A/N: Here's a good thing. My friends are home!

They've been away, travelling across Europe for a month, and I've missed them like a missing thumb; you can survive without it, but it's tough.

But now my thumb has returned! Hooray!

The next few months passed in a blur. To Kyarri, it felt like she'd gone to sleep at Midwinter and woke up the first week of June.

The weather was hot and muggy as the pages readied themselves for the summer trip in the Royal Forest.

'Are you sure you've got everything?' Yukumi asked Kyarri, as Kyarri tied her pack shut.'

The girl nodded. 'I've double and triple checked everything.' A bunch of boys ran past her open door, then one doubled back, catching onto the door frame.

'Hey Princess,' Jase said. 'Good evening, Mistress Yukumi.' The maid curtseyed to him, then left.

'Hey, Jase, come in.' The prince did come in, sitting on the edge of Kyarri's bed while the girl sat on the floor. He had called her Princess ever since Midwinter, when it was just the two of them.

'Can I borrow your whetstone?' he asked. 'I can't find mine anywhere.'

Kyarri opened her pack and pulled it out, handing it to him. He took his dagger from its sheath on his belt and began sharpening it.

'Are you excited for your first trip as a page?' Jase asked.

Kyarri nodded. 'This year has just gone so fast! I barely had time to psych myself out for the little examinations before they were over, and now I'm nearly done my entire first year of pagehood.'

'You know, you've lost a lot of people money this year.'

'What?'

'Betting. I had Ayden, Sam and Owen betting good money that you wouldn't make it until Midwinter. The Lioness and my and Dom's dads made very good money too.'

Kyarri cocked her head at him. 'What made you bet that I'd stay?'

He grinned wolfishly. 'The mudfight. Your archery skills. And after the first week, there was just something that I knew you had. The Lioness has it, and Lady Kel, and my mum, and Buri. It's a sort of glow, this determination. That first week, when you talked about why you weren't going to leave, I was filled with this need to be something greater than I was. Princess, you're an inspiration.'

'You think?'

He nodded. 'You're carrying on what the Lioness started, and Lady Kel made possible. More and more young women are learning how to defend themselves. Down in the city, girls are being taught how to get rid of an attacker, and they pass on that knowledge. The numbers of assault and rape have gone down dramatically. Noble girls, including my buffle-brained sister, have teachers in archery, swordplay or staves. The army has started letting girls in. None have joined yet, but it's allowed. And there're the Riders, which are now half women. It's people like you that have started that. The Lioness was god-touched. Everyone said she was a freak, a fluke, something that no one else could match. Then Lady Kel came along, and she proved that wrong, proving that girls could be knights if they tried hard enough. And now there's you. You are making it reality, a way of life. Many people have barely heard of you yet, but that is going to change, I just know it. You're going to make it, and you're going to inspire lots more people than me.'

Kyarri was staring out the window, her jaw set in that stubborn way that Jase now found so familiar. She nodded. 'You're right. I am going to make it.'

Jase smiled. 'I know you are.' Kyarri was so lost in thought, she didn't even hear him.

Kyarri was up well before dawn the next morning, dressed and ready to go when the first fingers of light pulled their way up over the horizon. She banged on her friends' doors, her pack slung over her shoulders. They opened them, still half-asleep, and followed her down to the stables, yawning and dragging their heels. Kyarri herself was too excited to be sleepy as she handed around the still-warm rolls, stuffed with ham and cheese that Yukumi had brought in a basket for them all.

'Come on, guys, hurry up!' Kyarri cried, skipping ahead of them.

'She is far too excited,' Dom muttered, his voice still rough with sleep.

'No, you're just far too cranky!' Kyarri yelled back over her shoulder, laughing.

'How did she hear me? I was twenty feet behind her at least, and I was talking quietly!'

Kyarri laughed again. 'I listen, Dom. And cheer up! It's a beautiful morning, the sky is clear and we are going on a ride!' The last few words echoed as she disappeared into the stables.

Ayden called after her. 'Did you 'fall down' again last night and take a knock on the head?'

Kyarri just laughed and began to tack up her horse.

After the training master had done an inspection and they had all passed muster they set out through the forest. Kyarri rode with her friends, slowly improving their moods with her joking and soon enough, they were all laughing and telling stories.

Kyarri had never ridden through any part of the forest in summertime, and by noon, they were much deeper into it than she had ever gone. They ate in their saddles but stopped to refill their water flasks from a stream that shone as clean water in Kyarri's Sight.

'Ky, why didn't you tell us you had the Sight?' Ayden asked, surprised.

She shrugged. 'It just never came up. Dom knew, I told him my first week, but other than that, it was never in conversation.'

'Well, what can you do with it?' Owen asked. They whiled away a good part of the afternoon discussing the Gift and the Sight, and how it differed between people. When the sun began to sink behind the trees, Lord Padraig stopped them, saying that this was where they would be staying.

