I press my face gratefully into her scales, squeeze my eyes shut, and breathe raggedly. Not for the first time in my life, I am acutely aware that dragons are better than people. Also, that my life would not be worth living without Nilak. She clicks her teeth and snorts through her nose, her way of saying she feels the same way about me.
But there must be more I can do to help Zenevieve and understand what she’s been through. I feverishly turn every event since the dragons returned to Maledin over in my mind, especially the ones that relate to her. She was in the city for weeks as Odanna, Emmeric’s spy. She befriended the future queen while she was disguised. Recently, she visited Isavelle’s crone, and what kind of potion, what kind ofpoison, did that old woman give her? I’m suddenly burning to know. Lady Isavelle’s crone owes me some answers.
I remember the way to Amriste, and Nilak and I fly there one morning. I leave my dragon on the edge of the woods and walk down toward the little fields and cottages on foot, finding a man working in a field.
“Can you help me, please? I’m looking for your witch.”
The old man gives me a long, assessing look. Then he points the way. “Cottage at the far end of the village. But she doesn’t like visitors. Or strangers.”
Too bad. She’s getting both.
As I march in the direction the man pointed, there are a great many crows circling above me. They follow me as I approach the ramshackle old cottage, cawing, flapping, and wheeling through the air.
The village of Amriste is neat and pretty, with thatched cottages and a well for drawing water, but I don’t think much of the witch’s dwelling. The front gate hangs drunkenly on its hinges. Much of the garden is overgrown with weeds, and the thatch is coming loose. It looks like a mad old woman liveshere, cackling and talking to herself. Anger burns through me. A human witch should not be treating a Maledinni dragonrider.
I raise my fist and thump three times on the cottage door, and a dry, cracked voice speaks from within. “Come in, dragonmaster. Mind your head.”
I stare in astonishment at the door, and then my eyes narrow in annoyance. This is some kind of witch trick, and I won’t let her know that she surprised me.
I push open the cottage door and stoop low to enter. The old woman is seated by the fire in a sagging chair. It’s very dark and smoky inside, with witchy paraphernalia everywhere. Bundles of herbs, earthenware pots, a mortar and pestle. Gods know what she’s brewing up in here. Probably poison.
“Mistress Hawthorne of Amriste,” I say with a small nod.
“Dragonmaster Stesha of Lenhale,” she replies, just as formally, but with a wicked grin on her lips.
Fine. I’ll rise to the bait. “You know me?”
“Who can mistake a man of your looks? The white-haired man who rides a beautiful white dragon. I’ve heard a little about you from my trainee witch. Oh, how you irritate her.”
The feeling has been mutual, but I say nothing because it’s beneath an Alpha to admit that he’s been irritated by an Omega. I wonder how she knows how I arrived on a white dragon. Perhaps it has something to do with all the crows following me.
“You may sit,” she says, indicating a low stool that would better suit a child than a seven-foot-tall Alpha. I would like to stand to deliver what I have to say, but I feel silly bent double at the waist. I sit, and I feel even more ridiculous on the stool with my knees up around my ears. I settle for kneeling on one knee with my forearm braced upon my thigh.
“I came here to speak to you about my former ward, who has visited you with the future queen. You claim she was poisoned,but you made Zenevieve ill. What was the poison, and how did you treat her?”
She examines me with clouded but strangely shrewd blue eyes, the silence punctuated by the crackling fire. “I know who you speak of. The hazel-eyed young woman who sometimes comes here with my trainee witch. Is that how you still think of her after all these centuries? Your former ward?” The old woman gives me a crafty smile. “Or is it that you enjoy sayingmine?”
I clench my teeth and fume. “I saymy former wardso you understand that I have a right to ask about her welfare.”
The old witch sits in silence, apparently doubting I have that right.
I try again. “What poison was dragonrider Zenevieve of Vierforn suffering from? Her parents died long ago. So did her brothers and her dragon. I am her only family left and the only one who cares about her.”
“Yes, I see that.” She settles back in her chair, her eyes gleaming with speculation. “The poison was something very old. I could feel it wrapped around her insides. Malicious. Cruel.”
“It was killing her?”
“Not killing her.”
“But what was the poison?”
“Don’t you know?”
I feel my temper mount. “I wouldn’t be here if I knew. I suppose that means you don’t. What did you give her to cure it?”
“A mixture of things, good for purging stubborn poisons from the body.”
“And the poison is gone now?”
