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Painfully slow, the dragon took a step down the slope, and then another, climbing down into the pass. The rocks shuddered beneath it, threatening to shake apart the mountainside.
Erida held her ground, even as every instinct told her to run. Not that she trusted her own instincts much anymore.
Her soldiers kept up their retreat, the Lionguard shouting for her to run. Only Taristan dared follow, charging across the snow.
She felt him at her side, blazing with heat, his own eyes awash with consuming flame.
Then the dragon lowered its head to them both, jaws closed, its belly scraping along the ground. The snow hissed beneath it, melting on contact, filling the pass with a boiling heat and a curtain of steam.
Grinning, a figure all in red slid from its back, his white face like a ghastly moon.
And his eyes, his horrible eyes.
Erida stopped short, almost slipping in the snow. A wave of revulsion passed over her, the image of the wizard wavering before her as her head spun.
She’d hated his eyes before, so watery and pale, always rimmed with red, as if he’d spent the last hours crying. Bloodshot like no eyes she had ever seen in her life.
To her horror, Erida found herself missing such eyes.
Two sunken holes were all that remained now, the lids bruised and crusted with blood, the sockets sunken. White veins and black webbed over his face, mottling his skin in a terrible mask. The wizard wavered, shaky over the snow, one hand cast out to catch himself lest he fall. The other still clutched his cane, using it to feel his way forward.
“Ronin,” Erida whispered, falling to her knees.
Behind her, she heard Taristan suck in a hissing breath.
“The price,” he murmured, his boots crunching in the snow.
Somehow, Ronin managed to sneer despite his injury. His pride remained.
“It is done,” he said, laughing to himself, following the sound of their voices “It is—”
The red wizard faltered, craning his neck. Erida felt sick again as his head turned, his sightless eyes somehow finding her on the ground. His lips moved, soundless.
Ronin went paler, white as the snow. Slowly, he sank to a knee, reverent as she had never seen him. He bowed his head, red cloak spilling around him like fresh blood.
“It is done,” he said again, and Erida knew he did not mean the dragon.
She could not help but feel a grim sense of satisfaction. She understood what he sensed in her, what he saw without seeing.
“My queen,” he murmured, raising his palms to them both. “My king.”
“First an army of corpses, then a dragon.”
Behind her veil, Erida rolled her stinging eyes at one of her lords.
The gaps in the council table were still painfully apparent, the seats of executed lords left empty. Erida wished the other nobles would fill them in, for her own sake. It felt like an attempt at punishment, to make her stare at what she did.
What I did justly, she reminded herself from the head of the table. Taristan glowered beside her, near to smoldering.Every lord who died with Konegin deserved it. They were traitors, all of them.
One of the surviving lords stared at her from halfway down the table, his fleshy face folded up with worry. He was a weak man, with no chin.
“Adragon,” he exclaimed, repeating himself.
“Thank you for the astute observation, Lord Bullen,” Erida bit out, her voice acid. “What is your point?”
To her left, Lord Thornwall pursed his lips, but said nothing. Lord Bullen did the same, lowering his eyes.
Ronin tittered into his hand, laughing openly at the noble coward. Once, Erida might have stopped him. Instead, she let him laugh; his mutilated appearance set the entire council on edge, most of them refusing to even look at the twisted little wizard.
