Page 78 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I narrowed my eyes. “And if I had claimed some deep patriotism to your Sightlands, you would have believed that?”

Langnathin snorted. “No, I suppose not.” The moment hung in the air. Then he sighed. “I should kill you right now. Both of you.”

I rubbed the baby dragon’s head, my finger shaking. I did not think it appropriate to beg him for my life, not when he sought to make out my character.

“I am trying to imagine what my father would say,” the Dragon Prince muttered, pacing around me once more. “Would he call for your deaths? ‘Better a dead dragon than one in the hands of a savage?’”

I flinched as his spat question moved my hair.

“Or would he condemn me for the action,” he continued. “You offer yourself as an ally, you and your dragon as tools for our use, in exchange for something so simple as security. It would seem a shame to let you both go to waste.”

He stopped before me, and I breathed in and out as steadily as I could, but my heart was beating out of my chest.

He narrowed his red eyes. “You have not met my father, the good King Braxthorn, but humour me. What do you think he would say?”

I blinked a couple of times. Suddenly, it felt like I was back in the Fate Ceremony. Only there was only one question, and only one option. Live, or die.

I had to show him I was more than what he thought of me. An equal, someone who could match him. Not a simpering princess. If he decided to trust me enough to take me back to the kingdom, the king had to think me strong. Strong enough to be a bride for his son.

If I were Braxthorn… What argument could I make to keep myself alive?

I looked straight ahead, my eyes on the golden tapestry as I gathered my thoughts. “Vellintris is dead,” I said. “You have spent years here, in this forest, and all you have to show for it are her materials. Valuable, yes, but not justifying the cost of your siege here.”

The Dragon Prince huffed out a breath.

But I was not finished. “The age of dragons is already coming to a close. Of the great dragons left in the skies, there are only three now. Yes, Kallamont is in his prime, and Chaethor is finally an adult. You have two of the three. You will control the skies for decades more. But then what? A new dragon is a new legacy. It is an heir of your line, continuing your strength for one hundred years to come. And its price is easy. The loyalty of one woman. Win her, and you win the last blue dragon to your cause.”

I slid my gaze over to Langnathin as he stared at me.

His face was entirely impassive, any emotion cloaked behind a wall of stone.

I smiled at him. “I think if I were Braxthorn, I would ask you this. Are you so uncertain of your own charms that you would kill a kingdom’s greatest weapon, instead of attempting to win its keeper?”

The silence was so deadly, I forgot for a moment I was in a room with two cacofs. We stood, the three of us, preternaturally still. It was only my little one’s steady breathing that indicated any time had passed.

I had spoken boldly, and even rudely. I had insulted his judgement, his abilities. He could cut me down in an instant. And yet, I knew my words were true. They needed this to justify this entire war. How many resources had the Sightlanders lost to this forest? How many years? How many were dead to traps? To come back from such a journey, with nothing but the corpse of a dragon…

A laugh burst out from behind me.

The noise was so loud, so raucous, that I flinched. I hadn’t heard laughter like that in several years. The moments of humour I’d experienced over the last span had been so flickering, or so lonesome, that I hadn’t done more than exhaled from joy in all that time.

The thought made me sad. I’d grown so used to the quiet that laughter felt like an assault. It used to be my favourite thing, when I caught onto a laugh with Seth and found myself unable to stop.

The burly man stopped laughing and held his hands up. “Sorry, Lang. But she nailed that. I could feel his spirit in the room.”

The Dragon Prince was still stony-faced. “We fly south in six days, on the first day of Tanmer.” His eyes to my leg. “You will rest here until then.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he clapped his hands three times and cut off any thought I had as two guards pushed into the room in answer.

“The girl is staying as our guest. Find her a room. No one speaks to her.”

The two men nodded, and one of them gasped as he saw the creature attached to me. I limped out of the room, not looking back even as I felt his gaze bearing into the back of my skull.

21

Lang

Awheelbarrow full of dragon’s teeth rattled past, and I couldn’t help the shiver. Chaethor was thankfully too far away to see the barbarism of her species through my eyes.