Kyarri scooped up the kudarung in her hands and ran through the corridors to Daine's rooms, ignoring the looks she got from palace servants and the scholars that shared the hallway. She knocked on the door, then opened it, keeping the tiny winged horse carefully cradled in the other hand, her fingers leaving smears of blood on the door-pull. Daine was at the open window, chatting to some of the local birds, but turned when the door opened. She instantly saw the problem, and took the kudarung from Kyarri.

'Hush. This is difficult for me, more difficult than mortal animals.' She sat down at a table and sunk into meditation.
Kyarri went over to the young dragon sitting in the window seat and whistled a hello. It had been a few weeks since she had seen Kitten. The dragon turned as the girl sat down next to her, back against the window, and made an inquiry in whistles and clicks. Kyarri answered in the same language, briefly explaining the fight with Emmet and the injured kudarung. Her hair was coming unbraided, and she brushed a lock of it off of her face, not noticing that the left kudarung blood there. Kit whistled a dragon spell and the girl's hair twisting back into the braid of its own accord.

Daine was finishing up at the table, settling the kudarung into a soft nest made out of a shirt pulled from a basket of mending on the table. She wiped her hands on her patched, stained breeches; clearly she'd been around other animals that day.

'Look at you two, thick as thieves like always. Tea?'

'Please.' Kyarri wiped her own hands on her breeches, but inside the pockets so she wouldn't leave a mark. Lord Padraig disapproved of dirty clothes on anyone who wasn't at that moment working.

Kit whistled. Daine laughed. 'Yes, Kit, you can have some too.'

Kyarri went to get the teapot as Daine put on the kettle, but then realized that she had no idea where it was. Daine unearthed in on a shelf full of glass bottles, every shape and filled with every substance imaginable and more colours than Kyarri had ever seen anywhere else. After checking inside to make sure that Numair hadn't been using it for magical experimenting, Daine made tea and poured cups for the three of them. Kit picked hers up in dainty paws and lapped at it like a cat. Kyarri slid off her shoes and crossed her legs underneath her on the sofa. Daine sat at the other end of the sofa, sipping her own tea, one of the palace's many cats curling up next to her.

They talked about Kyarri's page training, about Numair and Daine's work for the crown, about news from Pirate's Swoop and palace gossip. They fell silent after a while, then Kyarri leaned forward abruptly. The cat next to Daine gave her a glaring look that clearly said that, while the girl's presence was tolerated, but was by no means desired, and that moves like that put her on thin ice.

'Daine, who are my parents?'

'We are. Me and Numair and Alanna and George. You know that.'

'You know what I mean. Who gave birth to me?'

Daine smiled, a little sadly. 'I don't know. None of us do.'

'What do you mean? How did I come to you then? Was I abandoned?'

Daine cupped the young girl's face in one hand. 'Oh, sweetling. I can't tell you that. Not yet. Someday. But not now. When you're a bit older, maybe.'

Kyarri pulled back. 'Why?'

'Just...because. Some things are just because.'

'That's a stupid reason. Don't I have a right to know?' She crossed her arms, aware that she was acting like a little kid, and getting angrier at the knowledge.

'Please don't be like this about it,' Daine asked. 'I know you don't like it. I grew up not knowing who my Da was. I get how you feel.'

'Really.' Kyarri was getting sarcastic in an angry, jerk-of-the-head way. 'You get how it feels to be a commoner in page training, being the girl, being different from everyone else, having all these memories that you can't explain and things that you don't know how you know? Do you really know how that feels?' Kyarri slammed her teacup down on the table so hard that the handle broke. 'I'll see myself out.'

Daine looked as though she wanted to say something, but didn't know what. Kyarri left, shutting the door behind her. Through the door, she could hear Kitten scolding Daine in her baby-dragon way.

Kyarri walked fast down the corridor, frustrated and angry. She turned into an empty gallery, full of old animal skeletons and fossils, a reference place for the scholars housed on that floor. She tucked herself into an alcove in the far corner of the empty room, leaning against the wall then sliding down it so that she was sitting, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She felt the anger that made her want to throw something and the kind of sad that sits right in your belly like hunger. It all came out in a flood of hot, angry tears. She hadn't cried through any of it; none of the fights, the frustration, the injuries in weapons practice, the bullying of the other boys, but this was the last straw. None of what she had always thought was true, and her family, the people she'd always been able to trust, were keeping secrets from her, secrets about her. She heard the door creak open and quickly wiped her face on her sleeve, but it was only Kitten. The dragon crept over on all fours and then sat up in front of Kyarri. The girl looked at the dragon in desperation. 'Who am I, Kit?'

