Origins

  Your imagination is quirky, Jaxi observed.

  Clearly, his subconscious constantly worries he’ll be discovered and hanged for being a sorcerer, Azarwrath said.

  Hanged or poked? By a pitchfork.

  I’ve dreamed of my death at the hands of mobs armed with all different manner of weapons on numerous occasions, Trip admitted. There wasn’t much point in hiding things from soulblades that could read his mind. Once, after a captain in his squadron had remarked on how odd it was that his hunches were always right, he’d experienced nightmares of his comrades pushing him against a wall and unleashing a firing squad.

  Telryn, Azarwrath said sternly, while it’s understandable that you’ve grown up with these fears, there is no reason for you to continue suffering them. You have the power to stop any of these scenarios from happening. Once you are more experienced, you will gain confidence in your abilities and understand this.

  Most of the people who were truly hanged or drowned for being witches, Jaxi added, had little to no actual power. If they had, they would have been able to escape those who persecuted them.

  Trip thought of his mother’s awful death and didn’t find the statement that comforting. Why did people have to be so damn superstitious about magic to start with? Did they ever later realize they’d killed innocent people? Or gotten the wrong person? He wasn’t sure, but he’d always suspected his mother had been hanged because of something he had done.

  “Trip?” Rysha had navigated around the bed to the sewing desk, the floor around the chair the only place completely cleared of baskets, tools, and pieces of snipped fabric. “Do you think it’s all right to snoop, or should we ask your grandmother for permission first?”

  Trip hesitated. He didn’t want to interrupt her while she was preparing dinner. Besides, she might not be as open as Grampy had been. Trip had always sensed that she’d known more than she’d told him. Perhaps she’d been hiding the secret that Grampy had alluded to, that his mother hadn’t been a willing participant in his creation.

  His eyes stung as he thought about that again, and he hurried to blink away the tears that threatened. What had he expected? That his mother had convinced some dragon to fall in love with her? Could dragons even do that?

  “Go ahead and snoop,” he said.

  Trip sat on the end of the bed, deciding she might be better than he at inspecting old letters and recipe books. Besides, he now worried he might find proof of events that would distress him. If his mother had been… injured, he didn’t want the details. It was bad enough that he’d been there when she’d been hanged, forced to watch by the callous villagers that should have been friends, not enemies.

  Noticing Rysha gazing at him with concern, he added, “This used to be my bedroom, so I could argue that anything in it is fair to look through, right?”

  “This is your bedroom?” Rysha crinkled her nose.

  “Was. When I was here, it didn’t smell like dead roses. It had strong, masculine scents.”

  “Like what? Dirty sweat socks?”

  “Uhm.” Trip didn’t know how to recover from that claim, especially since her guess was close to the truth. “Like woodworking tools. Sawdust. Paint and wood glue. Anvils.” Not entirely untrue. He’d spent a summer working for the smith down the street and had enjoyed pounding the malleable alloys into shapes.

  “If you kept all those things in your room, it’s no wonder your grandmother felt the urge to redecorate.” Rysha investigated nooks and crannies in and around the sewing desk as she spoke. “Though I’m surprised—well, doesn’t it seem weird to come back, and your room is basically gone?”

  “Did your parents leave your bedroom intact when you left for school?”

  “Yes, it’s the same as it always was.” Rysha extracted a clump of old, opened letters. “There are still stuffed dragons on the bed. I told Shulina Arya about them, and she wants to see the place someday.”

  “I suppose, since you grew up in a castle, there are plenty of rooms, so space wasn’t a concern.”

  “It’s a manor.”

  “How many rooms does it have?”

  “Rooms or bedrooms?” Rysha set the letters on the bed, then pulled a couple of logbooks out of a drawer stuffed with crafts magazines.

  “What’s the matter?” he teased. “It would take too long to count all the rooms?”

  “My brain is occupied with other matters.”

  “That sounded like a yes.”

