Page 22 of Wings of Destruction

His specialty.

Why look your enemy in the eyes to kill them when you can accomplish the same thing when their backs are turned? Too many people have gone down against Tristan, frothing at the mouth, unaware that their wine had soured with an added ingredient.

His bandy-legged stride is as much a boast as the set of his shoulders or the unhidden ego in those blue eyes. Golden hair falls casually across a face of chiseled angles.

The golden boy.

He might as well be General Ryson’s son instead of me. Life comes easily to Tristan. I’m just the son of one of the man’s spoils of war, foisted on him.

My mother had been Roman Ryson’s first, back when he might have had a shred of decency left to his name. Or maybe he’d been born with something wrong in him. He’d taken my mother captive, the only one of her village, and dragged her back to his family’s castle with him.

She raised me, taught me who my father really is, and showed me the truth about the cities and the villages left in ruin in his wake. Maybe her knowledge made a mark on me.

Maybe Tristan would have benefitted from such an education. Instead, his father took a heavy hand in the boy’s rearing, and left us with this hulking beast of a man, uncontrollable and contemptuous.

Several others join us on the hunt on silent feet and I glance at Tristan from the corner of my eye.

He’s staring at me full on, his lips twisted in a pout.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to do this?” he asks. “After all, hunting for survivors means killing the injured and finding those who are healthy enough to be sold.”

He puts special emphasis on the last word.

“Your father explained it to you, didn’t he?”

I stare straight ahead. “He did.”

“Nothing more than cattle, really. That should make it easier for you to do your job, Kieran, really. It’s a mercy to ship them off this way. The kingdom gains hard workers doing something useful and productive for the crown, rather than⁠—”

“Cheats,” one of the men supplies gruffly. “Swindlers.”

“Exactly.”

Tristan’s secret glee at our task turns my stomach. Any kind of person who takes delight in the suffering of others is one to watch closely and keep at a distance.

I don’t trust him. I never have.

“I understand,” I snap.

Better than anyone else, considering my parentage.

Tristan stomps at my side and I’m grateful when he lapses into silence. The soldiers around us keep their footfalls soft as we span out through the trees, the better to hunt our quarry.

The battle doesn’t end when the fighting does—the clash of swords is our opening move. I’d rather not find anyone, and I pray we don’t.

One of the soldiers with us stops, bending low to push through a thicket of briars, then cursing when the thorns snag his skin.

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Tristan says with a grunt of laughter. “There are nettles as well.”

Tristan is the type to kick a man into the nettles just for fun and a good chuckle.

I step around the soldier, who hastily stands and trots away from the briar and nettle patch.

Even the birds are silent today. Do they mourn the loss of the herd? Do they even understand what happened, or were they spooked by the arrival of the dragons? The woods are pretty and empty outside of us.

The intruders.

“Eyes open, Kieran.”