no Lord Baldric looming to menace him each time he became angry, and no Galvin Herder to hit him or kick him or try to get his talon killed.
Perhaps Thorn didn’t have so many restrictions on the use of legacies.
Aron kept staring into the sapphire energy of his own hands. In the glittering light, he saw an image of Eldin Falconer in his cardinal robes, delayed these many days at Stone while Lord Baldric found excuses not to release the children Thorn wished to absorb into their folds. Falconer stood side by side with an image of Stormbreaker in his Stone Guild gray. The two men merged and separated, merged and separated, as if each was forming the other—or destroying him.
“Stormbreaker,” Aron whispered, and the word was louder than the crack of rock breaking in a deep canyon. He slammed his hands together, and a hot blast of blue fire shattered his muscles, his bones, his skin and teeth—
He woke without shouting, and without startling Raaf, who was sleeping in a third bed that had been placed between Aron’s and Zed’s after Raaf took his vows. Sweat bathed Aron’s neck and shoulders, and when he swallowed, his throat felt raw and abused.
That dream had been worse than most, and he sighed as he assessed the reasons.
His worry for Dari, who had been distant since he saw her shift into her Stregan form.
His self-recrimination for not telling Stormbreaker about his confusion over using his legacy in the battle with the bandits.
His concern for Raaf, who had become Stormbreaker’s junior apprentice to avoid being forced to leave Triune. There were many new junior apprentices these past few weeks. More than should have been, had Thorn not attempted to insinuate itself into lives better left without their influence.
Some of those things, Aron was powerless to change, but others, he knew he needed to make more effort to correct.
These were only dreams. He had discussed them with Stormbreaker and Dari enough times to know that. They were expressions of hidden desires, or even his deepest fears. Nothing but wishes, made into pictures.
Still, Aron wondered what might happen if he took the Lady up on her dark offers, if he ever surrendered to that type of temptation even in his dreams.
That, he didn’t want to imagine.
“Up,” Aron said as he climbed out of his bed to rattle Raaf awake as Zed had roused him so many times his first few days at Triune. “Come on. We’ll be late for fael’feis.”
• • •
At the end of his morning training with Dari, Aron mastered his own anxiety enough to tackle one of the main causes of his heightened dreams. It took a great deal of determination, but he caught her attention by placing his hand on her wrist. When she met his gaze, he swallowed hard, then got the essential words out without major disaster. “What happened two cycles ago, it didn’t bother me.” He swallowed again. “Seeing you as you are in your Stregan form, I mean.”
Dari’s smile was gentle, and heartrending. “I wish I could believe you.” She stood slowly, smoothing her gray robes, and gestured for Aron to rise as well. “I’m not ashamed of my Stregan essence, Aron. Please understand that. I just know how … alien it must seem to you.”
And to Stormbreaker.
She didn’t say that aloud, or even through their lingering mental connection, but Aron knew that was what she believed. That Stormbreaker could muster no interest in her because she was, at base, Fury and not Fae.
She had to know that wasn’t true, and she had to know he didn’t feel that way either—didn’t she?
“I’ve never discussed what happened that night with Stormbreaker,” he said, hoping to spare her feelings as he joined her by the chamber window, paying little heed to Blath, who sat quietly nearby.
“Blath spoke to him after we returned.” Dari nodded in Blath’s direction. “Stone had to be informed about Canus the Bandit’s activities in Dyn Cobb, and Stormbreaker had to know that rumors of Stregans in Eyrie might begin to appear.”
Aron wanted to take hold of Dari and turn her to face him, but he thought that might be too forward. Somehow, he had to reach her, break through that wall she seemed to have constructed between them since that fateful bandit attack. “Stormbreaker hasn’t asked me any questions about you. What you were like when you changed.”
Dari’s expression shifted to sadness, then anger. “I suppose I should be grateful for his disinterest.”
Now Aron wanted