Fideltas of Cradlemount
The vigil is kept long into the night.  They pace, they fume, they worry about the future.  And at last, as dawn already slants faint beams through narrow windows, the Healer appears, her dark skin tinted with a dull red and a smile on her face.  “Lord Eleison,” she greets, brown eyes warm even as the sharp astringency of redwort streams from her in the draft, “both babe and mother live, and the child is male.  What will you call him, m’lord?”
Eleison smiles, his muslin-hued skin and rare blond hair gathering the dawnlight, as none of his companions’ do.  “The Lady Kaeritha and I have agreed.  He shall be called Fileos.  Does that meet with your approval, Fideltas?”
The ice-pale young man at his side blushes redder than his hair, recognizing elements of his own name in that of his half-brother.  “Father, there was no need,” he begins, but is cut off by the excited chatter of the steward.
“Then we have a proper heir at last!  Your pardon, lord, but I must go and tell the Hold of this.  With your leave, there shall be feasting!”  Acian’s dark eyes practically throw sparks as he flies helter-skelter down the stairs into the Hold proper.
The Lord Holder, smiling and agreeable, is already halfway in the door to his wife’s chamber, hot on the heels of Healer Taschany.  He misses the stunned look that flickers across Fideltas’ face, and the hurt in his adopted son’s blue eyes.
*****
“Fourteen Turns out of eighteen,” Fideltas says harshly, and the runnerbeast he is addressing flinches.  “Fourteen Turns have I been his son, in name and word and deed.  I have watched him every moment, and shouldered some of his burdens.  I have learned how to govern well; I carry the training he gave me everywhere, until I frighten my comrades with my ‘maturity and bearing’.  If I do not share his blood, it is not from lack of effort!  But now they, /he/, throws me away, the dragonrider’s son, begotten before the Lady Kaeritha became a lady.”  His breath catches in his throat, and he buries his face in the runner’s muscular shoulder.  “I thought that Father liked me, at least, even if Acian never did.”
“Deltas?” queries a light, feminine voice, and a slender silhouette arches in the doorway.  “Aren’t you coming to the feasting?”
He tries to laugh.  “Feasting?  Me?  You know I’d rather smell runners any day, Catcheen.”  The sight of his betrothed brightens his eyes, however, and a small smile curves his thin lips.
“Deltas, I have some bad news,” continues the delicate young woman, seriously.
Fideltas laughs again, a strangled and miserable sound.  “What is it?  Did the Heir sneeze?”
She doesn’t smile back.  “Father’s broken the betrothal.  I’m sorry, Deltas.”
His jaw slack, his hand stretched out to her, the dragonrider’s son stands uselessly as his sweetheart of five Turns walks away from him.  Wordlessly, he starts back toward the Hold and his room.
Every useful thing he owns is piled in the leather bag, until it bulges, seams standing out like scars on its length.  He’s out in the Courtyard, and then away, before anyone can dissuade him.  The curve of mountains on either side, the distinctive view that Cradlemount Hold was named for, is daunting, but Fideltas ignores their stony heights, heading for the docks.  The waterways are the only true path out of the mountains that encircle the lands protected by Dicytra Weyrs.
Fideltas Impressed at Tarizal Weyr!
See his beautiful green Gebrochenth