Amber's eyes fluttered open and she looked up at the wagon ceiling. She could feel the bed moving beneath her, and she felt disoriented: the last thing she remembered, she was thinking that she was dying as she lost conciousness in a cavern full of dragon eggs! She moved to sit up, and let out a cry as pain lanced through her side. Well, then it wasn't a dream, but why wasn't she fully healed? She settled back on the bed, allowing the pain to pass, and a moment later the door opened. 

Jinwoo stepped inside the wagon, concern lacing his handsome face as he looked down at her. "Don't move too much, you were really badly injured," he said softly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

"You couldn't heal me?" she asked through gritted teeth, feeling ungrateful for asking but truly wondering why he hadn't done it.

And he shook his head regretfully. "Not fully, not in one go. I didn't have enough power. I still don't," he added in a grumble. "I expended so much just casting the Seal on the eggs. But I healed what I could and I will continue to do so until you're good as new."

She nodded stiffly: that made sense. "So you did it, then? You destroyed the eggs?"

Darkness passed over his face and he nodded, unable to hide the sadness he felt at his actions. "I did. They're all sealed, and that makes them unable to hatch."

He was hiding something, she thought, but she couldn't pinpoint what so let it pass. "Can your spell be reversed?" she asked, to which he shook his head. 

"Only by a Magician who knows how the Seal of Creation works... which means someone who trained in the Towers and is loyal to them. So in other words, they can only ever hatch if the Tower wishes them to."

She wasn't so sure she liked that idea, giving the Towers of Noria the power to unleash dragons if they so willed it, but she said nothing about it. "Where are we?" she asked instead.

"On our way back to the Needle Gate," he informed her. "You've been asleep for three and a half days after we reached the wagon again." He held a small cup up to her lips. "Here, drink this, it will help with the pain."

They set off again soon after that, Amber falling asleep to the constant motion of the wagon and the draught he had given her. By the time she reawakened, she was healed a bit more and Jinwoo was sleeping beside her. It continued like this as they traveled, the days passing to a drug-addled mind and him working at healing her each evening and each morning after his sunrise greeting. It was on the sixth morning after awakening that she realized she felt well enough to get up.

Knocking on the wall of the wagon to signal him to stop, she slid to the edge of the bed and carefully stood to her feet. Her legs were a bit shaky from over