Page 39 of Fire to the Stars

Raising a dragon killer starts with the toys: dulled play daggers, picture books about saving civilians, wooden puzzles in the shape of dragon skeletons. Those very toys littered my childhood bedroom.

Once I turned ten, I was sent off to training camp. Every season, I returned home—bruised, aching, and sometimes bloody—to parents who’d already received my scores on a coil of parchment.

“The Estellios are better than this,” my mother liked to say.

My father preferred to glare until I built up enough shame to hunch. Once I did, he’d scold me for imperfect performance. The point was to build up my nerve. It worked well, over time. In their hands, shame was an effective tool. It drove me to crave their praise like a tinderfox craves flame.

Shame didn’t work on Micah.

By age five, he’d already turned his back on his toys. Defiance, in my parents’ eyes. Mine too, if I was being honest.

Once, when he was six, my father caught him unraveling atapestry. The fight ended with Micah sobbing in his bedroom across from mine. The sound grated on me. I took my moondaggers to the backyard, where practice targets stood on the lawn. I’d hoped to set a good example where Micah could see me from his window, but all I saw when I glanced at the house was a red-cheeked child who obviously dreaded the future I represented.

He was spoiled.Spoiled.The Estellio family had wealth and esteem, yet Micah thought nothing of the responsibility.

That winter, I fumbled an assisted slaying with my field instructor. The dragon had raked the sleeve of my uniform and opened my forearm. The first person I sought help from was Lyle—and the smith he apprenticed with—to replace a dagger I’d thrown too wide and lost in the snow.

“At least you survived,” he joked, elbow braced on the top of his mop. He tossed me the clean rag he’d tucked into the back of his belt. “Stanch that wound before you bleed out.”

Red drops speckled the half-mopped floor.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“No apologies. Just take care of yourself.”

“Don’t tell my parents.”

“Abel.You need to value your health more than your equipment.”

The moondagger I’d lost was an old one from my father’s weapons cache, but my parents had gifted me this uniform as a training present. It was made from the hide of their latest kill, tightly sewn with the kind of multilayered stitching that flames couldn’t easily breach. Only the best outfitters made uniforms that lasted so long. Yet I’d gone and let the dragon shred through the scales.

I shook from shock of the injury. Fear of judgment, too. “I need my uniform repaired before my parents find out.”

Lyle set the mop aside. “I’ll take you to Ma.”

Madame Afi’s shop served a dual purpose: half outfitter, half smithy. The forge in the back remained cold, unused without her late husband, but somehow it was warmer than the smithy where Lyle had been apprenticing. Rolls of dragon hide, thread, and leather packed the shelves. Mannequins wore incomplete slayer uniforms. In the center sat a dining table, of all things. The wooden chairs were cushioned, as if prolonged social interactions with customers were the norm for her.

I gingerly removed my overcoat. It tore the sticky, scabbed blood from the gash, painful enough to hitch my breath.

“If there’s any way you can hide the damage—” I started.

Madame Afi tossed the coat at Lyle, then pushed me into the nearest chair. Lyle eyed her with exasperation while she went to retrieve her first aid kit, rattling off the instructions he needed to clean my blood from the scales.

“And make us some tea,” she ordered her son. “Chamomile.”

“Ma! That’s the worst flavor.”

“Chamomile.”

“Any tea is fine.” I cleared my throat. “The damage—”

She set the first aid kit down with a huff, rolled up the sleeve of my undershirt, and began cleaning the wound.

“Do you enjoy slaying?” she asked.

“I…I suppose. Is that relevant somehow?”

She scoffed. “What could you possibly enjoy about all that death?”