Page 15 of Fortune's Blade

I could see glimpses of tree-covered slopes, of rolling hills, of cascades and rivers and small flocks of animals, although we were too high up for me to name them. But mostly, I saw mountains and mist, because we’d broken through the cloud line by now. It didn’t help with the vertigo, and neither did the wind.

It was even more chilly out here and the “breeze” was savage. I hugged the castle wall as closely as possible while having to jump from massive stair to massive stair, with my hair whipping around and Louis-Cesare putting a subtle hand under my elbow, just in case. That helped with the wind, but less so with the bird I disturbed, which had made a nest in a cleft in the stone. I was pecked as I passed and resorted to sucking on my injured hand and trying not to think at all as we followed Claire ever upward.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she was saying, with the wind tearing the words apart almost before they reached us.

“But it did,” Louis-Cesare said flatly. “And before I subject my wife or myself to another potential assault, I would like to know why.”

That went over about as well as I’d expected, with Claire’s flush reaching new heights, even climbing into her hairline as she glanced back at us. “She’s your wife, but she’s my friend! Do you really think I’d have brought her here if I thought there was a chance—”

“I don’t know what to think—about any of this. But I need to. Or we will depart and find another way—”

“There is no other way,” I said. “You know that.”

It was true. I, for one, hadn’t had any idea of the scale of Faerie before we came here. I don’t know what I’d expected, maybe a nice video game version of a medieval world, with a squat, rundown castle on a hill, a picturesque village at its feet, and a bunch of well tilled fields beyond that. Obviously, I knew its reputation, and I’d met more than a few of its people through the years, none of which would have fit into that happy little illusion.

And yet, somehow, it had remained stuck in my brain. Maybe I’d wanted it there. Because the reality was scary as hell.

This was a whole new world, and one that I knew very little about, with customs, people and—presumably—weaponry that I had never seen and didn’t know how to deal with. I’d known I would need help—I wasn’t so crazy that I didn’t recall the number of people the Senate had sent here through the years who had never returned—but my gallant band of master vamps now seemed almost laughably inadequate.

It didn’t help that we’d had to leave Claire’s fey bodyguards in New York, as they had flatly refused to let her go on what one had called “a damned fool quest to get herself killed!” It was also a factor that a party of armed light fey would have never been allowed to come here and might well have been attacked on sight. We had therefore resorted to roofying the whole group on fey wine and slipping out in the middle of the night while they slept it off.

That was going to be a fun conversation when we got back.

If we got back.

The only other people on our side were a group of mercenaries who we’d contracted to trace Dorina from her last known whereabouts. But those directions had been provided by a queen who’d been trying to kill her until an abrupt change of heart, so I didn’t trust them at all, and anyway, they were weeks out of date. Sure, Dorina might be sitting around a campfire somewhere, drinking ale and chilling, but why did I doubt that?

No, Claire’s people were our best bet, which why we were here instead of hacking through the undergrowth with the mercs.

I just didn’t know if we were any better off, and Louis-Cesare seemed to feel the same.

“What I know is that staying here is equally problematic,” he said to Claire. “You should have warned us—”

“About what?” she demanded, whirling on him. “That there’s a war raging across Faerie? That we would be traversing a battle zone by coming here? Were you in any way unclear on that?”

Louis-Cesare looked a little startled to have a furious redhead suddenly in his face, possibly because we’d just reentered the castle, the stairs weaving their way back inside, and his eyes took a moment to adjust from the blinding glare. Or because Claire seemed a little . . . tense . . . today. And we’d just seen what a tense dragon could do.

“No,” he said, blinking at her. “But—”

“Then maybe it failed to cross your mind that some people don’t want to be involved in said war? And that my father choosing to align with your Senate wasn’t universally popular?”

“How could I know that?” he asked, somewhat reasonably. “You have never mentioned it before.”

“I didn’t think it would matter! There’s only three of us. And we’re not here on war business. We’re just trying to find Dorina and get the hell out—”

“Only some people don’t believe that,” I guessed, and she nodded, pushing random curls out of her face.

“Our arrival couldn’t have come at a worse time. There’s a debate raging about the war, with some people wanting to stay out, others leaning toward helping our side, and still more who rumors say have joined Aeslinn’s,” she said, talking about the light fey king who had started the current hostilities. “A few of the other houses—”

“There are other houses?” Louis-Cesare interrupted.

Claire shot him an impatient look. “Of course. Did you think that we were the only group of dragonkind to have—” She stopped to allow a couple of plump old women to pass by.

Or plump old somethings, because while the two looked like harmless grandmas of the Tweety Bird variety, with wispy white hair done up in identical buns on the tops of their heads and long black dresses with starched white aprons, they didn’t move like it. They didn’t walk down the corridor so much as hop, even before reaching the stairs. And when they turned their heads, it was with odd, bird-like motions.

But compared to the dragons, who were seven and eight feet tall with body builders’ physiques even in human form, they seemed pretty normal. I watched them head down the stairs, my eyes glad to have something familiar to focus on for a change. And felt my spine begin to unclench somewhat.

Until I glimpsed three-toed bird feet when one of the dresses fluttered up on a hop.

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