Diedre sighed. “In a perfect world, I think so.”

“Oh, Deedee. Still, you’ll have to point him out to me sometime.”

“Erm, yes. An’ you? In a perfect world, do you think you could marry your dragon?”

Yenni paused. “This is not a perfect world,” she said at last. “So there’s no use thinking about it. Now come, I need to practice Meyor’s Repulsion.”

24

He was cursed. He had to be. It was the only way to explain how his Given could look him in the eye and tell him he was nobody, nobody to her.

A bird trilled overhead in one of the pine trees. Weysh had hoped to find some peace here on the mountain, but the quiet only made his thoughts louder. A little over a moonturn had passed since he’d last spoken to Yenni. True to his word, he hadn’t sought her out, or wanted to seek her out. Half-year exams were approaching, and when he should have been concerned with helping her pass, the thought of her only filled him with empty hollowness.

“We’re not speaking,” he’d told Harth and Zui when they’d innocently asked after her. He didn’t go into detail, even when they pressed him. It was simply too embarrassing. “Just make sure she passes her exams,” he’d begged them. “Take care of her for me.”

He hoped this horrible numbness was not how the women he’d left in the past felt. How Carmenna felt.

Weysh shook his head and focused on moving forward on the mountain trail. Before him twin dragons stretched high enough to rival the pine trees surrounding them, their stony wings forever spread back and their onyx eyes shining. Long necks curved toward one another, creating an archway before an incline of stairs so steep they could lead straight to heaven itself. Weysh considered flying up to the top, but he was here to pray for guidance from Byen, and somehow taking the stairs seemed like it should be part of that effort. He’d already flown up the mountain to reach this chapelle, after all.

So he took to the cracked, white steps, and when the burn of exertion spread through his legs he relished it, considering it penance. He shouldn’t have unleashed his anger on Yenni as he did, but he doubted she would take kindly to his attempts to make amends. She likely didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to face her. He breathed deeply of the pine-scented air and kept going.

When he reached the top, the scenery at last stirred something in his murky soul. If Mount Eglise was a king, then the chapelle was his gleaming white crown. It consisted of columns carved with curving dragons arranged in an arc, with delicate, trellis-like woodwork stretching across them to make a roof that still let in patches of cerulean sky. The altar to Byen stood beneath.