Chapter 2
I woke up on the floor; my cheek pressed against cold stone. The bonded riders' dormitory had a scent of cedar, boot polish, and the faint sourness of many bodies crammed into a small space. I slept near the door on the bare floor because I wasn't assigned a cot. My cloak served as a pillow, but it slipped during the night, leaving my face on the cold ground. I could feel the stone's grain pressing into my skin without touching it. The other girls had already started their morning routines; cots creaked, and drawers were opened and closed. Someone hummed softly while braiding her hair. The room had eight beds; each made of dark wood with a trunk at the foot. Seven beds were occupied, and the last was empty, with a bare mattress and a locked trunk.
No one paid attention to me. I straightened up and tightened the cloth strip around my thumb, which I had torn from my undershirt the night before. The callus wound had stopped bleeding, but the centre was still pink and tender, pulling every time I flexed my hand. A girl with copper hair stepped over my legs on her way to the washbasin. She did not say excuse me or even acknowledge my presence. I drew my legs in closer and waited for the room to empty.
I stood, folded my cloak, straightened my trousers, and ran my fingers through my hair to make it seem deliberate enough to pass as styled. I left the dormitory hungry, with a sore back from the stone. The morning air hit my face, and the mountain's mineral sharpness filled my mouth.
The scarred instructor from the bonding ceremony was standing at the junction of two corridors, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. She looked as though she had been there for some time and was not bothered by the wait. "Lynith."
I stopped.
"You were supposed to report to the east building last night."
"I know."
"Ground support intake closes at sunrise. You missed it." She pushed off the wall and moved to the centre of the corridor. The scar on her lip made her frown look more severe than it probably was. "Do you want to tell me why?"
"I'm not going to ground support."
She looked at me. Her eyes were flat and grey, the color of old dishwater. They moved over my face without warmth or hostility. "You weren't chosen," she said. "That's not a punishment. It's just the outcome. Riders bond, or they don't. You can't pretend that it didn't happen."
"I'm staying."
"Staying where? You have no mount. No assignment. You slept on the floor because you were too stubborn to accept what was offered. This is not the palace, girl. There are no attendants here, no council to petition. No one in this building is obligated to care about your royal status."
My jaw tightened. I felt the muscles bunch near my ear. "I'm not asking anyone to care about my status."
"Good. Because no one does." She let that hang between us for a moment. The corridor was silent. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and shut. "If you want to remain in a place where you clearly don't belong, you'll earn your right to breathe. Today, you clean the sun side of the rider garden. All of it. The benches, the walls, the lance rack, the ground. By evening bell. Alone."
"Fine."
"The equipment is in the supply room past the west stairwell. Buckets, brushes, rakes. If you break anything, you replace it." She turned to leave but stopped without looking back. "I don't care who your father is. If you waste my time, I'll reassign you to ground support myself and make sure you scrub latrines until graduation."
She walked away. Her boots hit the stone in a hard, even rhythm that echoed down the corridor and faded around the corner. I stood in the empty hallway with my stomach hollow and my thumb throbbing, then headed toward the supply room.
A royal guard was stationed at the main gate, visible from thirty paces away. He was positioned within a large stone arch that separated the academy grounds from the mountain road, dressed in the king's colors, dark blue and gold embroidery on a grey wool surcoat. A short sword hung at his side. His posture was impeccable, and his expression was blank, typical of someone who had served the crown for years. I was carrying a bucket in one hand and a wire brush in the other, with a rake leaning against my shoulder. Soap powder was in a cloth bag under my arm, and I could feel the coarse grains shifting against my ribs with every step. He noticed me at the same moment I noticed him.
Students were walking through the gate toward morning drills. A group of second-year sun riders slowed when they saw the guard's colors. One of them glanced at me, then at the bucket, and his mouth twitched. The guard stepped forward. "Princess Lynith." The word carried authority. I felt heads turning. "His Majesty requests your return to the capital."
"No."
The guard blinked. It was a small break in his composure, gone almost immediately. He clasped his hands behind his back. "His Majesty was informed of the bonding result. He is displeased."
