Aliya and Anna parted ways without much fanfare. She had checked out the books and was walking not toward her room but towards the caves. She wanted to see Kilnik.
Instead of finding the book interesting it somehow made her uneasy. This feeling made her want to see Kilnik before anything else. Thankfully no one was around to tell her off for climbing the rock face to his cave. When she pulled herself up and arrived at his space he wasn't there yet. She stood up and turned looking out over the Academy, and from her vantage point, she could even see a good way beyond the city wall into the sky.
In the far distance circled many dots some of them darker than others. She was pretty sure that was his group out there beyond the wall. She wondered why they did when they flew out of the city. She'd asked him before but he'd never given much of an answer.
She had no choice but to sit back and wait. For a while, she sat at the edge of the cave floor and let her feet dangle over the side. She closed her eyes as a cool breeze brushed past and pretended she was flying with Kilnik.
How had Tate stood it all those years? When you knew what it was to fly on a dragon's back nothing could compare. She couldn't even imagine never being able to do it again. She knew that Tate had felt that way, she knew he longed to fly more than anyone. At one point she'd asked Kilnik to take him up as a present but Kilnik had awkwardly refused. She'd been so angry with him. She couldn't remember ever being angry with him, but his refusal to do that for Tate did it.
He'd explained that he wasn't comfortable taking someone into the air that he couldn't communicate with and she understood that but she wasn't sure if that was as big a deal as he made it out to be. After all, riders and their horses didn't talk.
Not that she was comparing a dragon to a horse just that communication in language was not necessary for partnership.
Even so in the end he'd held his ground and refused. It took a while for her anger to calm, but it eventually had.
An ache struck her in the chest, she was thinking about him again. Eyes still closed she rubbed the spot over her heart as if she could rub this pain away like you could a sore muscle.
She wanted to talk to Tate so badly, even more so than she wanted to talk to Kilnik. Kilnik knew of the book she'd brought to the capitol but he didn't have much interest in it. It was something she and Tate had shared, The mystery of that book was like a secret between just the two of them since they were the only two who could read it.
She pulled out the blue book she'd checked out from the library and looked it over. Feeling chilled now she stood and retreated further into the cave where Kilnik had some furs and blankets piled up.
She flopped back on them and opened the book she started from the beginning. It was all the same, almost every word was familiar to her. The only part that stood out was the absence of the Advisor.
Oddly enough the story didn't lose anything by not mentioning him. If someone was reading this book for the first time they wouldn't notice anything amiss at all.
She chewed on her bottom lip as she focused. All too soon she was coming to the last few pages, it was a short book after all, and she knew it almost by heart.
She closed the book feeling unsatisfied, she was unsatisfied with the book, unsatisfied that Kilnik was still out, and unsatisfied that she couldn't take her mind off missing Tate every few minutes.
She tossed the book onto the mound of blankets and then lay down. She dozed as she waited for her dragon to return to her. She had strange and intense dreams. She dreamed that Kilnik burst into flames. In her dream, she called out to him and tried to get to him but she couldn't. Then she dreamed that she and Kilnik were flying with Tate and a blue dragon but Tate and the blue dragon disappeared over a storm cloud and no matter how much she and Kilnik circled and searched they could not find them. That dream ended when an exhausted Kilnik plummeted through the clouds and into the storm. They hurtled toward the ground but the dream ended before they made an impact. She then dreamed that she was marrying Cade, it was so bizarre because she knew she was dreaming but her dream self was acting completely unlike herself. She simpered and fawned over Cade who kept gazing at her indiferently. Kilnik was there too and he kept trying to kill Cade with Aliya stopping him just in time. Suddenly she was standing in front of Cade in what she knew was the "wedding" Cade looked her up and down and said. "You're marks are so ugly." Then he walked away. A mirror appeared in front of her, like that was a normal thing to pop up in the middle of a wedding ceremony, and to her shock, her markings were not grey or even the pale silver others claimed markings were, they were pitch black. As she watched her reflection they began to ooze and a black liquid dripped down her face. She reached up to touch it and found it sticky, out of nowhere it felt unbearably hot, like fire on her skin. Her face where it dripped was agonizing and her fingertips that had touched it felt like her skin must be melting off.
She woke up to something shaking her and when her eyes flew open she was drenched in sweat and shaking. Kilnik's large pale head hung over her.
"Are you okay, did you have a nightmare?"
She shook her head the dreams already fading. She strained her mind to remember what had been distressing her so much but she couldn't grasp it.
"I Don't remember."
Kilnik looked down at her and then at his bedding. His eyes scanned everything and then landed on the blue book. He tilted his head.
"Why did you bring that book from your room?"
She shook her head.
"I didn't bring it, that's a copy I found in the library."
"Really, so you did find it? Well, is it the same?"
"Mostly."
He gave her a curious look.
"It had a few minor differences."
He didn't say anything else. She didn't really expect him to. She sighed, she wasn't sure what she'd expected when she'd come to see him. Yes, she wanted to talk to him about it but at the same time now that she was here it felt pointless. He just didn't care about the books or the story enough to think too much about it. This had been her and Tate's thing, Kilnik had alawys listened to their discussions on the strangeness of the original book but he'd enver contributed himself.
"I miss him."
She said at last, she couldn't think of anything else to say.
For once Kilnik didn't respond in a way that came across as jelous. He just accepted what she said and let the satement rest.
"Maybe he's just missing.'" Was what the dragon finally said.