Page 2 of Davoren (Dragon Master Daddies #1)

The boy scrambled to obey, eyes wide with lingering fear.

As he approached, I saw what I'd suspected—old burn scars wrapped around both forearms like shackles of melted flesh.

Runaway slave marks. The kind they gave you when they dragged you back the first time, so everyone would know what you were.

"Here." I took the comb with exaggerated care, making a show of examining it for damage.

Under the pretense of checking the pearl's setting, I pressed three gold coins into his palm.

"For your quick thinking. Hide these well, and disappear until sunset.

The stable master at the north end is hiring runners. "

His fingers closed over the coins, understanding flickering in eyes too old for his face. He'd survive another day. Maybe more, if he was clever about it.

"You stupid girl!" The merchant had found his voice and his footing, though the stench of drake dung would follow him for days. "Look what you've done! My silks—"

"Are unharmed, I'm certain." I straightened as much as the chains allowed, letting every inch of my noble bearing show.

"Though I do hope that unfortunate substance hasn't permanently stained your robes.

Such a distinctive color. I'll be sure to mention it to my future husband—Lord Varek Solmar?

Perhaps you know of him?—when I tell him about the merchant who was so vigorous in his .

. . training methods . . . at Ember Oasis. "

The merchant's face went through several interesting color changes. "I was merely disciplining—"

"A child." I let ice creep into my voice.

"In public. With a weapon. I'm certain the Trade Guild would find that fascinating, especially given their recent edicts about the treatment of bonded workers.

My father sits on the western council, you know.

Lord Marcus Lyris? He takes such matters quite seriously. "

Each name was a nail in the merchant's commercial coffin, and he knew it. Cross a future magnate's wife, irritate a Trade Guild councilor, draw the wrong kind of attention—any merchant worth his scales knew when to cut losses.

"A misunderstanding," he ground out. "The boy is clumsy. Nothing more."

"How fortunate that misunderstandings can be so easily forgotten." I smiled sweetly. "Especially ones that involve no permanent harm to valuable silk goods."

The merchant muttered something that might have been agreement or profanity, gathered his dignity and his walking stick, and stalked back to his wagon. The smell followed him like an accusation.

"My lady," the guard captain appeared at my elbow, carefully not touching me. "You should return to the caravan. The sun—"

"Of course." I allowed myself to be guided back, noting how the guards' expressions had shifted. Before, I'd been cargo. Now I was cargo with teeth. "The heat quite overwhelmed me."

Back in the relative cool of the caravan, Mira helped me settle onto the bench. Her hands trembled slightly as she adjusted my chains.

"That was dangerous," she whispered.

Yes, it had been. The merchant would remember my face, remember my name.

Would possibly find ways to make trouble for my father's interests once he realized I had no actual power to follow through on my threats.

But the boy would eat tonight. Would have a chance to run, if he was smart.

Would know that someone, even a chained someone, had thought he was worth defending.

"Sometimes danger is necessary," I said, watching through the curtain gap as the boy vanished into the maze of market stalls. The burn scars on his arms matched the ones on my soul—marks of those who'd tried to escape and been dragged back. The only difference was that mine didn't show.

As I sat again, I realised the hairpin was gone. My one chance at freedom. I tried not to let the agony show.

The caravan lurched into motion, leaving Ember Oasis and its small dramas behind. But I carried the memory of recognition in that boy's eyes, the weight of coins in a desperate palm, the knowledge that even in chains, I could still choose to fight.

It wasn't much. But it was something.

Through my gap in the curtains, I watched the landscape change.

Life disappeared as we entered the Fire Wastes.

Plants didn’t grow here, animals didn’t come here.

Only drakes, the mindless winged beasts that bothered trade caravans and hunted humans for sport, dared make this cursed place their home.

The ground, as far as I could see, was a glittering hellscape of volcanic glass and scorched stone.

Each bump in the road sent rainbow fractures of light dancing across the melted dunes where centuries of eruptions had created fields of obsidian sharp enough to flay skin from bone.

"It's beautiful," Mira said, peering over my shoulder. "In a terrifying sort of way."