"I understand."
"I don't think you do." His voice softened slightly, though his posture remained formal. The words felt less forceful now, as if speaking to a problem rather than a princess. "The court's already aware. By tonight, every household in the capital will know. The king's daughter attended the riders' academy and couldn't bond with a griffin." He paused, allowing his words to settle. "His Majesty would prefer you return home before this situation becomes more embarrassing than it already is."
The word sat in my chest like a stone. I was nothing more than an embarrassment. A sun rider to my left shifted his weight and whispered something to the boy beside him. I did not dare look at them. "Tell my father I'm staying."
The guard looked at the bucket in my hand, the wire brush, and the soap powder under my arm. His expression did not change, but something moved behind his eyes. A recalculation. He was looking at the king's daughter holding cleaning supplies in a public courtyard, and he was adjusting the story he would bring back.
"I will inform His Majesty that you chose to remain." He said the word the way you would say the word "I hope you understand what that means, princess." He did not wait for a response. He turned on his heel and walked through the gate and down the mountain road without looking back. His surcoat caught the wind, and the gold thread flashed once before he disappeared around the bend.
The students who had been watching returned to their activities. A girl with a griffin perched on her arm looked at me as she passed by. Her face carried a hint of pity, which felt worse than laughter. I shifted the rake on my shoulder and headed toward the rider garden. As I walked, the soap powder pressed against my ribs, and the rough grains caused a raw sensation through my shirt.
The sunny side of the rider garden was larger than I had initially thought. During the evening, while sitting on my bench, the courtyard seemed quite manageable with only a few benches and a patch of compacted earth. However, now, in full morning light and holding a brush, I could spot every crack in the stone, streaks of bird droppings on the walls, and patches of dead moss nestled between the flagstones. The lance rack stretched about ten paces, and the chains holding the lances were so corroded that orange rust flakes came off onto my fingers when touched. I began cleaning with the benches.
The wire brush scraped against the stone surface with a harsh, abrasive sound, like a grinding scrape that made my teeth grind and vibrated through my wrist into my forearm. My hands, wet from the bucket, were coated with soap powder mixed with water, forming a gritty paste that got under my nails and into the torn callus on my thumb. The sting was unrelenting, but I kept working because I had no other choice. The first bench took me twenty minutes, and there were nine in total. By the third, my knees were sore from kneeling on the flagstones, with the pattern pressing into my kneecaps through my trousers. When I shifted, the fabric stuck to my skin with soap and grit. My shoulders burned from the weight of the wire brush, which felt heavier with each stroke, each one slightly more difficult than the last. Still, I did not stop.
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The sun shifted position, rising over the eastern wall and casting its light onto the courtyard floor. The wet stone radiated warmth and steamed. The air carried scents of mineral soap and hot rock, layered beneath the persistent aroma of the garden: animal musk, aged leather, and the bitter green of half-dead trees. Mid-morning, a group of first-year sun riders entered the garden, four in number, clad in their training gear, with griffins walking behind them in a loose formation. They were coming from flight orientation. I could tell because their hair was windblown and their cheeks were flushed, and one of them was grinning so wide it looked like it might split his face.
They saw me kneeling beside the fourth bench. The boy with a grin elbowed the girl next to him. She glanced at me but then looked away. A taller boy, with sandy hair and a new harness over his shoulder, simply kept looking. He said casually, "They've got the princess doing the scrubbing.' His tone was conversational, loud enough to be overheard. "I suppose they finally found a role that suits her."
The girl beside him made a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. They continued walking, with their griffins following, talons clicking on the flagstones. One griffin glanced at me as it passed, its amber eyes showing no recognition. I scrubbed the bench vigorously. The wire brush scraped against the stone, and I pressed harder. By noon, I finished the benches and moved on to the low walls, which were in worse shape. Bird droppings had hardened into a crust that resisted the brush, requiring me to chip at it with a flat stone before scrubbing. White powder got into my hair, and my arms trembled when I lifted them above my head.
