Rivelin knelt beside me, the muscles tight around his eyes. Soot stained his tunic and cheek. “Daella. Are you hurt?”
“She’s fine, Riv,” Haldor said tiredly as he and Odel slowly approached. Odel’s wings were twitching so fast, I thought she might faint from the effort. “But I can’t say the same for Godfrey’s house.”
“That was Godfrey’s house?” I managed to choke out.
Viggo finally emerged from the safety of his steps to join us before the blaze. “Interesting, isn’t it? Godfrey got some votes in today’s trial and now he’s been targeted. It looked like I was about to be targeted, too. By Rivelin’s dragon. WhoobeyedDaella when she told him to stop. One might wonder why.”
Every single head turned my way.
31
DAELLA
Istood and faced the gathered enemies. Then I summoned my best smile despite my inward turmoil. It felt like donning an old, familiar set of fighting leathers I thought I’d packed away in a trunk, never to be worn again. For once, it did little to bring me comfort. It just feltwrong.
“That’s quite the theory you’ve come up with. It’s a shame it’s not founded in reality. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d love to finish my ale.” I collected the forgotten mug from the ground. Some of the ale had spilled during the dragon attack, but there was enough left for a few sips. And they were sorely needed. “Someone should probably do something about this fire. We don’t want it to spread.”
Haldor turned to Viggo and nodded gravely. “Have some of your sand?”
Viggo inched closer to the fire and pulled some Vatnor sand from a pouch he wore by his side. He tossed a few grains toward the inferno, whispering beneath his breath. Water gushed forward in magnificent, stormy wave, wild and far greater than anything I’d seen before. Interesting. I never would have expected a fire demon to have a stash of Vatnor sand.
I narrowed my eyes. He’d been quick to accuse me, too.
“You made an error in judgement, love,” Odel said, stepping up beside me as the flames died down. “Riv would never order one of the dragons to attack this place. You should have stuck with Gregor’s crimes. Might have gotten away with it then.”
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remain calm. “I didn’t do any of this. I know nothing of dragons, and I certainly don’t know how to use one in an attack.”
“You’re an orc,” Viggo said with a sneer. “Orcs werecreatedin dragonfire, and then your kind bonded with them. The original Draugr. If anyone was going to order them to target one of us, it’s you.”
I took a step back. “What?”
“Don’t pretend to be so surprised. Mabel told us everything about you,” said Viggo. Odel and Haldor nodded in agreement.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak, too astonished by what he’d said. By the time I’d been born, orcs had mostly died out from a disease that had swept through the world several hundred years earlier. Records of our past were hard to come by. Over time, knowledge of orcish history had been lost. My mother had told me many tales, but I’d never known how much was true and how much was myth.
Isveig had refused to speak with me about it. I’d often wondered if there were things he didn’t want me to know.
But dragons and orcs…it was too wild a story to accept.
Unless it wasn’t.
Rivelin came closer, but his hooded eyes still refused to meet mine. “What’s this about orcs and dragons?”
“It’s not true,” I insisted.
“Mabel has never lied about anything,” Viggo countered. “Orcs were forged in dragonfire, and they know how to control the beasts by bonding with them. Daella is behind all of this.”
Rivelin finally looked at me. His yellow eyes blazed with inner fire, boring through me with enough heat to scald my bones. I lifted my chin and refused to back down. I wouldn’t let them turn this on me. In fact, I had questions of my own.
“Funny, Gregor seems to think Rivelin is the one behind it all,” I said, hating every word of it. “He’s approached me twice now, trying to warn me. Now I see why.”
A muscle worked in Rivelin’s jaw. “And yet you told me you didn’t believe a thing that bastard said.”
“I didn’t.” I folded my arms. “But now that you’re trying to blame this on me, I’m starting to think he might have been telling the truth.”
Rivelin laughed bitterly, a sound so achingly different from these past few days. “Really, Daella? This is your move?”
“Almost all of your competition has been targeted withyour things. Your forge got destroyed, your hammers got stolen, then your swords did, too. That was your dragon who attacked, not mine. And now you’re trying to pin the blame on me. Of course this is my move.”
