Chapter 8
Kaya
T he day has been productive, full of baking and serving customers this afternoon and early evening. I feel satisfied even if I’m still very nervous about getting Lady Egrettington’s treats prepared on time. I still have the chocolate croissants to do. I have one day left because I’m not going to be able to bake the day we deliver the goods to Kingstown. It’ll be too much to do in one day. My eyelids are drooping; I should go to bed.
I start to shut the door when I notice a very familiar shape loping across the street.
Cyrus. He doesn’t seem too steady on his feet. Perhaps he has been partying. Laini and Tully did say that Rom and Argos were asking about playing cards with him at the tavern when he had time.
Where is he headed when he should be sleeping off his drinks? Hmm.
“Are you going to follow him?” A deep, scratchy voice says behind me.
I whirl to see Sio looking up at me. “I will never get used to this.”
He meows.
“I guess I should follow Cyrus,” I say, looking out the cracked door. Cyrus’s tail disappears between buildings. “Where could he be going? Certainly not to those ruins, right? He’s smarter than that.”
“I doubt it,” Sio says. “He has an air of recklessness about him. Curiosity too. Like us cats.”
“Will you go with me? I hate to venture out there alone in the dark.”
“I’m too old for shenanigans like that. Just take your walking stick and bang anyone who bothers you over the head. Give that dragon a good smack to knock some sense into him as well.”
I laugh and scratch behind Sio’s ear. “All right. I’ll go. Will you watch the candle?” I usually blow out all candles and gaslamps when I leave, but maybe Sio likes a little light.
“I will handle it.”
“Thanks.” This is so weird, talking to my cat.
Taking up my walking stick and a heavy shawl, I leave the cozy cocoon of my bakery and home to enter the chilly spring night.
The hill of ruins rises under my boots, and I hurry, hoping to catch Cyrus before he enters the cursed area. I can’t see him anymore; I had to take too long explaining to the gate guard that I just wanted a walk. Clouds like ghosts have swamped the moon, and he has a good head start on me. He might have flown the rest of the way and is already inside, getting good and cursed, the idiot.
“Cyrus?” I call out quietly. It seems dangerous to shout in a place like this.
The ruins dominate the hill. Time-worn stones make up what was once a proper castle gate, a ring of curtain walls, and a tower keep. A few boards from what had to have been a bridge over a moat still stretch across a weed-choked ditch. The edge of a dragon’s wing shows beyond the nearest wall.
It must be Cyrus landing inside the walls. It is as I feared.
I swallow as the wind gusts around me, colder than it should be on a spring night. I grip my walking stick and start across the dilapidated bridge, keeping my feet sideways on the boards that appear the least rotten. I don’t care to fall into that ditch and deal with those thorns.
“Cyrus?” I call out, feeling like I’m being way too loud. Can you wake up ghosts? How about curses? Blessed stones, why am I here? This is so foolish. “Cyrus, I’m going to murder you. Or get Tully to do it for me. Where are you?” I whisper out as I reach the arch of the castle gate.
A howl echoes through the old structure—just wind?
I gather my shawl more tightly around me and debate whether or not to step inside. Cyrus could be hurt in there. He might be desperate for help. Who knows what is inside? No one, really. It could be anything. Even just bears. Bears are lovely, but I do not ever want to meet one. Especially not right now.
“Bears? Please move on. There is a nice forest just a mile west. Sounds good, right?”
I think of Cyrus working so hard in my kitchen to help me. Of how he patched my wall after a storm last year. About the time he helped me figure out the error in my bakery bookkeeping, so I didn’t get in trouble with the king’s tax collectors. He is a good friend. He deserves my help even if he is being a moron. It’s understandable; he’s wildly curious about his bloodline. A creature like him, well, he is meant for big things, for open skies, for the adventurous life of a dragon. It isn’t all that surprising that he is risking his well-being to find answers that the human tempted him with.
A laugh bubbles out of me despite the circumstances. I keep calling my fellow humans humans , and it’s just odd. I guess I’ve been around Veil creatures for so long that humans are nearly as strange to me as they are to the monsters born in the Veiled Kingdoms.
I bite my lip and step through the old gate and onto the ruins’ official grounds.
A hum buzzes in my ears—a slight sound that I wouldn’t notice if it weren’t for the sudden silence. No spring frogs peep. No bats make their funny chirping noise. I almost miss the horrible howling. Not quite.
“Cyrus?”
The courtyard of broken-down structures includes a dove house with a domed roof that is half collapsed, the remains of two horse stalls, what was likely an outdoor kitchen, and, of course, the conical tower keep one can see from town.
But no dragons.
Where could he have gone? The wind whips my skirts, and I shiver, hurrying to shelter against the side of the keep. A row of windows sits in another outbuilding that the tower was blocking at first. It is long and huddles right up against the protective wall.
A flash of scales shows in the middle window.
Cyrus.
I rush through the knee-high weeds, then through the long structure’s simple rectangular entrance. What’s left of a wooden door hangs from its hinges and creaks quietly as I pass.
The inside is very dark—no surprise there—and I squint.
“Cyrus!”