“We are most certainly leaving.”
“I’ll have the feathers prepared for transport then, but I can’t exactly send you off with a flock of birds.”
Hafgan snorted.
“Unless you want—” I stammered. “I’m sure we could arrange it.”
His glare returned to me, sharp and hot. “Is that what you do? Arrange your traps and lie in wait to spring them? Your cage may not have bars, but it’s all the more insidious for it.”
The blood in my veins turned to ice. “What?”
Hafgan growled, low and surprisingly deep. He looked much like Aderyn—a bit more hale, a little stockier, but he’d been taken care of his whole life. Still, he was slight, for a dragon. He looked even more delicate than Rhiannon, and his usual disposition was so much softer than hers.
“I never meant to trap him,” I whispered.
“Oh? Then why is his hoard here? Why is this—” He looked at the walls around us, formed by Athelstan’s magic, once so uninviting to all dragons. At my request, Aunt Gillian had shaved off the sharp peaks to create space for dragons to land here. They lived in our court. I wasn’t Athelstan, or my father.
I’d tried so hard not to be.
“—the place where his smile comes easiest?” Hafgan hissed.
He hadn’t meant for me to answer, but I must’ve made some sound, because next thing I knew, Hafgan shoved against me. “Shut up!”
His hand clenched around my throat hard enough that after a few strangled gasps, the world tilted and blurred, but I didn’t try and shove him back.
“I trusted you,” he snarled, teeth bared as he pressed into me. “I trusted you with him because he loved you, and all the while?—”
“I know,” I rasped.
“Did you ever hurt him?”
I grimaced, not because of the pressure on my throat but because I couldn’t deny that I had. I’d left him in that cage once, and I’d let him close every day since I’d found him again, knowing all the while that one day, we’d be here.
As if he could see the thoughts warring in my eyes, Hafgan hissed. “Did you cut him? Drink from him?”
“No,” I insisted. “Never.”
Hafgan adjusted his hand. The pressure lessened, and I rushed to fill the space with useless explanations. “He never knew, I swear. I wanted him to?—”
“To what?” Hafgan snapped.
My thick whisper had nothing to do with my sore throat. “To be happy.”
At the same time, Hafgan shoved me back and let me go. He narrowed his eyes, turning half away. I disgusted him. “And now you’ve broken his heart.”
The disappointment in his tone, the heaviness of the words themselves, crashed into me. I slumped against the wall Hafgan had pressed me into.
Then, a clear, strident voice echoed in the hallway. “What’s going on here?” Tristram asked, a long gait carrying him down the hall.
Hafgan didn’t answer him, and I saw his jaw tick as he turned away from Tris too.
“Nothing,” I said, staring at Tris, willing him to let this one thing go.
“We’re leaving,” Hafgan snapped at Bowen.
Bowen was as ancient as the Mawrcraig Mountains, and his expression then was every bit as stony. I dropped my gaze to the floor and wrapped my arms around myself.
Hafgan paused, but did not turn to look at either me or Tristram.