I sat on the ground to rest and drank from the well, pulling the rusty crank until the bucket emerged. The water was cold and iron-tasting. I poured some over my hands, and the torn callus stung so sharply I hissed through my teeth. At that moment, the griffin arrived, dropping from above onto the low wall three paces from where I sat. It was large, with pale feathers nearly white, a broad chest, and heavy talons that scraped the stone as it gripped it. The griffin folded its wings, settled its weight, and looked at me. I froze. Its eyes were pale gold, fixed on me with a focused attention different from the usual flat, scanning gaze of the griffins in the bonding hall. This one was observing me specifically. It tilted its head, its beak dark, smooth, and slightly parted.
Warmth and tightness arose in my chest. My hands relax in my lap, and my breath catches as my face starts to change before I can control it. Hope. Foolish, involuntary, and completely obvious to anyone watching. Two sun riders on the far side of the courtyard are observing. I hear footsteps behind me, quick and purposeful. A second-year boy jogs past, unclipping a lead from his belt. He reaches the wall, attaches the harness to a ring at the griffin's neck base, and pulls. The griffin ruffles its feathers and hops down. The boy walked it away without looking at me.
"Voss!" he called across the courtyard. "Your mount keeps wandering off. Clip her before drills, or I'm reporting it."
Someone responded from the far side. The griffin led the boy by its rope, swinging its head, already losing interest in me. The two sun riders across from us hadn’t moved. One covered her mouth, while the other offered a small, quiet smile, one that costs nothing to give but means everything to receive. They saw my face, the hope in my eyes, and it fading away. I grabbed the wire brush. For a moment, my vision blurred, and I blinked until it cleared. My eyes teared up, but no tears fell. I turned back to the wall, scrubbing at a patch of dried waste, not looking at anyone. I kept scrubbing until my fingers cramped around the handle and then continued anyway.
In the courtyard, the moon riders were tending to their side. I noticed them early in the afternoon, when the sun had risen high enough to illuminate the entire garden. There were about fifteen of them, all first-years in the dark grey of the moon faction, working in groups along their half of the courtyard. They swept the packed earth, oiled the chains on their lance rack, and two boys carried a dead branch from a bent tree, guided by a girl pointing where to place it. They talked while working, their voices overlapping in the distance, too faint for me to catch words but close enough to hear the rhythm. Someone said something sharp, and a girl with short braids burst into laughter, dropping her bucket and splattering dirty water on the stones. The boy beside her swore and stepped back, and afterward, they all kept laughing.
Their wolves rested nearby, spread along the wall on the moonlit side, wings stretched in the sun, horns casting shadows on the stone. One wolf yawned, revealing teeth like aged ivory. Another rolled onto its back, legs in the air, while a first-year doggedly scratched its belly with both paws. They finished hours before I did because there were fifteen of them and only one of me. They belonged where they were, and that sense of belonging made every job lighter. I knelt on the flagstones, scrubbing the base of the lance rack, and I didn't think about it.
A group of moon rider girls was working near the boundary separating the two sides, close enough for me to overhear. I was kneeling by the oldest tree in the garden, scrubbing the stone border around its roots. The soapy water in my bucket had turned grey and cold. My hands were pruned and raw. "He trains before sunrise," one of the girls said softly, with an accent I couldn't identify. "Every day. I saw him from the dormitory window last week. He was running along the perimeter with his wolf while the rest of us were still in bed."
"His wolf won't let anyone near it," said the girl with the short braids. The one who had dropped her bucket earlier. "Maren tried to touch it during orientation last year, and it growled at her so loudly the instructor came running."
"I'd let him growl at me," said a third girl, and the other two burst out laughing.
"Stop."
"I'm serious. Did you see him in the courtyard yesterday? With that first year on the wolf?"
"He's terrifying."
"He's focused. There's a difference," the girl with the accent said again. "My older sister is in his year, and she told me he's been like that since the first term. He never socializes or eats in the main hall; he only trains." She paused briefly. "She also mentioned his jaw could cut glass."
