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His lips twitch into a ridiculously sinful smirk. “I love the look of you between my legs. Maybe while you’re down there—”

I glare up at him and twist my grip on the dagger ever so slightly.

He throws his head back with a yell and slams a fist into the arm of the chair.

Asshole. That was for Cole, and for Archie. And...maybe for myself, too. Perhaps it’ll teach him to mind his tongue.

After I retract the dagger, Marge presses a rag into the gaping wound, and I back away. Marge blots and sews, blots and sews. Her skillful gloved hands work nearly mechanically. Darian occasionally grimaces or clenches his fists, staring off at a wall as he sips from a flask he’s pulled from his black vest.

Once he’s stitched, Marge applies an ointment and instructs me to grab the bandage she’s set aside. As soon as she completes his wrap, Marge wipes her hands clean and returns back to her collection from her outing.

“Probably should tell you to stay off your leg for a few days to let it heal. But there’s no point since you won’t listen to me anyway, right?” she asks.

Darian rises with a grunt and a sickly sweet smile. “You know me better than anyone, Margie.”

He limps past me, not a word or another look toward me. When the door closes, Marge huffs.

“Wicked thing. For your first patient, that was impressive. Had it been me, I might have relocated that dagger into his neck if he talked to me like that.” She pulls out contents from her basket and begins to line the countertop with it all.

I shrug. “Well, I guess there’s always next time.”

A hint of a grin twitches on her lips before it’s gone. “Alright, I’ll need your help to reorganize what we have since you’ve managed to take over our supply room. Come over here and start putting these up into the top right cabinet.”

We pace back and forth to organize supplies. She shows me various things she collected, and where it all belongs in the healer’s quadrant. At one point, my hands start sweating from the nerves of needing to remember it all. A bottle slips out of my grip, shattering onto the floor.

Marge isn’t afraid to let me know she’s not pleased about that before sending me off for the rest of the day.

Guess I’ll try again tomorrow.

I have some free time before dinner, so I return to my room to read another journal entry. Hope flickers within me at the thought of finding something that could tell me about Daeja or the blue flame.

It’s been a week since the King met with Jurrock and obtained a fire dragon egg. Jurrock must have left shortly thereafter because I haven’t seen nor heard a word of him since. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to ask questions I’m hoping will lead me to wherever the ‘lock’ is.

I can’t seem to wrap my head around why the King would want a dragon egg, and what he’d be doing with one. Not to mention, an egg away from other dragons could mean the embryo dying from magical inactivity. That time frame had such a wide range—but it’s a risk I imagined the King knew.

With his royal bloodline, one theory I had was that he was trying to resuscitate dragon riders. But why fight so abhorrently against us “dragon sympathizers” if you meant to revive dragon riders?

Something told me it was a larger puzzle I couldn’t quite piece together...yet. I had to figure out where the lock was with the dragon egg.

So the best plan I could come up with was to lie.

“The King sent me to retrieve the egg. It must be relocated. We need to secure it by guard in the King’s quarters until further notice,” I had said to the guard that was given the egg the week prior.

He searched my eyes, waiting for me to flinch or falter. But I held him there. After a few moments of tense silence, he nodded and led me to the lock.

Rather than down the spiraling staircases where I expected it would be, we headed upwards. Up several sets of stairs and through a maze of hallways. We stopped at a hidden door blending into one of the stone walls. The guard pressed against one of the many gray stones until they shifted, clicked, and creaked as part of the wall opened. We walked down another long narrow hallway with no lights lining the corridor. Theonly light came from the small torch clutched in the guard’s hand.

Wicked shadows danced along a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor. It was one of few doors in this castle I had seen that wasn’t made of wood.

We both walked inside, and my insides instantly curled into a knot.

Inside the small room, several eggs were in wooden crates. By the flickering torchlight, various colors peeked out from the gaps of the wooden cages. One egg was large and red with veins of black. One was a shiny blue, another a dull white, and a fourth egg green with dark speckles. Each dragon species was accounted for: fire, water, earth, and air.

But what caught my eye was the egg in the middle of them all. It wasn’t nearly as large as the others, but the light sheened off its smooth surface.

In all of my days, I had never heard of, nor seen, a black dragon egg.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the guard challenged.