Children with Stars in their Veins (Chapter 32)

a/n: hey, thanks for checking out Starry Veins! This is the novel I wrote for Round V of LMS, and it's still a first draft! While I don't discourage any feedback, I prefer not to receive feedback on grammar! I'm not polishing this draft up yet, so I'm not as concerned about editing. I am, of course, open to all feedback, but I ask that you keep this in consideration! Thanks <3

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[Cassius]

Though the Wilderlands had been a constant shifting landscape around them, the further north the travelled, the less green they saw. Danica said they would be at the first settlement on the road the Glacier’s Keep, a place called the Blessed Gate.

Artemesa nibbled at Cassius’ fingers as they plodded alongside the cart. The inside itself was really too small to hold them all, and so they took turns. He didn’t like walking, but Artemesa also couldn’t fit in the cart, so whenever he walked, he was with her.

Which was better anyway. He didn’t like not being able to see her.

“I don’t have food,” he told her, apologetically, as she grazed her teeth ever so delicately along his hand. She pulled away, and stared up at him, eyes narrowing as though she were concentrating. “What?”

She bared her fangs, as apparently his response had been the wrong one, and swung her head away, hissing to herself.

“Rowan said that you saved her?” Hypatis, who was walking alongside him, asked.

He smiled and ducked his head. The other benefit of not being in the stuffed carriage, at least at the moment, was getting to be with Hypatis. “Yeah. We found her nest after—” He frowned. “After her mama was killed. The other two, they didn’t make it, but Artemesa had just hatched. I fed her, brought her home, and took care of her.” He lifted her hand, where the faint, white line marked the scar from their first encounter. “When I first fed her, she accidentally nicked me, right here. Now she refuses to let me hand feed her.”

Hypatis took Cassius’ hand gently int his own and examined the tiny scar. Cassius tried not to squirm or move around too much. Was his hand sweaty? He tried to think about not sweating. What if his hand was too hot or cold and Hypatis thought he was weird?

“That’s sweet. I didn’t realise dragons were so intuitive.” Hypatis smiled up at him, watching him closely. He didn’t release his hand.

Dragons. He knew dragons. He was smart about dragons. “They’re very intelligent. They have their own language and societies and histories. Artemesa understands how I’m feeling usually, and she’s good about communicating what she needs.” Thank God Hypatis wasn’t holding the hand Artemesa had just gotten saliva all over.

“It seems providential that you found her, then, since you seem to know a lot about dragons,” Hypatis said.

He smiled, cheeks warm. Providential. Mishal had surely said that at some point. Where was he when you needed his stupid, big words? “Yeah,” he said.

“There’s an outpost tower up there,” Danica called suddenly, leaning off from the front of the cart, where she was sitting with Enoch. “Last one before the Blessed Gate.”

Hypatis gave his hand a squeeze before finally releasing it. “Then we should get ready to start setting up for the night.”

“What are we doing once we get to the Blessed Gate?” Cassius asked, half-floundering for a reason to keep talking and half genuinely asking.

Amusement warmed Hypatis’ darker eyes and he raised an eyebrow. “Danica was telling Enoch the other night, you didn’t hear?”

While the other night wasn’t specific, his face grew hot at the attempt to recall what he might have been doing that would have caused his distraction. On one hand, he could have been playing cards with Ember—Cadelia’s set, which she was kind enough to share, because Cadelia was really nice—but he also could have been staring at Cadelia or Hypatis and simply been lost in thought. He…probably shouldn’t do that so much.

In his defence, they were both very pretty. Though Cadelia was far more taken by Rowan and reminded him more of Isadora than anything else. Hypatis, at least, seemed to pay him some attention.

“She wants to see this cart and she’s hoping what we’ve saved up, combined with the money for scrapping this, will be enough for either enough horses or a walking carriage to take us to Glacier’s Keep,” Hypatis explained. “Then, hopefully, find some means of employment there.”