More laughter echoed, its sound drifting over the warm stone and reaching me as I knelt with my bucket of grey water. I chose not to laugh or look up, but I listened. Risol. The name suited what I had seen of him, sharp consonants, no unnecessary sound, fitting for someone who didn't like explaining himself.
The base of the ancient tree was its final segment, the largest and oldest in the garden. Over time, wind had pushed its trunk sideways, causing it to lean nearly parallel to the ground, supported by roots that had broken through the flagstones and grasped the soil like fingers. The bark was dark, deeply grooved, with moss filling the cracks where it met the stone border, creating a thick green line. I knelt and scrubbed along the border until my brush caught on something. I pulled back and saw engraved marks in the stone, a series of carvings on the flat flagstone at the tree's roots. They had become smooth from age, foot traffic, and weather, but in the low afternoon light, with the stone still wet from my scrubbing, I saw them clearly. They were small, no larger than my thumbnail, arranged in a pattern I didn’t recognize. Straight lines and curves formed sequences. I traced one with my finger.
The stone felt cold but not like typical wet rock in shade. It had a deeper chill, seeming to originate beneath the surface and rise upward. I withdrew my hand, feeling the tip of my finger numb. I stared at the marks for a long time, as they looked back at me. I didn't understand their meaning, nor who had carved them, when, or why they were here at the roots of a nearly dead tree in a courtyard often used as a shortcut. I rinsed my brush in the bucket, completed the border, and then avoided touching the marks again.
Evening bell rang as I finished emptying my last bucket at the well. The sun had set behind the western wall, casting a grey, cooling hue over the courtyard. Shadows from the bent trees stretched long across the clean stone, and the air carried the scent of soap, wet earth, and the day's last warmth rising from the flagstones. The sun-facing side of the rider garden was spotless, every bench scrubbed, every wall chipped and brushed. Although the lance rack chains remained rusted, most of the orange flakes had fallen away, revealing pale stone underneath where I had scrubbed. My hands were swollen and sore, skin cracked at each knuckle, with the cloth around my thumb soaked and stained brown.
I sat on the first bench I cleaned that morning. The stone was dry, still hard, gritty, and cold. Yet, since I had cleaned it, it felt uniquely mine in a way I can't quite explain. The moon riders had left hours earlier. Their side of the garden was also spotless: the earth was raked smooth, the chains lubed, and dead branches stacked neatly against the far wall. They finished in less than half the time, using only a fraction of my effort, all while laughing. I had done my work alone, on my knees, with blistered hands, a torn thumb, and the lingering taste of soap powder at the back of my throat.
At the courtyard's far edge, a figure moved from the eastern arch toward the moon-side dormitories. Tall and dark-skinned, he moved with precise steps, avoiding any wasteful motion. His wolf companion walked alongside him, its size such that its shoulder reached his hip. Dark, curved elk horns adorned its head, reminiscent of ancient creatures, contrasting with the dimming sky. The wolf's wings were folded, and its footsteps made no sound on the stone surface.
Risol.
He crossed the courtyard without looking at me, unaware of my presence. He had no idea I had spent the day on my knees beyond a line he probably never considered. He vanished through a doorway on the moon side, followed by his wolf, leaving the courtyard empty. I sat on my bench, feeling the stone pressing into the backs of my thighs. My hands rested in my lap, palms upward, and in the grey light, I could see every blister, crack, and grain of dirt pressed into my skin's creases. The harness clip on my belt tapped against the wood with each shift. Still empty. Still waiting. The east building was a ten-minute walk away. Ground support intake had stopped at sunrise, but I knew they would take me if I appeared. They would provide a cot, a uniform, and a task that didn't require a bond. The scarred instructor wouldn't stop me. The king's guard was already gone. No one was left to wait for my decision.
I pressed my thumbnail into the raw center of my thumb, feeling a vivid, sharp pain that stood out amid the surrounding blur of uncertainty. After holding it there briefly, I pulled my hand away. I glanced at the garden I had tidied, then at the faint marks near the old tree in the fading light. I decided not to go to the east building and stayed where I was.
