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The skin on the back of my neck pulls tight. Rowan is a magician, clearly, but I’ve never felt his kind of magic before. There’s something wild and unstable about the scent of the magic coming off of him, like a shadow sliding beneath his words.
“What did he teach you?” I whisper, although as soon as the words are out of my mouth I’m not sure if I want to know the answer.
Rowan shrugs, then tilts his head to the sky. I follow his gaze and try to ignore all the ways various parts of my body are voicing their extreme displeasure with our current circumstances.
“The stars are out,” Rowan whispers.
Okay, so that’s the end of our discussion. I try to swallow the sigh rising in my throat and let my gaze fall back to the matted mane of the poor old mare. Another gust of wind rattles the trees above us, carrying the scent of smoke and something else. Horses, maybe, and roasting meat. Perhaps we’re approaching a town.
“You know what he did?” Rowan whispers, tilting his head toward the front of the row of horses. “Our dad, I mean?”
I shake my head.
“He built the barrier,” Rowan says. “He trapped the Kingdom of the Fall in the Lands Below.”
A slow shiver climbs my spine. It makes a strange sort of sense that elven magic is behind the barrier. I’ve always wondered how the dragon Rensivar managed to create magic that powerful when none of the other dragons I’ve met had any magic at all, save the ability to shape-shift.
That strange question Phaedron asked me in the Barrier Mountains drifts through my consciousness.Are you running from the father?
“Did your father trap you in the Lands Below?” I whisper.
Rowan’s shoulders rise and fall, sending a ripple through his chains.
“He can tear a hole into the Lands Below,” Rowan replies, not answering my question. “That’s where he stuck the Kingdom of the Fall, and then he slapped up the barrier to keep ‘em in there. But that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted more. You know there’s more down there, right? There’s whole worlds down there.”
No. No, I did not know that, and I’m not at all sure I wanted to know that. My horse stiffens and snorts, sensing my apprehension.
“So, that’s where I come in,” Rowan continues, his voice bitter and sharp as a blade. “He wants me to do the same shit he did, but better.”
“The same what?” I stammer. “He wants you to defeat a kingdom? To trap them somewhere?”
Rowan sighs. “I wasn’t going to do it,” he says. “I was going to die first. But then Phae showed up.”
He twists in his saddle, staring at the trees behind us as the horses labor slowly up yet another hill. I turn away, trying to give him some privacy. I understand, after all. It’s one thing to risk your own destruction, but once they have someone you love? Once they can torture someone you care about? Isn’t that why I didn’t attempt to escape Grathgore’s castle until after my sister was gone?
“What kingdom does he want you to trap?” I whisper. “Why?”
Rowan’s lips curl into an expression that’s not at all like a smile.
“Same old reason,” he says. “To make a dragon look good.”
Something about my expression must give away my utter confusion because Rowan sighs and begins again.
“They set the whole thing up,” he whispers, tilting his head toward his father. “A human army’s going to attack a bunch of dragons. I’m supposed to defeat the humans using the magic that fucker taught me, even if it kills me, and then the dragon Rensivar’s going to take all the credit. Just like the last time.”
My horse stumbles and my empty stomach lurches. Defeat an army? With Rensivar? I stare at Phaedron’s deeply unsettling brother, but there’s nothing about him that suggests he’s spinning some sort of wild tavern yarn. He just looks miserable.
Maybe he really can defeat an army, then. My gut drops as my fingers knot into the horse’s mane, and some small, bitter part of me thinks that Phaedron really should have warned me about his brother. Just a little hint, likehey, by the way, my brother’s magic is a little different.Or,yeah, about my brother, maybe I should tell you that his magic can defeat an entire army. That would have been nice.
“Whose human army?” I whisper, although again, I’m not at all certain I want to know.
Rowan grins, an expression that makes my gut pull tight. “That one,” he says.
He nods toward the front of the line of horses as we crest the hill. My old nag snorts, then pulls forward. And I see the distant flicker of campfires beneath us, spread evenly between rows of white canvas tents.
An army. Sweet spinning stars above. I gulp for air as my legs tighten around the horse. Rowan’s chains rattle as he leans toward me.
“Hey,” he whispers. “What’s going on with you and Phae?”
