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KION

“Of all the dragons, Sarnorinth is the most volatile and dangerous. He has never bonded with a human, none we know about, and the idea that he would is unlikely.”

—Notes from an unnamed dragon lord’s journal.

“I am not a horse,” Senaria hissed from beside me—because I held the broken end of the mage chain tethered to her left wrist and led her like a mare. But I wanted her under my control, and holding the chain seemed like the easiest way.

“At least the horse knows enough to follow docilely,” I said.

“I’m not following. We just happen to be walking in the same direction.” Senaria rattled the cuff that was loose around her right wrist. “These things don’t work on me, anyway.”

My teeth clenched. “You’re very lucky.”

“And you’re very male, with all that growling when you don’t get your way.”

I breathed in hard to stop the growling.

Bright moonlight flooded the road and turned the surrounding trees into sooty shapes that dared not move, not with the waves of magic rolling from me.

Magic that protected our conversation from those who might listen in—the night birds.

More wyverns, although they wouldn’t return with a dragon on the hunt.

“Why would you talk to Sarnorinth like that?” I asked in low tones, proud of my self-control when I wanted to say far worse things to her.

“Like what?” She swatted at her loose hair. “Like he’s a reasonable person who loves his child?”

“Dragons are not people. They are not pets.”

“They’re wild creatures, untamable, with indecipherable minds,” she parroted, as if she quoted from a textbook. “Thankfully extinct, since people don’t build modern buildings with dragons in mind.”

I turned my head, my jaw clenching because she just…annoyed the fuck out of me. “You have not seen him when he’s angry and spewing dragon fire. He’s the one dragon even I won’t provoke.”

“And I’ve somehow aggravated him by caring about his fledgling?”

Her magic rose with a sweet heat, and mine reacted. “There are wyverns in the Faded Lands,” I snarled. “They’ve come here to hunt for you.”

“Your scary dragon ate them as snacks,” she snarled back.

I stared as Senaria dug beneath her vest. She pulled out an apple and tossed it aside.

Bits of cheese followed. She’d prepared for a long trip, acted like the night had been entertaining—running away, fighting vicious carnivores driven by magic and sent by priests who hated her.

Then she’d been stuck in a fucking tree with an angry dragon a few feet from her head.

All Sarnorinth had to do was breathe too hard, and whatever problem she was to him would have been eliminated.

“He told you not to leave.”

“He should have anticipated.” She rattled the chain again. “I’m not from your Faded Lands. Your laws are different from mine, and I don’t appreciate being dragged around like a damn horse who—”

My control snapped. I released the chain, unsheathed the sword and swung around, holding the blade inches from her neck. “You think this is a game you play?”

“If it is, yours is the next move.” Her chin arched to expose the throbbing vein.

“But like every powerful man I’ve ever known, you’ve left yourself little room to maneuver.

I’m a threat, so what are your options? Back down or go through with it…

killing or saving. How will you protect your precious dragons from me? What move do you make now, Draakon ?”

“Now…” The tendons in my throat constricted. “You stop talking.”

Fire glittered in her eyes, leaving me unsettled. I tipped my head and stared. She did not flinch, even though I sensed the racing of her heart.

“Men like you are arrows,” she said. “Shooting straight toward the target without ever asking yourself why. But what do you shoot for, I wonder? Is it the violence you crave? Or enough noise to drown out the truth? That one day, those curses hanging around your neck will drag you to your knees? I’ve lived with a dragon for most of my life and never once realized what he was, and because of it, I cannot carry the same fear in my heart that you carry in yours. ”

The insight in her words should not have bled me the way it did, and I tightened my lips to keep from saying something more aggressive than, “Sarnorinth is not an image in your father’s books.”

“No, I get that he’s real. Tova was real, and there’s no way I can make amends for what happened to her.

But for seven years, I’ve been Silk, forced to use my magic, slip into dark minds.

I’ve lost myself in sickening thoughts, so it wasn’t even strange for a dragon’s voice to be in my head, carrying on a conversation. ”

“You risk too much, Senna.”

“No.” Her face paled. “You don’t get to use that name. Only Nikki calls me Senna.”

I adjusted my grip on the sword hilt. Senaria watched my hand while I watched the pulse beating beneath her skin.

“Be honest for once, Draakon,” she said. “Let yourself feel what your beating heart is trying to tell you—that I will leave every time I get the chance.”

