KORIK

‘The first words out of Halden’s mouth when he sees me on that drizzly morning are, “Why are you here?” Not, “I’m glad you’re not in a wurm’s stomach.”’

— Korik, “Drizzly” They Come at Night

Weeks later…

The first words out of Halden’s mouth when he sees me on that drizzly morning are, “Why are you here?” Not, “I’m glad you’re not in a wurm’s stomach.” Or even, “Thanks for saving my ass back there. I know I had this fancy sword, but I was too much of a fucking coward to actually use it.” 

No, it’s, “Why are you here?” like I’ve committed some ghastly betrayal in continuing to draw breath. And it doesn’t help my mood at all that the clearing I’m standing in is more mud than anything else.

“Why are you?” I counter.

“Because they drafted everyone of age who wasn’t desperately needed elsewhere,” he answers as he tries and fails to suppress a shiver.

Hmm…so you were forced into this? Interesting…

I shrug and gesture expansively toward the horde of us standing in this sodden field. He doesn’t need to know my truth. He doesn’t deserve it. 

“So you lied?”

I snap my gaze back to him lightning-quick. “About what?”

“Your age obviously. Last time I checked they didn’t draft fledglings.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Those standing nearest to us have already been drawn in by his accusatory tone.  

“I am not a fledgling, Halden.”

“But your hatch day’s not until—“

“Dark Night. My hatch day is—and always was—on Dark Night.”

Hal just stares at me dumbly. “But that’s my hatch day.”

I can feel the anger bubbling up inside me and I shove it as deep down as I can stomach. 

“I know. Why do you think I didn’t say anything when they assigned me a new hatch day.”

He’s still staring at me like someone spit in his honey cake. Like I spit in it. 

“Come on, Hal, you can’t tell me you seriously never noticed? That my hatch day was ‘coincidentally’ the same day I was brought into the Fledgling Hall?”

He didn’t. We were roommates for over ten years and he never even realized it.

It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like we were truly broodmates. Or Nimbus. We were just victims of circumstance and nothing more. And after today I can forget I ever knew him at all. 

In fact, I should just start now. 

I begin to turn away from him.

“Korik—”

“Alright, fledglings, listen up!” a booming voice cuts Hal off from somewhere in the near distance, and I swing my attention toward it.

“I know you’ve got questions, but I don’t give a Unikin’s asshole,” a man dressed in uniform tells us bluntly. “It’s wet enough and dark enough that those damned wurms could come slithering out and make a meal of the whole horde of ya.”

An uneasy murmur ripples through the horde of young Dragokin. 

“That’s not really true, is it? I thought…I thought they could only come at night?” Hal questions in a hushed voice.

When I say nothing I feel his moss-green eyes on me. 

Why he thinks I’d have the answer is beyond me. I mean I do, but still. 

I don’t move my eyes from the knight barking instructions at us all as I answer Hal’s question. “It’s not like the wurms can tell the time of day, Halden. They come out at night because there’s no sunlight.”

“But he said—“

I huff out an annoyed breath and shift my gaze over to him. “Do you see any sunlight, Hal? No, you don’t. So don’t run about.”

“What?”

He just stares at me and I right back at him. 

“Nothing,” I hiss, turning to face the front. 

Nothing. Just a rhyme Mamma used to say.

«If the sun is out, feel free to run about. But if the sun is gone, hide until dawn.» 

“…So I want draftees to go to the right with Knight Ragnuson. And I want enlisted to go to the left with Knight Brynjubur,” the uniformed knight orders the horde of us standing out in the drizzling rain. 

As I start to move, Hal grabs me roughly by the forearm, yanking me to a stop. I flick my eyes down to his hand, then up to meet his eyes. 

What right does he think he has to lay hands on me?

“Where are you going, Kor? He said draftees go to the right.”

My gaze is unflinching. “I know.”

It takes longer than it should to sink in. That I wasn’t drafted into the war. That I voluntarily enlisted for service. 

Hal’s lips form the question he doesn’t ask aloud. 

I raise my chin, letting the rain snake freely down my face and plaster my unbound mane to my skin. And then I answer that unspoken question.

“Because I’m going to become a Royal Knight,” I vow with unwavering conviction. “Because I am not a coward.”

NOTE: dialogue in Guillemets— sideways double chevrons « and » —are in a language other than Dragotic the common Dragokin tongue. 

Oh snap! Did Kor just call Hal a coward?! And what’s going to happen now that they’re going their separate ways in the Royal Dragokin Forces?

Find out in the next episode of They Come at Night!