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She turns toward the fire, then thrusts a stick into the smoldering embers as if she were trying to impale something.
“You know what he said?” she asks, turning back to me.
The fire hisses at the darkness. Rayne shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge the memory.
“He already knew,” she whispers.
My gut twists around the food I’ve just eaten. King Donovan knew that his signet ring had been taken? He already knew he wasn’t in control of his own ? I swallow as another piece of Rayne’s puzzle slides into place. Intense emotions, like rage, can trigger the transition from human to draconic form. It’s one of the reasons dragons prefer to raise their hatchlings in stone caves, without many flammable furnishings.
“Was that when you first shifted into your dragon form?” I ask. “In the royal bedchamber?”
Rayne’s laugh fills the little clearing and startles a snort from one of the horses munching on oats behind us.
“Oh, kings,” she replies. “Now that would have been a story. No, the dragon form came weeks later. Rensivar told me he would turn me into a powerful weapon, and then his creepy assistant Varitan set me on fire. When I opened my eyes, I was a dragon.” She inhales slowly, almost like the memory hurts. “Rensivar told me he’d given me a gift,” she finishes.
She lifts her wooden mug and gestures toward the ground. Or toward her own body.
“He didn’t give you that,” I growl, although as soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize my mistake. Rensivar is her father.
“I know,” Rayne replies. She turns back to me, and her eyes flash in the gleam of the firelight. “Rensivar is a liar.”
My heartbeat feels very loud inside my skull. I need to tell her what I found in Varitan’s shop in Valgros. She has a right to know her lineage and hatching prophecy. But something else slides into place, another missing puzzle piece, and I shiver despite the warmth of the fire.
“You ran from him,” I say. “Rensivar wants to use you as his weapon, or as his champion, but you came here instead.”
Rayne turns back toward the fire. Something soft and almost sad crosses her face, and suddenly I realize what I should have known all along. Rayne escaped from Valgros to warn the Iron Mountains. She fled right under Rensivar’s snout. What a fool I’ve been to tell her she could go back to Valgros.
No, Rayne can never return. Just like me, she no longer has a home waiting for her.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I lean forward, then wrap my fingers around her hand, like she did to me on the deck of my father’s ship. She sighs; her shoulders curl inward.
“Rensivar,” she begins. The word hangs in the air, suspended in smoke and ash just above the fire. “He said, if I did everything he asked, he would let King Donovan live.”
She falls silent, although the implication behind her words rings through the chill night air like a great brass bell. I blink at the darkness beneath the trees. Hadn’t I assumed she’d chosen the king over me? Once again, Rayne has proven me a fool.
“I’m sorry,” I say, once again. Weak words, but they’re the only balm I have to offer.
Rayne shakes her head.
“I— I can’t protect him from himself,” she says. She sets her mug down, then wipes her hand across her eyes. “All those years serving him, and it was all a lie. He was never the man I thought he was. I gave him everything, and he never cared for me at all.”
Her lips curl up at that, as though she’s trying to laugh at the pain behind those words. I lean forward, lifting my hand to brush a strand of fire-red hair from her cheek. I open my mouth to apologize once again, as though my words could ever be enough.
But I kiss her instead.
Chapter22
Rayne
“Igave him everything, and he never cared for me at all,” I say.
My gut twists. I’m almost afraid to meet Doshir’s gaze. I’ve never said anything like that about the king before; somehow, speaking the words makes it more real. I was nothing to King Donovan, and I let him be everything to me.
I turn toward Doshir, trying to smile, trying to pretend it doesn’t bother me to admit that I fell for all the lies in Valgros. But Doshir is looking at me in a way that suddenly makes it hard to breathe. And then Doshir kisses me, and the world falls away all around us.
His lips are soft and the kiss gentle, waiting for my response. I fall into him, my body suddenly burning with a fire so bright and hot there’s no room left for my exhaustion, for my guilt and shame over being used by the king so badly for so many years. I tilt my head, opening for him, ready for him.