There was a crude log building, made to serve as a mess hall, set in a large clearing with flat spaces for tents at one side and old cooking fires, set away from everything else. Lord Padraig started handing out tents to the boys, explaining how to set them up. Kyarri was just standing there, wondering for the first time where she would fit into all this, when the Shang Tiger came up to her.

'I'm here as your chaperone,' she explained, to Kyarri's immense relief. 'I've set my bed up over here.' She pointed to a dry spot below an overgrown willow tree. Kyarri nodded and set her packs there, then went to dig a latrine.

By the time all the boys had managed to set up their tents and those assigned to do so had cooked dinner, it was pitch black out and they had to see by the light of the fires they had lit. Lord Padraig was not pleased and gave an elaborate speech on the necessity of camp skills, which the pages attempted not to yawn through as they ate their supper; it had been a long day. After they had cleaned up, Kyarri cleaned her teeth and burrowed into her bedroll, falling asleep almost instantly, comfortable with the sounds of the forest all around her.

The next day, she was up before dawn again, dressing underneath the covers of her bedroll before getting up. She went to the stream along the edge of the clearing, cleaning her teeth and splashing water on her face to wake herself up before putting her hair in its usual tight braid. She went over to the far edge of the clearing, away from everyone else, and began doing her strengthening exercises as the first golden haze of sun came over the horizon. When she finished her last set of press-ups, she got up and stretched, then noticed the boys. They were ranged around, chatting, but all her friends were staring at her, again. Why was that always happening?

'Do you do that every day?' Ayden asked. Kyarri nodded, yawning widely.

'Since before I even started here. I'll never be as strong as you guys, but I can work to get closer. Come on, we're on breakfast.'

As they brought up the cooking fires, talk somehow turned to their families.

'I've got an older brother,' Ayden was saying. 'He's a first-year squire.'

'Does he have the Gift too?'

Ayden shook his head. 'I'm the only one in my family with it. It's not even very strong in me; I can only heal little things like bruises and scrapes. Give me a broken bone or a knife wound and I can't help. I can just tell exactly what's wrong, which any healer can do. I can bring light and start fires, as well as doing amateur protective shields, although Master Numair says that my shields could get really good if I keep practicing.' He swore at the log he was trying to get to light, glanced at the training master and gave it a prod with a finger. It burst into flame. Kyarri giggled.

'What about your family?' Ayden asked. 'Do you have any siblings?'

Kyarri shook her head, wondering what to say. This year, she had mostly avoided talking about her family whenever possible. But she felt that after a year of friendship, she owed it to these boys to be honest with them. 'Actually, I'm adopted.'

Ayden cocked his head at her. 'Really?'

'Mhm.'

'The Lioness and the Baron adopted you?'

'Along with Mistress Daine and Master Numair.'

He whistled softly. 'That's some kind of family.'

'It's definitely a lot to live up to sometimes. I'm kind of glad I don't have the Gift, actually. Being the adopted daughter of two mages with that kind of power is hard enough without feeling like you had to live up to it.'

'How old were you when you went to them?' Ayden asked, picking up a big bucket to get water in. Kyarri followed suit.

'I never asked. Um…let me think a second.' She thought back as far as she could remember, before her first memorable fight at the Swoop, before being given Chavi, before she knew she had the Sight, back to when she'd met the dragon Skysong. Her mind went straight past meeting Skysong, before that, before anything that she'd ever remembered before, to a small cave, with a small bed and lots of cozy blankets in curious, shifting colours, to a sleepy sundown where someone very gently stroked her hair, singing to her in an otherworldly language…

Kyarri shook her head, snapping herself back to reality. 'Ky? Are you okay?' Ayden asked.

'Why wouldn't I be?'

'You just completely zoned on me.'

'Sorry. I was just…remembering something that I'd forgotten. I think that I was about four.' She carefully tipped her bucketful of water into the pot above the fire.

'Who were your real parents?'

Kyarri smiled ruefully. 'You know, my friends always want to know that. I've never asked.'

'You don't care, or you don't want to know?'

Kyarri shrugged. 'I don't know. A bit of both, maybe? I like my life, I love my foster parents. I don't think that it really matters all that much either way.'

Still, something nagged at the back of her mind. Did it matter? Why? And what was that memory all about? Now it came back whenever she focussed on it, in sharpest detail, the colours of the sunset, prismatic through her half-closed lashes, her hand curled next to her cheek, just on the edge of her vision. This memory distracted her for the rest of the day, making her unsociable. Her friends noticed, but said nothing to her. Instead, they all asked Ayden what he'd said to her, but he was as baffled as they were.

Kyarri was on clean-up after supper, then she cleaned her teeth in the stream and went to bed. She was restless and edgy, jumping at the forest noises that had soothed her the night before. Finally, she put her dagger under her pillow, her bow and quiver in arms reach and was able to get to sleep.