Page 52

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“A way out.” She sat down and waited.

“If your way out involves death, then you are staring it in the face! Death with the fishes!”

She did not even glance at him. “If you have nothing useful to say, then I don’t wish to hear it. Either tell me your name and speak plainly, or do not speak at all.”

“The Princess of Dragons has no manners,” the boy replied, jutting out his lip as if he was incredibly offended. But then, he grinned like the fool he was. “I told you: I have many names. But none of them matter.”

“Then I guess you should be quiet. I’m thinking.”

It followed, of course, that the boy resolutely did exactly the opposite, and Wren was forced to listen to him reciting all manner of riddles and poems and songs until she thought she might be going just as mad as he was.

But eventually what little light had been in the dungeon faded away, and when the water began to shift and creep toward her, Wren knew it was time. Getting to her feet, she rolled her shoulders, arched her back, then climbed up the iron bars of her cell, hoping against hope that the dragon would appear once again.

The boy watched curiously from two cells down. He clambered up the bars, though he kept his eyes on Wren. “You look ready to kill someone,” he commented. “What is your target? The fish?”

Wren said nothing. She had to concentrate. There was no guarantee the dragon would even show up. Which meant Wren had to be on the lookout for any kind of sign that it may be lurking beneath the water.

Anything at all.

Time ticked by at a glacial pace. The water rose and rose and rose, and, by the time it reached its full height, Wren’s muscles felt close to breaking once more. How had the bard managed it twice a day? She was going to fall into the water when the dragon was not around to keep the fish away. Then she would be chum.

Dark amusement filled her. That was one way to deny the king. Die.

Pale blue luminescent light shimmered beneath the water and she smiled.

It was time.

Wren climbed down into the water as the long, luminous spines of the dragon sliced through the surface as it made its way toward her. It stopped by the edge of her cell, as it had the night before. Then a pair of yellow, narrow pupils emerged from the water to watch her.

She took a deep breath and began to sing.

Wren sang a variation of what she had hummed the night before, still haunting and plaintive but less tragic and more dreamlike. She wanted to entrance the dragon: to make itneedher to continue singing like its life depended on it. Wren had to get it on her side.

To her left, the boy grew silent, apparently listening intently to her song.

She ignored him once again.

All her attention was on the dragon.

Wren hummed and sang for what felt like hours, throat already sore from the night before, but whenever she paused to see if it had been enough, the dragon shifted, unsettling the water by growling softly, large spines lifting up along its back.

A male then.

She had not done enough yet. He did not trust her.

It has to be tonight.

Her panic rose when the water began to recede, and, in the space of a few minutes, the dragon stared her down one last time before disappearing beneath the waves.

“Blast it all!” Wren cried, slapping her palms against the stone floor. “Come back.”

Only the echoes of her own voice answered Wren. She’d failed.

There was no escaping her fate now.

Tomorrow, she’d marry the enemy.