Page 47 of A Matter of Destiny

Rayne’s eyes widen. I shrug, then turn toward the mountain. We’ve followed the little stream marked on my father’s map, and now we just need to reach the rock outcropping that looks like a claw. Rayne spotted it about an hour ago, while the sun was setting the sky afire as it sank behind us. I set my eyes on the lump of rock, push the heavy cloak Elyon gave me back over my pack, and force my legs to climb.

“You remember the night we met?” I ask Rayne.

Her cheeks turn even darker. I’m glad there’s still enough light in the sky to show it.

“Of course,” she replies, almost under her breath.

“Remember what I told you about hatching prophecies?”

She frowns. “I think so. That every dragon is given a prophecy at birth, or, uh, hatching?”

“Exactly,” I say, trying to keep my mind from tumbling back to that elven pub, to the taste of frost wine and the way candlelight had played across Rayne’s full lips and the swell of her chest. “And I told you about the worst hatching prophecy in the world?”

Rayne’s lips curl. “Right,” she replies. “Something about having sex with a queen?”

“You will serve a great queen,” I say, panting as my legs burn with the effort of hauling myself up a stupid mountain. “The problem is the verb.”

I pause to catch my breath, then speak the word in Draconic. It rises like a snarl from my lips.

“It means serve,” I explain. “Or, service. With a sexual connotation.”

“I remember,” Rayne says. The fading light in the sky plays across her lips as they curve into something that looks like the shadow of a smile.

Somehow, that hint of a smile makes me feel better. I’ve carried the weight of the world’s worst hatching prophecy for my entire life, dragging it like a chain wrapped around my leg, but somehow the curve of Rayne’s lips makes me feel like I’m in on the joke. Like I’m laughing alongside the rest of the world.

“That’s—” I pause, take a breath. “That’s my hatching prophecy.”

Rayne’s smile shatters. The line appears between her eyes, then vanishes as her mouth forms a round little pool.

“Oh,” she says, in a gasp. “Oh, kings. Is that why Wendolyn and you—”

Her voice fades as I nod.

“Like I told my father, Wendolyn will do anything to be queen,” I say.

Rayne looks like she’s been slapped. I turn away; this memory is hard enough without having to bear her pity as well. For a while, we drag ourselves up the mountain in silence as shadows swell up from the rocks around us, the scrape of our boots against the mountain’s flank the only sound between us. And then, almost without my willing it, the story slips out of my lips.

“I came home early one day,” I begin, in a voice that’s almost a whisper. “It was spring, and I thought I’d surprise her with flowers.”

Rayne says nothing. A stone slides down the mountain behind me, clattering in the darkness.

“She wasn’t alone,” I say. “And it— it wasn’t even the first time I’d caught her being intimate with another dragon. But it was the first time I stopped in the hallway long enough to overhear what she was saying.”

And of course, Wendolyn’s voice rises in my mind again, the honeyed tones of her tongue as sweet as ever despite the years that have rolled on between us.I’m doing everything I can to be the next queen, she’d said.I’m even fucking Doshir.

I swallow hard, then rub my knuckles over my chest. The words rolling through my mind are as clear as ever, but strangely, they don’t burn quite as brightly as they once did. Perhaps it’s exhaustion. Perhaps it’s—

I pull my eyes off the mountainside beneath my feet and glance at Rayne. A knot of her hair has come loose from the tight bun she’d wrapped this morning, well before the sun rose, when she shook me awake and said the horses had rested long enough. Now it’s falling across her face, and I have to suppress the urge to brush it away. Because damn it all, the middle of a suicide mission is not a good time to have a talk about what’s happening between us, or what it might mean, or where it might lead.

Rayne turns toward me, and I glance away, a strange rush of heat pulsing through my skin that’s something like shame and something like arousal. I feel almost like I was watching her undress, which is ridiculous. All she’s doing is climbing a damned mountain, and besides, I’ve seen her undress. And it was glorious.

“I’m so sorry,” Rayne says, her voice a thick, breathless whisper. Then she snorts, and I glance back long enough to see her giving me a sort of smile. “That’s horrible. Really. It’s as bad as me busting into King Donovan’s bedchamber on his wedding night.”

I start to smile, then stop.

“Well,” I say, “yes. But I didn’t burst into the bedchamber.”

Rayne stops climbing. Her foot skids to a stop, and she braces herself against a boulder. “You didn’t?” she asks.

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