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“Why do the dreams scare you so?” Egg asks, once Daeron is done brushing the last stubble off his bald head.
Daeron shrugs. “They are too real. More real than waking life. I see fire and death, snow and shadows, dragons and great beasts.”
“Dragons are good,” Egg protests. “Dragons made us kings. You should be glad to dream of them.”
The sky is already darkening outside the windows of the inn. The room is rather shabby, but that suits Daeron well. No-one will look for a prince of the realm in here.
Daeron does not intend to be found a prince of the realm at all. As soon as she entered this chamber, she pulled off the awful soldier’s coat her father keeps insisting she wear. Now she sits here in her long white undershirt, shaving her brother’s head.
“Sometimes I am glad for the dreams. I like it when I get to be the dragon.” A dying dragon, lately, but she need not say this, need not scare her little brother. “Once, I dreamed that I had eggs. I kept them warm in a brazier and waited for a handsome dragon prince to come and wake them.”
“That’s weird.” Egg’s nose wrinkles so much that Daeron has to laugh. She pulls her own clothes out of her travel bag and slides a gown over her head.
“Help me lace up,” Daeron says to Egg. “I helped you shave after all.”
Egg pouts, but then puts his little hands to work tightening the laces at the back. “Father wouldn’t like you wearing that,” he says glumly. “He wants you to ride in the lists.”
“He wouldn’t like your new haircut either, hm? But here in this humble guest house, we can spend a few days ignoring what he wants.”
Down in the main room, the innkeep gives Daeron a curious glance. “You looked different when you came in, my lady.”
Daeron makes a gracious gesture of ambivalence. “Sometimes a lady has to travel in disguise. Bring me some wine, and food for the child.”
The innkeep raises her eyebrows, but scuttles off to the kitchen to fulfill the order. Egg sits beside her, working on consuming his leg of lamb and blathering on about all the famous knights who will be in the tourney.
“We could still go, Dae. You don’t have to ride. We could just hide in the crowds, and I could watch the joust, and you could get drunk on Fossoway cider. Maybe you could find a husband for a day, until he finds out you’re a fraud.”
Daeron laughs, but has to decline. “You’re a brave boy, Egg. But it wouldn’t work like that. They’d find me, and father would put me in armor and tie me to that horse so I don’t fall off. Maybe beat me up a little, too. Wouldn’t make my jousting skills much worse.”
Egg scoffs. He’s done with his food, so he gets up and scuttles out the door. Doubtless he will play with the horses in the stables, or try on Daeron’s clothes — that is, the clothes her father would want her to wear — from their luggage.
Daeron loves her little brother, she really does. She certainly means him no harm. But she thinks she’s doing him no harm at all, keeping him away from the tourney. He will get a break from Aerion, from their father, from all the things that Maekar does to turn his sons into men. Daeron shakes her head and pours herself another cup of wine.
Some time later, she feels herself pulled up from the table by the innkeep’s hands, wrapped in a threadbare blanket and steered to a bench by the fireplace.
“It’s not quite befitting of your noble station, lass,” the innkeep says, “but it’s better than napping in a puddle of wine, isn’t it?”
Daeron grumbles. She likes this old woman very much. She’d like to give her a silver stag, but she doesn’t remember where in her clothing she hid the coins.
“I want to sleep,” she tells the woman, “but not to dream. My dreams come true, you know? But only the bad ones.”
She pulls the scratchy blanket around her shoulders and sinks into a wine-soaked sleep.
Not quite wine soaked enough to stop the dreams. The first dream is nice. She is a dragon, a great she-dragon with wings of spun silver and hard scales that make her invulnerable. She soars through the sky, twisting and turning, flickering like a flame. She breathes a spout of fire just because she can. The land passes swiftly below her, fields and forests, rivers and mountains, castles and tourney grounds.
But then, without warning, the dream changes. She sees the face of a man, lying in the mud all bruised and bloody. The man is alive, if barely. Daeron lies close to him, the cold mud seeping into her skin like it is meant to soothe her. Then Daeron is gone, and sees the scene from above. The man is still there, large and handsome, sword in hand. But most of his body is pinned under a dead dragon. It is a great beast, wings spreading far beyond the man’s reach.
The dragon is dead.
She has had this dream before. The dream of the tourney ground, the cold mud, the dead dragon. She has never seen the man’s face as clearly as just now.
Daeron wakes up with a start, jolts back into her body only to realize she is more a man than a dragon, flesh instead of flame. It makes her half nauseous, as it always does. She runs her fingers along the piping of her neckline, the boning of her bodice. Her breathing finally slows, but the echo of the dream is still loud in her head.
The other thing that is loud is the conversation between the innkeep and some young man. Daeron blinks her sleep-encrusted eyes open, and startles.
“I mean to be a champion,” the young man is saying. He glances over at Daeron; he must have just noticed her when she moved. His eyes linger on her for a bit. At any other time, Daeron might be flattered by that cornflower blue attention. But right now, it is a worry. She frowns.
“I dreamed of you,” she tells him. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she could pull them back. She wants to explain herself, but the words are swimming in a murky pond. She raises her hand instead, points at him accusingly. “You stay away from me, you hear?”
Daeron pats her hips to see if she has a blade on her belt. There doesn’t seem to be one, but she does finally find that coin. It’s golden, a dragon instead of a stag. But that’s all right. The innkeep deserves it. For being kind to Daeron, for treating her like a lady.
She staggers up to her room, lies down in her bed, and dreams of dragons.