Page 45 of A Matter of Dragons

She sheathed her sword with a hiss of metal against leather, then stepped away from the man’s body. I came forward and wrapped my claws around his limp body. The man was heavy, but no matter. I’d fly him to Cairncliff if it killed me.

I turned to Rayne and found her watching me with a blank, hopeless expression on her delicate features. She looked very pale with her split lip and her friend’s blood smeared across her forehead.

“You could come,” I offered. “You could ride—”

“Go to hell,” she snarled.

Fine. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I flexed my wings, forcing life back into my stiff muscles, and then tucked the man’s motionless body closer to my chest. I pulled breath into my chest, set my gaze to the stars, and leaped into the night sky.

“Hang on,” I whispered to the man from Valgros. “Don’t you dare die on me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Rayne

The dragon vanished into the sky with my friend in his claws, and I sank slowly to the forest floor. Flames danced across the little clearing, devouring dry pine duff and hissing as they forced sap from fallen logs. Their warmth washed over my face, and some part of me realized this fire would make it difficult to reach our horses. I pictured Eadberh tying the hobbles around my little mare Peya’s front hooves, and it felt like my chest had been cracked open.

Did he have family, I wondered as I wiped my eyes. Surely there was a mother out there somewhere, or an older sister who’d want to know about her little brother’s latest adventures? Everyone had a family, after all. Everyone but me.

A gust of wind rustled the pines above me. The flames swelled. How was it that I’d never asked Eadberh about his family? Heat danced across my skin. I looked down at my open hands, my blood-stained palms then glanced up at the sky. Smoke rose in dizzying white streamers, reaching toward the stars.

I’d just sent Eadberh off with a dragon. We’d come to Cairncliff to kill a dragon, and now I’d handed my friend over to a monster. My insides felt numb and hollow, cold despite the flames leaping around me. I should have killed the monster when I’d had the chance.

I pressed my palms to my eyes and remembered Doshir’s face above me as I’d come swimming back to consciousness. His soft, full lips and dark hair, so damned beautiful I’d thought I was dreaming. Or dead. I’d had just long enough to think death wouldn’t be so bad if Doshir was what waited for me on the other side of the veil. And then I’d smelled smoke, and blood, and the world had come crashing down.

That’s when I should have killed him. I groaned, pulled myself to my feet, and lurched away from the flames. After I’d twisted the tourniquet around Eadberh’s thigh, I should have turned on Doshir and run my sword through his ribs. He was a monster. I should have slain him for the glory of Valgros. For the glory of King Donovan.

That thought brought a bitter taste to the back of my mouth. I rocked back, away from the heat of the fire licking the forest floor. My head throbbed; the Royal Crest flashed through my mind. The Royal Crest on a suit of armor, the same suits of armor I’d never been permitted to wear, no matter that I was faster and stronger and better with a sword. No, King Donovan’s Royal Armor had been given to that asshole Carlton instead. To Niglan Olovan. To all of them, all those bastards and bullies, because they had pricks and families and money while I was just an orphaned woman with a disfigured arm.

Rage burned through me. I ground my teeth together as I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of my sword. His Majesty’s Royal Army had just tried to kill me. They’d driven a sword through Eadberh’s thigh and left him for dead. They probably thought the flames from Captain Niglan’s dropped torch would devour us both, saving them the hassle of trying to bury our bodies.

Niglan. I pressed my teeth together so hard my jaw ached. He had to be lying about the king. Eadberh had seen right through that slimy son of a bitch. Niglan was so desperate to gain King Donovan’s good graces that he’d scraped together a bunch of losers and then came to steal our secret mission.

Still, a tendril of doubt wove its cold way through the back of my mind. There was something off about our mission; there had always been something off about this mission. Let’s be honest, Rayne, Eadberh had said as he’d offered his crazy plan to bribe the dragon. The plan was always for us to die.

That couldn’t possibly be right. It would be an enormous waste of resources to send us to Cairncliff to die. But to send us as scouts, as spies who would be followed by another larger and more experienced team—

“Stop it,” I hissed into the darkness as I tried to rein in my traitorous thoughts.

King Donovan had saved me from the orphanage I could scarcely remember. He’d brought me into his castle, given me training and a role to fill, and even taken me into his bed. The king wouldn’t send me on a suicide mission. He wouldn’t betray me by sending Niglan after me.

I remembered the last time I’d seen King Donovan. I’d been called for a special audience with His Highness. I’d taken the time to brush out my hair and left it long across my back, the way he liked it. I’d even undone my top buttons, showing just a bit of cleavage to His Majesty, which was stupid vanity. But I’d done it anyway.

The king hadn’t looked at my undone buttons, though. He’d looked pale and sullen, and even his expensive cologne hadn’t been able to fully hide the scent of last night’s wine wafting from his pores. Perhaps he hadn’t looked exactly majestic, but my chest had tightened all the same as I’d entered his throne room. I’d been so certain, so damned, stupidly certain, that he was about to offer me a chance to join His Majesty’s Royal Army. Just for one mission. Just one chance.

Then his Royal Advisor Ensyvir had stepped out of the shadows, and my heart had fallen to the polished stone floor. Ensyvir had done all the talking while His Highness nursed a mug of tea and looked bored. In his creepy, snake-like voice, King Donovan’s Royal Advisor had explained my mission to Cairncliff, given me Eadberh as a companion, and told me how the city of Cairncliff would sing the praises of Valgros once the dragon was vanquished. By the end, when King Donovan’s gaze finally settled on my chest, I’d been too disappointed to speak. I’d only nodded dumbly as Ensyvir had assured me this was a most prestigious, most essential secret mission.

And perhaps this would be the last of them, I’d told myself in the days and nights that followed, as I’d read all the books on dragons from Ensyvir’s private library and strategized with Eadberh on our cover story. Perhaps killing a dragon would be enough. Perhaps that was what it would take for a woman to finally earn a place in His Majesty’s Royal Army.

The Royal Crest flashed through my mind again, followed by Bain’s sneer as he examined the blade he’d just yanked out of the warm flesh of my friend’s leg. Bain, Carlton, and Niglan. His Royal Army’s finest. All men I’d bested on the practice fields, men I could outrun and outfight who were still given the privilege of wearing the King’s Royal Crest.

Rage throbbed through my veins, drowning out the dull pulse of my headache, the reminder of the blow Carlton had given me. I couldn’t do anything to save Eadberh now. He would live, or die, according to the whims of a monster I’d just met. I couldn’t grant myself a position in the Royal Army, or answer the aching question of when I would finally measure up to that elusive honor.

But I could pay Carlton back for that blow. I could make sure the last thing Bain saw in this world was his own blade severing his femoral artery, returning the wound he’d given Eadberh. If those men never returned to Valgros, well, wouldn’t everyone assume they’d fallen in battle with a dragon? My lips curled back in a snarl. Wouldn’t everyone assume they’d been killed by a monster?

They wouldn’t be expecting me, these men who wore the Royal Crest. Carlton and Niglan and all the others would be focused on fighting the dragon who lived in these mountains, luring her out of her cave, and finding her weak spot. If they even knew about a dragon’s weak spot. They wouldn’t think to guard their flanks or to watch for daggers thrown from the shadows.

I crept away from the fire as silently as possible. Rocks shifted above me. I held my breath, listening. Men’s voices echoed down the ravine, distorted by distance and vegetation.