No one said anything as Clarisa retrieved her pack and went back to her tent in silence. Farot and Bylanna started dragging the sedated thunderbeast riders back to their tents so they wouldn't freeze to death. I joined in. It took Kuertis and Tawny a while to get over the shock of learning that Clarisa was a paltor before they started helping as well.

After checking every corpse and retrieving the stolen supplies, then tying up the frazin riders, we learned that one of Farot's men had died and two more were seriously injured. We'd recovered most of the supplies, though Farot seem to have lost something very important. He searched every frazin rider twice before declaring that he would have to go after the ones that had escaped and get back what they'd stolen.

Kuertis and Bylanna volunteered to go with him, but they were both mildly injured.

"Clarisa and Tawny will come with me. You two are injured, and Ella has not slept. It is good she had not, or else we would have had no chance to confront the frazin riders."

Tawny gave me a terrified look.

"It'll be fine," I whispered as Farot went to retrieve Clarisa.

She clutched my sleeve. "El, how do you even know that this mission is real? What if it's all a trap? What if Clarisa just tricked us all to get us here and trade us to the Ferentisians for a reward or something?"

I patted her arm. "Callah herself sent us on this mission. It's real, even if Clarisa is actually a half-blood."

"I'm afraid to go with them alone."

"You'll be fine. They won't hurt you as long as you keep quiet about the whole paltor thing." I hoped it was true. They had no reason to hurt her as long as she was helping with the mission, but still... Clarisa had a temper, and I didn't really know Farot that well.

"I hope you're right," she said as Farot returned with Clarisa.

"We will wait for the dragons to wake. It will happen soon, then we will go," he said.

Farot's prediction came true a few seconds later when the snores of the dragons turned into growls and snarls. They'd undoubtedly awoken before the sedated bipeds due to their larger size.

The other dragons and Farot's katalni had been chained to stakes in the ground, so they merely made inquisitive noises in their rider's direction while Leera came over to inspect me.

[Good aim with the daltek. I saw his face before I came over,] she said.

[Thanks.] I glanced over at the expedition group. Clarisa, Farot, and Tawny were mounting up to go after the escaped frazin riders.

Kuertis, who was leaning on a sword for support because of an injured leg, groaned and swayed enough to worry me.

"You should get that bandaged," Bylanna said as he passed him to go into her tent.

"Some help would be nice," Kuertis muttered. He tried to limp towards his tent and almost fell over.

"I'll help." I hurried to help him stay on his feet.

He leaned on me and his sword as we made our way to his tent. After the fire and the running around, I'd been fairly warm, but the chill began to creep back in. It was a relief to be inside Kuertis's warm tent. I closed the tent flap behind us before crouching by his injured left leg.

"Here." He handed me a roll of bandages from his pack.

I took them and gingerly pulled his pants leg up away from the cut. It didn't look great, and I certainly didn't have Tawny's healing expertise. However, I did know that I should clean out the wound and bind it tightly—but not too tightly—to stop the bleeding.

"Do you have any alcohol?"

He winced. "Yes..."

"Then hand it over. You don't want this cut getting infected, do you?"

He shook his head hesitantly, then took a small bottle out of his pack and gave it to me.

I unstopped the bottle and splashed some on his leg. He howled and nearly kicked me in the face, but I dodged.

"Warn me next time," he said, face still scrunched up in pain.

I dabbed at his leg with a clean cloth I'd found and started rubbing it with the bandage. "Sorry I don't have Tawny's touch. Healing isn't really my thing."

"No, lighting things on fire is more your thing."

My hand jerked involuntarily, and Kuertis hissed as I pulled the bandage tight around his wound.

"What do you mean by that?" I kept an eye on my hands to keep them from sparking. They were shaking slightly.

Kuertis placed a hand on my shoulder but removed it when I flinched. "Your secret is safe with me."

"I don't have any secrets."

"Right."

"But just for curiosity's sake, what secret do you think I have?" I tied off the bandage.

"You're a paltor."

"I'm not."

"I've thought it since I met you, but I wasn't sure until tonight. But I won't tell anyone."

I looked up at him. "Why not? I mean, hypothetically, if I were a paltor, why-"

"I met more than a few paltors when I was captured and brought here. They were no worse than anyone else because of their mixed heritage. Some of them were cruel, and some of them were what made my captivity bearable."

"I find that hard to believe." I avoided his knowing look. "Paltors are bloodthirsty monsters, aren't they?"

He took my hand, forcing me to look at him. "Not most of them. And definitely not you." His eyes seem to bore into my soul.

I glanced from his hand holding mind up back up to his face again. Could he see the heat that was rising in my face? Were my cheeks as red as they felt right then? Those and a thousand other thoughts raced through my mind as I looked into his eyes.

