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A VOW WITH SOME SIZZLE

T hose seven days passed slowly. Considering Viggo’s news, I hadn’t pressed Demius about the permission he’d given for me to go to the city. At least, not yet.

We spoke very little, our attention turned inward. My short twenty-six years of life were all I was to have. Whatever I might have done outside the canyon mattered not at all. And each night, when I closed my eyes, I wondered if it was the last.

Most of my questions were the same as those people passing through the gully, so I never asked them; I didn’t expect I’d be given different answers. Once, I suggested we open the seal in the floor and consult the cavernous, secret library of priceless books. Surely one of them held the key to protecting ourselves from the prophesied doom of the blue dragon.

But my master refused.

It wasn’t my place to argue. They were his books, after all, collected through millennia of life. No doubt he already knew each page, each word. If there was important information stored below our feet, surely, he would know it and would tell me.

One night, Demius barred the windows and doors and headed to his bed. I stepped in front of him to demand his attention. His weary shoulders sagged, and he finally looked me in the eye.

“Mother Semel. How did she know I’m a woman?”

He sighed. “Because her son has been calling you “she” since the two of you were sixteen.”

I gasped. “ I never heard it!”

“She did.” He stepped around me, then stopped. “It would be best…if Viggo forgot you were here. And if…trouble comes, do not leave any hint of your direction, do you hear? I don’t know how the two of you have been communicating, but it ends now.” He turned further, to face me head on and lay his hands on my shoulders. “I will have you vow it.”

Where his hands rested, electricity buzzed lightly through my robe, warning that any vow I made to him now would be sealed and breaking it would render me violently ill.

“Not even a hint that no one else could understand?”

“Not even a hint. He is not the innocent boy you remember. And when all is done and unfolded, the last person you want to trust…will be Viggo.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Demius’ gifts included a light knowledge of healing and the opposite—to make someone ill if they broke their word to him. If he had other talents, besides the ability to quickly summon a rain cloud, he hid them from me, but I was fairly certain he couldn’t see the future…

Or could he?

Before the question could reach my lips, he shook me. It was the first time in my life he’d treated me harshly. “Vow it! Do it now.”

Despite that tender kiss just days ago, my heart had no attachments to Viggo. We’d played together as children sometimes, under Demius’ watchful eye. We’d had a few frantic episodes when we were teenagers, once Viggo discovered I was a girl. And since Demius always said I must be educated, at sixteen, I’d considered kissing an essential part of my education.

Those lessons had ceased as quickly as they’d begun, however, when the Semels went back to Ristat for Foadaan, the yearly celebration of the harvest . And even when they did return, Viggo was never at our meeting place again, an alcove in the rocks, not far from the garden.

It was the alcove where he would expect some note from me, or a pile of rocks, pointing the direction where I might be found.

The end of his interest had been an education as well. My heart had cracked but hadn’t broken. There was nothing between us now but our past…and that last kiss of defiance.

I took a deep breath and said the words Demius demanded. “If we should flee this place, I vow I will leave no hints at where to find us or the direction we take.”

“Say it again,” Demius whispered. “But there will be no we . When you flee, you will go alone.”

The certainty in his tone told me there was no need to ask the other question. Demius, one of the Everfolk, could see the future just fine…

* * *

One of the Unbreakable Laws of Hestia was that no dwelling could be claimed by another if the space was declared occupied. Since reading had been discouraged for over a hundred years, rendering many Hestians illiterate, a simple scrap of white cloth, called a bratach, would suffice.

If that cloth became well-worn and soiled, the security of the dwelling was in jeopardy. Thus, if I wanted to keep intruders from the Semels’ home, for as long as life continued, I would need to maintain the large white bratach that hung beneath their balcony, visible to the entire gully in daylight.

The punishment for thievery or trespass was decapitation—sure and permanent death—so many Hestians with a covetous or greedy bent had already been eliminated or had learned to control themselves. Few had bothered us, over the years, but Demius had a clever way of dealing with those who would break laws. He would summon a sudden storm further up the wash, promise there were riches buried in the deepest dip in the gully, then let the flashwaters sweep those who dared threaten us away.

If anyone survived, they never returned to complain.

Now, with news of the blue dragon, we were on our guard. Belief in their imminent death would change men’s natures—it was already changing mine—and we couldn’t count on our luck holding.

Demius and I had permission to collect whatever we wanted from the keep, and finally, on the morning of the eighth day, he declared it was time. I knew he’d been saving the task to distract me from his promise. But now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to see the city at a time when everyone feared what was to come. I’d read about riots and mobs ruled by fear. I was in no hurry to witness such things firsthand.

“Sir,” I began, over our morning meal, “Why didn’t we all drop dead when the blue dragon arrived?”

Demius rolled his eyes. “You shall understand soon enough.”

Soon enough. He was still trying to teach me patience. But patience was a game for millenarians. They could enter gevri, hibernate for a hundred years or a thousand, and not feel cheated. For younglings like me, patience was just another word for torture.

Before letting me out of the house, he paused to look me over, then stared for a moment into my eyes. It wasn’t the first time. I knew what he wanted.

“I have nothing to confess,” I said.

He chuckled and shook his head, then waved me closer. He dug inside the cowl of his robes and removed the library key from around his neck. He demanded my hand, then slowly lowered the key and tether into my palm. The silver of the dragon talisman shone like new, though it had laid against my master’s skin for as long as I could remember. Some of my first memories were of watching the heart of it light up when he neared the library door.

I turned it over to look once again at the raised bits and grooves on the back that resembled a tiny city—details that would align perfectly with the depressions in the seal of the library. As old and slow as he moved, Demius had never allowed me to open that door, but insisted on doing it himself. It seemed that was about to change.

The precious key. A high honor. But a bit too late.

“Wear it,” he said. “Conceal it. Never trade it away, do you understand?”

“No, I do not understand. Just how much time do you think we have?”

He only stared.

I rolled my eyes and turned for the door. “It won’t matter much if we’re laid waste by dragon fire, will it?” I paused, hoping he’d assure me that fire wouldn’t be the manner of our death. I couldn’t imagine anything more painful.

“Take your time,” he said instead. “Be thorough. If it grows dark, stay the night in the safety of the keep.”

On the way up the hill, I thought back on Demius’ lingering stare and realized he might not have been hoping for a confession from me, but perhaps had been tempted to confess something himself. After all, we might not live much longer. Perhaps he thought it time he expressed his appreciation for me.

And the more I considered, the more determined I became to express my own appreciation for him as soon as I returned to the house. He’d taken me in as a wee babe left at his door. He’d kept me alive, educated me, and as keeper of his priceless library, he’d declared me his apprentice, though my access to the books was restricted.

But most importantly, he’d kept me under his protection, shielded me from the Prospectors—an association that scouts for female younglings in an attempt to increase the population.

With time running out, I realized I wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore…