“Our feelings have nothing to do with you being a human, or dragon, or a thread woven into some bloody prophecy,” Tavias says. Sparks dance along his scales as if just the thought of that makes him furious. “It has everything to do with who you are. Who you make us be, when you are near.”
Tavias kisses my forehead and Hauck toys with my wrist. Their touch is healing. Warm. More than I deserve.
“Speaking of our new mate,” Hauck says, his attention on my shifting scales. “Since she is actually a dragon dame, she should be able to leave the trial ground’s wards. So maybe we should be getting the hell out of here.”
Out of the trial grounds. Away from the priests. It sounds divine.
“What about the priests? And the eggs I found?” I ask. “We can’t just leave everything. And if we go past the wards, we can’t come back. We have to do something now, while we are here.”
“Can I remind you that literally everyone and everything here is designed to kill you, turnip? The other competitors, the priests, hell—even the weather.” Hauck winces. “I’m not the military mastermind here, but you getting dead doesn’t seem like a step in the right direction toward freedom of dragonkind.”
“We have to expose the priests,” I say. “And for that we need proof, not just some allegations or my memories. If we leave, Salazar and Geoffrey will make it known that we forfeited the trials and use that to spark the very civil war we came here to try and avoid.”
“Kitterny is right,” Tavias says. Hauck looks like he is ready to punch the dragon general, but Tavias shakes his head grimly. “Leaving here won’t erase the target from her back. Our best chance to expose the order is from their stronghold.”
“She is a bleeding dragon dame.” Hauck throws his arms up. “The truth—”
“The truth won’t matter,” Cyril says grimly, his arms still around me. “Perception will. We won’t have Massa’eve’s attention long enough to even prove that Kitterny is a dragon. She was a child when she was bound. It will be decades before she has enough control and power to shift. Frankly, a tale that we’ve glued some scales onto a human in a desperate attempt to hide our shame at losing the trials is more believable than a tale claiming the revered priests are actually on a mission to exterminate dragonkind. We need proof. And we need to show it to a crowd.”
“Like the one that will gather to see who's survived the second trial,” I say.
Tavias nods. “For now, the priests have every reason to think they’ve won. We use that. And we use the week to gather evidence and discover just how deep the order’s claws go. So long as no one knows that Kit is still alive, much less a dragon, we have the upper hand.”
“Someone is coming.” Quinton hollers from beyond the shelter. “A pack.”
Within a heartbeat, the males have their swords but before they can even exit the shelter, a dragon crashes through our roof. And that quickly, our upper hand advantage is gone.
* * *
