Page 74 of The Dragon Queen

“What did that bastard do?” Ged snapped when I told him who whisked me away. “Gods, I never should’ve taken you down to Cheapside in the first place.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Soren growled. “Bringing Pippin into the presence of the likes of Marcus Lighthands?”

“I’m fairly sure if you’d made that clear to our queen, she’d have sought the man out herself.” When I looked up, Brom shot me a smile. “But Pippin, what did Marcus want?”

I sucked in a breath and then told them.

Chapter 35

I recounted my story, my men’s faces growing darker by the second, but any attempt by Glimmer or any of the other dragons to glean where Dragon’s Rest was being built failed. Marcus was scrupulous in his attempts to keep me ignorant, perhaps informed by Hadrian’s judgement.

“What do we do about the wild dragons?” I asked Draven.

“We’ll deal with that issue when we’re forced to,” he said, clearly exasperated. “It’s not wise, but on the eve of war, I have to discount one tiny hamlet of insurrection to deal with a far greater one.”

“What matters is you’re safe,” Ged said. “You shouldn’t go down to Da’s workshop.”

“I need to,” I replied.

“Pippin—” Brom started to say.

“Then you’ll need guards.” Soren looked at Draven. “Good ones. I’d step in if I could get away from the cadets.”

“You’ll have to settle for handpicking them yourself,” Draven replied. “You won’t go anywhere, talk to anyone, without your guards present. Promise me that, Pippin?”

Males protect, Glimmer reminded me from the bed.

But from what danger?I asked her.You see things. Did you know about Dragon’s Rest and what Cynane and the other dragons had planned?

I see what I need to, she replied, and that was that.

Three days later,I was getting ready to work in the tannery.

We had moved beyond the creation of cogs because Roland had been tinkering around with a leather stamping machine and managed to create a die that cut metal rather than impressed a shape into the leather. We were popping out rough cogs faster than the ladies could sand them. Some of us used metal files to polish off burrs and the rest were starting to assemble them into gimbals. By the end of the day, my hands were covered in cuts and scrapes from working with the unforgiving metal.

I pulled a pair of gloves now in preparation for another day of work and went to the door of the suite.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked, but instead of a phalanx of guards, only one had reported for duty. “Flynn!”

Someone could’ve seen me fling myself at him, but I didn’t care. My arms went around his shoulders and I pulled his head down, my mouth needing his.

“Gods, Pippin…”

We were being stupid, so terribly stupid, but we couldn’t seem to stop. The sound of maids chattering as they walked up the hallway had him thrusting me back inside the suite, the door kicked close.

“Did you hear the Duke of Skane’s son is back?”

His eyebrows shot up as we heard the muffled sound of gossip.

“Oh, he’s a fine one, that one. I’m not sure if I’d have settled for the king if I was Her Highness,” another voice said.

Settled?Flynn mouthed the word.

“The queen must wish she was a queen of old, like Imara?—”

“Inara, you dolt,” an older woman interrupted.

“Whatever her bloody name was, I’d much preferred to be a queen back then. All those pretty riders, our queen needn’t have chosen one then. She’d have them all at her beck and call.”

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