Page 42 of House of Ashes

“I didn’t have much time to work on the plan. I didn’t know what to expect when I found you. I didn’t even believe you would accept my offer and come with me, even though I needed you for this.”

I sat silently, letting his words fall into empty air. I had nothing to give him. As I had been before, so I was now: merely a pawn. A silver piece on a map, to be moved around at will until he had what he wanted, then put back in a drawer. The same way my father had moved my pawn piece to the prison isle, to be left alone and forgotten.

For the first time, I understood why Kirana would deliberately choose to forgo a mate bond.

Who wanted to be a pawn to a dragon?

My mother’s lovely face floated behind my closed eyelids. I pictured her black-and-silver hair, the stark silver of her eyes. In my mind, she was healthy, beautiful, not the tired, drawn corpse she’d been in the end.

Not a pawn for long, she said in my mind. You have no mate bond. When you become Dragonesse, you need never lay eyes on him again.

The pain in my chest and stomach was still there, but it had dulled. I cradled myself, leaning my head back against the door.

I had to remember that I would not always be a pawn. I would move myself on the map, and soon I would have my sister in chains, and Rhylan could walk away with Tidas’s head.

I would steal my father’s throne. I would be the one passing Judgments.

And then I would be free.

“Talk to me, Sera,” Rhylan said softly. “I know you’re in there.”

I directed a humorless smile at the ceiling.

“What is there to say?” I sounded calm, in control. A far cry from the enraged, lonely creature screaming inside me. “I’m glad you finally decided to share your plans with me. Is there anything else you’d like me to know before we continue? Any other insignificant details?”

It was his turn to be silent. I wondered if he actually cared, or if he was rolling his eyes, cursing himself for choosing a princess who could barely hold herself together.

But…how could I? When I now had incontrovertible proof that my father had meant for me to die on those lonely shores, forgotten and unmourned.

“Or, answer me this: why ask me to become your pretend mate? The Drakkon made it clear he’d do damn near anything to keep me away from Koressis.” I swallowed the tightness swelling my throat. My eyes were still dry. “Why go against his orders, if they were so important?”

Rhylan shifted, the muffled rustle of fabric coming through the door. “He had a change of heart,” he finally said. “He never showed it, but I think he regretted what he did.”

“Some excuse.” I picked at a fraying thread on my sleeve, pulling it out until the fabric wrinkled. “I don’t believe it.”

“If I’d known you were alive, nothing could have stopped me from coming for you. It was my fault you were there at all.” There was the thump of a fist against stone. “I know it was my testimony that caused it. All I wanted was for Nerezza to pay for destroying our family, not to send you into fucking exile for years. I did everything I could to convince him to release you, until the day he held a knife to my wings and told me he’d take them if I dared to go after you.”

I winced a little despite myself.

“A month later, he told me you’d died of a consumptive disease. And he was convincing, that was the worst part. I truly believed him.

“When he became my Preceptor, he spoke to me about honor. About how sometimes a thing that seems dishonorable on the surface disguises a deeper motivation. That sometimes the Law must be bent in order to not break it. When he told me that…I thought he was full of shit. It wasn’t until he was dying, until he told us you were still alive, that I realized he had been speaking of you at the time.”

But I didn’t give a damn what he’d been speaking of. My stomach had tightened in a clench again, stabbing deep.

“He was your Preceptor?” I whispered, betrayal choking me.

In the year before a dragon graduated from the Koressis Training Grounds, they were assigned a Preceptor, a mentor who would bring them into the world and instruct them on the Law, the draconic code authored by Larivor of the Wind and Naimah of the Flame, and on how to uphold the honor of their House.

Usually, dragons were assigned like to like. A royal dragon could almost certainly expect a Preceptor from a royal eyrie.

But the Drakkon had not taken a student in years, since well before I was born.

He could have meant only one thing by taking him under his wing: he had been grooming Rhylan as the future Drakkon.

And I had not been meant to be a part of that.

I heard a sigh. “Yes.”

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