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Graduation.
I look around my room, trying to absorb the knowledge that it wouldn’t be mine for much longer; the next time I set foot in Basgiath, it would belong to a newly-minted third year. Or maybe it would belong to a different third year on the brink of graduation; there was no telling when I’d be back.
If ever.
Focus, Violet. Clothes into the rucksack. I notice Xaden’s clothes are already missing from the armoire. I’m not sure when he found time to pack his things in the chaos of the last few days, but he would never expect me to do it for him.
There’s a folded page at the bottom of the empty armoire, and I stoop to pick it up, unfolding it as I straighten.
It’s a drawing of a battle ax. Written below in Xaden’s handwriting is the note Watch out, Violence. Laughing, I tuck it in my rucksack and shift to the bookshelf.
I pack the books into the crate one at a time, running my fingers down the spine and flipping through each. I tell myself that I’m deciding what to bring, but I know I’m bringing all of them. It’s the last time I’ll hold each book in this room, in this place , and it probably feels more meaningful than it should. Or maybe it’s just as meaningful as it should be. I’ve lived here a long time, after all.
The Book of Brennan is sideways on the shelf, halfway down, with a scrap of paper marking the last place I’d referenced partway through second year. After the Battle of Basgiath, everything we were learning had changed so drastically that our experiences for second and third year were very different. I wonder if I should give it back to Brennan, maybe with my notes for a second edition. It was so precious during my first year, and the knowledge he’d given me had saved my life on more than one occasion.
I sit down on the edge of the bed and page through it, thinking about changes I might make. Presentation , says the header at the top of the page, and below it is a sketch of the line of dragons. Of course I’d seen it before, I’d looked at it the morning of presentation to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but. But now, I realize that one of the dragons in the drawing is definitely Marbh, and right next to him is Tairn.
I push the crate to the foot of the bed and put my back to the headboard, patting pillows into place for support, and I start looking closely at the illustrations.
Now that I’m looking, I realize Tairn is in nearly every illustration that includes a dragon. If there are two dragons, Marbh is the second. I don’t know the others, but I’m willing to guess they’re dragons Brennan knew when he was writing the book. “They are,” Tairn confirms, his amusement clear as I flip back to Presentation and tap the other dragons one at a time as he names them. “Firinn, Aodach, Briogais, and Gaoth.”
“Does that mean this cadet is someone you know too?” I turn pages slowly, admiring my brother’s artwork. “ Wait, that’s Brennan. Who’s the one punching him?” The aggressive cadet is a few inches shorter, with wild curls and an absolutely manic grin.
“Naolin,” Tairn says.
I stare at the page. “They were here at the same time?”
“They came as you did with Feirge’s rider.”
I close the book and put it in the rucksack alongside Xaden’s note. If Naolin was Brennan’s best friend, he might be happy to have these drawings back.
–
The best part of having graduated is coming home, I decide as the cliffs and green roofs come into sight and Tairn and Andarna roar greetings to the dragons and gryphons launching in welcome. I’m not sure when Basgiath stopped being home. It still was when we flew to defend it, when the details of the treaty were hammered out, when the ring around Xaden’s eyes faded and Sgaeyl deigned to bear him once more. It was home after last year’s graduation when Rhiannon claimed the room that had once been Xaden’s, and we prepared to welcome the new cadets, the first year they would be offered a choice between Threshing and Harvest, brown and black uniforms mingling on both sides of the parapet (“You are all lunatics,” Cat declared the minute she caught sight of it. Ridoc grinned at her and said, “Now you know why,”) but the new rules meant that Rhi got to declare that anyone caught harming another candidate during the crossing would themselves be pitched headfirst off the side. That level of casual brutality was a strong sign of venin training and it was no longer welcome. No more Jack Fucking Barlowes, if we had anything to say about it.
I think it had still been home when the first years started practicing the Gauntlet, cheering each other along and only marking a success when all the first years from each squad made it to the top, when I realized it was safer to learn their names because while death was an ever-present threat for all of us, cadets were lost to accident and injury and irritated dragon but not to one another.
Somewhere during that year I started thinking about graduation as if it was something that might actually happen to me instead of a distant squad goal, and once that had happened, I decide, Aretia had become home.
Home is where Xaden is, I think, but Xaden isn’t actually here yet because we’d made better time than expected. I’m still home. It’ll be an even homier home when Xaden’s in it, and in the meantime I swing my rucksack to my shoulder and slide down Tairn’s foreleg. Maybe I’ll get to clean up and change before Xaden makes it back from patrol; that will be nice.
The rucksack ends up in the corner, which means that I come back into our bedroom the next day to find it unpacked and everything neatly put away. I still find it surprising to open the door and find our bed neatly made, fresh towels in the bathroom, everything restored to gleaming order, even though Xaden has warned me about it. The head housekeeper, whose family has served Xaden’s for centuries and who herself has known him since the day he was born, had informed him that he would allow her staff to clean his room or he would be scrubbing the floor himself, and now our room was regularly spotless. I wish I’d been here to see it.
