7

“Congratulations, Bram.” The man clasped his shoulder. “You did it.”

“Thank you,” Bram returned the gesture, then his eyes fell to the red band around the man's wrist, and he remembered to ask, “What is your rank?”

“Second,” the man replied, before taking his leave.

“Jiyasu Agadh Vialthor,” Bram read the name and stood watching the prince of the Vialthor Empire walk away, struck silent by how a man born to such a throne could carry so much quiet kindness.

Jiyasu walked a few paces farther until he reached the parchment bearing Solmaere’s results, the crowd there was unlike the one at Vaerhold. It was far more disciplined, for Solmaere’s ranks were shared by both men and women, whereas Vaerhold’s gathering consisted mostly of men. He entered the crowd in search of his cousin and found him standing behind a red-haired boy and a Verdani girl.

“Rhovyn Arghy Aestlae,” he read his name three times.

“You are Rank One,” Erynae said, spreading her arms to hug Rhovyn.

“Thank you,” Rhovyn said, pressing his face into her shoulder. “What rank are you?”

“Third,” Erynae said, then pulled back. “I will be first in the practical exam.”

“I do not doubt you,” Rhovyn said, rubbing her arm before glancing around.

“Thinking about your Draconian girl?”

“Talking too much,” Rhovyn said, pulling her along. “Come. Let me take you to eat something worthy of my Rank One.”

Erynae tagged along as Rhovyn led the way, his thoughts still wandered back to the Draconian girl. Had she passed? He wondered but he had no way of knowing; he knew neither her name nor where to find her amid the darkness that had begun swallowing the last remnants of dusk, then, as though the heavens themselves had taken mercy upon him, the university's magic cressets bloomed to life, one after another, and the last of them, the Great Cresset that rested atop the Mirror of Light, awakened last and burned brightest of them all.

Its flames cast shifting shades of gold and amber across hundreds of faces before coming to rest upon the woman standing at the edge of Aelthara's crowd. A golden radiance stirred behind her ears, then unfurled across her skin, it flowed along the graceful curve of her neck until it came to rest within the hollow of her throat, where the ancient wings reached their final span and blazed with quiet brilliance.

The crowd parted before her the way still water parts around a stone cast into its heart, students stepped backward from judgment already rooted within them, and within the space they had opened without ever meaning to open it, Rhovyn found the Draconian girl glowing gold.

Ryska turned, the crowd had made way for her without meaning to, and for the first time, nothing stood between her and the parchment.

2. Ryska Harini Aen

Her eyes rested there, unlike everyone else, she did not search for any other name. She had no one here whose name she had come to find, no familiar faces waiting to celebrate with her, and no one who had stood before the board hoping to see her name appear at the top.

Nehara broke through the parted crowd the very next second, and her eyes lifted to the parchment.

1. Valere Arjane Paendrage

2. Ryska Harini Aen

Nehara read the names, then she crossed the remaining distance in two quick steps and gathered Ryska into a fierce embrace. The force of it turned Ryska toward the open courtyard, toward Rhovyn, who stood barely ten paces away, and for the first time, he saw her face.

His heart stumbled within his chest as he finally found her, the night itself had waited for this very moment, and she proved more beautiful than every face his heart had imagined throughout the day. His pulse betrayed him with reckless haste, utterly unaware that scarcely ten paces behind him another pair of eyes had found her in that very same heartbeat, and that heart too had forgotten how to keep its rhythm.

Valere had only glanced back once at the murmurs of a glow, yet that single stolen glimpse robbed his heart of its next beat. He stopped mid-stride, his eyes found her again, and he forgot where he had been walking, why he had been walking there, who stood beside him, and what either he or the world had been only a heartbeat before. He stared without blinking for thirty heartbeats or longer, almost afraid that closing his eyes, even for the smallest breath of time, would banish whatever miracle the night had chosen to place before him.

His feet carried him toward her of their own accord, and with every step the world receded farther from him. Colors bled away into ash, figures blurred and melted into indistinct shadows, and the murmurs of the gathering were the last thing to disappear, fading into a distant hum, while the gold flowing through her veins remained untouched, the only color still burning within a world gone grey.

He walked past students still murmuring, past Rhovyn, who remained rooted where he stood, watching the golden girl from a distance while Valere, whose heart had beheld something he had never known could exist, needed only to know that the girl before him was real.

Ryska saw him coming from fifteen paces away and held his gaze without wavering until he had crossed every one of them.

What does this Human bring? Jab? A sneer dressed in courtesy? The same tired prejudice wearing a gentler face? Or perhaps another compliment upon her beauty, the sort men offered when they wanted something and believed flattery the cheapest price to pay for it.

Valere's gaze lowered as he came to a halt before her and she tilted her head only enough to meet it. Gold met blue, and the world that had been fading into grey narrowed itself into that single meeting of their eyes. His head inclined because her height demanded it, yet it felt as though something far older than courtesy itself had compelled him to bow, however slightly, before she chose to meet him halfway.

Her eyes, dragon-pupiled, held a gold that was wholly her own. It was not the reflection of flame he had mistaken from a distance. It lived behind a gaze that neither flinched beneath his scrutiny nor yielded to it. Her eyes remained steady upon him, in the same way his heart was certain of everything once he had decided upon it, and it made something stir behind his ribs, something he had no name for yet.

He could hear her breathing, then his own and every instinct pleaded with him to step back, this closeness was too much for a girl he had met scarcely a breath ago, yet his body had forgotten how distance was made for wanting came upon him with the violence of revelation.

He wanted her fervently, wanted to press his mouth to those eyes, to the furrow of her brow, to the blue veins of her temple visible beneath her almost-translucent pale skin, to the golden vein of her neck. She had struck him with something he had not expected, for she looked like someone whose very existence could have prepared no mortal eyes for what it meant to see her made whole, made near, made real.

He tilted his head, taking her in whole, but his gaze fell upon the wound on her arm, and his hand reached for it, only to stop a breath short of touching her. “It is a blade cut,” he said, pointing toward it.

He stopped before I could pull away, Ryska thought and suddenly she was annoyed with everything, with him, with the wound, with the moment, with the impossible timing of it all, and most of all with herself for being shaken by a restraint she had not expected him to possess.

“It was an accident,” she lowered her gaze slightly.

“It did not come from an accident,” he tilted his head to meet her lowered gaze.

Ryska blinked, the words struck somewhere inside her chest, a quiet knock against a door she had never intended to leave answerable, and something within her, braced all evening for cruelty or calculation, faltered at receiving neither. Her heart behaved in ways she did not understand, forgetting the rhythm it had always known. Warmth spread through her chest, frightening in its gentleness, because nothing had happened that should have summoned it.