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There are voices coming from the Great Hall, and I make my way there. It’s filled with dragonriders and wingrunners, all wearing expressions of shock as I push my way through the crowd.
Zabriel is sitting on his throne, gripping the armrests, his red eyes burning and his brow tight with fury. I’m about to call out to him when I notice what he’s glaring at.
Or rather, who.
A woman is kneeling before the throne, her body wrapped in chains with her arms pinned to her sides. People have moved back to give her space. Or because they’re afraid to get too close to the object of the Flame King’s fury.
I move around to one side to get a better look at her face. My heart is already pounding. I know who I’m going to see, but my stomach still rebounds around my abdomen as I see her blank face. Odanna.
I’m about to call out to her and demand she explain why she pretended to be my friend and then betrayed me. There’s a hand on my arm, and I turn to see Fiala with Dusan by her side. My bodyguards cast fearful glances at Zabriel and shake their heads, cautioning me to remain silent.
I close my mouth for, but I still burn for answers. Odanna once told me that her father was a priest. Did he force her to work with the Brethren? Was that even the truth?
“I will ask you again,” Zabriel says with such power that his voice reverberates around the room. “Did you betray your people to the Brethren?”
Odanna takes a long time to answer. When she replies, her voice is oddly flat. “I don’t…I don’t know any Brethren.”
“You’re lying,” Zabriel snarls, and beats his fist against the arm of his chair. There’s a powerful scent coming off my Alpha. Anger and something else. He leans forward, eyes blazing red, and a gleam of perspiration on his brow. “You passed on information about my mate to the Brethren.”
Odanna speaks in a colorless monotone and her expression is blank. “I didn’t like Lady Isavelle. She told me she was having visions, and so I waited until she was alone with her dragon and gave her a happy vision of her family returning home.”
Zabriel’s hands tighten on the armrests. “Why?”
“I wanted Lady Isavelle to suffer.”
Sadness and hurt impale me through my chest. Odanna sounds vacant as she claims to have done something so spiteful. But at the same time, what Odanna is saying makes no sense. The false vision was a trap to make me return to my village. The Brethren and those strange mages were waiting among the bodies of my fellow villagers.
“You gave her that vision? Impossible,” Zabriel replies. “You’re not a witch. You have never been a witch, and you were never trained in dragon magic either.”
I glance in surprise at my mate, wondering how Zabriel knows so much about Odanna.
“Nothing to say?” Zabriel growls. “So be it. You have been working with the Brethren, and you will be punished as a traitor to Maledin.”
There’s a cry from the back of the room and someone forces their way to the front. A dozen people are knocked aside, and a white-haired man in pale riding leathers bursts through the crowd.
His fists are clenched and his body is shaking with fury as he gazes at the young woman in chains. My heart leaps into my throat, afraid that we’re about to witness the dragonmaster lose his temper and beat the traitor to death.
Stesha turns toward Zabriel, but it’s not anger filling his expression.
It’s despair.
In a ragged voice, he says, “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Please don’t hurt her.”
My eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
Zabriel never takes his eyes off Odanna as he seethes, “Remain silent, dragonmaster, or I’ll have you dragged from the room.”
Stesha gets between the young woman and Zabriel, protecting her with his body. Odanna hasn’t even glanced at him. She’s staring straight ahead with an empty expression. He’s acting like he knows her, but the two of them couldn’t possibly have met. Can they?
Or maybe they don’t need to have met for Stesha to protect her. The second I met Zabriel he forgot about everything else even though he was in the midst of a battle. The day Stesha smelled my hair, I’d just been down in the city with Odanna. We were sitting close together on the back of a wagon. I could have had her scent all over me. I don’t much like Stesha, but what a nightmare for him if he’s finally found his Omega only for her to be a traitor to everything he believes in.
The dragonmaster sounds broken as he begs, “Spare her, I beg you. Punish me however you wish, only don’t hurt Zenevieve.”
I feel a jolt of surprise. Zenevieve? Stesha’s ward? I thought she died five hundred years ago. I glance around, hoping to share my confusion with someone else, but Fiala’s and Dusan’s expressions are grim, and so are Godric’s and Ashton’s.
Everyone in this room knows exactly who this young woman is. Everyone but me.
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