“I’m fine,” he said, voice rough.
“He said Ian was with your mother. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”
Fox didn’t look at her. “You know a side of Ian I might never know. But a king’s man doesn’t disobey the chief commander’s orders. If Harlow orders Ian to kill her?—”
“Youdid.”
Fox stopped and looked at her.
Her eyes were fierce, her lips a thin line.
“I did what?”
“You disobeyed his orders,” she said, her voice stern, more confident. “You went against what he said and changed. And Ian’s already on our side. He’s been working with the resistance since before me.”
“And if he doesn’t have a choice? If Harlow doesn’t let him decide?”
“We’re going to get them out. Your mother and my father. Right around the time I tear Harlow’s eyes out and shove them down his throat until he chokes.”
Fox looked at her, face softening. “I’m glad I’m not on your bad side anymore.”
“Don’t speak too soon,” she said, gently nudging his shoulder.
“Will we free Eha, too?”Chalia asked, her head coming around to rest at Sofia’s side.“While you’re feeding the evil man his own eyeballs?”
“Yes,” Sofia said without thinking.
Fox’s smile faded, and he looked ahead, eyes lost in thought. “We need to figure out how he’s controlling them,” he said. “How we can free them.”
“You were working with him. Is there anything you can remember?”
“That’s the problem,” he said. “Last time I was with him, the idea seemed impossible. I didn’t worry about him finding some secret because I didn’t think there was a secret to hide. He was insistent thatyou were controlling the dragons somehow, and I knew that wasn’t true.”
“So, he found an answer to a question you didn’t even think existed.”
“I thought he was being paranoid.”
“But he wasn’t,” Sofia said grimly. “Chalia, any ideas?”
“I’ve never heard anything about humans controlling us. I can’t imagine if that information existed, we would have allowed it to be written down, or even known to the humans to begin with.”
“No, I don’t imagine the dragons would have loved that information floating around.”
“Bruta would have known,”Chalia said, almost wistfully.
“Bruta?” Sofia had only met a handful of the dragons over their time here, and she didn’t think Bruta was one of them.
“She was an elder—a leader of our people. But she only speaks with Quelia now.”
Sofia didn’t need to ask what that meant. She placed a warm hand on Chalia’s nose, as if she might comfort the god.
Chalia spent the rest of the funeral talking about the times she’d spoken with Bruta and the stories she’d tell of the time before the kings and the wars that went on between the tribes. It included parts of her history that Sofia didn’t even know. She knew the tribes were never peaceful, even before the first king took over the kingdom, but hearing about some of the atrocities, she was beginning to think that humans were just evil by nature.
“Fighting and war are not necessarily evil,” Fox said, continuing when she gave him a deep frown. “Bad, yes, but not evil. They were fighting for resources and land. For keeping their people alive. We don’t consider the jaguar evil for killing to feed itself. It’s different from fighting and killing for the sake of power and control.”
“Maybe,” Sofia said. He wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t sure the difference was so clear cut.
When the pyre burned down at last and they’d finished their meal, Micael took a small bowl, scooping out the dirt from the edge of thegrave, before making the customary slash across his chest and passing it on.
