“Good. It’s not impossible for a dragon to fly over the city and strike at someone, then depart before the gnomes can send their golems and launch their other magical defenses, but our kind have been wounded before when they’ve gone to Tranquility with violence in mind. I doubt Lysilria will try to find you in the city.
“I hope not. The war is over, and there’s a treaty. I haven’t done anything to go against it.”
Not that dragons hadn’t occasionally killed humans and other two-legged speciesbeforethe war. Further, the treaty was hardly a pact promising that they wouldn’t slay random people who vexed them. Regardless, Jildarin nodded with agreement.
“I believe this of you now. I do not think you are a threat to me—ormy kind.”
“Nope. And I’m not oozing allure at you to keep you from mating with other dragons.”
“Correct,” he said with another nod. “Further, you stood by me to verbally defend me to my mother.”
He smiled faintly and touched her cheek before stepping back, the tenderness of the gesture surprising her but also making her think again of intimacy.
Telling herself that he had no idea what a human woman found intimate, she pointed at the tunnel. They’d come for a reason, and they had best take care of business before any dragons returned.
“The human male departed while I battled my aunt. You did not notice him running down the knoll?” Jildarin pointed in the direction of the river. “Usually, you are observant.”
“Thanks, but I was busy watching your fight and worrying about your mother coming back to join in.” Rylana didn’t mention that they—he—had been somewhat mesmerizing and that it had been hard to look away. “It’s all right. I already spoke to him, and…” She looked back to where she’d dropped Vormalt’s journal. It lay there in the soggy leaf litter. “I got his diary.”
“A book where he records his innermost secrets?” Jildarin's tone suggested he was repeating verbatim how someone had once defined it for him. Dragons probably didn’t keep diaries.
“Something like that.” Rylana jogged over and picked up the book. “This has his blackmailing notes inside.”
“Blackmailing is a tactic used by villains.”
“Yeah, though he may think himself a righteous vigilante. A righteous vigilante who wants his family to prosper.” Rylana returned to the pyramid and peeked into the tunnel. “Let’s see if we can figure out what prompted him to come out to these ruins. Thanks to his skullduggery under my family’s castle, the city is already cursed, so what else did he need to do?”
“I am uncertain as to what took place beneath your family’s abode.”
“So am I, unfortunately.” Only a few steps into the pyramid, an eerie draft swept over Rylana, raising gooseflesh. It reminded her uncomfortably of what she’d felt under the castle, and she couldn’t tell how far the tunnel extended. She paused to see if Jildarin would follow. She’d never considered herself cowardly, but she also wasn’t keen to visit the ruins of gods who could put curses on an entire city. Besides, she hadn’t thought to bring a lantern along on this journey. “I could use some company, Jildarin.”
He stood outside, gazing skyward. Watching to see if his mother and aunt returned?
Rylana hoped Lysilria would be nursing her wounds for a long time and that both were well on their way to the far south.
“Your expertise and talents could come in handy,” she added when Jildarin appeared confused by the request.
Rylana hoped he wasn’t thinking of his mother’s claims thatshe would try to lure him off and seduce him. As if the ruins of a troll-god temple were where she would take a man for that.
“My culinary expertise and talents?” Jildarin asked.
“Actually, it’s dark in here, so I was thinking of how dragons can make fire. You can do that in your human form, right?”
He hesitated. “When the peacekeepers questioned me about my magic, I informed them that my power is very limited in this diminished state.” He waved to his human body.
“I’ve seen you cook bacon without lighting the burner.”
He cocked his head.
“Youareaware that you do that, right?”
“I’ve intentionally used flame to caramelize the sugar on a dessert.”
“Yeah, your crème brûlée is good. Will you come caramelize the air so I can see better?” And so she didn’t have to face irate troll-god idols on her own, she thought but didn’t say.
“One cannot caramelize or evenburnoxygen,” Jildarin stated. “It is itself an oxidizer which acts as an accelerant to cause other materials to burn more intensely.”
Since he joined her in walking down the tunnel, she didn’t object to the science lesson. “I guess that’s why dragons exhale as they roast their enemies.”
