“Anyway,” the head dracologist went on, “there’s nothing to do but send someone there and have them appoint a new dragon master from the trainers. There are two, so it won’t be a difficult job, but I haven’t got anyone. ..” His voice trailed off, and his eyes fastened on Valenna. She smiled. “No,” he said sharply. “I can’t spare you.”
“I’ll only be gone a few days,” Valenna pleaded. “Who else do you trust enough to do this for you?”
The dracologist peered around his pile of papers, wafting a few more onto the floor. “That’s the point. I trust you, Miss Castanaia, more than anyone, which is why I can’t spare you.”
“And if you send someone you don’t trust, and they appoint a trainer who isn’t fit for the job, what will the queen say?”
The dracologist waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll send Beamish. I can spare Beamish.”
“Beamish will go straight to the nearest tavern, get roaring drunk, and then appoint the first man he meets and come home. You’ll have to do all this paperwork again in a month.”
The master dracologist sighed. “Alright. No more than four days, do you understand? One day of travel, two days there, one day to return.”
“Yes, thank you, sir.” Valenna hesitated, then asked the question that had been nipping at her heels since she overheard the underkeepers in the aviary. “When the dragon master was eaten, were any of the trainers injured?”
“Trainers?” the head dracologist asked impatiently. “They can easily get new trainers, but the dragon master must be replaced as soon as possible, before the king of Sennaliath grows impatient. His emissary is here with the order, and I think you should see her.”
Sour anxiety curdled Valenna’s breakfast, and her mind whirled like a child dancing around a maypole.
She couldn’t see the woman from Sennalaith—she might recognize her and take word to her father. Valenna would be home before she had time to run, and she wasn’t ready because she didn’t know where Olivette was. She cursed herself for losing so much time swooning over a boy with broad shoulders and nice eyes. If she returned before she found Olivette, everything would be lost. And it would be the fault of Evander bloody Trevelyan.
“Oh, no time for that,” Valenna said. “I must leave at once.”
“She’s on her way,” the dracologist said, perplexed. “She can give you the details of the order.”
Fighting the urge to turn on her heel and run, Valenna cleared her throat and donned the voice she used when she didn’t have the patience for questions.“I will be leaving within the hour.”
The instant the carved wooden doors closed behind her, Valenna ran. She tore through the brick management house, out the front doors, and through the boxwood gardens, her feet kicking up pea-gravel in her frantic sprint, her dress flapping up and showing her stockings. She didn’t care.
Racing past iron cages, Valenna set a horse-sized fighter dragon and an armored club-tail dragon snarling and squalling. She burst into the lodging house and pounded up the stairs to her room, wrenched open her bureau, and pulled out her carpet bag.
She’d stuffed three impractical dresses into it when she realized she didn’t have any underclothes or stockings, and sheneeded to calm down and go about this in a sensible, organized manner.
Valenna sank onto the bed, and the quilted comforter poofed around her, coughing up feathers.
Yesterday, against her better judgment, she’d tried to recall the faint constellation of freckles on Evander’s cheeks and realized with a twinge of grief that she was forgetting what he looked like. But now, every detail of his face came to her with brilliant clarity. The amber in his green irises, the way his wavy chestnut hair brushed his eyebrows, his high cheekbones and square jaw, the grave set of his mouth, and the way his eyes twinkled when he wanted to smile and decided not to.And when he did smile, the way it lit up the whole world like a torch flaring in a darkened springhouse.
A burning sensation bubbled behind Valenna’s ribs, and she pressed her hand to her stomach. Since Evander left, she’d had trouble keeping her magic contained.
Think on retribution. Imagine your sister on the throne, your father shivering in a cold dungeon, wrapped in venomous thorns. Don’t think about Evander. It’ll only break your heart. Without you around to look after him, make him take his medicine, he’s probably dead anyway.
How pathetic was she, flopped on her bed like a schoolgirl, sick over a man she hadn’t seen in a year? A man who kissed her and then disappeared the next day. Who would do a thing like that? And why?
Valenna wondered if it was because she never said she loved him. Even as the doubt crossed her mind, her gaze fell on the little tin of wyvern bone powder she still kept beside her bed. That tin said ‘I love you’ louder than any grand words or passionate speeches.
Five minutes of self-indulgence was all she could afford. She wasn’t one to lie down and wait for life to happen; she was a woman of action.
So, she dragged herself off the bed, changed from her pretty dress into a sensible traveling suit—elderberry purple tweed pants and a waistcoat over a lavender lace blouse. She slipped her feet into low-heeled, lace-up leather ankle boots, pinned her wavy hair into a becoming but professional pile atop her head, and donned a pistachio-colored linen coat long enough to brush her calves.
By the time she was ready to leave, Valenna’s carpet bag was bloated, ready to burst. She refused to acknowledge that she was over-packing. If she was going to be the dracologist’s emissary, she must appear respectable. Evander Trevelyan’s presence didn’t factor because he was probably being digested by a massive lizard at that very moment.
A sharp knock at the door startled her, and she called irritably, “What?” as she struggled to close her bag.
Her landlord answered, “The woman from Sennalaith wants to speak to you before you go.”
Valenna ran to the door and wrenched it open. “Where is she?”
“Downstairs,” the landlord said, looking startled.