Brennan’s book, I realize a few days later, is tucked onto the bookshelf, which makes perfect sense to anyone outside my head. Xaden’s battle ax is inside it. I put it in the armoire where it belongs and go looking for Brennan.
He’s in his room, I’m told, which also requires that I ask where his room is because somehow we shared a house for several months without my needing to know that. Some sister I am.
It also becomes clear to me how much of Riorson House I haven’t even seen yet. Part of me wants to ask Xaden for a tour, to see the rooms and halls of this place through his eyes, and the rest of me wants to wander around and see what I can find without anyone stopping me. That’s how I explored Basgiath in the weeks and months after my mother was first stationed there - hours of rambling down hallways, ducking into empty rooms when I heard footsteps, hiding behind doors and curtains and under tables and waiting for silence to return. It backfired sometimes - I’d gotten stuck in more than one uncomfortable hiding place after ducking into a room that turned out to be where the footsteps were going. Sometimes I’d explore with Dain or Mira, but usually it was just me, sneaking off to learn about the place without needing to amuse anyone else in the pursuit of knowledge.
Brennan’s door is at the end of an unfamiliar hallway lined with large portraits of ancient Riorsons who seem to disapprove of my presence in their venerable halls. I wonder, not for the first time, what the prior generation would think of their heir’s choice of partner.
I knock and wait, holding my breath to count how long he’ll take to answer it. “Kylynn, I told you,” he starts to say as the door opens, frowning in concern as he catches sight of me. “Violet? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Is this a bad time? I can come back.”
He looks me up and down, as if to confirm that I’m not secretly hiding an injury. “Not at all, unless Kylynn sent you to argue on her behalf.”
I laugh. “Nobody sent me, I promise.”
“Then by all means, come in.” He steps back with a half-bow, opening the door the rest of the way.
Brennan’s room is small and cozy, wood-paneled, small windows looking out onto an interior courtyard I think I’ve walked through once or twice. There are a pair of overstuffed chairs flanking a small table in front of the fireplace and a desk entirely buried in papers tucked in the corner. A map hangs over it, a smaller version of the Battle Brief map, dotted with flags and notes and small sketches of dragons and gryphons next to outposts. A curtain separates the front part of the room from the rest, clearly marking a private space.
“Have a seat,” he offers, nodding at the closer chair. “I’d offer you tea, but it’s probably gone cold.”
I sit down and look around while he tries vainly to straighten up. I’m reminded of nothing more than visiting our father in his study, but with slightly fewer books and more drawings on every surface. Instead of a text, Brennan has an open sketchbook on the arm of his chair, the beginnings of a dragon roughed out on the page.
“I brought you something,” I say, which is enough to make him sit down across from me, arching his eyebrows in question. I pull the Book of Brennan from my satchel and hand it to him.
He takes it, turning it over in his hands with a surprised, slightly confounded expression. “How did you - when you all thought I was dead?”
“Mira gave it to me,” I tell him. “She couldn’t bear to burn it, and I’m glad she didn’t, because it saved my life on multiple occasions.”
“That’s why I wrote it,” he says. “Not specifically for you, of course, but… I’m glad you got to have it, Vi.”
“Me too. It was like having you with me, when I never thought I’d get to have you around again.”
“Still sorry about that,” he says.
“Not trying to twist the knife, Bren, I promise. I’ve been wondering something, though.”
“What’s that?”
“How did you know where the matches were posted in advance? If I had to pick one thing that was the most helpful, it was that.”
“Really? We always thought it was useful, but not that useful. I almost didn’t put it in.”
“Maybe not for Mira. But I poisoned my first six opponents, and then in second year I used it to poison Sloan’s until she was willing to accept help training.”
“You - poisoned - “ Brennan bursts out laughing, shaking his head at me. “Dad would be so proud of you, Vi.”
I flush at the unexpected compliment. “I had to do something , and I didn’t stand a chance until Xaden and Imogen decided to train me until I was strong enough to fight my own battles.”
“I mean it,” he says. “It wasn’t what he had in mind for you, but he’d be proud of what you’ve become.”
“Thanks, Bren.” I look down at the book in his hands. “I didn’t use it much after the Battle of Basgiath. A lot of things changed.”
“Even if they hadn’t, you had your feet under you. You didn’t need my help any more.”
That perspective hadn’t occurred to me. Thinking about it, I could recognize its truth, though. “I did have a lot of other support. You know me, though. I’m always going to read the textbook.”
“Two or three times,” he agrees. “Which I assume you did?”
I nod. “Whenever I was too anxious to do anything else during my first year, I’d read it. It made me feel safe, like you were watching out for me.” He smiles at me, warm and tender and very much the big brother who held me after nightmares and kissed scrapes and threatened to punch boys who were mean to me. He’s flipping through the pages, stopping to look at some of them. “I looked at it again when I was packing, and that’s when I realized that the dragons you’d drawn were… well, most of them were Tairn and Marbh. And that made me think the person you kept drawing was real, too.”
