Page 56 of Earth Dragon
“No,” he said again, this time more slowly. “No, not failure. But you’re right… it was an escape. That fantasy was all about finding a secluded spot where no one would know me. No one. There would be no worry about anyone wanting to kill me because of my title or bloodline then. And I suppose to the young dragon who dreamed it up, death itself wouldn’t be so eager to come looking for me there. What could go wrong in a place like that?”
“Plenty of things,” Shannon offered.
“I’m sure,” he nodded, a small smile on. “You’re some kind of sorceress.”
She should take that smile, return it, but she felt a soft swell of bitterness with him for how quickly he had pushed her aside. And so, she kept her face serious as she said, “The earthmagic will find you if you’re honest with yourself. I just realized that you hadn’t been.”
“And you?” he asked. “Have you been honest with yourself?”
“No,” she said. “I have not.”
“What have you lied about to yourself?”
The way he was looking at her sent heat from her chest and into every limb. It was remarkable that he could do that to her without barely batting an eyelash.
“My father,” she said. “He’s not… a good man.”
“Have you told yourself that he is?”
“Yes.”
“What makes him bad then?”
“He’s bad because… of what he did…” She hesitated, but finally pushed the words out, finishing, “To my mother.”
Ewan frowned. “What did he do?”
Shannon began to gnaw on the inside of her cheek, willing her hearts not to race and her breath not to hitch.
There had been so much blood everywhere.
“He hit her,” she said.
And her mother had stumbled, hit her head.
And there had been so much blood.
Everywhere.
“She fell,” Shannon said. “She… died.”
“How?”
“There was a ledge. Low down, maybe knee-height. It was stone. Her head it… It made this sound like glass in a cloth bag getting smashed on a rock. It was… But he meant to do it,” she said, the tears spilling over, though her sobs were contained this time. “He knew. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted her dead.”
Then Ewan’s arms were around her, tight, pressing her to him. She grasped at his shirt, burying her face against his chest as she remembered.
“My mother said…”
She fumbled for the memory. For so long she hadn’t looked at it that now it seemed frail and colorless. There were only wispy images, like apparitions in mist. Her father’s arm swinging at her mother was the sharpest out of all of them. And that sound. The sound her mother’s head made as it connected with the ledge. Everything else was blurred and distant.
Then she heard her mother’s voice.
She said three words and those words got her killed.
“You are wrong.”
“She stood up to him,” Shannon said slowly, the tension within her slowly beginning to ease as the memory grew clearer. “She told him to stop what he was doing. She…”