[Biped romance. How boring,] Leera said.

[If it's so boring, then stop listening in. And it's not romance.]

"Ella?" Kuertis asked.

Something told me he'd said something that I'd missed. "Yeah?"

"Does everyone except Tawny know what you are? I assume Clarisa knows because she's a paltor, too."

Instinctively, I tried to defend Clarisa's secret. "Why would you think Clarisa is a paltor?"

"She told us, remember?"

I was about to lie again to try and protect her secret, but my brain caught up with my nervousness, and I realized that she really had given it away herself.

"You don't need to lie to me, Ella."

"I'm not-"

Before I could protest further, he took both my hands and looked me right in the eye. "You can trust me. Now tell me, are you a paltor?"

I couldn't see the point in lying to him anymore. He obviously knew what the truth was and wasn't about to drop the subject. Not to mention, I felt I could trust him... for some reason. "I'm a half-blood, yes."

"Half fire elent?"

"Y-yes," I said, thinking it was best that no one except Leera knew exactly what I was. Even if Kuertis understood that paltors weren't bad, he would never understand me being half dragon. I could tell that much by the way he kept his dragon under the control of the mindless collar.

"How did you do fire magic without your wand?"

I felt a strange buzzing and a pain at the back of my mind, almost as if-

With a jolt, Kuertis pulled back from me and looked away. He yawned and covered his mouth, acting like that was why he pulled away. It might have been the real reason why he backed off, but I didn't think it was. That buzzing feeling, that sharp pain in the back of my mind, had been just like when Clarisa was speaking to my mind.

I might've been imagining it, but I didn't think I was. And if I wasn't imagining it, then that meant that Kuertis must be a paltor, too. Half cinem—or maybe half daltek—to be specific. Why wouldn't he have told me that when he told me that he knew my secret?

"We should sleep," he said.

"You're probably right."

I went over to my own tent and found that Leera had managed to open the tent flap partway and stick her head inside. When I crawled in myself, she snorted.

[It's cold out there.]

[I know.] I closed the tent flap as tightly as I could with Leera's head in the way. As soon as it was closed, I pulled off my boots and climbed into my sleeping bag. Even through the bag, I could feel the heat of Leera's breathing. It was a lot nicer than outside.

I wanted to go to sleep, but my questions about Kuertis swan around my head for hours. I couldn't stay awake forever, though. With Leera's head warming the tent, I eventually fell asleep and slept like a rock.

I awoke curled up next to Leera's sleeping head. I packed up as quickly and quietly as I could and brought all my things outside the tent. I'd barely put them down by Leera's saddle when Clarisa rounded the corner and jabbed her finger in my face.

"You were stupid enough to bring your pure-blood friends on this mission, and now you endangered it by doing fire magic in front of them? I should have let them know it was you." She was red in the face and obviously fuming.

"Then why didn't you?" I asked, trying not to get too upset. The last thing we need right now was more fire magic.

"Because that stupid knife won't glow for me." She stomped. "I trained for this mission for months before Callah found that dagger, but after all that, it only glows for you. You, a half talme who can't even control her own dragon, much less her magic."

I vaguely recalled Callah showing me a dagger when I first started practicing fire magic with her. "What does the dagger have to do with any of this?"

She scoffed. "That dagger is the key to opening or destroying the portal to the weapons cache. When the fake dagger was stolen from Callah's office, it must've found its way to Farot. He was so upset about losing this orb thing last night, he must have the fake dagger stored inside. His will glow for anyone, but the real dagger only glows for someone who can wield it, a real descendant of the portal makers."

"If only a descendant of the original makers of the portal could use the dagger to open the portal, why would Callah think that you could?"

"Callah knew that Tyor, your father, was a fire elent. Her informants told her that he married someone who wasn't an elent and that he had a paltor daughter sixteen years ago. Callah figured out that her sister, my mom, had married a fire elent and had a paltor daughter sixteen years ago. It was the right town, and her informant even said my father looked exactly like Tyor, but he was wrong, Callah was wrong, and now the fate of Lykela is in your hands."

It was impressive how she could make a simple word like 'your' sound like an insult.

"Well, thanks for covering for me either way. And sorry about the mix-up, but that's not actually my fault. I didn't even know who my father was until after the choosing ceremony."

"I can't believe it. Lykela's as good as doomed." She stormed off.

[That was entertaining,] Leera said.

I jumped and spun around. She had extricated her head from the tent and was looking intently at me.

[You're probably going to say that she was right about me endangering the mission by using fire magic, that I should have somehow found some other way to fight off a bunch of frazins and their riders.]

[No. In that situation, I don't think you could have done anything else.]