Page 115 of Trials of Dusk and Dreams
“Knight Commander.” The Earl guides me to a comfortable settee in a drawing room facing the same cliffs our guest room overlooks. I scan around and recognize the same impotent walls. He has also chosen chambers far away from the resonance network.
“I prefer to stand,” I reply. This meeting needs to be over quickly.
I have places to be, an impertinent Shadow to . . . sleep beside. The Earl’s jaw twitches, but he sits.
“Very well. I appreciate your time. I know it is precious.”
“It is.”
“I’ll make this quick. Robin Goodfellow has?—”
I hold up my hand, cutting him off. “Spare me the sob story. I am well aware of the rules he breaks and continues to abuse. As I have mentioned, I do not intend for him to retain custody of your dragon.”
“Yet you voted him into the role.”
Finally, he confronts me directly about it. I was beginning to think of him as spineless.
“Come now,” I drawl. “Someone as intelligent as you can understand why I did this.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “You also suspect the Hunt is feeding on him.”
“I’m surprised the Baleful Hunt hasn’t revealed this truth to Puck himself.”
“The Baleful Hunt is a particularly . . . willful dragon.”
“Aren’t they all?”
He winces. “But this one has a tendency to, how shall I put this delicately . . . he has a habitual obsession with breaking free.”
“But then the rightful custodians will swoop in and reclaim him.” I smile flatly. “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
He bristles at my tone. “I am not asking you to do anything. That’s not what I was insinuating before you made your assumption. Our expedition was foiled. Tomorrow’s informal meeting with the Shining Host will no doubt end similarly.”
Assumption?An uncomfortable feeling tightens my chest. I loathe not being able to delve into his head myself. The torment of remembering the skills I am missing is unbearable. If I had access to his mind, I would have anticipated his train of thought. Instead, I am wrong.
It is irritating yet also refreshing.
Before this, before Willow, we lived in a numbing vacuum of the ordinary. Even though I am eager to reunite our hive and claim our queen, I cannot escape the niggling feeling of being alive again. And it has been a very long time since that happened. Any time my fingers brushed her velvety skin while I washed her, sparks skipped into me.
Blushing.For Nicenevin’s sake.Since when do I blush?
“What do you want of me, then?” I ask, fingers twitching to return to Willow.
“Information.” He sits back with intelligent eyes and drinks from his stone goblet. “When the Folk woke from our long slumber, we found this world remarkably changed. But it is starting to dawn on some of us that—” He takes another sip as if to check himself before continuing—to check me, rather. “Have you noticed that none of the original dragon-bonded are present? The ones who entered the slumber bonded?”
Titania crafted a version of reality that suited her. If the original Shining Host were alive, they would know their truepurpose—and their dragons’ purpose—is not to guard the gates of Avorlorna against Nocturna but to guard them against us, Sluagh, and our Wild Hunt. We were Oberon’s greatest weapon before Titania bartered with the gods to create dragons strong enough to contain us. They couldn’t. Not without the help of the Keepers of the Cauldron and their enchantment binding us to slaver queens.
“Titania said they perished during slumber,” I reply.
“And you believe her?”
“Of course not.”
“And this war . . . Do you believe it is because Nocturna tries to steal our resources?”
“Again, no. But you already knew that.” What does he believe?
“Yes, I knew that,” he admits, gesturing to the Guardian teardrop beneath my eye. “Just as I know, your mark is not something neither the Folk nor the mortals have seen before. They have also never seen one like your Shadow—a mortal with fae ears and . . . interesting biology.” A void opens within me. Is he threatening our queen? “Which leads me to believe you and the Knights of the Queen’s Hive are the only members of our kind—apart from Titania—who know the truth about what happened to the original dragon-bonded.”
