With anyone else, I’d have left it at that, but I owed Bet better. I could never fully explain how it felt to watch the people I loved fight for their lives, nor how it’d nearly gutted me to see Aderyn, smallish and abused and so green even then, on the middle of a battlefield.
Heaving a sigh, I leaned back. “The clans are not allies I would risk—would use. That was the crux of all the conflict between us. The dragons used us.” Those were the stories—dragons had taken Llangard from elves, had enslaved humans, and been defeated by a hero turned monster in the form of Athelstan, my ancestor. “And we cast them out. Defeated them. And—” I swallowed roughly. “And I won’t have it. We will work together, not with opposite interests or to use each other, because we depend on each other.”
I’d never have magic of my own, but magic as a whole had almost died in Llangard, thanks to the wedge driven between our people.
As I forced myself to hold Bet’s eye, his gaze softened. His hand fell on my shoulder, light and warm. “You may not be able to avoid war forever. If not Destovia, then someone else. Somewhere else. Sometime else. It’s the way of the world, Roland.”
A life lesson, to be sure. I even thought Rhys would agree, not out of some violent impulse of his own, but because he’d read and read and read and knew the ways that people failed.
I couldn’t fail.
“We can afford to avoid it now.”
His lips pressed tight together, a thin line disappearing as he inhaled. “So long as you’re careful not to compromise our safety in the name of impossible peace.”
I shook my head. No way would I accept that idea.
Only decades ago, all the humans in Llangard would have said it was impossible to have peace with dragons. Now, we had it.
Why not dream bigger?
8
ADERYN
Bowen and I found Tris in his office, Bowen refusing to let me out of his sight after, as he put it, “such a difficult morning.”
So he accompanied me through the warren of the Spires, knocking hard on Tristram’s office door when we reached it. His knock was so strident, so confident, I envied him that.
I always tapped, barely making any noise, so concerned about not taking up more space than I had to.
“Enter,” Tristram said immediately, and so Bowen opened the door and marched us in.
Tris was... well, he was the humanest dragon I knew. Unlike me, who’d spent my first decade-and-then-some as a dragon, Tris had spent his first nearly three decades as only a human. It was almost impossible for me to imagine, that until Tris had been older than I was right then, he’d never once shifted forms.
If any dragon understood what Roland needed, it would be him. He was the one who’d taught Roland to be a good king, after all. He knew everything about what it meant to be human, and to rule Llangard.
He’d done it himself, sort of.
Bowen led me across the room to the front of Tris’s desk, and motioned me into one of the chairs, then he started pacing, which was... odd. Bowen was rarely the sort of dragon who let his emotions overcome him.
I squinted at him as he moved, hands clasped behind his back as he stalked back and forth, this mountain of a man, usually so calm, so staid.
He was acting on my behalf, I realized. He was expressing my concern. Acting on it, worried for me because I was worried.
My heart melted at the reminder of Bowen as... well, as the closest thing I had to a sire or matriarch. I had to blink away tears at the realization, rolling my lips between my teeth to keep from speaking.
“There was a man in the royal wing this morning,” Bowen began, and Tris pursed his lips.
“Master Aronin. I am sorry. Was he harassing you, Aderyn?”
Bowen spun to face him, holding up a finger. “He called him dragon.”
Tris blinked for a second, before his breath caught and he lifted his hand to cover his mouth. The room was silent, tense, filled with the strain and anger of the situation, even though not a single person present had any grudge against another.
Finally, Tris dropped his hand back to his desk and nodded. “It’s beginning to prove to be a problem, the... the Destovian envoys. They refuse to work with or even speak to dragons, regardless of how they’re reminded that we’re a part of Llangard. We didn’t have nearly as much trouble with the people of Llangard coming over to realize that dragons aren’t the monsters of legend.”
Bowen scowled, crossing his arms. “Then why are they still here?”
