Page 37 of The Dragon's Captured Heart
“What’s your plan?” Jude asked at last, relenting.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But now that I know the truth, I have to try. I’ll go talk to the guards. Read their reports, see if everything they say corroborates with that. Check into any other evidence. Follow up with everyone she had contact with, basically. All I know is that I can’t go on living my life now that I’m aware she was murdered in cold blood. I have to figure this out. Iwillfigure it out.”
“Then what?”
“Then it’s none of your damn business,” I growled. “Maybe try to rebuild my life after spending the past two years ostracized for something out of my control.”
Jude’s gaze flickered past me to Madison, his anger swiftly rekindled.
“At least you’re alive to do so,” he snapped, pointing a finger at my chest. “My daughter didn’t have that chance. Remember that.”
Then he was gone.
I stayed in the doorway, trying not to let his last words sink in too deep. That was what he’d wanted, after all. I had to be better than that.
My fingers touched the scale his daughter had placed on my chest. A memory of her I could never be without.
I will remember, don’t worry.
Behind me, Madison shuffled uncomfortably, waiting for me to shut the door.
My fingers pressed harder to the scale as if it would somehow give me answers. To all my problems.
I was trying to solve the murder of a woman I loved while fighting every part of me not to grow closer to another woman, lest I betray the first.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
Chapter Twenty
Madison
“There you are,” the feminine voice said from behind me. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I didn’t immediately turn around as I watched another dragon come swooping in for a landing on the palace roof. This one was a giant with orange and black scales, a particular combination I’d only seen once before on the sovereign.
Was this dragon related to her? Or were the scales just a random pattern? There was so much I still didn’t know about them. I needed to fix that because it looked like I would be staying a while. Whether I liked it or not.
But you’re starting to like it. Aren’t you?
Desperate to avoid facing that question, I looked behind me at the speaker, giving her an inviting smile. “Looking for me? Why? Did I do something wrong?”
Laura laughed, her blonde hair a brilliant golden color in the sunlight, shimmering easily as she shook. “No, not at all, I don’t think. Besides, I’m not in any sort of command around here, so I wouldn’t be after you even if you had.”
“Then why’d you want to find me?”
The woman shrugged, coming to stand next to me. We stood in silence, watching a massive dragon with scales the color of a deep jungle green come in for a landing. It was easily the biggest dragon I’d ever seen, and the man he shifted into didn’t disappoint.
I whistled softly in amazement at how much he towered over the guards by a head or more. “That’s a big one.”
“Indeed,” Laura agreed. “But they still move so easily through the air. It’s almost majestic.”
“Terrifying,” I corrected. “That’s why I come up here. To try to get used to them so seeing one in the wild doesn’t freak me out.”
“What do you mean?” Laura asked.
I looked at her, surprised by the genuine lack of understanding.
“You weren’t ever there, were you?”
