Page 48 of A Matter of Destiny

I turn away, run my hand through my hair, and try to smile like this is a joke. “I, uh,” I stammer. “I left.”

“You… left?” Rayne says, frowning at me.

I turn up toward the stars, find no help, and then glance back down across the valley and the narrow road we’ve just traveled. Somewhere in the darkness far behind us, the Knife’s Edge Mountains rise like sentries, protecting Cairncliff and the life I built for myself. For only myself.

Well, that life is gone now. I sigh and turn back to Rayne.

“I left,” I say, with a shrug. “I left the Iron Mountains that morning. I flew to Cairncliff. And I settled in with my father.”

Rayne shakes her head, then holds up a hand.

“Wait,” she says. “Are you saying you didn’t even confront Wendolyn? You found her with another man, and you just… left?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My smile feels like a mask.

“You didn’t even break up with her?” Rayne continues.

I swallow hard. “Uh, I mean, I think it was pretty clear our relationship was over—”

Rayne exhales in a huff. It sounds like an explosion in her mouth.

“So, just to get the story straight,” Rayne says, scowling at me. “As far as Wendolyn is concerned, you left the Iron Mountains with no warning, said nothing to her, and then never came back? With absolutely no explanation? Is that about right?”

I wince. “Well, I did send her a letter.”

It took me about six months and a dozen attempts, but yes, I had ultimately sent Wendolyn a short, painstakingly polite letter requesting a few items from our cave. Which she’d sent. With no return letter. At the time, I’d taken that as a sign of her utter disregard for me and my feelings, but now I’m starting to worry there might have been another explanation.

Had I been an asshole? I stand frozen on the mountainside, my insides churning under the weight of Rayne’s scowl. It had never occurred to me to wonder if I’d played a role in the messy disaster that was the implosion of my relationship with Wendolyn. Wendolyn was cheating on me that bright spring morning, yes, and it wasn’t even the first time. But then I had abandoned her, without even the benefit of an explanation.

I bring my hand to the back of my neck and squeeze, trying to dispel the hard knot under my skull that’s pulling my muscles tight. Damn it. This mission was insanity even before Rayne pointed out that Wendolyn might have good reason to be angry with me.

Rayne snorts again. Her hand rests on the hilt of her dagger, which doesn’t seem like a good sign.

“Is there anything else I should know before we try to sneak into this woman’s home?” she asks.

Shit. Yes, yes there is. The scrap of parchment I read in Varitan’s shop floats through my mind, the neat line of Rayne’s parentage scratched out in the Historian’s jagged claw writing. And at the bottom, almost like a postscript, written in my mother’s own neat letters, the name of Rayne’s sire. Rensivar.

No wonder he’d wanted Rayne as his champion. He’d stolen his own daughter, abducted her to a country where no one would recognize the changeling dragon, and then saddled her with a curse that left her trapped in her human body. He’d raised her to think Valgros was her entire world, and then he’d positioned himself as her savior. As someone who could give her the gift of a dragon’s form.

I swallow hard against the bile rising in the back of my throat.

“Yes,” I say. “There’s something else—”

A sharp, sudden squeak echoes over the scree field. I freeze. It’s the alarm cry of a pika, one of the little hay-gathering rodents that make the slopes of the Iron Mountains their . Fear traces a cold path up my spine, and then I hear it. The soft, slow beat of heavy wings.

I surge forward, grab Rayne’s arm, and tug her to her knees. Then I throw my cloak over both of us as we kneel on the stones, painfully exposed. The beat of wings echoes through the air, swirling dust and grit over my face. Another pika’s cry splits the night as the dragon rises from behind the ridge, its wings covering the sky.

My heart hammers like a great bell inside my skull, and fear pulls my muscles tight. The dragon’s neck stretches across the night sky; he’s so close I can see the dark outline of his spines against the stars. Starlight winks off claws as the dragon passes over us, and I don’t dare to breathe.

If he sees us, or smells us, or notices the horses, this is all over. Our stupid, misguided mission to sneak into the Iron Mountains ends here, because no one, not even a pair of humans, would be stupid enough to attempt to climb the Iron Mountains. The rush of wings sends another grit-filled gust of wind against the cloak I’m holding over our bodies, and I’m picturing the Council of the Iron Mountains surrounding me and snarling as they demand to know what in the Mothers’ many names I was doing trying to sneak up this flank of the mountain?

Beside me, Rayne exhales in a long, low sigh. I follow her gaze, almost against my will, and see the treetops stirring beneath the dragon’s massive wings. He’s curving toward the north, thank the Mothers, away from the glade where we left the horses. He’s leaving.

Slowly, I unwrap my fingers from the hem of the cloak I’d thrown over our bodies and try to tell my frantically hammering pulse that we survived. I come to my feet, feeling like I’ve just been smashed against the shore by a massive wave, and then offer my hand to Rayne. Her face looks very pale in the thin starlight.

“Was t-that Wendolyn?” she whispers.

I shake my head. Females don’t usually have spines on their neck, and besides, I recognized that silhouette.

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