Page 66 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

“Not when Drulougan is at home. ”

Because no one would be foolish enough to approach. Enya swallowed. “And the gate?”

“An open invitation to lunch,” Liam muttered.

“I’ve seen enough.”

Liam had learned much of Misthol while he’d been waiting for her to arrive.

He pointed out various landmarks and shops, and Colm explained what they were - tributes to dead queens, sacred places, places not to wander after dark, places not to wander at all.

It was he who explained how the city was divided and steered them toward the Cloth Quarter as Liam’s eyes roved over the women in corsets with wide sleeves and skirts.

It made her smile. Much had changed, but not all.

Liam was still Liam, and that felt like a balm on her aching, wounded soul.

Mistress Alys would have fainted at the price Enya paid for two shirts, divided skirts, and a blessedly new pair of stockings, but she still had a few coins to her name. She leaned against the outside of a tailor’s shop with Colm as Liam haggled over a new coat inside.

Enya cleared her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me you told Liam where to meet us?”

“If he didn’t remember on waking, I didn’t want you to be disappointed,” Colm answered.

“I thought he was dead.”

“I had difficulty finding him after we met Hylee. I only found him again the night before last.”

Enya chewed her lip. Colm did like his secrets, but as long as he guarded hers, she supposed she could live with it. “Tomorrow, will you come with me?”

His brows rose. “And the others?”

“Just you.”

Colm rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m a fair sword Ansel, but if it’s steel you need, you want Adar or Pedron. If it’s something else…any of them have more useful methods.”

Enya shook her head. She would not give Oryn the opportunity to stop her and she had to fulfill her end of the bargain alone. “I don’t need weapons. Just…a friend.”

“And Liam?”

“He’ll provide a distraction. And should it go poorly, I don’t want him to see.”

Colm nodded gravely. “I am honored to be counted as a friend.”

She flashed him a warning look that was probably unnecessary. “Don’t make me reconsider.”

Oryn

Perhaps Enya did think mischief so close to Sun Day was sacrilege because she did little more than spend her coin and get rip roaring drunk on fire wine in one of Misthol’s open air markets. Oryn ground his teeth in the shadows of an alcove as he watched her dance between Aiden and Liam.

On Sun Day, with fire wine roaring through their blood, even the stuffiest of Estryians seemed to temporarily forget their stark ideas of propriety.

They would invoke Solignis’s name to defend this dance intended only to generate heat and friction, as if it were needed in the sweltering heat.

For a people who hardly held to the gods at all, they found a convenient scapegoat for their sins in the God of Fire.

Distantly, he wondered if Enya had ever seen a Sun Day celebration quite like this.

This kind of debauchery was common in the cities, but it was difficult to picture against the backdrop of Westforks.

He watched her stumble back into Aiden, the fire wielder catching her around the waist with a laugh, holding onto her for a heartbeat too long.

Oryn watched his broad hand slide around her waist and thought he might crack a molar grinding his teeth.

“Easy,” Colm murmured next to him. He was doing a poor job of masking a smirk. A bloody smirk.

“Is something funny?” Oryn growled.

Colm lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, an unspoken question in his eyes.

Oryn turned his back to stop himself from doing something he would regret. “Keep her alive. I’m going back to the inn.”

Master Kimball had already turned over to lunch service by the time a bleary eyed Enya appeared in the dining room the next day, rubbing at her temples.

Aiden had taken one look at Oryn and made himself scarce, but the haggard looking stable boy either lacked the awareness or didn’t care as he sank into the chair next to her.

She winced when he dropped a spoon and sent it clattering against a platter. Good.

“Did you enjoy yourselves last night?” He asked coolly .

Enya only hummed and pinched the bridge of her nose, but a slight blush crept into Liam’s cheeks.

“Will we be doing any burning and pillaging today, or just more drinking and dancing?”

She took the first sips of her tea and groaned. “Today, I’ll be trying to get rid of this throbbing headache.”

“How long are we going to stay here, Ansel?”

She shrugged. “Until I say otherwise.”

“Why?”

She ignored him, closing her eyes as she inhaled the steam.