The muscles in my back twitched. “Why?”

“Because I can’t be here.” Her gaze speared mine, and even with the tears in her eyes, her commitment shimmered.

“I’ve lost a friend who has been with me for most of my life.

I bound him to me and now I’m abandoning him, and there’s a hole inside that feels like I’ve cut off part of myself and offered it to your bloody Orm.

My family is in Thales. How can I stay when Tarian might have Nikias?

What if he’s given my brother to the red priests?

I can’t bear to think about it, and I won’t lose my brother the way I’m losing Bogo. ”

“I told you I would protect your brother.”

“Just like you told me I had to choose how I got off a cliff, when you’d already taken that choice from me?

” Her shoulders trembled. “I’m tired of powerful men using me for their own reasons, forgetting that I have a heart and soul and can think for myself.

I have dreams for a better life beyond being locked up in a castle room, and I’m done with hiding behind a veil so the king can kill his enemies without the guilt.

I don’t want to exchange one empty existence for another, and I don’t want a life where I’ve forgotten how to breathe and will probably die that way without even knowing it. ”

The muscle flexed in my jaw. My grip around the sword hilt squeezed, released as I glared at her beautifully defiant expression. Every time I saw this woman, with her hair tangled around her face, all I wanted was to bury my fingers in the long strands.

“You haven’t lost Bogo. A dragon bonds for life. And I have men around Nikki. One on the small council. Another in the King’s Guard. There’s a mage boy in the castle—”

“There was a boy who came to ward the windows.”

The trembling in her body had settled, even with the weapon at her throat. Because she’d made a choice and waited for me to make mine.

“I do not fear dragons, Senaria. But I respect them, and neither of us can yield. Nor should we when we share a unique talent that requires untold strength.”

“What talent? ”

“We speak to them. All of them.” I returned the weapon to the scabbard at my back. Reaching down, I removed the mage cuffs from her wrists and tossed them aside, where they disappeared in a puff of magic. “Will you cooperate?”

“Since you asked.”

A horse approached from the shadows, and I pulled Senaria against my side before I recognized Fennor. “Draakon,” he said, “it’s time.”

Fennor had two horses with him. I helped Senaria mount the mare, then I mounted the other horse and rode beside her as Fennor led the way.

We wound up a curving road along a tree-covered hillside, through a dip, reaching a smallish villa with a stone terrace wider than the house.

Inside, mage lights glowed. A maid led us through the corridors and into a wide bedchamber, sparsely furnished.

Tapestries hung on the walls with vivid images of dragons and the riders on their backs.

Standing candle sconces held dozens of burning candles.

A fire blazed in the fireplace to offset the night chill from the open space where a wall would have been in a normal home.

But the opening led to the terrace where signal fires burned and a small boy stood, scanning the dark sky.

I pushed the futility down. “Magda.”

The woman in the bed opened her eyes. “Draakon.”

Her smile deepened the creases in her skin, evidence of so many years spent riding on a dragon’s back, exposed to the sun and wind.

I dropped to one knee at her bedside, took her knobby hand in mine. Kissed her knuckles .

Her gaze strayed to the open terrace and the boy standing there. “He continues to hope.”

“Magda, I…”

She studied my face with gentled eyes. Cupped my cheek. “It’s not your fault, Kion. The dragons have always been in charge, haven’t they? We ride them, but…we’re also their willing slaves. I’ve told him she won’t come.”

“I can reach out to Lassa.” Lassa was Magda’s dragon; she’d been silent since Tova disappeared.

Gray curls fluffed as Magda brushed her head against the pillow. “I don’t blame her for the silence. I can’t blame any of the mothers. She doesn’t need more grief with me.”

Magda’s eyes closed, reopened, and she glanced at Senaria, hovering near the wall. “Come closer, girl. Let me see you.”

Senaria hesitated, and I said, “Magda is a dragon lord. She’s led an illustrious life.”

“Come,” Magda repeated.

Senaria stepped closer to the bedside, respect and acceptance in her expression with none of the hostility she reserved for me.

“You are the one, aren’t you?” Magda’s voice rustled like dry leaves. “You called the dragons and they came.”

“I’m trying to make it right,” Senaria said.

“You care about them—dragons and the Draakon. The truth is in your voice.” When the old woman reached, Senaria folded her fingers around Magda’s gnarled hand. “He needs a friend. From the look of it, so do you.”