Chapter 64: Finally Out
The tavern was loud with music.
Reynold was seated at one of the chairs near the back. He had a drink placed on the table in front of him. He did not touch the drink yet.
The music was still playing.
Nymeria suddenly moved out from behind the curtain and the crowd near the front started clapping and stomping.
Reynold eyes widened and stopped moving the moment he saw that Nymeria was the one who stepped out.
She was wearing a short dancer’s skirt — those kind that swirled up when dsncers turned, and a wrapped cloth across her chest that left her shoulders and arms open.
Her braids hair was down.
Reynold stretched and relaxed back in his chair with his drink still on the table.
His eyes shifted from the hem of Nymeria skirt as it swirled outward when she turned, to her face, then back down again to jer skirt.
He suddenly folded his arm with smile playing on his face.
Then Nymeria turned and looked directly at Reynold.
Her expression did not change but she kept her eyes on him and kept dancing and Reynold felt something shift in his chest that he did not entirely understand....
Just then he woke up.
His eyes flipped opened and the first thing he saw was the ceiling of his room at Ironhold. Then Faint morning light coming through the narrow slit of the window near the top of the wall.
He just lay there for a second as if he was trying to remember the dream.
The dream started caming back to him fully and he went completely still.
Nymeria.
He was just dreaming about Nymeria.
Nymeria, in a dancer’s skirt, looking directly at him.
"Shit..." he muttered, sitting up in the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling with the blank.
It in the flame now was that?
Reynold sat up slowly, then he looked down.
"What the fu*k..."
He pressed both hands flat over his face and fell back against the bed dramatically.
"What is wrong with me." He said.
He just laid there for another three seconds.
Then he got up and walked to the small bathroom, he turned the tap and splashed cold water directly over his face.
He splash the water once, twice then the third time before he stopped.
He gripped both sides of the sink and stood there with water dripping from his jaw. He was staring at his own reflection.
"Of all people. Nymeria? Really? Reynold?" He muttered to himself.
After a while he exhaled through his nose. He reached out and checked the small timepiece he’d left on the edge of the sink.
8:04. Sunday morning.
One more sleep and he was out of here.
He hung the timepiece back on the edge of the sink, then he dried his face with the back of his forearm and walked out of the bathroom.
He walked out of the room and headed outside and imto the open arena just as the morning light was starting to settle properly across the stone ground.
The air was cool.
Reynold dropped to the ground and started doing press up.
He kept his breathing even.
One. Two. Three!
His arms was starting to ache a little after 15 but he kept going.
16. 17.
At twenty, his arms finally stopped moving.
He hit the ground flat, his chest against the stone, cheek turned to the side. He just laid there for a moment as he kept breathing.
Then he pushed himself up, walked to the flat stone near the edge of the arena where he had left his shirt, and picked it up. He used it to wipe the sweat from his neck and chest.
He was turning to go back inside when he a sound above him.
It was the sound of large wings or more the heavy rhythmic beat of something flying.
He stopped and looked up.
It was a dragon.
The dragon crossed the open sky above the arena and for a second Reynold just stood there with his shirt in his hand and his neck tilted back.
Is that Drakneth?
He recognised the dragon. It was his father’s dragon.
Just then a voice sounded from behind him.
"We released him."
Reynold turned.
It was the same man from the restricted area. He was standing a few feet away.
"He has not burned anything for the past days," the man said as he shifted his head to watch the flying dragon.
"After you went into the restricted area, he suddenly became calm and stopped spitting and burning everywhere. We kept watch on him for the days just to be certain he was back to normal. Then this morning we decided it was time to bring him back to the dragon stable."
Reynold watched Drakneth move across the sky until the dragon was finally out of sight..
"Glad to hear it," Reynold said.
The man turned and looked at him then. He was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe he just needed to see the seed of his former rider," the man said in a joke tone.
Reynold said nothing but just nodded once.
The man stepped forward and put a hand briefly on his shoulder. "Be good, child." He pause. "Your father was a good man."
Then he dropped his hand, turned, and walked away.
Hearing the man say that last words, Reynold was still for a moment as he watch the man walk away.
He almost called the man to stopped as he wanted to ask.
what did the man know about his father, but he closed his mouth before the words came out.
He stood there alone in the arena for another moment.
Then he went back inside.
Once inside, he bolted the door behind him.
Then he went to the bed and reached under it for his backpack. He pulled it out and unzipped it slowly.
The letter was still there.
He took it out and sat down on the edge of the bed and held it with both hands.
He had been trying to decipher it for days and but he still could not.
He was suddenly thinking about his parents as he held the paper.
"Whatever the cause," he thought. "Whatever it was. I will walk through fire. I will walk through every locked door in Valdris if I have to and I will find out what happened."
If their deaths was not natural, he would not stop at nothing at everyone involved pay with their own blood too
He clenched his other hand as his thoughts was filled with parents.
He did not even notice when he started to get dark and when he even he fell asleep.
He woke up with the letter still in his hand.
He lay there for a moment, blinking.
Then it registered.
Today was Monday.
He sat up. The letter was creased from where he had been lying on his hand. He smoothed it carefully and folded it back the way it was and put it in the inside backpack.
He was finally getting out of Ironhold.
He stood up and he pulled on his trousers and left his shirt on the bed.
Then he walked to the courtyard.
It was still very early outside with the morning dew out.
Then he dropped to the ground.
He started with push-ups. He slow and was not trying to burn through them fast.
At thirty he shifted his hands slightly wider and kept going. By forty his shoulders had a deep, steady burn in them that he had learned years ago to separate from real pain.
He pressed to fifty and held himself at the top, arms locked, and breathed.
Then he went down again.
At sixty he slowed down even further. His jaw was tightand his arms were trembling.
He pushed through sixty-five, sixty-seven, before felt his chest drop slightly at sixty-nine, and then hit seventy and lowered himself to the ground.
He lay there face down.
He could feel his heartbeat in his palms.
After a while he pushed himself to his feet.
He shook out both arms and rolled his neck slowly to one side and then the other.
He then walked to where his shirt is and stood still for a moment, hands on his knees.
He straightened up and picked up the shirt.
He dragged it slowly across his chest, his neck, across the back of his shoulders. Then he held it in one hand and looked up at the sky.
This is his last morning in Ironhold.
He was grinning as he walked back and then went to the bathroom, washed, and came back out.
He picked up his bag from the bed and began packing.
His shirt, the timepiece, his jacket and when he was done, he zipped the bag and set beside the door.
Then he fell on the bed waiting for the non teaching staff.
Soon, there was knock on the door.
He stood, picked up the bag, and unbolted the door.
Two non-teaching staff members was in the corridor.
They were different from the ones who brought him here.
They nodded at him.
Reynold swung the bag onto his shoulder and walked out of the room without looking back.