“Please, child,” Alderin says, beckoning. “Come forward.”
Tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, I step farther into the room. I’m almost sure the sound of my heart beating in my throat is audible above the crackling fire. I approach that desk as one might approach a throne. Because Alderin, though he wears neither crown nor royal robes, is always a king. Kingship simply radiates from his being. It’s terribly unnerving.
Once I’ve drawn as close as I dare, I drop a curtsy. “You wished to see me, Your Majesty?” I murmur.
“Yes, yes.” Alderin steeples his fingers and looks at me long and hard from beneath his drawn brow. “That was a harrowing ordeal this evening,” he says at last. “How are you feeling?”
How am I…feeling? After staring into the ragged jaws of death only to escape it by inches? After watching a man determined to defend me torn to pieces, his guts spilled on the floor? After holding his hand while his spirit fled his broken body? How am Ifeeling?
“I’m well enough, Your Majesty.” My words are like blocks of lead.
The king studies me for a long moment. Then, rising, he comes out from behind the desk, moves across the room to a tall armoire. A clink of crystal, the sound of liquid pouring; he returns to the patch of firelight in which I stand and presses a goblet of wine into my hand. “Here,” he says. “Drink. It will do you good.”
I really don’t want to drink wine. Not after the night I’ve had. Not on an empty, knotted stomach. But one simply doesn’t refusethe High King. I lift the glass to my lips and sip. Sweetness bursts across my tongue, but it goes down like pure vinegar.
“There,” Alderin says, smiling that warm smile of his. “Is that not better?”
I twist my lips into an answering smile and nod.
He sips his own cup, regarding me the while. “I know this evening was difficult for you,” he says, his tone so warm and understanding, it’s difficult to resist. “But I hope, my dear, that you will come to understand the necessity of these trials.” His brow darkens. “Everything which stands between you and the Dracor Flame is so much more perilous than any of these little tests. If the champions cannot prove themselves worthy here, how can anyone trust they will prove worthy out there?”
Insofar as it goes, the king’s logic is sound. Only I know his entire argument is based on an utterly false premise.
He motions for me to take another sip. I obey automatically, wincing at the burn of alcohol sliding down my throat. I’ve scarcely swallowed my mouthful when he says, “What happened out there tonight, Roselle?”
“What?” I choke a little and cough into the back of my hand. Alderin watches me closely, waiting for the fit to pass. I blink, shake my head, and say, “I…Did you not…That is to say, I thought you observed it all.”
“I did.” He swirls the contents of his own cup. “I watched the champions as they performed, and I watched you as well. Even as I watched you two nights ago, when Joro had you in his clutches, and you were, for a moment, in mortal peril. I watched, and I saw the moment when something inside you ignited—when the heat of your ancestors awakened in your soul, and fire rose in your veins. I thought then that you would take the first vital step in your manifestation, summoning fire to your command. But it wasnot to be.” He takes another sip from his cup, licking his lips thoughtfully as he swallows. Then: “I had hoped tonight would be enough to awaken that fire at last.”
I stare at him, trying to make sense of his words. Is he truly saying that he deliberately put me in danger, hoping it would finally…what? Make a dragon out of me? Did Rune die tonight, not because he chose to participate in a trial, but because King Alderin required more of me than I could give? The wine in my gut churns with bile.
“Your Majesty,” I manage at last, my voice a rough whisper. “Your Majesty, I…I think you’ve got the wrong woman.”
He tilts an eyebrow. When I don’t continue at once, he urges softly, “Go on.”
I grit my teeth. How many times have I tried to tell him this? From the moment of my arrival, I’ve protested and pleaded all to no avail. But no one had died yet. This mistake had seemed like nothing more than a dark hilarity. Now it is swiftly becoming a tragedy from which none of us can escape.
“I’m not the Dragon Princess,” I say, squeezing my goblet hard even as it shakes and wine spills over my fingers. “I cannot be because…because I was burned. The night the dracori came to my home village.” I bite my lip, forcing down the sob in my throat. “My mother—Durona Harpwood—she carried me into our cottage and barred the door when the dracori came, but then they set fire to it. Flames ate up the walls into the thatch, and they were just outside, waiting to kill us the moment we emerged. So Mother…she pushed me up the chimney onto the roof. She couldn’t fit, she was too big. But I was just small enough, and I climbed out, and I slid down the far side and ran for the forest.”
The night comes back to me—all the horror, the screams, the flash of green hellfire. Then the swallowing darkness of Inamaer.
“My gown caught fire when I slid down the roof,” I say softly, and hold out my hand to show the scars. “See? It’s worse on my shoulder and arm. And all down my side as well. If I were a dragon, I should be immune to hellfire. But I’m not. I burned.”
I burned and should have died. They should have caught me, for the dracori were surrounding our cottage. When I landed and rolled on the ground, desperate to put out the fire, which ate away my garments and ate into my flesh, a tall, silent dracori rushed to claim me. But when I looked up into his face—when I met his black, terrible eyes gleaming with hellfire—something happened. He froze, even as his hands outstretched to lay hold of me.
Then he leaned in close and said,Run.
I did. I ran as hard as I could, ignoring the pain in my body, ignoring the horrible screams of my mother. All sense, all reason fled me, and I plunged into Inamaer Forest without a thought. It wasn’t for many years after that I stopped to think back on that strange moment. That I wondered why that man—that monster—let me go.
In retrospect, I’m not even certain he was a man. At the tender age of seven, anyone that much taller than me appeared to be an adult. But his voice was…young. Young and frightened, despite the great power he wielded.
I cannot think about that now, however. Not with Alderin’s eyes boring into me, not with the lives of the remaining champions depending on me finally convincing him of the terrible truth. I look up, meet his gaze, and say as firmly as I can, “So you see, I cannot be the Dragon Princess. I don’t know who the true Roselle Pandracor is…but she isn’t me.”
Alderin nods slowly. After what feels like an age, he turns from me, walks to his desk, sets his cup down. Then he picks up something from among the papers lying there, something I cannotsee. He contemplates it for some moments, his back to me. Then, very softly, he says, “Did I ever tell you how I knew Durona Harpwood?”
My heart stops at mention of my mother’s name. I shake my head, though he’s not looking at me to see it.
“She was my dearest friend. We trained together when we were young, for she was noble at heart and determined to be a knight, though it has never been the custom for young ladies to train in the ways of knighthood. She sought to prove herself, to best all the young men both in feats of arms and proof of valor. Why”—he laughs a little, shaking his head—“I would not be half the man I am today were it not for my sheer determination to keep up with that woman!”
