Page 41 of Dragon Fight

“Everyone is but for Ada,” Draven announced. “Charles, if you wish to return to your estate, you have my permission, but you’ll need to do so without your wife.”

“I’ll be applying for a divorce post-haste,” he said with a bitter twist to his mouth. “I was able to do my duty and marry the woman my father chose, despite the fact her heart belonged to another. But to be wed to a murderess?” He shook his head sharply. “She will not become Lady Emberly through me.”

“Then return to your lands and put it about that the two of you have had a falling out,” Draven advised. “You could even say you caught her in flagrante with the stable lad she enticed to perform some of her dirty work. That should stifle any questions about their whereabouts.”

Charles nodded gratefully at that.

“But where will Ada be, in reality?”

Bernard asked the question, but he knew. Each noble house had a cellar, a basement built into the foundations of their estates, but that dark space had multiple purposes beyond storing root vegetables and good wine. If required, a lord or lady could take someone into custody until the Royal Riders arrived. Draven met Lord Emberly's gaze unwaveringly, and slowly the lord nodded in understanding. Then he walked over to the bedroom door, waiting until Kay had ushered Charles and the children out before opening it.

“Draven!”

The passionate way Ada gasped the prince’s name, completely without honorifics, made it clear who she’d been holding a torch for. Even though her hands were bound behind her back, she rushed towards Draven.

But he put out a hand to stop her from getting any closer.

“I did this for you, darling.” Her words came out in a great rush. “Your mother made me see what was possible. While I know you must marry Beatrice…”

Beatrice? I remembered the girl at the ball monopolising Draven’s time, her catlike eyes boring into mine when I’d dared to approach him.

“… we could still be together. Once the doors were closed and all was done for the day we could—”

“The only thing that will be happening is that you’ll be spending your time in a cell in the bowels of this house,” Draven replied in a clipped tone. Ada jerked back as if slapped. “You were to become Lady Emberly but now you’ll become the estate’s prisoner.”

“You…”

For once, the woman’s self-assurance seemed to fail her. She frowned as she searched his face, then Brom’s, as though waiting for absolution to come and her eyes widened with a gasp when it didn’t. Then, when she couldn’t get what she wanted from either man, her focus shifted to me.

I don’t know if anyone had ever looked at me so closely. Her eyes seemed to take me apart, dissect me into small pieces, but she still didn’t find what she was looking for.

“It’s true then.” Her eyes jerked back to meet the prince’s. “You… This girl… You—”

“See that Ada is looked after, kept warm and well fed, but nothing else.” Draven’s voice cut through hers as he turned to speak to Brom’s father. “I can’t have her getting back to my mother. Do you understand?”

“Ada will be held without trial?” Bernard’s voice held all the surprise that might be expected. The right to a swift and just trial was something we Nevermerians held sacred.

“Just until…” Draven turned to me and some of the aspect of the prince by the lake was back, those blue eyes unguarded as he stared into mine. “There’s some things I need to do first, but as soon as is practical, I’ll send some riders to hear her case.”

He stepped away from Ada and she stumbled forward a step, all of the fight gone from her now.

“Lord Emberly, you know what’s coming? What my brother planned?”

“I do, Your Highness,” Brom’s father said with a sad nod. “I never thought I’d be one to say it, but damn your mother and damn the bloody Duke of Harlston. Between the pair of them, they’ll plunge us headfirst into civil war and then where will we be?” But he straightened up then. “So you’ll return to the keep?”

“Afterwards,” Draven assured him before turning to the rest of us. “I just have somewhere we need to stop first.”

“And where thehell are we off to now?” Ged asked as the six of us walked out to where our dragons awaited, bags slung over our shoulders. We’d been forced to change back into our leathers as Draven warned us the journey would be a cold one. “And is anyone at any point going to explain what the hell is going on?”

“We’re going to visit the wild dragons in the north,” Draven replied, shoving his bags into Darkspire’s saddlebags and then lifting the saddle to put on his dragon’s back. “Because my mother has it all wrong. Glimmer isn’t too small, nor is she defective.” He stared at the two of us, Glimmer having clawed her way up into my arms the moment I got close enough to her. “I think she’s a very special dragon indeed.”

26

“Well, I’ll be damned…” Ged murmured in my ear, as we landed on a massive flat expanse of rock that seemed to have been laid here for just this purpose.

It’d taken us two days to reach here. We’d been forced to spend the night at one of the prince’s estates in Cantlyn for fear we’d drop from the saddle from exhaustion. But by mid-morning we were in the air again, keeping on until we reached the Needletooth Mountains, named for the sharp, spiky formations of rocks that ran along the spine of each peak. We’d flown right into that daunting mass of stone, the entrance to the landing pad not apparent until we were almost on top of it. Perfect for a dragon hide-out.

As our dragons came to a stop we saw the scores of countless claw marks in the stone, great furrows created by others of their kind here, giving credence to Draven’s claim. Here be dragons. But as we slipped from the saddles, we noticed far more that differed about this place. Carved statues of stylised dragons stood either side of the landing pad, carved in the same style as those sculptures I’d seen in the ruins Flynn had taken me too, though these were carved on a scale not for a human eye but for a dragon’s. They towered above us, each of our beasts looking up to notice them as we walked forward. Through a gateway ahead, we could see a complex of buildings.

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