Page 103 of Dragon Fight

“No, they don’t—”

She had more to say but Beatrice appeared beside the table, virtually shoving Nancy to one side. The maid's eyes went wide as the woman smiled down at each one of my men, forcing me to smother a growl, but Glimmer didn’t bother. She lifted her head from the bowl she was eating from and fixed Beatrice with a steely eye.

“You don’t want such heavy, stodgy fare,” Beatrice informed us with a sickly smile. “Try these. The pastries are lighter than air.”

She moved around the table expertly, setting a pastry on each side plate and pushing it in front of each man, in doing so, pushing aside the hearty fare that Nancy had provided, much to the other woman’s disgust.

They did look amazing. I knew skilled baking when I saw it, because Cook was a master of it. Whoever had made them heaped the centre of the light pastry with different kinds of stewed fruit, then created an intricate lattice work of pastry, complete with tiny little flowers, across each one.

“Would you like one?” she asked me once each man was served. Her eyes slid over me with insulting slowness, her smile taking on a cruel twist. “I know we ladies need to watch our figure but…” That smile widened. “You need something to soften yours, don’t you?” She held out a pastry to me like people used to hand over money for my pigs, with little interest or respect. Glimmer took a step forward, letting out a rumbly sound of warning. Brom went to say something but I slapped a hand down on his thigh, squeezing it under the table.

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” I said, taking it from her with a tight smile.

I was dismissed from her notice then, as she turned in a swirl of her skirts to move onto the next table.

“Well, someone must’ve put a lot of work into these,” I said.

That one is trying to usurp you, Glimmer snapped, watching Beatrice’s every move.She doesn’t like the favour you have earned with the other riders and wants it for herself.She glanced at me and stared quizzically.You didn’t ply them with food to achieve that.

“Trying to buy the favour of the corps,” Soren observed in a low rumble. “It won’t bloody work.” He nodded to me. “While many of them would take her for a tumble if she was amenable, it takes more than that to win the respect of fighting men.”

“Well, I’m not eating mine,” Flynn said, offering it to Glimmer, who just gagged theatrically at it.

“Nor I,” Ged said and looked up at Nancy. “Your food is the good stuff.”

“I feel bad for the women who obviously worked bloody hard to make them, though,” I said. “I’m sure it was someone’s family recipe, just not Beatrice’s. And it does smell lovely.”

But when I went to take a bite, Ged’s eyes widened and his hand snapped out, grabbing my wrist and yanking it down to slam it against the table.

“Ged, what the—?” Brom snapped, but Ged cut him off.

“The ring, Pippin!”

Glimmer’s head whipped around as I looked down at my wedding band, saw it was still on my finger and was about to shout back at him when he pointed to the other one I was wearing.

Marcus Lighthands was something, alright, but no one could accuse him of being stupid. When he’d tossed me the jade ring, I’d taken it and put it on my thumb. It was still a little loose, but it stayed there well enough. When I looked down at it, the dark murky green of the ring had changed to a bright red.

Beatrice had tried to kill me.

Time to become the queen you are, Pippin, Glimmer snarled inside my head, her fangs bared, her tail lashing, tipping cups of coffee over and sending cutlery flying. I heard people talking in hushed voices, other tables getting wind of what had happened, the muttering growing louder, but it was all background noise to the sound of my dragon rushing forward, hissing violently at Beatrice’s back.

A queen doesn’t tolerate another queen in her territory, she’d told me over and over and I heard those words as I got to my feet, hands going to the hilts of my daggers as I strode across the floor. All of the finely honed social instincts that I had learned at my mother’s knee screeched at me as I grabbed the countess’ wrist and jerked her around to face me.

That mask of sweetness cracked then, her brows jerking down, her eyes flashing with disdain, but I didn’t care.

“You tried to poison me?”

“What? Are you mad?”

Men perked up all around us, food left ignored for far more satisfying entertainment. They watched us with eyes that glittered, but that changed when I held up my hand.

“My ring is of nephrite jade and it changed colour when I held your pastry.”

“Nephrite…?”

Her eyes were wide open and guileless in that moment, flicking from me, to her basket, then to the room around her. With good reason because riders everywhere jumped to their feet, their own hands going to their weapons.

“Look at that ring. Red as blood, it is,” one said.

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