Page 55 of A Matter of Dragons

“Damn it,” I groaned, reaching again for the scroll.

I needed to forget about Rayne. She knew what she was, now. She knew where to find me if she wanted. If she was dead set on returning to Valgros and risking her life, then by the blessed Mothers above, there was nothing I could do to stop her. In fact, if she thought Doshir the married dragon was trying to stop her, she’d probably try even harder to get back to Valgros.

No, I needed to let her go. Just like the Iron Mountain, like my idiotic childhood dreams of joining the Council. Like Wendolyn.

Paper crunched beneath my fingers, and I jumped. I’d made a fist around the Historian’s letter without even realizing it. Gently, I pulled it free from where Elyon had lodged it behind the water clock.

The letter beneath the Historian’s missive had a red seal. My heart stopped. Guilt rose in my chest, as hot and thick as dragonfire. That was my mother’s seal. I could picture her sending a jet of flame to melt the red wax stick, then pressing her delicate seal into the molten drops. A crown of stars. Her own personal signet, the one she wore around her neck everywhere she went.

I took a step back before I’d even realized what I was doing. I didn’t know what that letter contained but, by all the blessed Mothers above, I could guess. It had to be a laundry list of things that I was doing wrong. What else would be pressing enough to inspire an actual physical letter?

True, the Mad Scarlett situation had been dealt with, horribly enough. But Mother wouldn’t have known that when she wrote this letter. As far as she’d know, her son was sitting in Cairncliff with his claws up his ass, doing nothing to either convince Mad Scarlett to move or to infiltrate King Donovan’s court.

Damn it all. Rayne and Eadberh had been my plan to infiltrate Valgros. Now Eadberh may well be dead, and Rayne wanted to kill me.

I huffed out a sigh and tossed the Historian’s sealed scroll on top of the water clock. I’d have to deal with this hot mess when I got back from the Town Council meeting. Maybe by then I’d have thought of a sufficient list of excuses to get my mother off my scales, at least for a little longer.

I stalked through the shop, yanked open the front door, and then slammed it closed behind me so violently the little bell sounded like it was being kicked. Good. This was just the right frame of mind to go fight with the idiots on the Town Council.

There was quite the crowd at the Town Hall, which was odd. Usually, Council meetings attracted about as much attention as watching grass grow in the Spirit Wood. I pressed my way through the crowd in the foyer and moved toward the open door of the hall.

“What’s going on?” I asked the woman next to me. She seemed to be listening intently to the conversation inside.

“Oh, heavens,” she whispered, giving me a scandalized expression. “There’s a lady in there what says she murdered a dragon!”

My gut felt like it was sinking through the floorboards. “Oh, no,” I muttered.

The woman moved aside, waving her hand as if to prove her words. There, in the center of the Council’s benches and tables, stood Rayne.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Rayne

“Do you mean to tell me,” the heavy set older man with the red face asked me again, “that you murdered one of the citizens of this good town last night?”

The crowd behind me muttered and rustled, sounding angry. By all the blessed kings of Valgros, I should not have worn Doshir’s stupid sword to this stupid Council meeting. I should have worn the red dress and a fancy hairstyle and then batted my eyelashes and acted like an idiot.

But I hadn’t been sent to Cairncliff to bat my eyelashes and act stupid. I’d been sent here to kill a dragon and spread the glory of King Donovan. I hadn’t killed the dragon but, by the ancient kings, I could still spread the glory of Valgros.

“The dragon,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the dark murmurs of the crowd. “The red dragon that was threatening your town. She’s dead. My... compatriots have ended this threat to Cairncliff.”

I swallowed hard; describing Niglan Olovan as a compatriot was a bit of a stretch, and remembering the way heat had bled from the dragon’s scales beneath my hands still made me feel like something had been wrapped around my throat and pulled tight.

There was another burst of angry shouts from the crowd. The Council sitting before me, seven human men, two human women, and a dark-skinned elf I’d studiously avoided making eye contact with, glared at me with varying degrees of rage. I shifted on my feet, trying not to reach for the hilt of the delicate little sword. What part of getting rid of a dragon didn’t they follow? Their governance system was overwrought and unwieldy. Shouldn’t they be relieved that someone had stepped in and just solved the problem?

Unless she wasn’t a problem, that traitorous voice in the back of my head whispered. Unless that dragon was just living in the mountains, minding her own dragon business, until Niglan Olovan showed up to run a sword through her guts.

No. I stiffened my back and faced the Town Council. It wasn’t my place to question my orders. I wanted to join His Majesty’s Royal Army, so I had to do what I was told. I had to complete my mission. And right now, my mission was to spread the glory of Valgros.

“King Donovan sent us,” I said, my voice as loud and clear as a guard tower bell. The room fell disconcertingly silent. “The Kingdom of Valgros had heard of your troubles, and King Donovan dispatched his fighters to your aide.”

The members of the Town Council all stared at me as though I’d lost my damned mind. The woman with the crown of gray braids slowly opened her mouth, her lips forming a little O of surprise. A memory rose in the uncomfortable silence; Donovan’s throne room, the king looking bored and hungover, his slimy advisor Ensyvir standing beside the throne and speaking those exact words. Tell them the Kingdom of Valgros has heard of their troubles, he’d said in the voice that always made me think of snakes and other dark, slithery things.

There was a scraping sound, then a rustling. I turned and saw the dark-skinned elf had come to his feet. He towered over the rest of the Council, and his eyes burned as he stared at me.

“You speak of Valgros in this chamber?” he said. “You?”

He didn’t yell, and yet his voice filled every corner. I felt frozen, my boots rooted to the spot.