Page 5 of Enchanted Crown
“Afraid it will be in this form for a week though,” Amory said. “He is to heal in his human form and not shift for a while.”
I looked to Malachi, wondering how that must feel.
He walked toward me and patted me on the shoulder with his free hand. “Could be worse. Stuck in my shifted form after being stuck in it for so long would have been harder. Not horrible, all things considered.”
Like the fact that if they hadn’t defended themselves as swiftly, we could be holding another funeral. Thinking of Serkan on that pyre made my blood chill. I would not be smelling the death of any of the people I loved.
“I will let you all get caught up,” the queen’s mother said. “Seems there is much to tell.”
Two hours later,Esta was sleeping, her head on my thigh while I softly spoke with Malachi and Amory. Owen had left to head back to our rooms, and Dex still stood guard outside Esta’s door along with her guards.
I was fully filled in on all the details of the attack. Including the gruesome one of how Malachi shifted into his human form and allowed his arm to be broken in order to drive a dagger into a lion shifter who had entered into the dining room the normal way.
Malachi might be jovial in his demeanor, but I also didn’t want to face him as an enemy. He was likely as hot headed as Krew could get.
“There are never any leads,” Amory began. “We are trying to find a shadow.”
That had me thinking. There was only one person still alive which we had dealt with in all these moves. A land dragon in the holding cells, Obsidian, in the southernmost portion of Dra Skor. When was the last time that anyone had tried to reason with him?
“She has hardly slept since the attack,” Amory said quietly, stealing my train of thought. “Can you stay with her tonight?”
“If that is what she wants,” I answered. “I will not demand to stay.”
“Did you get what you needed from Wylan?” Amory asked sweetly. Far too sweetly. She was fishing for information and we both knew it.
“I got exactly what I needed,” I responded intentionally vague.
She opened her mouth then closed it before looking to Malachi for a brief moment. I wondered if his injury had caused the two of them to get any closer. The constant push and pull between the two of them was enough to drive us all to madness.
“I would tell you more, but I’d rather it be a surprise in the next advisor meeting.”
Malachi gave me a smirk. “You do have a flair for the dramatic. Particularly in the war room.”
“I don’t want any of you to know in advance what I will be presenting because I would like for there to be honest reactions for John to watch.” Specifically, I wanted him to watch Esta’s family. I had already requested Reyald Mallick be in attendance.
Amory nodded as if she understood entirely.
Malachi leaned back and took a sip of his bourbon. “You aren’t going to be making any grand gestures, are you? Esta has had a hellof a week and I am not sure she would be in the headspace to publicly decide anything.”
So he thought I would be fool enough to propose in front of the advisors? “Hell no. Not in the way you are thinking. A grand gesture of sorts is in order, but it is not at this juncture a proposal. Nor would I care to do so in front of all the advisors. Not really my style.”
“Well, aren’t you a jack of all trades?” Malachi joked.
I shot him a grin. “I am, if nothing else, a diplomat, am I not?”
Amory shifted her feet before saying, “Before said advisor meeting, it might be helpful for you to know as our most trusted diplomat that there are theories the shifter found impaled after the attack did so himself, but we have reason to believe he did not.”
So he escaped and someone else killed him? “Why?” Why would anyone who knew that shifter immediately kill him rather than question him? When he was the only lead?
“My gut tells me whoever they were working for didn’t like having any loose ends,” Malachi explained. “And Conan was a large, winged wolf shifter. So it’s not like it was a small animal to force onto the tree trunk.”
“So we are dealing with a large enough shifter to have caused it?”
None of us had to voice it, but we were all thinking it. Dragons. A dragon with a personal vendetta.
I could think of only one, but it couldn’t have been him.
CHAPTER 3
