Dimwater's Demons Read Free Page A

her fiancé.
    Even Lady Gerrigan, who had comforted Kyra after her mother’s murder, now scrutinized the young apprentice with narrow eyes whenever she passed by. Kyra knew better than to hope for any amount of comfort from Lady Gerrigan now. That woman had even once muttered the words ‘half-blood’ while staring at Kyra and talking to another one of the instructors.
    Given these developments, Kyra might have left the school if not for Cyrus. He was the one shining beacon of hope in an otherwise dreary school. He was always the optimist.
    “We must train to find the shade once more,” the old wizard had said whenever Kyra would get discouraged.
    True to his word, that is exactly what they had begun focusing on once she was healed up enough from her battle to return to her classes with him. Despite having gone into battle with a dragon on her side, Kyra had been grossly outmatched by the Shade, and had been lucky to come away with scarcely more than a broken ankle. Her dragon friend, Leatherback, and she had been pinned down by a host of illusionary shades, each able to cast its own spell, and would surely have been done for had Cyrus not arrived just when he did, banishing the shade, and returning Kyra, unconscious, to her room at the academy.
    Now that summer had come, she was looking forward to enjoying her time at the school, reading, pursuing her own studies, and working with Cyrus to prepare to defeat her mother’s murderer. She especially was looking forward to spending more time with Leatherback in his secret aspenwood grove where the taint of Nagar’s Blight, a terrible curse that promised to overtake the mind of any dragon still found in the middle kingdom, so far had been unable to find him. It was strange to think that, except for the daily lesson with Cyrus, she would be entirely self-directing her use of time this summer.
    There would be no summer festivals to attend, no travels to other parts of the middle kingdom to occupy weeks of time, and no stuffy dinners to attend with other noble families. She didn’t mind the lack of structure, but she did desperately miss her mother, and was almost happy not to be returning to the home she had grown up in, where she would certainly be confronted with hundreds of things that would remind her that her mother was gone forever.
    As Kyra had been disowned by the man she had grown up thinking of as her father, she had been given permission to stay on at Kuldiga Academy for the term of her enrollment. Though she wasn’t sure who was paying for it all, it seemed her room and board were being handled through the school. She had been allowed to stay in the same room on the top floor of the school to which she had been assigned after first arriving at the academy, and had still not been re-assigned roommates since having them transferred away after the death of her mother.
    She had been happy to be rid of those first roommates – girls with whom she had nothing in common, and who had never taken up her defense when the rumors had begun about her and Feberik, even though they had been there each time he had come to call. The private room had also afforded her the necessary privacy to magically open a portal whenever she had needed to last term, and travel through it to visit Leatherback. Now that the summer was setting in, she wondered how much longer she would be so lucky in her housing situation. Perhaps by next year they would require her to take on a roommate. It would be strange to share her little place with someone. She smirked at herself for a moment, realizing that she had come to look upon her dorm room as her own private little apartment, as though she would be able to remain there for the rest of her life.
    While most other students and half of the faculty went home for the summer, Kyra was already at home. Though she despised the news that she would be expected to attend weekly dinners with her fiancé Feberik and his brother Janik, she did enjoy knowing that