  “There are thirteen bedrooms and nine bathrooms.”

  “Indoor bathrooms?”

  “Of course indoor. The manor was renovated and brought into the modern age before I was born.”

  “This was the first house I lived in that didn’t have an outhouse.” Trip smirked and waved toward the hall and the single small indoor bathroom.

  “I refuse to feel bad about your simple upbringing now that we know you’re half dragon. That is way more amazing than the fact that my family has a manor. I bet you could wave a hand and magic a manor into existence.”

  “I probably have to master the first page in Sardelle’s workbook first.”

  “Fine, after a year of training, you’ll be able to magic manors into existence.” She gathered the books and letters and sat cross-legged on the bed with them, but she looked at him instead of immediately investigating her finds. “Trip, don’t you understand how much power you’ll have? That you do have? Once you learn how to use it. Those mages of old, especially the ones that were direct offspring of dragons, ruled cities. If people sent armies against them, they simply used mind control to turn the armies around. Or they could conjure up a hurricane to knock the entire army into the ocean. If there hadn’t been multiple people like that back then, along with dragons who were even more powerful than the mages, they could have easily controlled entire nations by sheer magical strength.”

  “Did anybody like them? Because they sound like assholes.”

  Rysha snorted. “Trip.”

  “I don’t want to be an asshole, Rysha,” he said softly. “I’m afraid that having all that, being able to do all that… How could it not change you?”

  “I’ll let you know if you start changing, Trip.” She patted the back of his hand, then dug into the letters.

  As smart as Rysha was, Trip didn’t know if she truly comprehended his fears of becoming someone evil. Or even someone who did evil by accident by being oblivious. He hoped he never gave her a reason to understand fully.

  “Some of these letters are from your grandmother’s sister, but here are some from Zherie. Your mother is the only Zherie in the family, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re twenty-five now?”

  “Almost twenty-five, yes.”

  “Most of these aren’t dated, but a few are.” Rysha started opening envelopes and reading, skimming through the loopy cursive writing.

  Trip’s gut tightened. He’d forgotten what his mother’s handwriting looked like, but he recognized it as soon as he saw it. Even though he’d vowed to let Rysha do the researching, he found himself leaning closer to peek over her shoulder.

  “This one got a ride on a steamer out of Rakgorath,” Rysha said. “It’s the right year. Your birth may have coincided with her interest in cactuses. No wonder you’re so prickly.”

  “I’m not prickly. I’m appealingly smooth.”

  “Remarkable considering how much of your youth you apparently spent rubbing sawdust and wood glue all over yourself.” She smirked at him, but looked back at the letter in her hands before Trip could decide if he wanted to swat her. It seemed a crime to swat someone who wasn’t looking. “Nothing about lovers in this one.” Rysha flipped through a few more letters from the same time period. “Hm, this is interesting. She talks about how she was buying herbs at the Lagresh market—how odd to think of a city run by criminals as having a farmers’ market—and someone mentioned an intriguing mold growing deep in the dark recesses of the dragon-rider ruins in the cliffs to the north of the city.”


  “Intriguing mold?”

  “That’s what it says. She was quite excited about it.” Rysha pointed to a line. “It seems your mother was as odd as you are, even without having dragon blood.”

  “If you keep teasing me, some of my adoration for you may wane.”

  She leaned her shoulder against his. “What if I kiss you after I tease you? Will that keep things from waning?”

  “Things should start to swell in that case.”

  “How intriguing.” She rested her forehead on his shoulder and swatted his chest. Good, he’d been certain swatting should be involved in this exchange at some point.

  “Like mold?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  Trip expected her to pull away and return to the letters, but she held the position, even though her spectacles had to be mashing into the bridge of her nose. She left her forehead on his shoulder, and her hand settled on his chest. He looped an arm around her and rested his temple against the top of her head, enjoying the softness of her hair. He hadn’t seen her often without her army cap on and promptly decided her red-blonde locks were lovely. And also that he wanted to tug them free of that bun so they would fall about her shoulders.

