"What about you?" She turned the question back on me. "Palace life everything they say it is? Golden plates, silk sheets, servants wiping your..."
"It's boring."
The word came out before I could stop it. She stared at me.
"Boring."
"Mind-numbingly boring." The frustration I'd been carrying for years suddenly needed to get out. "Every day is the same. Wake up, lessons, meals, more lessons, formal events where everyone says things they don't mean and pretends to enjoy it. My brothers are perfect at it, Aldric actually likes duty and Caelum actually likes scheming and I just..." I trailed off. "I just want to see things. Real things. Not paintings of battles and maps of places I'll never go. Real."
Cassandra was quiet for a moment.
"You know what I'd give for a boring life?"
I flinched. "I didn't mean..."
"No." She held up a hand. "Let me finish. You know what I'd give for boring? For a bed that's mine every night and food I didn't have to steal and a door that locks against the cold? Everything. I'd give everything."
Her words hit me like a splash of cold water. Shame crawled up my throat.
"But," she continued, softer now, "I get it. A cage is a cage, even if it's made of gold. You can have everything and still be trapped. I've seen rich people with dead eyes, people who've never been hungry a day in their lives but look like they're starving anyway."
"Yeah." My voice came out rough. "Something like that."
"So you snuck out." A hint of a smile crossed her face. "Climbed a wall, got lost, almost got mugged by Goff's idiots, and ended up on my roof talking to a street rat about the nature of freedom."
"When you put it that way, it sounds almost sensible."
"Nothing about tonight is sensible." She laughed. That rough, real laugh I was already starting to crave. "But I like it. Haven't had company up here in... ever, actually. You're the first."
Something warm bloomed in my chest. "Really?"
"Don't let it go to your head. I just meant..."
She was interrupted by a flash of movement. Raikiri had stood, his attention fixed on Azurene. The dragon was watching him right back, her tail swishing slowly.
What is she doing? I asked through our bond.
I think, Azurene replied, I'm making a friend.
Raikiri had stopped pacing. He sat at the rooftop's edge, watching Azurene with an intensity that made the lightning along his spine flicker brighter. Cassandra noticed.
"Raikiri doesn't like other Anima," she said. "Something about him, other beasts always back off. Even the big ones. Even the dangerous ones." Her voice dropped. "People too."
"Azurene isn't backing off."
"No." Cassandra watched our Anima watching each other. "She's not."
Azurene slithered out from under my cloak entirely, her small body gleaming white in the moonlight. She was barely the length of my arm, still, a baby dragon by any measure. But she held herself like she was already the size of mountains.
She approached Raikiri.
Careful, I said through our bond.
When am I not careful?
Do you want an honest answer or...
She ignored me. She always did when she'd made up her mind about something.
Raikiri watched her come. Lightning crackled, but it wasn't aggressive. More like a question. His chimeric body tensed, all those wolf-cat-weasel parts coiling together.
Azurene stopped a foot away. Stretched her neck forward. Touched her snout to his.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Raikiri made a sound, not quite a growl, not quite a purr. Something that vibrated through the rooftop and made my teeth hum.
Azurene chirped back.
And then they were moving, the two of them bursting apart and coming together again in a dance that looked like fighting but wasn't. Raikiri dodged. Azurene lunged. He bounded over her and she twisted in midair to snap at his tail. Lightning arced. White scales flashed. They tumbled across the rooftop like children, which they were, I realized. Young Anima, both of them. Still learning how to be what they would become.
Cassandra watched with her mouth slightly open.
"I've never seen him play," she whispered. "Not once. Not in my whole life."
"Maybe he just needed the right playmate."
She looked at me. In her eyes I saw something fragile, something she was trying very hard to keep hidden behind street rat armor. Hope. The dangerous kind. The kind that got you hurt when it was taken away.
"Maybe," she said.
We watched in silence. There was something almost sacred about it; two creatures who rarely connected with others finding each other in the space of an evening. The bond between a human and their Anima was the deepest relationship most people ever knew, but the bonds Anima formed with each other were different. Rarer. Precious.
"You know what they say," Cassandra murmured. "About how human friendships mirror Anima friendships."
"My tutor mentioned it. Something about resonance."
"Yeah. If your Anima likes someone else's Anima, you're probably going to like that person too. And if they hate each other..." She whistled low. "Seen that go bad before. Two kids whose Anima couldn't stand each other. They tried to be friends anyway. Didn't end well."
I looked at Azurene, now lying on her back while Raikiri batted at her waving paws. Through our bond, I felt her contentment; a warm, drowsy pleasure I'd never felt from her before. She was happy. Not just satisfied or amused, but genuinely happy.
"What do you think it means?" I asked. "That they get along so well?"
Cassandra didn't answer right away. When I glanced at her, she was watching the Anima with an expression I couldn't read.
"Means maybe you're not as annoying as I thought," she finally said.
"High praise."
"Take what you can get, Soft Hands."
The sky turned grey at the edges.