"My tutor used to say the Fire Wastes were like a equation made visible.

" I traced patterns on the dusty curtain.

"Every lava flow follows natural laws. Temperature, velocity, mineral composition.

If you understand the formula, you can predict where the glass fields will form, where the soil stays fertile, where the underground springs run cool. "

She gave me a sideways look. "Your tutor taught you mathematics?"

"Among other things." Four languages, classical philosophy, astronomy, trade law, and the genealogies of every major house from here to the coast. Everything a merchant's wife needed to be an asset rather than an ornament.

Father had invested heavily in my education—investment being the operative word.

"See that ridge? The one that looks like a dragon's spine?

That's the start of the Old Serpent's Trail.

Merchants have been using it for three hundred years because the lava tubes underneath create a natural cooling system.

The road stays ten degrees cooler than the surrounding desert. "

I pointed toward distant cliffs where shadows moved against the red stone. "Drake roosts. They build them high where the thermals are strongest. My brother Marek used to—" The words caught in my throat.

"Your brother?"

"He died two years ago. Border skirmish with Zarathosian raiders.

" I kept my voice steady through long practice.

"He used to collect drake scales, said he'd train one someday.

Had this whole elaborate plan about how he'd do it.

You had to start with eggs, he said. Raise them from hatching.

Sing to them so they'd know your voice."

Marek had been twenty-four when a Zarathosian crossbow bolt found the gap in his armor.

I'd been finishing my second year of university, translating Valdoran poetry and thinking myself worldly.

Then the messenger came, and everything changed.

Father retreated into his ledgers. Mother faded like morning mist. And I became the only coin left to pay our debts.

"I'm sorry," Mira whispered.

"He would have loved this journey." I forced lightness into my tone.

"All the drakes we've seen? He'd have filled three journals with sketches by now." We’d been untroubled so far by drakes. They weren’t intelligent, exactly, but they were smart enough to see how well-defended our caravan was. I’d seen them circling above, and their calls were easy to hear, caught on the wind.

The guards' voices carried through the partition, tense and clipped. I heard hands moving to sword hilts, shoulders squaring beneath armor despite the heat. We had to be approaching Bali's Crossing.

"Why are they nervous?" Mira asked.

"Geography." I nodded toward the narrowing passage ahead. "Two dormant volcanoes funnel the road into a channel barely wide enough for the caravan. Perfect for ambush. The bandits know every cave, every lava tube. They strike and vanish before guards can respond."

"Are we in danger?"

"We have many guards." I kept my voice thoughtful. "Either Lord Solmar values his investment highly, or he expects trouble. Possibly both."

A shard of volcanic glass had worked its way through a tear in the silk, probably kicked up by the wheels.

I palmed it carefully, testing the edge against my thumb.

Sharp enough to cut rope. Or flesh, if necessary.

I slipped it into my sleeve where the fabric would hold it against my forearm.

With the hairpin gone, it was good to at least have this.

"Does it hurt?" Mira asked suddenly.

"What?"

"Being sold." Thank goodness, she hadn’t seen the obsidian shard. She flushed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't—"

"It's not selling." The words tasted like ash. "It's a marriage alliance. Perfectly civilized. My family gains trade concessions and debt relief. Lord Solmar gains a bride with bloodlines stretching back to the Third Dynasty. Everyone benefits."

"But you've never even met him."

"I've seen his portrait." Painted to flatter, naturally, but even the artist couldn't soften those calculating eyes. "He looked . . . controlled. Like someone who arranges everything in neat lines and despises deviation."

What the portrait had really shown was a man who smiled like a blade. I thought about his previous wives. One dead, one mad, and now me—the third acquisition for his catalog.

The marriage contract had been extensive. Thirty pages of subclauses and conditions, signed in my father's careful script. My signature had been shakier, forced between two guards who smelled of leather and impatience. The ink had barely dried before they'd produced the ceremonial chains.

"My cousin married without meeting her husband," Mira offered. "It worked out well. He was kind."

"And did he keep his previous wives locked in mountain estates?"

She had no answer for that.