My hoard,Isanara said as she wove between the piles of treasure.
“Your hoard?” I nearly choked on the words.
If Garrick or Syleris had thoughts, I could not hear them over the roaring in my own ears. My entire body felt as if it were on fire. Maybe I had hit my head when I fell, too.
Isanara climbed to a spot atop the biggest pile of gold, circled around like a cat, and then lay down, resting her long snout on her two front feet, talons out.
I am a dragon. It is my duty to protect magical objects. Objects of great power,she preened.
“Great power.” The words came out of me hoarse because my throat was closing. The fire in my veins was not fire at all, but ice so cold that it burned every inch of me, inside and out.
There was no amount of counting or breathing that could get me through this. My knees went out from under me, but Syleris and Garrick were already there, bracing me on each side.
“What is it?” Garrick. That was Garrick’s voice.
“Talismans.” Syleris. Rough. Why was his voice rough?
A big, warm hand splayed across my back, my Lifebind supporting me. Gods, I loved him.
“The talisman is here?” Garrick again.
My back arched as pain more powerful than any I’d felt before surged through me.
“Not one,” I cried. Each breath was torture. I gasped for air that did not want to come. My lungs were too busy being ripped apart to function properly. I was being pulled in many directions at once. Too many.
Not one talisman.
“Four.”
I gasped again, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 48
KORYN
My circumstances had not changedthat much since my arrival in Balar Shan. I still sat cross-legged and almost naked on a hard floor. Tile or brick, they were both uncomfortable.
I was no longer alone. Isanara sat atop her hoard, muttering adolescent nonsense into my mind. Garrick rubbed circles on my back. Syleris lurked. Physically, on the threshold between the bedroom and Isanara’s dirty secret. And at the edges of my mind.
I was not scared anymore. But I was worried.
Maybe things were not quite the same.
Answers were laid out before me in a line. A porcelain salt cellar embossed with gold. Thankfully, empty of salt. A signet ring the size of a quail’s egg, but whose engraving was almost entirely worn away. A sapphire and jade comb with golden tines. And a dagger nearly identical to the one that Garrick and I had seen on display in the presence chamber more than a week before, with the strangely swirled metal blade.
I stared at the four objects. Four. Not one talisman. Four.
As I stared at them, my vision blurred. I’d only just managed to force my power back into submission. It was not like the training sessions Syleris had put me through, but without them,I knew I would have been in the fetal position on the floor, sobbing. Probably surrounded by ice.
My power was trying to protect me. The power in the talismans felt foreign, even though… it couldn’t be.
Garrick’s hand paused to massage the base of my neck. He could tell I was still struggling for control. Conscious I might be, but steady? Not even close.
I tried to look away from the talismans to give myself a moment of relief. The amount of treasure stuffed into the small room was remarkable. There were gold coins of every mint. Tiaras and crowns, though the diadem I’d wrested from Margeaux was conspicuously absent. So much jewelry that someone must have noticed… but if she took one item at a time, here or there, from every courtier…
This is what you’ve been doing all the hours you’re gone. Not foraging in the mountains or the forest.
Isanara blinked down at me from atop her hoard, citrine eyes glowing.I have been foraging in Balar Shan.