I noticed it first in the way shadows softened, how the stars faded into the growing light. The city was still quiet, but not for much longer. Already I could hear distant sounds of morning; a cart rattling, a rooster crowing somewhere in the lower districts, a vendor setting up his stall.
"Dawn," I said. The word tasted bitter.
"Yeah." Cassandra had noticed too. "You need to get back."
I didn't want to go. The thought of returning to the palace, to the boring dinners and the endless lessons and the weight of being someone I didn't know how to be, sat in my stomach like a stone. Here, on this rooftop, I was just Vale. A kid talking to another kid. That was enough. That was everything.
"I could stay longer..."
"No." Her voice was firm. "You need to get back before someone notices you're gone. If they start looking for you and find out you've been in this part of the city, it won't just be trouble for you. It'll be trouble for me. For everyone down here."
She was right. I hated that she was right.
"Okay." I stood, brushing dust from my borrowed clothes. "I'll go."
Azurene disengaged from Raikiri with visible reluctance. She pressed her nose against his once, then flowed back to me and wound herself around my shoulders. Through our bond, I felt her sadness mixing with mine.
We'll come back, she assured me.
Promise?
Promise.
Cassandra stood too. She was trying to look casual, arms crossed, weight on one hip. But something in her posture was different. Tighter. Like she was bracing for something.
"So," she said. "This was weird."
"The weirdest."
"You're not going to... I mean, you probably have to..." She stopped. Started again. "This was a one-time thing, right? Noble kid slumming it with the commoners. Something to brag about to your fancy friends."
"I don't have friends."
The words came out too honest, too raw. Cassandra blinked.
"What?"
"In the palace. I have siblings and tutors and servants, but I don't have friends. Not real ones. Everyone wants something from me or is afraid of me or is trying to use me. No one just..." I trailed off, embarrassed. "No one just talks to me like you do."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"That's tragic" she finally said.
"I know."
"Like, seriously tragic. You live in a palace."
"I know."
"With a dragon."
"I know."
"And you've never had a single friend."
"Are you going to keep rubbing it in?"
"Probably." But there was no heat in it. Something in her expression had shifted. Softened. "Come back tomorrow night."
My heart jumped. "What?"
"Same time. Same place." She jerked her thumb toward the edge of the roof. "I'll show you the best food stall in the lower market. The guy makes these meat pies that are..." She kissed her fingers. "Worth getting stabbed for."
"I can't pay for anything. I forgot to bring money."
"I'll cover it. You can pay me back later. When you're king or whatever."
"I'm fourth in line."
"Then pay me back in forty years. I'm patient."
I was grinning. I couldn't help it. "You want me to come back."
"Don't let it go to your head."
"You actually want..."
"I'm being charitable. Don't make it weird." She turned away, but not before I saw the smile she was trying to hide. "Now get going. Dawn's not going to wait for your dramatic moment."
I moved toward the edge of the roof, then stopped. "Cassandra."
"Cas."
"Cas." The nickname felt right. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For tonight. For saving me from those thugs. For showing me this." I gestured at the rooftop, the city, the slowly brightening sky. "For not asking questions you knew I couldn't answer."
She shrugged with exaggerated casualness. "Don't thank me. Just come back. And bring something interesting next time. A book, maybe. I've always wanted to learn to read."
"You can't read?"
"Street kid, remember? School costs money."
"I'll teach you."
The words came out before I thought them through. She turned back to face me, surprise flickering across her features.
"You'll teach me to read."
"If you want."
"And what do I teach you in return?"
I considered. "How to climb without looking like an idiot?"
That surprised a laugh out of her. "Deal. Now go, before the whole palace explodes."
I went.
The journey back was easier than the journey out. Whether because I had a better sense of the streets now or because dawn was lighting my way, I moved faster, more confidently. Azurene stayed alert under my cloak, but her mood was lighter than before; the echo of her play with Raikiri still resonating through our bond.
You made a friend, she said.
We made a friend.
True. Her satisfaction wrapped around me like a blanket. Raikiri is... good. Wild and sharp and good.
Like Cas.
Yes. Exactly like her.
The palace wall loomed ahead. I found my gap, found my handholds, and climbed. The four-minute window between patrols was different now; morning shift instead of evening. But I'd accounted for that in my planning. Some things, at least, I'd done right.
I dropped into the old garden. Crossed to the servants' quarter. Slipped through back corridors already filling with staff preparing for the day. Changed out of the commoner clothes, stuffing them back into the storage trunk. Made it to my chambers just as the first servants knocked to wake me.
"Good morning, Your Highness." The woman's voice came through the door. "Breakfast in one hour."
"Thank you," I called back, amazed my voice sounded normal.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Azurene curled on my chest, her weight warm and familiar. My heart was still pounding. My whole body hummed with the residue of the night; the running, the climbing, the conversation that had lasted until dawn.
I had a secret now. A real one. Not the petty secrets of palace life; who hated whom, which lords were vying for favor, what Caelum said behind Aldric's back. This was different. This was mine.
Tomorrow, I thought. Same time. Same place.
I'm already counting the hours, Azurene replied.
I closed my eyes and smiled.
I was already planning my next escape.
*