Free Dragonoak by Sam Farren Page B

wander out
into Mahon like that and nobody would look at her twice.
    “Katja,”
I tried, eyes fixed on the knife laid across her lap.
    Katja
drew in a deep breath and I didn't dare speak another
word.
    “I never wanted to be a healer, Rowan. My mother was always very supportive
of this, but there were those who believed I ought to set all my
ambitions aside in favour of aiding those foolish enough to get
themselves hurt in the first place,” Katja said, and I didn't care
why she was telling me this. As long as she was talking, the knife
was going to remain in her lap. “My mother was always quick to
silence them: no one argued with Queen Kidira. All my life, these
so-called powers have been one great insult to me. I am but a
glorified weed . I
could do so much more, I could do what you refuse to, and instead,
I am forced to endure you wasting your gift.”
    “Please...” I mumbled, chains rattling behind me. “Please,
Katja. Let me go. I won't tell anyone, I won't...”
    Katja
let out a shrill laugh, and instantly, I was the calmer out of the
two of us. She trembled in her seat, holding the knife by the
handle lest it fall out of her lap, and shook her head over and
over, fingers running through her hair.
    “No. No,
I don't think I shall do that,” she said, “I didn't mean for any of
this to happen. You must believe that, Rowan. I honestly did not
wish for it to come to this, but goodness, you gave me no choice.
We can't turn back now.”
    “What...” I started, eye-lids heavy. My head kept rocking
forward, and every time I focused my vision, Katja seemed to have
drawn closer. “What did I do?”
    “What
did you do?” Katja repeated, kneeling in front of me. Fingers
digging in beneath my jaw, she tilted my head up so that I could
see the disappointment written across her face. “I gave you every
chance to tell me what you were, Rowan. I went so far as to
flagrantly mention Kondo-Kana around you. I took you to one of
Isjin's temples. I let you know that you were safe around me. That
I thought highly of necromancers. And you insisted on remaining
ignorant.
    “I have given you every opportunity to help, to become better
than a person of your standing could ever dare to hope to, and you
have squandered it all. You are selfish , Rowan. You are too utterly
wrapped up in your own grief to comprehend how you might be of help
to others.”
    Though
she was holding my head up, I could feel myself slipping away.
Everything in my body wanted to tumble down, down, and slip through
the floorboards like the blood that had been stolen from me. She
was right. She was right. All I cared about was getting back to
Asar, leaving behind everything the people here had given
me.
    “You
knew...” I murmured.
    Of
course she had. Sickness hadn't welled up within me by chance,
hadn't gripped me whenever she was demanding something of
me.
    “I knew. Of course I knew. From the moment you stepped into the
castle, I knew that there was a necromancer in Isin. All my life,
Rowan, I had waited to meet a necromancer. I studied endless books,
the records left by past healers who'd come into contact with them.
I convinced myself it was wishful thinking; surely I wouldn't be
able to feel a necromancer's presence so clearly. And yet the
moment you arrived, I knew,” Katja said, fingers moving from my
chin to run through my hair. “And after all that time, what is my
patience rewarded with? An illiterate farmer who barely scrapped
together the intelligence to get there in the first place. I tried
my best to make you better, I truly did, but you are irredeemably
oblivious, Rowan.”
    All my
life, I'd been convinced that necromancy only served to negate
anything of worth I had within me. But there Katja was, reassuring
me that my powers were the only part of me that counted for
anything.
    “If you can
do this, I certainly can,” Katja said firmly, and I opened my mouth
to tell her that she was wrong, but she covered it with her
fingers,