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I turn toward the brilliant sapphire sky, then back to Anslo. Married or not, he was my first kiss. He was the first man to show me that intimacy can be enjoyed, not just endured. And now he’s frowning at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“It’s just, all this,” I whisper, waving my hand up the mountainside. “Dragons. Elves. It’s—”
I swallow around the lump in my throat and try again.
“It’s not our fight,” I finish. “This isn’t where Valgros belongs.”
Anslo frowns, and the lines on his face harden. Fear pulls the back of my throat tight. Anslo’s always had a temper, and I’ve been on the receiving end of it often enough to be wary.
“Valgros belongs where our king sends us,” he growls.
His eyes pull together, then widen as if he’s just seen something new and exciting flash across the side of the mountains. The cloud of anger evaporates, and he suddenly smiles at me.
“Ah, Rayne,” he says in a very different tone of voice. “This is about the king, isn’t it?”
I blink. Of course it’s about the king, my mind screams. It’s about his signet ring and who controls it, and what’s being done to his in his name but not by him. Anslo raises his hand to my shoulder, then tugs me closer to his body. His breath washes over me, still carrying the acrid tang of whatever he must have had for dinner last night. Onions, I’m guessing.
“Listen,” Anslo begins, smiling at me like he’s leading a lesson on how to add two and two. “I know this is hard for women, but it’s nothing personal, you see? You were one of the king’s favorites for years, but he was bound to marry someone eventually, and it had fuck all to do with you.”
Anslo shrugs. Something hot and sour rises in the back of my throat.
“There’s just a difference between the kind of woman a man wants to bed and the kind of woman he wants to marry, that’s all,” Anslo finishes.
His hot onion breath washes over me as he speaks, and his fingers tighten around my shoulder. For one horrible heartbeat, I think he’s going to try to kiss me.
My back stiffens. I tug out of Anslo’s grasp and meet his eyes. He’s still smiling, although now there’s something almost apologetic in his expression. We’ve never talked about what happened between us or how it ended. I stopped speaking to him after seeing him with his wife in the marketplace, and after a few weeks, he stopped asking me to join him in the darkened back corners of the armory. And this is probably as close as I’m ever going to get to an apology.
“Yes,” I say, stepping out of the range of Anslo’s arm and his onion breath. “It’s nothing personal.”
Anslo is the first to break eye contact, which is a petty little victory but one I savor thoroughly.
“So, yeah,” he says, running his hand across the back of his neck and staring off into the distance behind my left shoulder. “Why don’t you get something to eat, rest a little? When the sun sets, I’ll take you to the edge and show you the path.”
I tilt my head at him.
“As you say, Captain,” I reply.
Chapter29
Doshir
Iwould have thought I’m beyond surprise at this point, but still, when Wendolyn pulls up short and begins to drop to the ridge where the guard sits with his tail curled around his shining silver body, something ripples through my chest. It’s not alarm, exactly; it’s more of a dull flicker of impatience.
I’d thought Wendolyn was leading me back to the Iron Mountains. Now she’s stopping here. And Rayne is gone, vanished somewhere on the barren stone cliffs that flank the Tarn of the Maiden. She could be injured, disoriented, shifted into her human form by accident and dashed her body against the rocks—
“Nyrgin,” Wendolyn calls.
The great silver dragon raises his head. He has more spines outlining his skull than I’ve ever seen, and the first low, cold tendril of fear slides through my scales. Nyrgin bends his neck respectfully as Wendolyn settles onto the stones beside him.
Now I recognize his silhouette. This is the guard Wendolyn spoke with this morning, the one I’d assumed to be her former lover Greimbyss. Wendolyn glances up at me as I pull my exhausted body through the air, her green scales shimmering in the sunlight.
I could just keep flying. A flush of rebellious heat flashes under my scales, fading as quickly as a spark falling to hard stone. I could keep flying, but where in the nine hells would I go? Rayne is here. She has to still be here.
I clatter to the mountainside, my claws knocking a landslide of stones down the steep ridge. Nyrgin raises one bony eyebrow.
“You remember Doshir?” Wendolyn asks, in a tone that’s far too chipper for the occasion.
“Of course,” Nyrgin replies.