I know who it is; Tairn told me before we left Basgiath. But I want to hear it from Brennan, for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint.
“His name is Naolin,” Brennan says softly.
“The one who saved you?” It’s not a question, not really, but I don’t quite know what to say to my brother when he looks like this, like someone’s ripped him apart.
Like I looked when I thought I’d lost Xaden.
He nods, still staring at the page. His fingers are splayed loosely across the text but I can read CHALLENGES around them. “I was going to put someone else in this picture, you know? We were in the same squad. But he suggested… he thought it was hilarious, the idea of punching me. Mira wouldn’t know, and once we told her she’d think it was funny too. So I did. I never could tell him no.”
“You loved him,” falls out of my mouth, and I slap my hand over it to make sure I don’t say anything else weird.
“I do,” he says. Present tense.
“But he’s…”
“I know.” He reaches without looking, pulling a larger book from between the table and his chair and hands it to me. “Those are better. These are just silly little sketches, I barely put any work into them at all.”
“They’re honestly really good, Bren,” I start to say, and then I find myself staring at a full-color pencil drawing of a man with floppy red-gold curls, a wide smiling mouth, and merry blue eyes so vibrant I half expect him to blink. A scar cuts across his cheek, vanishing into his hairline just above the ear. There’s a suggestion of two stars on his collar, and the overall impression is of someone who’s not quite handsome but is certainly arresting, the sort of person who would tell hilarious stories, Ridoc’s brother in spirit if not in appearance.
“That is Nao. First real drawing I ever did of him, and of course it’s the best one I ever managed. It’s so hard to get his mouth right.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “He’s beautiful.”
“He always thought he was funny-looking, can you believe that?” Brennan asks, leaning forward to look at the page. “There are more, they’re just not as good.”
I turn the page and gasp. It’s Tairn, head up and wings spread in the breath before launch, and the strangest thing about the picture is that there’s someone on his back who’s not me. Red hair gleams in the sun, black leathers vanishing against the background of Tairn’s scales. “Brennan. This is gorgeous. ”
“You think? Tairn’s head is - “
“No. It’s breathtaking, and all I want to know is if I can convince you to do it again with me on his back? I want this hanging on my wall.”
“I can try,” he says. “I’m a little rusty.”
I look around the room, silently counting all the dragons I can see. “Really.”
“That’s different,” he objects. “It’s how I keep track of who’s stationed where, it’s not…”
“It’s not what?”
“It’s not art. It’s no different than your taking notes in class.”
I’m staring him down, doing my best imitation of Mom’s what-sort-of-bullshit-excuse-is-this look.
He laughs. “I told you I’d try, you don’t have to glare at me like that.”
“You better,” I tell him, turning the page.
Naolin with a book in his hand. Naolin, intensely focused on something. Naolin, sprawled in the grass. Naolin, a silver lieutenant’s stripe at his collar, an arm over the shoulder of… “Is that Suri?”
“We used to be friends,” he says wryly.
Tairn again, just his head this time, with Naolin. “Is he hugging Tairn?”
Brennan shrugs. “He was a hugger.”
“Do you like to be hugged?”
Tairn chuffs.
More pictures, each one breathtakingly beautiful, no matter what Brennan says about them. Maybe it’s just the way Bren’s capturing someone he loves, noticing every detail, every nuance of his expression, and he can tell where he made mistakes because he had the original in front of him.
“Better not go any further than that,” Brennan says suddenly, reaching to take the book back.
Surprised, I hand it back to him and realize his cheeks are slightly red. “Wait. Are you - did you -“
“Don’t ask. You don’t really want to know, Vi.” He’s laughing, more than a little uncomfortable.
“Brennan!” I laugh, fingers tightening around the book. “It’s not going to shock me.”
“Violet. I’m not showing my baby sister my partner’s… assets.”
He’s so embarrassed I can’t keep from snickering. “Never fancied you a prude, Bren.”
“Baby. Sister,” he repeats.
“Your baby sister’s a grown woman,” I point out. “Commissioned officer and everything.”
“Nope. That’s my line, right there.”
I’m still laughing but I relent, giving him the book back. I don’t really want to see my big brother’s drawings of his nude boyfriend, but I so rarely get a chance to tease Brennan, especially now. Col. Ashreigh is much more solemn than Brennan Sorrengail ever was, but at least now I know why.
A dark shimmer brushes against my thoughts, curious and affectionate.
“I’d love to hear more about him, if you’re willing to tell me,” I say as he tucks it back next to his chair. “Not tonight; Xaden’s looking for me. But soon?”
“Soon,” he says, rising with me. “And Violet?”
“Hm?”
“Thank you for bringing it back to me.”
I throw my arms around him, impulsively, like I did as a child. He hugs me back, big and warm and solid, and I’m so glad that redheaded rider loved my brother enough to give him back to me.