He brightened. “I’ve seen a walking carriage before! They’re incredible. Ember knows a lot more about them then I do though, she loves that kind of stuff.” He shrugged then and glanced down at Artemesa, who, if she could, would be frowning at him. “They were pretty old though. I dunno when we even got them.”

“I only ever saw people who had a lot of money riding in them,” Hypatis said, with a hint of distaste. “And only when we were visiting market or anything like that. They never came by the orphanage.” His lip curled. “We were too dirty for them.”

“Orphanage?” Cassius asked, cautious. He’d never seen one before, but it didn’t take someone like Mishal to realise this was a tender topic.

Hypatis eyed him for a moment, no longer smiling, and sighed. “Caddy and I were raised in one, in a village between Chromium and Summermount. That’s where Danica took us from. It was an awful place.” He was staring at the group now.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t know what to say. What would be enough, or too much? “Glacier’s Keep sounds like a really nice place though. It’s got to be, being so favoured by the gods and all that, right?”

Hypatis nodded, tension fading from his expression. He met Cassius’ gaze. “Yeah. It’ll be better.”

The cart slowed to a halt as they came to the base of the tower, Danica cranking back the levers that propelled the gears that powered the cart. She knocked on the door to the carriage, which was shortly opened by Ember, who looked ruffled. She leapt out the door.

“Hey, Cassius?” Hypatis asked.

He glanced away from Ember and back at Hypatis’ warm gaze. “Yeah?”

Hypatis smiled and picked up one of Cassius’ curls off his forehead, putting back in his nest of hair above. “Has anyone ever told you that your eyes are a beautiful shade of blue?”

His ears grew hot, but before he could reply, Ember had grabbed his arm and began to tell him about how Rowan was cheating at cards. She didn’t explain how they were cheating, just that she knew, and she was mad about it.

As they set up camp, and he made a game of it with Ember to make it more fun, he occasionally caught Hypatis’ gaze. Hypatis always offered him a smile.

Maybe this all wasn’t so bad after all.

* * *

As Cassius placed half his meal on the ground for Artemesa, and she happily wolfed it down, she continued to give him the strange, focused stare as she had before. In fact, she had been doing as much for a few days now.

Her eyes were bright and glittering, the blue ring around her pupils almost silver in the darkening haze of the evening, as the sun crested beyond sight and the moon shone above. It was nearly full now, and nights were no longer all that dark.

He turned away from Artemesa’s intense look, unsure how to interpret it—which made him squirmy. He didn’t like not knowing what Artemesa wanted.

Ember was sitting on a log they had procured beside him. Rowan, Cadelia, and Hypatis were across the way, discussing who knew what. Enoch had already eaten, and was brooding silently to himself, out of the firelight that Danica had started. Danica herself was next to Alanna, who was showing her the small knife that Ember had made her.

Then Alanna blinked and glanced up, towards Rowan. “Oh,” she said. “Ori, it was your birthday.” Her expression fell. “We missed it.”

Rowan glanced up, dark skin glowing an almost gold in the light of the fire and shrugged. “That’s okay,” they said. “We had more pressing matters at the time.”

“Why don’t we celebrate it when we get to the Blessed Gate? Or, even better, when we get to Glacier’s Keep? I’m sure they’d have something fun to do there,” Cadelia suggested. “Since it’s one of the kingdom, they’d likely have more on magic than any of the outlying towns or villages.”

“Yeah!” Ember chimed in. “I’m sure they’d have some kind of weird trinket shop too— you like weird things! Maybe you can find another bone to add to your…” The light that sprang to her eyes fizzled away. “…collection. Which you don’t have anymore.”

Rowan ducked their chin. “Maybe I can start a new one.”

Cassius leaned into Ember. “Maybe we can get them a violin?” he whispered, turning his face so that Rowan could not possibly hear him or read his lips.

She nodded, a smile curling her lips, the spark back in her eyes. If she meant to say anything, however, he was distracted as Artemesa knocked a horn against his wrist.

