Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(54)

It seemed horrible to me, but the Warrior and the Lovers had such different views. It was probably a comfort to them.

::We will escape,:: Aaru repeated in quiet code, as I shimmied out from under the bed to distribute the rest of the food.

I glanced at Chenda, but her back was turned toward me, as usual. Even so, her changes were evident. Her braids looked ragged. Her copper clothes gathered snags and rips. Her perfect skin turned blotchy and blemished.

It was more difficult to see into her cell than Gerel’s, but sometimes as I walked by to and from work, I caught Chenda running her fingers across a tattered sleeve or down a long braid, like she could smooth the hairs back into position. She mourned her beauty. I understood. And that was why I kept trying to befriend her, no matter her rebukes.

Again tonight, she didn’t accept any of my food, but when the package went down the line, a few cheers went up. “Mira!” shouted Varissa. “My daughter the food bringer!”

Shortly after I’d started bringing food, Varissa—the woman who thought she had a daughter but didn’t, and thought she was from Bopha but wasn’t—decided to claim me as her daughter. I didn’t particularly want to be caught up in the fantasies of troubled minds, but resistance posed just as many problems.

I’d learned to give Aaru-like grunts when Varissa talked about our lives. She blamed our incarceration on a theft of mercy; apparently, we’d stolen bread for a homeless child with a magical singing voice and a box full of kittens. For that small crime, we’d been sentenced to the most horrible place on the Fallen Isles. At least, that was usually the story. The other story she liked involved a palm tree, a duck, and twenty-seven officer jackets “borrowed” from the town militia.

Then there was Hurrok, who screamed at night, and Kumas, who sang all the time though she had no talent for it, and Kason, who seemed to hate everyone but me. Probably because of the food.

When the food was all gone and the strips of silk returned to me, I hid them inside my pillow and copied Gerel’s stance. Aaru and I were both exercising with her now, though when I’d told her it was for our alliance, she’d made me promise to never try standing on my hands again.

“I wanted to be a Drakon Warrior,” she said during a series of squats. “That’s why I joined. I was small for my age, so no one thought I could do it. I endured the other trainees’ taunting for the first year—and then I broke every nose in my group within a few minutes.”

My gasp made her smile.

“Were you punished?” Aaru asked. Idris had very strict rules, he’d told me before, and even stricter punishments. Mostly, they seemed to involve locking people in basements.

Gerel shrugged. “I was reprimanded and made to apologize, but immediately given the top position in my class. On account of my fierceness and clear fighting skills.” She glanced at me and . . . didn’t quite smile, but almost. “Besides, noses look ridiculous. I improved the situation.”

I giggled in spite of myself. “They do, don’t they? But can you imagine our faces without them?”

“Oh, seven gods. No.” She gave a shiver of disgust.

“Did you become a Drakon Warrior?” Aaru spoke carefully, quietly, like waiting for someone to catch him. One did not speak aloud to their superiors on Idris—not without invitation—and he, like most of us, considered Gerel an expert here.

“No.” A frown tugged on her mouth. “The Mira Treaty went into effect when I was three years old, but I always believed the part outlawing the practice of dragon riding would be repealed.”

“Right. Forgot that part. Sorry.”

Gerel shook her head. “I don’t know how you could forget the worst part of it. I hate the Mira Treaty.”

“Barely affects me.” Aaru said it like a shrug.

“What do you think of it?” Gerel looked at me. “After all, you have the unfortunate distinction of sharing a name with it. I bet you have an opinion.”

I was of the opinion that the Mira Treaty did more good than harm. It helped the dragons. It freed Harta. It united the islands. Sure, dragons were illegal to own now, and if anyone understood the desire for dragons, I did. But we did what was necessary to care for the children of the gods.

I weighed the idea of asking Gerel whether she knew the Drakon Warriors had not truly disbanded. Altan had all but admitted his involvement, but he didn’t say when he’d joined them. Gerel might know, but there was equal chance she didn’t, and it wasn’t my place to tell her when I didn’t have more information.

“Well?” Annoyance edged Gerel’s tone. “You probably got teased in school. You must have thought about it.”

I pulled myself back into the present. Gerel had been nice to me for the last few days, and I wanted to keep her that way.

“I have.” I just hadn’t thought of a way to talk about it while hiding that I was the Mira. And since Gerel hated the treaty, it seemed best not to give her another reason to despise me. “It seems to me that the Mira Treaty—”

“I tried to kill Mira once,” Hurrok said from down the hall.

Gerel stopped in the middle of stretching her arm across her chest. Her eyes cut to me.

Then his words registered.

“What did you say?” Gerel’s voice was deep. Angry. She’d always seemed powerful to me, but when she gripped the bar of her door and peered out the side—not that she could see much—she was terrifying. Her knuckles stood sharp. Her eyes narrowed. In the dim, shadowy light, every muscle went taut with readiness. She looked fierce.