My chest trembled slightly, and I began backing toward the wide central aisle of the lair that led back outside. The dragon turned a quick circle, the breeze from her wings rustling the loose hairs that had fallen from my hasty braid. I’d never seen the ancient dragon ruffled or bothered about anything. In the month I’d worked here, only the males had shown their tempers, snapping at me or leaping away in annoyance if I tried to clean their stalls when they were in them. I’d learned to wait until they moved outside before cleaning their sleeping quarters. But not Mirantha. She was always calm, like she was too wise to bother being ruffled by the petty disturbances that riled the younger dragons.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s just me.” My back brushed the cool stone wall, and for a moment, I waited to see if she would calm down. But her attention remained fixed on the sky above, andshe continued her agitated circling, claws clicking on the floor, tail, as large as a ship’s mast, waving about.
Without warning, she leaped into the air, her massive wings spreading in a breath, her launch knocking me back into the wall. She lifted to the top of the wall, where she perched, head twisting to watch as something crashed to the ground outside the lair. I hurried from the stall to the bone-chilling sound of dragons snarling. I’d heard cats fight in alleyways, but this sound was much, much worse.
But another sound slowed my steps.
Beneath the dragon’s growls and Mirantha’s thunderous wingbeats, I heard a man moaning. I hesitated.
Growls sounded, filling my ears and chest with reverberating thunder.
Run.
But then I heard it again. A man’s groan.
Someone was out there.
Whirling on the spot, I sprinted toward the sound of dragons fighting.
CHAPTER 2
As I rounded the corner at full speed, my skirt and petticoats bunched in my hands, I collided so hard with a man that I fell straight back, clacking my elbow on the stone floor.
Dazed, I rose to a seated position, cradling my elbow. My eyes traveled up the man’s legs, to his bloodstained white shirt, to his mop of disheveled blond hair.Blazing sun above.It was the duke’s younger son, but I’d never seen him up close. Only from a distance as I’d dumped dung into the train as he’d waltzed from the lair to his family’s castle perched a little higher on the hill. This close, his sky-blue eyes, so bright they were almost luminous, rooted me to the floor like I was a moth on a pin.
My gaze dropped back to the blood. “Are you all?—”
The sound of snarling dragons stole my attention.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he snapped, stepping around me, away from the dragons. Red seeped into his white shirt beneath his suspenders.
I got to my feet, my elbow throbbing but still able to bend and straighten. He darted deeper into the lair, into his personal tackroom, and emerged with a long lance. The killing lance, tipped with steel to pierce dragon scales.
He stormed past me without a word.
“What can I do to help?” I asked, following.
“Leave.”
A scoff escaped my lips. Like I could leave. The duke was not known for his generosity or understanding, and if anything happened to his prized Mirantha while I was on duty, it would somehow be my fault. And now that the duke’s son had seen me, I couldn’t deny my presence here today.
Heart beating madly, I followed Rushland Covington. Second son of the duke. Not destined to inherit but destined for glory nonetheless, according to the papers. Golden boy of the night races. Heartbreaker. Troublemaker.
A few quick steps brought us to the courtyard, where Azeron, the duke’s son’s deep blue dragon, crouched on the ground, neck flat against the stones as a black dragon flecked with gold on his scales hovered in the air above him, talons out. Deep red spread on the courtyard’s pavers beneath Azeron.
“He’s injured!”
“Saints, you're clever,” snapped Covington, tossing me a fierce scowl.
Mirantha, perched on the top of the nearest wall, omitted a high-pitched screech as she watched the blue dragon, one of her many offspring, bleeding onto the stones below.
Covington lifted the lance over his shoulder, tip pointed at the black dragon. “Now get out of here.”
“Wait!”
Covington’s arm tensed. Then he bent his knees and hurled the lance with a shout.
The lance sailed beneath the black dragon and clattered to the stones. Covington curled forward, one arm cupped against his bleeding side.
