a reply, he rushed down the hallway and into the west wing, leaving the dragonar behind him. He was almost sure he did not imagine Lugus’s voice chasing him through the corridors as he ran.

  ‘We will meet again soon.’

  Fáolan stopped before a large wooden door, panting. He looked up at the carvings on its surface—dragons in flight and the six watchful eyes of Unity above them. He tried to ignore the uneasy feeling they gave him.

  He took a deep breath, which did little to calm his nerves, and pushed open the door to the chamber. The three dragons present turned their heads to look at him, expressions varying from impatience, through a question, into gentle support. A table spanned the chamber’s length, long and narrow, Father in the seat of honour. Untouched refreshments were distributed evenly along it. From the walls portraits of kings and queens glared at the visitors, and between them various maps filled the space on the white marble walls.

  The King Lightbringer said, ‘You are late, Fáolan.’

  ‘I know, Father,’ said Fáolan, bowing. He slunk into the chamber, closing the great wooden door after himself. ‘I apologise for the delay.’

  Taori sent him a tight smile while the king shook his head and said, ‘Might we begin?’

  Fáolan sat down next to Taori, wings folded neatly against his back, tail coiled around him, its tip at his paws. He looked briefly to Mother, a silent presence watching them from an alcove at the back of the room. ‘Yes.’

  The king looked at his two heirs, his gaze lingering a little longer on Fáolan, as he laid his forepaws on the table, leaned forward a little, a mountain of muscle and scale. Even at a distance Father’s looming presence never ceased to make Fáolan’s stomach heavy, which this day’s delay only augmented.

  ‘Imagine you are the ruler,’ said the king and Fáolan almost smiled. It was that kind of test this time, not an academic one. In these, if he got lucky, he could come closer to the better answer. ‘You receive a report of strange occurrences taking place in Vyl. Soldiers are refusing to enter the darker parts of the woods, claiming they come alive when intruders try to cross. It begins with talks of forest demons and vengeful spirits, but with time come more concrete reports—misshapen dragons made of crawling vines, larger than any living ones, trapping dragons in the writhing coils of their bodies. Some have too many paws, or too few, others multiple heads, and yet others do not look like dragons at all.

  ‘Rumours spread in the outposts—that these are what’s left of the dragons who ventured too far, now possessed and corrupted by the spirits of these woods. Even the air itself, they say, is poisoned. Unrest grows among the forces there.

  ‘You have a choice now,’ the king went on, looking down at his heirs. Fáolan’s claws twitched against the cushioned mat as the spell that had held him in the story broke. ‘Do you deploy more forces to investigate the new threats in Vyl? Or should you take a different approach?’

  ‘I would investigate the woods,’ said Fáolan without much need to think, and cursed himself for his compulsive reply—curiosity was a poor compass for a monarch. Then, remembering the meeting with Lugus, he added, ‘Knowledge is power. Without knowing what this threat is, there is no way to counter it.’

  He suppressed a shiver at his own words. The same applied to Lugus—who was he? What did he want?

  He had to tell Father about him.

  The king looked appraisingly at Fáolan, but said nothing. He turned to Taori, who tapped a claw on the table and said, ‘How dire is the situation in Vyl?’

  ‘Not very,’ said the king.

  Fáolan tensed. He had not considered that.

  Taori thought for a moment. ‘Keep our dragons stationed in Vyl, but without deploying more. Designate a small unit to investigate the woods, but focus the expansion in the south, and then, when we know what is happening in Vyl, deal with it appropriately.’

  The king nodded. ‘Very well. That is close to what I was expecting. Do mind, Taori, that it is still important to make sure we keep a firm grip on the territories under our control, but you judged correctly that it is important to assess the danger before pouncing blindly on every little obstacle. Fáolan—’ Father turned to him and Fáolan stiffened— ‘I appreciate your willingness to learn all there is to learn about the enemy—you are right in that knowledge is power, Cáondai used to say so herself—but you cannot let every distraction steal your focus. If you do, you will lose sight of your true aim. And these reports are merely that—distractions. A small thing when compared to the whole geopolitical web around us. You must learn to distinguish trivial matters from things truly worth your attention.’

  Fáolan felt hot under his scales. He wanted to oppose—to say it was not a trivial thing. Father himself had said that they should keep their grip on Vyl, and a thing like this was a threat to their control.

  He said, ‘I understand, Father.’

  ‘Is it true?’ Taori asked.

  The king turned towards her. ‘What is?’ and neither his voice nor snout belied any emotion.

  She leaned forward above the table, met his eyes. ‘All of it. The reports. Is there really something odd happening in Vyl?’

