Page 115 of House of Ashes

We passed Maristela’s rooms, and Rhylan raised his head, sniffing the air. “Gaelin’s here. I need to speak with him. It’d be more convincing for Kirana to visit Undying Light with allies from other Houses, if they can spare the time for a long flight.”

I reached up and took the saddlebag. “I’ll get the harness ready if you want to talk to him.”

I still wasn’t entirely comfortable around Rhylan’s friends, and the idea of a few moments to myself in the eyrie sounded much more appealing than clinging to his side and over-analyzing every word I said.

But he seemed to understand. He released the saddlebag and leaned down to brush a kiss over my cheek. “Don’t fly off with any other dragons,” he said, the corner of his mouth tilted up in a smile. “I’ll chase you down.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” If I rolled my eyes much harder, they’d fall right out of my head.

“Technically, that was a response.”

I scowled at him. “You are so impudent.” Then I hefted the saddlebag over my shoulder and left him to knock on the door and confer with Gaelin.

A sweeping staircase took me up to the eyrie’s dragon terrace, with its enormous archway overlooking the sky, and I blinked at the blinding morning light playing over the snowfields far below. The inside of my nose immediately froze as I took a breath of the crisp air.

But, despite the cold I so despised, it was a beautiful sight.

And the Eyrie-Master of Kirion had laid out Rhylan’s harness for us already. The leather gleamed with fresh wax.

A chill that had nothing to do with the icy wind ran down my spine. I couldn’t remember giving instructions to leave his harness untouched…but surely one of us would have mentioned something? Had I been too tired from the long flight to think of it?

As I approached it, my shoulder aching from the weight of the saddlebag, Chantrelle emerged from a room on the far side of the harness. My heart jumped in an uneven beat at the sight of her, and the little smile playing about her lips.

“Serafina.”

“Good morning, Lady,” I answered, falling back on politeness as I began buckling the saddlebag to the harness. “We appreciate the hospitality of your House—”

“Shut up, whorespawn.”

The venom in her voice cut me short. I looked up and found Chantrelle had come to my side of the harness, and she stood there staring at me, lips pulled back to expose her sharp, yellowed teeth.

My self-control began to fracture, a frozen river cracking to reveal the hot torrent of anger beneath. “But not that hospitable, of course. Gods forbid you send us off without spewing some more wyvernshit in our faces.”

“You have no right to speak to me,” Chantrelle whispered. “No right to stand here, in my eyrie, and speak to me of hospitality. You are a liar, Serafina, just like your whore mother.”

The chill I’d felt when I saw the harness became a flood, ice water running through my veins, cooling my anger under a rush of fear.

Chantrelle’s smile was back, alight with vindication. “A liar… and a fraud.”

She reached into a pocket, and pulled out one of the safety straps from the saddle. It had been cut away cleanly, the silver hook glinting at the end.

The draga held it up, peering at me through that hook as her smile widened.

The ice froze around my heart, pooled deep in my stomach.

“My Eyrie-Master thought this was rather interesting,” she said, the strap swaying as she shook it. “What self-respecting draga would need such a thing? You keep a prince harnessed like a dumb beast, unable to sit a dragon of your own accord. You are simply full of lies, Serafina. You are no princess. Merely a pretender.”

I couldn’t speak. My tongue remained frozen in my mouth as I listened to her tell me…exactly what I thought of myself.

“Maristela should have been the Dragonesse,” Chantrelle continued. Her knuckles were white as she lowered the strap, her hands shaking with fury. “You come into my eyrie, demand my fealty, crush my daughter’s rightful place underfoot…all while lying through your teeth!”

“I’m not…” I whispered, but Chantrelle raised her hand, as fast as a striking snake.

The strap whistled, cracking against my cheek in a sharp blow. Pain exploded in a white-hot burst, the hook catching my skin, tearing away flesh.

My hand flew to my face, blood spilling through my fingers. Chantrelle raised the strap and shook it, and all I could see was the splatter of blood across the leather, a tiny iridescent scale caught on the hook’s sharp curve.

“Don’t you dare speak to me,” she hissed. “I will give you one chance to make this right, lying whore child: you will come to the Second Claim, and you will stand down. You will renounce your claim and back my House. You will bend the knee of fealty to the Shadowed Stars, and give everything your House has to our success…”

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