  Laughter drifted down the hall, reminding them that there were others in the house, and Rysha pulled away. She shuffled through the envelopes. Some had postage stamps with dates. Others simply had his grandparents’ address, perhaps given to some merchant heading this way to hand-deliver.

  “It looks like she was in the Desert Isles before Rakgorath, but that would have been too late for her to have been impregnated and to have made it back by the summer of 851. Or spring of 851 if your grandmother was right, and you were older than three months. How odd that she just took off for more than a year at a time.”

  “There you go, calling my mother odd again,” Trip said, though the joke was half-hearted. He was dwelling again on the surprising revelation that he’d already been born when his mother returned home. It seemed strange to imagine her choosing to give birth in some foreign country, especially one full of criminals, like Rakgorath. Having a baby at sea didn’t sound any better. Why wouldn’t she have hurried home to be with her parents for the delivery? Had she been kept away against her will? Would a dragon have done that? What if she’d been forced to escape and tramp pregnant across some desert?

  Trip pushed his hand through his hair, not caring that he shoved it all out of place.

  “It’s more your story that’s odd,” Rysha said. “I’m going to try to draw your grandmother aside tonight and ask her some questions. Can you tell when either of them is lying to you?”

  “I’ve always had the sense that Grammy was withholding a few things.”

  “Can you read her mind and check?”

  “No.”

  She arched her eyebrows.

  “I mean, I guess I could try, now that I know a few things about that, but…” He grimaced, feeling such tactics should be for enemies, not relatives. And did he truly want to know all the details? “We came looking for a lead to Agarrenon Shivar. That’s all. We just need to know where my mother was when she was… when I was conceived.”

  “I think it has to be Rakgorath.” Rysha held up the letter. “Going by postage dates and these three letters, she was there for at least six months. Even allowing that you might be older than you originally thought, Rakgorath still matches up.”

  “I can’t believe I might already be twenty-five.”

  “A doddering old age, to be sure.”

  Trip snorted. “How old are you?”

  He hadn’t wondered before, and it occurred to him that she might be older, since she’d gotten all those degrees before going to the military academy for officer training.

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Damn, I should be making you canes instead of gun mounts.”

  She shoved him in the shoulder. “Now who’s teasing who?”

  “Is your interest in me waning or swelling?”

  “I don’t have anything that swells. You should be glad.” She smirked and nudged her spectacles upward on her nose, a gesture that he was growing to love.

  “Yes,” he said agreeably, gazing into her eyes and wondering if anyone would notice if they didn’t show up for dinner.

  He’d no sooner had the thought than footfalls sounded in the hall, the house’s old floorboards creaking.

  Rysha shifted away from him and opened the logbooks that she hadn’t yet investigated. Or maybe those were recipe books.

  “Ah, there you two are,” Blazer said, peering into the room. “I was sent to make sure you weren’t sullying your grandmother’s crafts room with sexual acts.”

  Rysha’s cheeks reddened, and she bent even lower over the books—the pages were covered in Mother’s handwriting—as she murmured, “No, ma’am.”

  “You were sent?” Trip asked. “By whom? I’m positive my grandmother wouldn’t have said such a thing.”

  “Then you don’t know your grandmother well.” Blazer smirked. “Kaika has drawn out her ribald streak.”

  “That’s alarming.” Trip scooted off the bed. “Rysha? Are you coming to dinner?”

  “I’ll be there soon. If nobody objects, I want to go over these books. I assume we can’t take them with us?”

  “Uh, I could ask, but Grammy probably doesn’t want to let them go. Those items may be all she has left of her daughter.”

  “They’re wonderful. Look at these sketches. And how tidily everything is listed.” Rysha flipped to the back, then looked up at him, her eyes bright. “Trip, there’s an appendix.”

  Blazer, still standing in the doorway, said, “I’ve never heard anyone say that word so lovingly.”

