“Oh, Mummy thinks so highly of you, doesn’t she?” Bitter poison laces the words, insidious and dangerous.
“It is my honor to serve the goddess,” I answer.
“Honor be damned. We all know what this is about for you. Don’t think you’re the only one with something to prove.”
I don’t answer. I stand firm, forcing my mind to be nothing more than a steel vault of resolve. I feel her frustration, prodding at me with insistent claws. Then, suddenly, an image appears—so vivid, I could almost swear I see her fire-limned form walking toward me down the tunnel. It’s nothing more than a vision in my head. But it feels real.
She appears clad in her red warrior’s uniform, complete with the black breastplate emblazoned with the same rampant dragonwhich is burned on my chest. Her footsteps are like a cat’s—soft, silent—and her body moves with sinuous grace. Bounteous jet hair tumbles about her shoulders, and her golden skin glints with flecks of scale just visible around the cheekbones, the wrists, the jaw. But it is her eyes which truly give her away. Those strange, burning, golden orbs. The same eyes as her mother.
The same eyes as Princess Roselle Pandracor.
The image comes to a stop before me, fists planted on outthrust hips. She smiles languidly, looking me up and down. “You’ve gone soft, Valtar.”
I should be thankful. Nyxia is dragon spawn, but she was born too human, without enough fire in her blood to manifest. She cannot wield hellfire, and as such, she is not as strong as a dracori. But she can still get in the minds of all dracori, can still manipulate them to her will. This makes her useful to Mhoryga. Until such a time as the Dragon Queen decides to devour her heart.
But as she cannot manifest, as she cannot access her full dragon nature, Nyxia does not possess her mother’s power to root out every secret thought in the minds of her slaves. There are parts of myself that I can keep hidden from her, so long as I maintain control of my emotions.
“I will have the heart in four days’ time,” I say firmly. “And I will meet you in the agreed-upon place a week from today.”
She pouts prettily. It’s a hideous reflection of the princess, so similar and yet so warped with cruelty. “I don’t like to wait a week. I’m getting bored out here.” She smiles then and tips an eyebrow. “Maybe I’ll find myself a nice village to burn, some townsfolk to terrorize.”
“If you do that, word will surely get back to Stromin Palace. You will materially damage my chances of success.”
“You’re such a spoilsport.”
“I’m not here for the sport.”
“No, just the spoils, am I right?” She lifts her head, looking at me down the length of her nose. “You’re hiding something.”
I offer no response.
Another smile twists her lips, and her eyes flash. “Tell me, Val-Val…is my sister as pretty as me?”
“Prettier.”
Her smile freezes. For a moment, she stands there, staring at me, her image still sharp and vivid. Then, in a burst of heat, she lashes out, grasping me by the forehead. Pain explodes through my awareness once again, dropping me to my knees.
When I come to at last—when the pain finally dulls—the vision is gone. Her link to my mind is, momentarily at least, broken.
I exhale a long sigh, then drag in a breath of the fresh air coming in through the mouth of the tunnel. Gathering my feet, I rise, stagger a little, put out a hand to the rocky wall, and stand, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Waiting for the last echoes of pain to recede.
Then I step back into the pulley lift, slam the door, and begin the long descent.
16
Rosie
“I do fear, Princess Roselle, that you are not applying yourself to your studies with the seriousness required for true learning.”
I smother yet another yawn behind my open book, crouching a little as though the thick cover might shield me from Master Gormon’s disappointed stare. The boning in my corset resists, struggling valiantly to keep my posture upright. It’s no use; I’m simply not meant for hours of bookish endeavors.
My mother—or at least, the woman I believed to be my mother—couldn’t read and saw no reason why I should be taxed with the learning of letters when she herself had managed admirably through life without them. Later, after Mistress Iliyani took me in, the old half elf made a valiant effort to transform me into a scholar. I can generally manage to read out a written script for a healing brew. My proudest moment was deciphering the nearly illegible scrawl of Master Kobero, the physician from the next town over, when he sent a rush order for a tincture of silverbellum during an outbreak of green fever. Mistress Iliyani was fromhome at the time, leaving me to fend for myself. Though Master Kobero’ss’s all looked likef’s, and he refused to use any vowel other than a much-abused lettere, I’d triumphed in the end and successfully managed to decipher the scrawledfelverebeleme.The proper remedy was delivered just in time to save old Granny Wardswold from a viridescent end.
But that was relatively simple work compared to the slog of philosophy, natural science, magic, lore, divinity, and history which Master Gormon has determined to cram down my throat.
“Make her a true Princess of Belanor,” King Alderin had said when he delivered me into Master Gormon’s clutches the morning after my arrival in Stromin Palace. That was a week ago. Philippa had not yet managed to tame my wild snarl of curls, and I must have looked a madwoman to the poor, bespectacled tutor. But he had taken to fulfilling his king’s will as though the gods themselves had appointed him a divine task.
All that to say…I am exhausted.