  The king gave her a long look. ‘You should not trouble yourself with such things, Taori. Not yet, at least. These are matters of the empire at large, and the two of you should focus on developing the skills of a future ruler.’

  ‘So it is true,’ she said, unrelenting. ‘Was the benchmark for this question the decision you made against these reports?’

  The king shook his head, smiling, and in that brief moment he looked so much more like Aodhan ál éoghan, their father, than the King Lightbringer. A dull ache bloomed in Fáolan’s chest as he realised it had been years, possibly, since he had seen Father look at him this way. ‘Do not rush to conclusions. Presently you need not trouble yourself with the matter of this report beyond the test. Whether it is true or not is mine to deal with.’

  Taori looked like she wanted to inquire further, but thought better of it. Fáolan used the brief pause in their conversation to speak up.

  ‘Father?’ he said before he could think better of it. His tail twitched restlessly. ‘I saw an odd dragonar on my way here.’

  The king turned his boulder-heavy gaze to Fáolan. ‘Odd? How so?'

  ‘He…’ Fáolan swallowed. How much should he say? ‘He approached me in the passage to the west wing. He called himself Lugus. His voice… It was like two dragons talking at the same time, and his eyes were glowing as if he was accessing, but they were wrong. Nearly white.’

  ‘White?’ The king said flatly. Fáolan held his gaze, and Father sighed. ‘What did he want?’

  Fáolan swallowed. ‘I…’ Should he say it? Or would it dig an even deeper hole under himself? Today’s trial made Lugus’s proposal all the more… Fáolan was not sure what, exactly. ‘I do not know,’ he lied. ‘I left before he got to that.’

  ‘Is this why you arrived late?’ the king asked. Fáolan nodded, earning a scoff. ‘Nonsense. White eyes? Two voices? If you wanted an acceptable excuse, you should have come up with a better lie. Or better yet—admit a mistake. A good ruler does not need to cower behind pitiful lies to save their scales.’

  ‘No, it’s not that! My late arrival is on me, I do not wish to blame it on a stranger—’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘—but I am not lying. There was a dragonar with glowing white eyes. I did not recognise him, but he knew me. And he was… weird. He talked ab—’

  ‘Fáolan,’ the king cut him off, sharp and sure as a command. ‘I will not punish you for arriving late, but fabricating nonsense like this will only make it worse.’

  Foolishly, he pressed on. ‘I’m not fabricating it! He was there and—’

  ‘Enough!’ roared the king, the scales on his neck flaring up, and Fáolan could not help but cower under his sudden fury. ‘I will not hear more of this. You—’

  ‘Aodhan!’ Mother interjected, stomping forward as she emerged from her alcove. ‘How, in the name of Unity, are you treating your son?!’ She moved toward Fáolan, opening a wing as though to shield him, and leaned down to look him in the eye. Her own, the warm yellow of sunlit honey, shone with fierceness and tenderness both. ‘Tell me, again, what you saw. No interruptions this time.’

  The search for Lugus proved fruitless. He was not where Fáolan had met him, nor anywhere in the central palace, nor anywhere else they looked. Even though Mother seemed to have believed him, she was looking less confident the longer their investigation went on, until at last even she agreed with Father.

  That evening Taori came to his room.

  ‘Was it true?’ she asked. ‘About this stranger?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Fáolan countered bitterly. He had lain on his cushions, thinking, when she entered, and how he stood and stretched his paws and wings, felt the muscles strain and relax pleasantly under his scales. It had been a long day.

  Taori considered him, tilted her head. ‘You are many things, Fáolan,’ she said, coming fully inside. ‘But you are too simple to have come up with something as ridiculous as this.’

  ‘I knew I could count on you,’ he said dryly.

  She did not smile. ‘That said, I would not recommend bringing this up with Father any more, whether you see this dragonar again or not.’

  Fáolan blinked. ‘So you do believe me.’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She scoffed. Her tail swayed idly, but all the rest of her was a picture of perfect royal poise. ‘I know you. I could believe you missed a trial because Eamon wanted you as his accomplice for another ridiculous stunt, but you would not have lied about it.’ She shook her head and made to leave, but stopped before the doorway, turning back. ‘If you see him again… be careful.’

  An odd feeling bloomed inside his chest, an almost-warmth. ‘I will.’

  Taori nodded, and left.

  It happened when he was alone again. He was walking down one of the palace corridors, just like he had on the day of the test. And just like then he heard the double voice of the stranger, and saw two glowing eyes of white.

  ‘Young Lightbringer,’ said the dragon who called himself Lugus, ‘I thought I asked you not to tell your father of our secret little meeting.’