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“Be right back,” I called to Amory before walking over to her to say hello. I smiled. “Hello, Mina.”
“So you remembered my name,” she said with a tight smile, eyes back on the queen as she casually walked toward Malachi. Taking her time.
“I usually remember the names of those who feed me,” I quipped.
Not even that could deter her from her focus on what was going on in the direction of the shore.
“Just wanted to say hello since I saw you,” I offered before turning to go.
As I did, the first roar rang out. Mina’s hand reached out and squeezed my arm.
Judging by the desperation in the noise, it had to be from the dragon in question.
“Mina?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
“I—” she shook her head. “I have seen numerous of these over the years, the way the shifters deal with one another, but this one worries me more than the others.”
“Why?” I asked gently, my eyes darting to see the queen finally reaching the land dragon who was cornered by other shifters.
“I—” she cut off again. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She gestured with a hand as if to point out all the people also watching from a distance. “Cannot.”
In one quick move, the queen had the land dragon by the neck. The land dragon was making the most awful sounds, like a hungry cat.
I turned my attention back to Mina. “If I put up a sound barrier like I used before, will you tell me what has you so worried?”
She paused, and finally looked at me. “Are you truthfully here to help?”
I put my hands in the air in surrender and looked her in the eyes as I said, “I am.”
She nodded but stepped back into the tavern, and I took that as my clue to follow. Dex came in also, not willing to leave my side.
As soon as the door slid shut and I noticed the tavern had emptied, likely to see what was going on with the dragons, I put up a sound barrier around the three of us.
“It’s the queen,” she breathed. “I am worried for our queen.”
I cocked my head. “She looked like she was handling herself just fine.”
Mina nodded aggressively. “It is not that. I mean no disrespect to my queen. Just that there have been whispers.”
“What kind of whispers?”
She swallowed. “That she has gone...feral.That the shifters are becoming more violent. More unhinged.”
“What?”
She wiped her hands on her apron. “The shifters have lived peacefully here as long as any of us can remember. These whispers started up about a year or more ago....”
“You can tell me,” I offered.
“Don’t you find it odd that the queen was celebrated until she became stuck in that form, and now suddenly a bunch of Enchanted stuck in their human forms think she is unfit to rule? When her shifted form as the dragon was the very reason they all danced in the streets when her Enchantment settled in?” She looked out the window as I heard a roar, this one I recognized as Esta.
“I don’t want to believe these rumors. Though plenty of us don’t want to fear the shifters, some of us now do,” she admitted. “Not because we want to, but because we know what predators of that size could be capable of.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “I can assure you that the queen you adore is still in there. She did not kill me when she first met me, though none of us would have really blamed her.”
