Page 76 of The Storm of the Empire

Nyx’s brows rose. “The things he will do…”

“So I have discovered,” I said wryly.

“What was he doing in Storm?” At least he’d confirmed that part of Luka’s story.

“He said he had followed his nose, searching for bane, and wound up on a ship escorting some cargo with the priests, which brought him to Storm.” I hated being the one to break this to them. Zaria and Luka were best friends, and here I was, about to ruin it.

“What kind of cargo?” Zaria asked.

I took a breath, suddenly aware that the story was going to sound far-fetched to anyone, but having burst in at the crack of dawn and woken them from their bed, I ran the risk of them not believing me at all.

“Dragon eggs,” I breathed, feeling a weight lift off for having said it to someone who needed to know.

“What?” Nyx growled, getting to his feet. “Surely you can’t be suggesting the priests are moving dragon eggs. They care for them, but they don’t move them.”

“I know it sounds crazy—I doubted it myself—but it’s true,” I said, not knowing if I was defending Luka or reporting him for misdeeds anymore. I didn’t know who I could trust except Nyx, and I needed him to help me unravel it all.

“Where did these dragon eggs even come from?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Truthfully, I don’t know. We had to work on the assumption that they were taken from the nurseries here or in other kingdoms.” This was not the way I wanted to tell them this news, but what other choice did I have?

“To what end? Because Storm has so few dragons?”

“No, they could never be passed off as storm dragons, no matter what they were, so there’s something else going on.” My anxiety rose with every word. How could we get Alora’s egg back if this was such a massive conspiracy?

Nyx fell back into a chair, his day already becoming too much for him to handle. I felt terrible for making it so, but this was too important.

“As you know, we only have Alora with an egg currently, and I was very concerned about their safety. We heard that the priests were to be performing a six month check on the egg, so we paid them a visit to observe in secret.” I barely kept my voice from trembling.

Nyx leant forward, listening.

“We concealed ourselves so as not to blow Luka’s cover with the sun order if any of them happened to recognize him. But Nyx, they switched the egg. They took Alora’s and left another in its place.”

“Goddess have mercy,” Zaria murmured as Nyx raked his hand down his face in despair.

I hung my head as the next admission I was going to make hit me. “We did nothing to stop them, Nyx. I’m so sorry. I feel sick over it, but there was nothing we could do that wouldn’t alert the priests that we were on to them and put all the eggs in jeopardy. I wanted to save Alora’s egg, I really did, but Luka said?—”

Nyx took my hand at the same time as Zaria’s arm slipped around my shoulders. “It’s okay. You did the right thing. We need to know as much as possible to stop whatever this is.”

“Well, we followed the egg to the docks and got on a ship with them, but we couldn’t locate them before—” I barely held back tears. All the emotions I’d bottled up for a week were hitting me at once. The grief and anger rocked me to my core.

“Before what?” Nyx urged.

I looked into his eyes. “How much do you trust Luka?” I turned to Zaria. “I’m sorry, I know he’s like a brother to you, but I’m just so confused about everything, and the one thing that keeps nagging at my core is Luka in the middle of all of this.”

Zaria took the hand that wasn’t in Nyx’s. “Luka is the best of them. I know he can seem tricky, but that’s just his way of surviving.”

“I trust him,” Nyx added, holding my gaze. “Not just because Zaria does but because I feel it in him.”

I nodded, feeling slightly better, but I still had this nagging gut feeling Luka wasn’t being fully truthful. “Well, while I was sleeping, Luka says he took a walk on deck and saw the captain hand off two crates to mysterious males on a small vessel off the southern end of the Storm coast, where the sea meets the Wild Mountains. He called it a ghost drop.”

Nyx went rigid. “And these were the eggs?”

“I don’t know. Once they were aboard, we were never able to locate them before that drop and not since either. Luka thinks they were smuggled overboard, but like I said, I wasn’t there. We found a confusing cargo of supplies on the ship, all marked by the sun symbol of the priest’s order. There were even prisoners on board. Whatever these priests are into, it is far bigger than some Dragon’s bane and a few stolen eggs. Faolan said?—”

“Wait, Faolan?”

“Yes…you know him?”

---