A long, lonely kingship stretched out before me once he left, but Bet was right. I’d lied to Aderyn, and to endure alone was what I deserved.
12
ADERYN
Again, I found myself in Tristram’s office.
It was beginning to feel like a habit.
I also didn’t much care for the look Tristram was giving me, all soft and sympathetic, like something horrible had happened and he was the one who had to tell me. Except that right as I was about to stand up and insist on knowing what terrible fate had befallen Roland... he walked in, Bet trailing behind.
There he was, just... Roland. Tall and strong and sturdy as ever. He smelled slightly of blood, but I didn’t even see any wounds on him. He didn’t look injured at all.
He did look . . .
Well, I didn’t know what that expression was on his face.
The only time I’d ever seen him do anything like it was that moment, when we’d been children, and he’d escaped his cage next to mine and realized he couldn’t get me out with him. After he knew he couldn’t help me, but before he’d donned his kingly aura once again, in that moment when he’d found something awful he couldn’t fix.
Tris put a hand on my shoulder, pulling a chair up next to me and squeezing lightly. He tried to give me a bolstering look, but it only made things worse. What was going on?
Had the monster injured Roland so badly he couldn’t be healed? Was he dying?
Only Tristram’s hand kept me from flying out of my chair and throwing myself at him.
There were tears in his eyes when he looked up at me, and I almost did it anyway.
“Wait,” Tris told me. “Let him speak. Then you’ll want some time to think about it.”
Time to think? What in the name of Penrose did I want with time to think? I wanted to sit in Roland’s lap and tell him that whatever was wrong, I could fix it. I would fix it, no matter what.
Whatever it took from me, I would give it to him.
I would give him any piece of myself.
Roland took a moment, silent and pale, and when he started to speak, he wouldn’t look at me. “I’m one of them,” he said.
Bet sighed and shook his head, looking to Tris. “You explain. You’re not so determined to make him look like a monster.”
“But I am a?—”
“It happened before Nicolas kidnapped Roland,” Tris interrupted. His voice was strong and confident, the way Roland’s usually was. It was a skill Roland had learned from Tris, I supposed, speaking confidently. “Laurence had poisoned Roland with the same thing he’d used on King Reynold. He was dying.”
My breath caught in my chest, and I stared at Tristram, eyes wide. I knew how the story ended, knew that Roland was fine, but I’d had no idea about any of this. Roland had nearly died?
Tristram had killed Nicolas in Windy Pass, and I’d never thought much about that before, but suddenly, I was grateful for it.
“There was nothing we could do,” Tris said, his voice going soft, almost like Roland’s had been. Like... like he was ashamed of something.
Finally, Bet sighed. “He was going to die. I was on my way back with the cure, but they didn’t know that. And frankly, even if they had, he’d have died before I arrived if they hadn’t done something. Rhys knew that feeding a human dragon’s blood can sometimes help in situations like that. So they did it. And Roland survived long enough to get the cure. But... well, you know what comes next. The dragon’s blood is a problem.”
I gasped and rushed to Roland, horrified and remembering the monsters from the battle. Every man who’d consumed so much as a drop of blood had turned into a mindless beast. They had all died in?—
But wait. This story had begun before Roland and I had ever met, and the men had turned to monsters after.
So how was that possible?
“It’s something about the Cavendish line,” Tris said, seeming to read my mind. More likely, just understanding that the story didn’t entirely make sense. “Nicolas retained his mind even after turning gray and scaly.”
