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The thought of losing my dragon powers seemed surreal. I couldn’t believe anything would ever take away my ability to shift. The dragon was as much a part of me as having a twin.
“Then we lose them,” Lynx said steadily. “The Scourge have claimed so many victims lately.”
“That’s part of what held us up,” I said cheerfully, before remembering we’d had Hanna with us. Honor’s raised eyebrows quickly reminded me, and I cleared my throat. “I’ve heard rumblings that Joachim is with Kallus, but we haven’t been able to find him.”
“We need to,” Damyn said. “Joachim must have that stone on him.”
“Teris’s stone,” Honor said abruptly, and all of our eyes swiveled to her because of the rawness of her tone. “According to Amily… he healed you boys over and over and then would take your memories so you wouldn’t know what Lysander and the Elders had done.”
She didn’t say it, but it was written across her face.
She hoped the stone would bring Talisyn’s memories back.
Her pain, and Talisyn’s, made my hands knit into fists.
“I’ll take care of Joachim, I promise,” I told Honor.
She looked at me, her gaze softening as if she saw through me, and I frowned. I wasn’t particularly troubled by the idea of finally sweeping Joachim off the gameboard after all his torture.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Damyn rose from his chair.
I wondered where he was going, since we were squatting in Joachim’s castle while we tried to figure out how to stop the kingdom burning down around us, so we didn’t exactly have much to do.
Hanna cast a quick glance at the four of us, then followed Damyn out the door.
“Let one of us do it,” Honor said softly. “You don’t need to kill your father, Bran.”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “Whoever gets to him first. I don’t care.”
She looked at me as if she didn’t believe that one bit.
I couldn’t resist glancing at Talisyn, who stood at the windows, looking out over the Scourge camped below, as if he didn’t feel anything. And maybe he didn’t; how could he know what he lost when he didn’t remember Honor? “He’s got the stone that took Talisyn away from you. I’ll get it back. And he can’t be left alive. It doesn’t matter—it must be done.”
“We all have to do what must be done. Or you wouldn’t have become the Scourge queen,” Lynx muttered.
Honor chewed her lower lip. “Does it change things? Knowing… what I’ll become?”
For a second, the three of us all stared at her.
“No,” Lynx said first, quietly. “Of course not, Honor. Nothing could change how we feel about you.”
“We’ll get the Scourge stones and break the Scourge curse and you won’t become anything,” I said, my voice clipped.
Talisyn was still studying the scenery and it made me want to shake him. Watching him be disconnected from Honor—even though it wasn’t his fault—was maddening.
I wouldn’t have wept about having Honor to myself, but I’d come to want to share her with my brothers. Because they made her happy. Because it seemed right for us.
Lynx crossed to Honor and wrapped his arms around her. She hesitated, then swayed against him, twining her arms around his neck.
“I missed you,” she murmured. “I would miss you more if things changed.”
“You can’t change the way I feel about you, silly girl,” he promised her.
“Queen,” she corrected him, though she was smiling.
“Out there,” he said. He slid his hand up her tunic, and she bit her lip as if she were trying to resist the way she responded to him, though she was smiling too. “In here, you’re ours.”
“And you are mine,” she said.
