Page 40 of A Matter of Dragons

“That idiot’s buying drinks for the house,” he said, nodding toward Vil.

Vil was currently waving his arms around and singing very loudly. He’d developed a pronounced tilt in his chair, and his mug sloshed beer over the men surrounding him with each wave of his arm. He looked, I thought, like a man who was going to wake up in the gutter tomorrow morning without a single copper in his pockets.

“Generous,” I offered.

The thin man snorted. His eyes narrowed as he watched Vil, and it occurred to me that Vil might not wake up tomorrow morning at all. Flashing gold around this part of town was dangerous, and a dead man can’t press charges for robbery. As soon as the barkeep pressed a mug of warm, and presumably watered-down, ale into my hands, I excused myself from that conversation and walked a bit closer to the table where King Vil was holding court with the drunkards and the criminals, trying to keep my head low on the off chance that Vil was sober enough to recognize me.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked the first person to glance in my direction.

“Easiest job I ever did!” Vil shouted.

He cheered, and the crowd cheered with him, and beer splashed all over everything. My lips curled; I’d have to send this jacket off to the wash first thing tomorrow morning. With an extra tip.

“And what was the job?” I asked. I tried to hide my face behind my mug, although it didn’t look like Vil was in any shape to identify me.

Vil hiccuped. For a moment I thought he’d pitch right over onto his face, but he straightened up proudly, his bright red cheeks flashing like signal beacons.

“Jus’ seduce and tell,” he announced with a great deal of drunken pride.

A flash of white-hot anger crested inside my skull until I realized he must have been talking about Rayne's male companion. Of course. The enormous man who hadn’t so much as glanced at Rayne's generous cleavage, the one who’d followed Vil so closely as they’d come into the room at the Duck and Goose this morning.

“Tell?” I pressed.

Vic accepted a fresh mug from someone in the crowd, sucked down half the contents, and hiccuped again. “Some assholes,” he replied. Then he brightened. “Yeah! Rich assholes!”

The crowd broke into cheers again.

“Tell them what?” I pressed, almost shouting into the mug I was holding over the lower half of my face.

“Dunno,” a man next to me said with a sad little shrug. “Wish I could get paid for fuckin’ some dude.”

Vil burped loudly, leaned forward, and adopted an especially annoying falsetto. “Tell us exactly where they’re going, and exactly when,” he chirped.

The crowd cheered as if this was the news they’d been waiting for. I suddenly felt cold despite the oppressive heat of the beer-soaked crowd pressing in all around me. I’d come here hoping to find Rayne. Instead, I’d discovered that someone else was apparently looking for the exact same thing. Some rich assholes.

I waited for the cheering to die down before leaning in closer to Vil. “So, where did they go?” I asked.

“To the fucking mountains!” Vil called. He finished his mug and threw it into the crowd, setting off another round of cheering. “Off to find their fuckin’ drag-dragon.”

He hiccuped again, and his face suddenly paled. I guessed he had a few more minutes before at least some of that beer started making its way back up. The thought was strangely satisfying, and I realized with a start that I was angry. No, more than angry. I was furious, angrier than I’d been in years. I glanced at the thin, mean-looking man in the corner and realized I wanted to beat him to it. I wanted to drive my fists into Vil’s smug, flushed face. I wanted to punch him in the gut until blood ran from between his fat lips. I wanted—

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I stepped back, hardly noticing the men pressing in around me, the hands smacking at my back as another round of cheers rose in the air. Rage hissed beneath my skin, and my own heartbeat thundered in my ears like waves pounding the shore.

I hadn’t lost control of my dragon in ages, not since I was a child. I hadn’t even thought it was possible for me to lose control anymore; I was Doshir, for the Mothers’ sakes. I was control.

But here I was, standing inside a shitty, reeking pub in my least favorite part of Cairncliff, feeling my wings press against my skin and my dragon howl for a human’s blood.

What the fuck was going on?

Blindly, I stumbled to the door. I almost tripped on a man passed out on the cobblestones, and then I was out, into the cool, salty evening air. I sucked in a deep breath, then another, still moving, almost running, trying to put as much space between me and that horrible pub as possible.

My eyes lifted to the mountains. Off to find their dragon. Rayne and Eadberh were going to the mountains tonight, in search of Mad Scarlett. And whatever rich asshole had hired Vil to seduce Rayne's companion in exchange for information was going there too.

Fury burned in my chest like the rising sun. I barely made it into an alleyway before my dragon ripped forward, shredding my clothes, his wings slamming against the stone houses on either side of the narrow street as my dragon exploded from within. For the first time in centuries, my dragon’s emergence hurt.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not the pain, not the shocked cries and screams that rose all around me as I lifted into the air, my wings beating against the twilight. I had to get to the mountains.

I had to find Rayne.