“Every moment we sit here is a risk. What are we waiting for, Ansel?”

“Maybe you should have asked Hylee.”

Colm studied the dregs of his tea as if he might find the future in them. He knew what it was she was up to, Oryn had no doubt, but he still hadn’t let on. Oryn reached into his coat pocket, sliding the neatly folded piece of parchment across the table to her in a strange kind of peace offering.

Enya went back to rubbing her temples. “What’s this? Another bounty?”

“Memorize it.”

With a frown, she picked it up. The boy peered over her shoulder as Enya read. “Who is Lara Fischer?”

“You are.”

She looked up at him across the table. “Where did you get this?”

“Does it matter?” He sighed. “It’s real, if that’s what you want to know. And she’s not likely to come looking for it.” Her eyes widened and she dropped the parchment, letting it flutter onto the table. “Gods above, Ansel, I didn’t kill her for it.”

“Did someone else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Bought it off a body snatcher yesterday.” She glared, waiting for more. “It’s not so unusual as you might think. When the wealthy spot the signs in their children, they buy a set of papers in the Foreshore and pack them off to Durelli.”

“So Lara Fischer is rotting in some potter’s field and her parents have no idea? ”

Oryn scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t have the slightest clue where she is or what happened to her, but the body snatcher would suggest there’s little risk she reports the copy missing.”

Her throat bobbed. “I don’t want it.”

“I thought you might want to avoid another Trout Run.”

“En,” Liam breathed.

“Do you know how hard it is to find a set of papers with green eyes?” Oryn asked.

Her lip curled in distaste. “Did you have to visit many body snatchers then?”

He clenched his jaw. He had, actually.

She huffed. “Appropriate company for a man who dallies with wi-”

“Ansel,” he growled. “For someone who claims not to care, you bring it up remarkably often.”

She glared at him with an arched brow, refusing to look away, but Liam had the wherewithal to study his oatmeal.

Liam

The unrelenting heat and press of bodies in the street had Liam sweating through his shirt before even the first puppeteers passed them by.

Or at least, he told himself it was the heat, and not what Enya intended once dark fell.

He did not try to talk her out of it. He would prove himself different from Adar, but some part of him had hoped she would come to her senses and call it off, or surely Andril would.

He scrubbed a hand through his damp, sweaty hair.

A great train of people carried a long, slithering cloth dragon down the street.

It occasionally belched real flame to the delight of the crowd.

Liam studied the beast, wondering how different it was from the real thing.

If the other marionettes were any indication, Drulougan the Dread would look nothing like it.

Andril had shepherded them to a spot far from the square before the keep, insisting on a view of the bay. Excited faces peered up at the sky, waiting.

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

“He’s coming!” A boy exclaimed excitedly.

“Drulougan!”

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum .

Liam looked up, scanning for the source of the wingbeats.

He grabbed Enya’s hand. A black, serpentine beast swept between the castle’s towers.

Massive leathery wings pitched Drulougan the Dread high into the sky to the oohs and aahs of the gathered crowd.

The man on his back, the king, was hardly a speck between the pointed spines that ran from the creature’s maw to the end of its tail.

“Drulougan rarely emerges from the keep other than to hunt, but once a year, Pallas likes to remind his people of his might,” Andril said quietly.

He was impossibly huge and terrifying to behold.

Liam wanted to shrink back into the crowd, but Enya’s face was an unreadable, unperturbed mask as she watched the dragon sweep low over the bay.

He circled, falling closer to the rolling waves with each pass.

When he flew low enough for his barbed tail to skim the surface in a spray of white, the dragon let out a roar that shook the entire city, but it was nothing compared to the jet of blue flame that chased it.

Great plumes of hot steam reached for the sky as the surface of the sea boiled.

The crowd roared at the demonstration and Drulougan unleashed another torrent of flame, this one coming close enough, the heat of it made Liam turn his face away.

With a third plume, the dragon flapped mighty wings that sent torrents of steamy air buffeting the crowd and swept back toward the castle.

Faces turned up to watch them go, shouting for the king and his dragon.

The man leapt down onto a turret and the beast flew back toward Blackash Keep.