Kitten replied in their whistle-click language. It showed to Kyarri as symbols and ideas, but boiled down to something of a meaning in Common. 'I am very very young. You are even younger, but you are also old old old old old.'

'Old?' The girl asked. The dragon nodded her reptilian face and answered with a sound of 'very.' The girl kissed the dragon on the tip of her soft, scaly nose, then sent her back to Daine's rooms, returning to her own, hoping that she would make it before lights-out. Dom was hammering on her door when she returned.

'What's up?'

The boy turned. 'Nothing, really. You weren't there earlier, for study. I thought I'd check on you.'

'I'm fine. I finished my work early. I had someone to go...I had stuff to do.'

Dom looked at his friend's tear-marked face and the damp spot on her sleeve where she had wiped it. 'Are you sure you're all right? You look...' He trailed off as the girl shot him a look.

'I'm fine. Was there anything else you wanted?'

'Uh, yeah. I left one of my books for class in your room yesterday.'

'Right. Yeah, you did.' Kyarri pulled her key out from her shirt, where it hung on a cord around her neck, and unlocked the door. The book was sitting on her desk.

Dom took it. 'Right, thanks. Um, you know, if you ever, y'know, have anything bugging you, not that you do, but if you do, you can, um, talk to me about it.'

'I'm fine.' Kyarri put a hand in the middle of her friend's back and shoved him out the door. 'If you get caught in the hallways, you'll get in trouble. Get!'

'See you tomorrow, Kitten.'

Kyarri growled as she shut the door.

The next morning, she awoke to light hitting her eyelids and Raoul-the-Cat standing on her chest. Up you get. Kyarri growled and rolled over, muttering about self-important cats. Raoul swatted her ear with a paw. UP! The girl sat up, ready to skin the cat, then winced. Between the tumble down the stairs with Emmet and her tilting failure earlier in the day, she was sore. She rose and hobbled about the room like an old woman. She let Yukimi in when the maid knocked with her water, and took it into the dressing room. She stripped off her nightgown and whistled softly. She was one big bruise. Yukimi brought her clothes in and tutted and the girl. 'Honestly, milady, what do you get up to?'

'I've told you, just call me Kyarri. And I'm terrible at two big things; tilting, and making people like me. Any page bad at those things is going to end up like this every once in a while.'

'If you say so, Page Kyarri.' The maid left the room.

'I'm going to start calling you "Maid Yukimi" if you don't quit that!' Kyarri called after the older girl, and was rewarded with a chuckle as Yukimi left her rooms.

Kyarri was subdued at breakfast, exhausted by the excitement of the previous day, the late night, and the extra-early morning, courtesy of her soon-to-sold-for-dog-meat cat.

Dom poked her in the shoulder, and Kyarri tried not to wince at the pressure on her bruised skin. 'What's up with you? You've said two words all morning. Where's our usual, obnoxiously chipper Ky?'

'She's still in bed.' Kyarri took the last bite of her porridge, then got up to take her tray to the servers.

Dom caught up with her halfway down the corridor. 'What's going on? You were short with me last night, and you're downright cranky this morning.'

'Nothing.' Kyarri kept walking.

'Is this about those guys yesterday? Because they're idiots and you shouldn't list-'

'I said it's nothing.'

'Is it about the tilting? Because no one can be good at everything, you know. It just wouldn't be good for you. You'd be insufferable if you didn't have some flaw-'

'It's not that.'

'Then what? Because I'm worried, and it's not just me. Jase was just asking me about what was going on too. He says you were snapping at him yesterday afternoon.'

'It's nothing, really. Just, family stuff.'

'Is everyone okay?'

Kyarri sighed. 'Everyone is fine. It's complicated. I don't want to talk about it.'

Dom raised his hands in defeat. 'Fine. I know when I've been told. But if you do want to talk about it, I'm around.' He waited for her to say something, and when she didn't, spoke again. 'Come on. I already have two bells of punishment work this week, and I really don't want to make it three by being late.'

THERE SHOULD BE A WORD THAT MEANS 'PIECE OF FURNITURE'

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