Even if his ire wasn’t directed only my way, I had no doubt who he addressed next. “If you ever touch my family again, I’ll end you, and I swear by Penrose and Nye both that you’ll wish it were Rhiannon here to swallow you whole.”
As they left, Bowen’s arm came around Hafgan’s shoulders. I stared at their backs, wondering if I’d ever see them again. Was it a self-destructive impulse, or foolish hope, that I wished I would?
As Tristram squeezed my shoulder, I came back to myself. He touched my chin and tilted my head to inspect my neck. “Are you all right?”
When I nodded, he dropped his hand. His brow remained furrowed, his frown soft and pitying.
I couldn’t stand looking at him.
“Would you see to Aderyn’s—his?—”
“His hoard?” Tris asked.
Swallowing roughly, I nodded.
“Of course,” he said.
“Whatever they need,” I whispered. “Just... give them whatever they need.”
I pulled away, rubbing my neck as soon as I turned. It hurt, a little. It was bruised. But mostly, that ache was easier to bear than the one in my heart.
14
ADERYN
The feathers started arriving in great chests before I woke the next morning.
Not gifts, or some sort of misguided apology.
No, all the feathers Roland had ever collected for me, packed neatly into chests between layers of silk, safe and ready to leave.
And we were leaving, Hafgan said.
He and Bowen were packing our bags, and he said we’d simply go to Summer Clan lands early. He’d paused in the middle of the announcement, when Bowen had said that Maddox and Gillian would be happy to have us arrive early this year, and I’d seen the moment they had both remembered Gillian was Roland’s aunt.
He’d shrugged it off, though, nodded decisively, and gone to repacking trunks that had only just been unpacked.
Rhiannon came and sat down next to me, watching as Hafgan bustled back and forth through the suite of rooms, so very tense, every motion just a little more forceful than it needed to be.
“What’s going on? Why do we have to leave? I like wintering in the palace and not stinky old caves.” Her little nose scrunchedup at the thought of caves, but it was melodramatic. We lived in a cave on the mountain, sure, but it wasn’t some filthy hovel. The walls were smooth, the floor covered with rugs, and everyone had a bed there.
The biggest problem was that the rock walls let the cold right in, so it was freezing unless you kept a fire going all the time.
“Roland is—” I whispered, my voice so rough that I had to clear my throat to continue. “There’s a problem.”
“Did you get in a fight with him?” She leaned on my shoulder, looking up at me with her huge innocent green eyes. How could I tell her anything terrible? She was an innocent, a child, and she deserved to never have to think about something as awful as humans drinking dragon blood.
Bowen took the moment to come sit next to us. As he lowered himself onto the sofa, he rolled up one of his sleeves to bare a huge white scar on his left arm. “You remember the story of Vidar, little one,” he told her rather than asked.
Because of course the girls knew some of what had happened. They’d been born in the aftermath, after all, and we’d all been born already orphaned because of Vidar’s monstrousness.
She nodded, running her fingers along the smooth silvery scar. “This is from when he captured you?”
“It is,” he agreed. “There’s another on my side. That’s the one they gave me when they took my blood.”
Again, she made her little disgusted face. “Why would they do that?”
He sighed, considering for a moment, then wrapped his bared arm around her shoulders. “Because dragon’s blood is powerful. Sometimes, if a human isn’t magical and they want to be, they’ll drink it.” He kept his voice low, soothing, and kept an eye on me, as though gauging my reaction.
