Heroic Yet

Dranalin tapped one hand against the other as she paced. In her mind, she heard the cries of the crowd beyond the keep. She knew the sound could not breach the walls, but she remembered from when she had hauled Darkel, Lord of the Frost, into the keep.

The crowd had milled in the streets below her steeds landing. Barenden, the ham he was, had paused balancing on his hind legs with wings expanded when they’d landed. Dranalin had no choice but to pose herself or fall from his back.

They would have been the sight to those below though. One which mirrored an image in her mind from her youth. Then Tremadan had been the hero and she had looked up from beneath in awe.

But even then, she’d heard the mutterings.

The discontent with the lives lost with Tremadan’s failures.

Braced on Barenden’s back, Dranalin hadn’t been able to differentiate the noise between cheering or hollowing. The crowd’s faces had lain too distance to see clearly.

Pausing at a table she retrieved the letter she’d left behind before. A letter from Mirsten, Lord of the Flames.

Both Mirsten and Darkel had called her out at once and she’d had to choose. Had she chosen correctly?

Fallend, her aid, entered the chamber and paused silently in the doorway, one arm crooked before him. His silence galled her, replacing the crowd’s buzz in her mind.

Setting down the letter, Dranalin bit her lip. “Do they find me heroic yet?”