“I don’t have anymore food, Mesa,” he said, as Alanna began to talk about getting new, not-filthy clothes. “I’m sorry.”

Artemesa narrowed her eyes at him and growled.

He turned away, to look for any more scraps to feed her. But he was just as hungry as she was, the five of them were all as unexpected to Danica as they had been to Enoch. There wasn’t enough to go around, even if he could will it.

“Maybe we can get people to dance,” Ember was saying when he turned back. “Like we used to do back home, in the village. That was really fun. Remember the last time, when it was just getting warm and we were all sitting around the fountain? Raz was dancing, and I was with Alanna, and then afterwards we were talking to Lady Sylvania.” She frowned. “I hope she and Elsie are okay.”

“I’m sure Risto would have protected them. He’s fond of those two,” Rowan pointed out. “Besides, I’m not sure anything could hurt them even if it wanted to.”

Cadelia began to ask about them, but whatever she said was drowned out. As though he had been dunked in water, everything grew silent around him, and for a moment, Cassius felt something heavy and powerful settling over him.

“Cassius.”

He blinked and shook his head, and he could hear everything again. Ember was enthusiastically talking about Lady Sylvania and Elsie, with Rowan adding comments occasionally.

But he had heard someone else, a voice he didn’t recognise but felt familiar. And he swore he hadn’t been able to hear.

“Cassius.”

He turned around— was someone whispering behind him? But it wasn’t that he heard it, it was encompassing his mind. And nobody else was reacting. Was he going mad?

“Cassius.”

Artemesa’s horn connected with his wrist again and this time it hit the bone. He yelped and yanked his wrist back. If dragons could scowl, Artemesa would be. “Ow, Mesa! What gives?”

“What gives is that you aren’t listening! Why can’t you hear me?!”

He stared at her and her bright, glimmering eyes. The blue around her pupils wasn’t dull from the low lighting, it was silver, beginning to glow brighter.

Dragons had magic. Dragon magic was one of the most powerful forms of magic around. He swung off the log and kneeled in front of her, ignoring the looks everyone was sending him.

“Is that you?” he asked, voice hushed as he met her gaze.

Artemesa’s ears, which were pinned back, shot up to point towards the sky. “You can hear me?”

He didn’t know what to do for several seconds. Nothing in all his readings ever mentioned dragons talking, at least, not to humans. When they did communicate, in the guttural and harsh noises that most would write off as growling, it was completely unrecognisable. There were patterns, sure, but no one had ever been able to speak to them or understand their language.

“I’ve been trying so hard! You haven’t been listening for days! I didn’t know how, it was just on instinct, but you never responded!” Her voice was lilting and wispy, ringing through his mind. She had stood up, tail flicking in a quick, excited rhythm behind her. “I thought I’d never get it right!”

He reached forward and nestled his fingers into the feathers growing on her neck. His eyes were prickling. “I didn’t know you could do that!” He laughed. Artemesa began to trill with excitement.

“What’s happened now?” Ember asked. She had turned to face him on the log, watching with eyes narrowed.

“Artemesa,” he breathed out, “she can talk.”

“I can’t talk to her, or any of them,” Artemesa said, nuzzling his stomach and curling half on his lap. “You’ll be the only one able to hear me. We can only share our connection with one. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. It’s like I knew I could talk to you, but I wasn’t really sure how.”

Ember glanced down at the purring dragonling in his lap. “I don’t hear her.”

“She said she can’t, not with anyone else,” he said, and tried to discreetly swipe at his cheeks. “She doesn’t know why though. I didn’t even know dragons could talk.”

For a moment, Ember seemed to consider this, then nodded, and turned back to the others. Everyone was watching, with varying expressions. Alanna, who was watching them sceptically, tilted her head.

“She must be smart,” Alanna observed. “Maybe you’ll finally have a voice of reason now.”

Artemesa, in his lap, trilled with glee.

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