13
Hua
Hua needed to see Heima, to make sure she was okay, but they’d been here for days, and no one seemed concerned about what she wanted.
The monks continued in their silent study, walking through the cold stone halls with measured steps, almost like a dance.
Boqin, Hua had come to learn, was a child orphaned when his village in Piao turned on his parents upon learning of their dragon blood. Master Delun, traveling the region at the time, saved him.
That could have been her if things went differently. What if the village of Zhouchang had learned of her family’s heritage? Would the shopkeepers her father frequented betray him? Turn him in to the emperor?
When her family first received a summons to Dasha for the dragon festival, they’d worried they’d been found out, that their secre
