Page 112 of Dragon Fight

He grinned at that, my blunt sarcasm seeming to put the two of us on even footing. I’d also just revealed some of what was going on in the keep. Damn.

“Is that what these stuffed shirts have in the works? Interesting. No, I’ve come here with news.”

“Of Lance and the others?” My hand fell away from my nose, but he just shrugged.

“The lads are fine. Jenkins is awake and taking food. They tried to cave the lad’s head in by the looks of it.” I choked on my breath then. “That’s the trouble with assigning complex tasks to minions. The sort of thick-headed lunk that would hurt a kid on the queen’s orders is also the kind that would happily… elaborate on those orders and beat the poor little bastard within an inch of his life.”

“So return him to us,” I said, everything else that had been worrying me pushed to one side. “Our healers can help him and we can protect him from the queen.”

“Like you did so well before?” The smile was gone, that green eye gone hard as an emerald as he stared at me. “No, those lads will stop with me until I can be sure they’ll stay safe. Because you lot don’t even know them, outside of whatever cadet bullshit bonding you’ve done. But me? I saw those boys grow up from squalling babies.”

He stepped closer then, but it wasn’t because he was drawn to me or because he wanted to strike out. His gaze hardened and drilled into mine, demanding my attention.

“Like something from a fairy-tale, wasn’t it? When those lads bonded with their dragons. They tell stories of that kind of thing enough down by the docklands for young lads like Lance, Jenkins, even Harley and Billy Boy…”

He smirked at that.

“You didn’t know the others’ names, did you? Those lads you feel belong here. Them that runs this place don’t either, I’ll wager. All commonborn lads they are, pulled in to serve His Majesty, to ride bloody beautiful creatures at his behest. Use them to enforce the law in the land and… his will. The will of anyone who climbs to the top of that rat heap they’ve got running in the palace.”

He stepped in close enough that I had to tilt my head back, forcing my hand to press the kerchief more to my nose.

“Lance’s dad is a fine swordsman. I’ve used him quite a few times, paid him pretty coin to keep a shipment safe or a street corner clear. Then, when his skill built, to infiltrate the homes of the fine lords that paid him for his blade. Before Lance bonded with his dragon, his dad thought his son would be one after him, take over the family business, so to speak. Billy Boy’s mother runs the soup kitchen for one of the poorhouses because his father did his back in, working too hard and long on the docks, hauling freight. His boss kicked him to one side like last night’s trash when Billy’s dad couldn’t work, not even a severance payment to tide him over. Jenkins—”

“They all have lives, left them behind to become riders. I understand,” I said. “And? We all left something behind to come here.”

“But it doesn’t stay in the past, does it?”

The tilt of Marcus’ head, the hypnotic nature of his gaze, and the way he inched forward, combined to have me drawing back, feeling cornered and ready to run again.

“The queen didn’t dare squirrel a grown man away. Not the Duke of bloody Skane’s son, when she has far more reason to want to torment him than any. Skane and Harlston have been caught in a deadlock for primacy for years. No, the queen sought victims, not hostages, ones she could do as she liked with and none would say nay to her. Except for me.”

“So what—?”

“I sent your lover boy running all along the docklands today,” Marcus told me, stopping a mere hand’s breadth away. “I had lads feeding this titbit and that, just enough to keep him scurrying.”

“But why—?”

“Because those lads will stay with me, right up until the point I can be assured of their safety with you lot. I’d steal their dragons away and put them with the boys if I dared.” My eyes widened. “But they are bloody difficult things to hide.” His lips quirked at the corner. “Not like people.”

“So what will it take for you to return the boys?” I asked, pushing aside all of my concerns, feeling like I was this close to bringing them back to us.

“The queen, dead. I don’t need another in her place; but her ten feet under the ground?” He nodded slowly. “I need that.”

“So kill her,” I said, feeling a sudden rush at that idea. “Gods, you have the methods and the means. You can—”

When he reached up and touched my mouth, it wasn’t like when my mates did the same. There was no heat, no desire in that eye of his. Well, at least not for me. A murderous impulse was what put a sparkle in his eye, and I mirrored that, because who amongst us didn’t wish for the queen’s bloody death? It would solve so many problems…

“Not me, lass. Regicide? I fair dream of it every night, then fall on those sweet things that keep to my bed when I wake, the pleasure of the dream making me harder than stone. But even Marcus Lighthands would have difficulties getting away with that crime.”

“You speak of yourself in the third person?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

He ignored that as he fished out a small pendant with a chip of polished dragonstone on it. “I worked out that these things are what keeps the fine men of the Royal Riders from finding me when I don’t want to be found, so I got chips for all of my men and women. But this ain’t enough to get me inside that palace, to slip in her window and then to her bed, to set the edge of my knife to that bitch’s neck. That dragon of hers, Zafira, would read my mind, alert the whole keep castle and the keep to my intent before I even scaled the walls.”

“What about poison?” I asked, remembering Beatrice’s attempt this morning.

“Tried that. They prepare every damn dish in bowls of nephrite jade, eat with cutlery that had stones inset into the handles. Seems like a lot of people want to kill the nobs in that castle.”

“And they’re a dab hand at poison themselves, it seems,” I replied. “The Countess Marchant tried to poison me herself. It was only your ring that saved me.”

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