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“This isn’t tea.” I make a disdainful face at the cup. “This is just water and leaves.”
“But that’s what you said…oh, fuck, I forgot!” His long neck snakes down and he blows a concentrated breath into the cup. The water immediately begins to steam. “There! Tea.”
Warmth spreads through my whole chest, and a smile teases at my lips. “Where did you get all this?”
“From a large house along the coast. I asked for the best they had.”
Whoever he spoke to must have been terrified at the appearance of the monstrous black dragon, and yet they were defiant enough to give him stale bread, salted fish, and moldy cheese. Kyreagan didn’t know any better—he took it all in good faith. He has to stop trusting people so readily.
The dragon looks at the food, then back at me. “Is it wrong?” Uncertainty threads through his deep voice, and fuck, I can’t bear it.
“It’s perfect.” I force the two words out. It’s a betrayal of my country, a concession greater than the dragon will ever understand. I care enough that I can’t disappoint him, not when he flew all the way to the coast to get these things, knowing they would please me.
“Wait…” I turn toward him. “You went to the mainland? Did you meet with the King of Vohrain?”
He swallows, pins his sharp ears back slightly. “I did. Yesterday.”
“You said you would ask about my mother.”
“I planned to tell you about it when I returned, but you escaped, and then—”
“The voratrice, and the transformation,” I finish. “But you could have told me during the night, or this morning.”
“It didn’t seem like the right time. Nor is this the right time. You should eat, enjoy your tea.”
“Kyreagan.” I step up to him and place my hands on either side of his long muzzle. His yellow eyes flare wider at my touch. Then they shift aside, avoiding my gaze.
“Kyreagan, tell me.”
He huffs out a warm breath. “The news will distress you.”
“I can take it. It’s harder not knowing. Please—”
At my plea, his eyes swerve back to mine. “She ended her life,” he says, low. “When the Vohrainian forces invaded the palace, they found her dead on the throne.”
But his eyes shift again as he says it.
“You’re lying, and you’re not good at it. Tell me, dragon. Right now.” I clutch the spikes along his jaw, desperate for the truth.
“She fought.” Kyreagan’s voice is a doleful growl. “She fought back until they took her weapons away. The King of Vohrain stripped her naked and had her beaten in front the people. Afterward he cut off her head.”
My hands drop from his spikes. I turn and stumble away from him, my vision glazed with tears.
My mother, who never stepped out of her rooms without face powder, rouge, and lip stain flawlessly applied; my mother, who wore grand, sumptuous clothing even on days when she didn’t have court or meetings; my mother, whose hair was intricately coiffed for every occasion—for her to be stripped of all her layers, her personal armor, and subjected to a beating in the city square—it’s an image I wasn’t prepared to handle.
“The tea was supposed to help,” Kyreagan says quietly.
“Tea?” I wheel around, shaking. “That fucking blob of leaves in water? That’s not tea. It’s disgusting, and so is the stale, decayed food you brought me.”
He shuffles back a step, his neck arched. His horns and spikes look more like a crown than ever, and I hate him for it. I hate that he’s so beautiful and regal, that he looks so hurt and yet so concerned for me.
“I loved my mother.” The words nearly choke me. “I hated her, and I loved her, and she was a wretched, careless woman who spent lives like coin, but she didn’t deserve to suffer like that. She didn’t. She must have been so humiliated, in so much pain—she needed me, and I wasn’t there, I wasn’t—”
“The same thing would have happened to you, or worse,” Kyreagan replies. “The King of Vohrain offered me three chests of gold and the Parrock Banks in exchange for you.”
“Why the fuck?”
“He says your people love you. He plans to use you to control them, and he wants to breed you as well.”