  “Yes, it’s strange that Rysha thinks I’m the only odd person in this room.”

  “Definitely strange.” Blazer peered about, her gaze catching on the bookshelf. “Are those sewing magazines from the Maddingtorn Pattern Company?” She stepped inside to look closer. “They are. The magazine went out of print decades ago, but they have all these great patterns for work clothing for women. Not like those stupid fashion pattern magazines that come out of the capital today with dresses that no woman could possibly want to wear. Dresses that don’t even have pockets. What the hells?” Blazer pulled out one of the dusty old magazines to flip through.

  “Why would you need to sew work clothing when you predominantly wear army uniforms?” Trip asked.

  “I do occasionally get days off and wear other things. But clothing isn’t all I sew.” Blazer stopped to admire a pattern for an outfit that looked like it was designed for climbing mountains. Distractedly, she added, “One of my recent projects was a set of placemats with fliers on them.”

  “I’m definitely not the only odd person in this room,” Trip said.

  The women, engrossed in their reading material, didn’t acknowledge him. Or hear him, most likely.

  He walked out to the living room and found Grammy ushering people into the dining area.

  “You make sure no sexual acts were going on in that room, Captain?” Kaika asked as he fell in at the back of the group.

  “Only Rysha and Blazer are in there now.”

  Kaika smirked. “That doesn’t preclude anything.”

  “I think they’re too busy reading to contemplate more vigorous activities.”

  “How boring. You two figure out where we’re going next?”

  “Lagresh in Rakgorath, I believe,” Trip said.

  His grandmother was adjusting place settings at the far side of the table, but she looked up, her blue eyes widening with concern. Trip hadn’t intended to delve into her thoughts—it was bad enough he’d delved into her sewing desk without permission—but something reared forward in her mind, and he glimpsed it without trying. His mother standing in an old farmhouse, not one Trip recognized. She cradled a baby in her arms while tears ran from her eyes.

  “I can’t let them find him,” Mother said in the vision. “He’s mine, an
d he deserves to grow up as a normal boy, not as some pawn to maniacs. But we can’t stay here. An ocean may not stop them. They know my name. They’ll figure out where to look. We have to move. I’m sorry I brought this trouble here, Mama, but I had to warn you. I knew they’d come here to look. We have to move.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t overblowing this? He’s just a baby.” Grammy came forward and pulled down the baby’s blanket to see his face. She didn’t believe Zherie’s story about a dragon. “He looks like a normal baby.” Deep green eyes opened, peering around curiously. Grammy lifted her gaze to meet Zherie’s eyes. “Your baby? You didn’t say…”

  “My baby,” Mother said firmly. “They’re not taking him from me. Ever.”

  No, they’d taken Mother from him.

  A lump formed in Trip’s throat.

  Grammy dropped her gaze to the table, adjusting a fork again, and the vision—the memory—dissipated.

  Trip could have pried further, but he’d seen enough. Enough to be concerned. Had some person or organization—criminals?—wanted him because they’d figured out Mother had given birth to a half-dragon boy? And was that part of why the family had moved so often when he’d been little? Maybe it hadn’t always been about someone noticing his oddness. How long had the person or organization hunted for him? At some point, they must have given up. Maybe after Mother had been killed, they’d lost track of the family.

  He shivered at the idea that someone might have wanted to raise him like some animal bred to fight. To use the power he barely knew he had now, at twenty-five. What if he’d grown up being trained like the kids at Sardelle’s house? But trained by someone a lot less noble and caring than Sardelle. Someone who wanted to use a powerful sorcerer to some nefarious end?

  It hadn’t happened, he told himself, and nobody was going to turn him into a tool at age twenty-five. He had nothing to fear from visiting Rakgorath as a grown man.

  His gaze shifted toward the dark window, night having long since fallen. Even though his thoughts were logical, he couldn’t help but dread what they might find when they reached the continent.