Page 73 of Mad Dragon of Chaos

However, by helping Prince Shey and breaking ties with New Rosanthe, the country stood to gain a trading partner with Caspagir and a potential military ally. It also didn’t hurt that Caspagir had a long-standing alliance with Erya, who had a deal with the Isle of Stone dragons. Not to mention Prince Shey had been seen with a dragon.

Prince Shey had no illusions about what was finally tipping the scales for Uris-Oladul to make a move at long last. Dragons. It was all about the dragons. It didn’t hurt, though, that Caspagir would allow Uris-Oladul to be a sovereign nation. Something that would never happen with New Rosanthe.

A few minutes later, Nancy and Peter left. Tyche pulled a chuckling Jules into the kitchen to go through their supplies and discuss dinner. Shey smirked as he partially listened to Tyche giving Jules a very detailed lecture on the different types of coffee beans and how they needed to be roasted and drunk.

He walked to the front windows and stared out at the empty street. Nancy and Peter had driven away in the car that had been in the driveway. Another car was going to be dropped off this evening with more supplies. It was going to take at least a day, possibly two, to reach Bellcairn.

Quiet footsteps descending the stairs had Shey glancing over his shoulder to find Adrian approaching with slightly mussed hair and puffy lips. Shey suppressed a grin and turned his attention to the window. Clearly, the dragon had cornered Adrian yet again. Not that it seemed as if Adrian was fighting him all that hard.

“Find anything?” Shey murmured, keeping his voice low so that it didn’t carry to Jules in the kitchen.

“The bedrooms are clean. No cameras, bugs, or bombs.”

Shey snorted. “Lovely.”

“I got a quick message to Vitor. He’s still in Sirelis, but he’s ready to worm his way into Bellcairn, if you want.”

“I’m surprised he’s not there already with a lit match.”

“Yeah, well, I get the impression that he prefers to make more subtle waves as a spy. A whispered word in the right ear. He’s not the type to lob the first Molotov cocktail.” Adrian turned and leaned against the wall next to the window so that he was facing Shey. “He confirmed that The Citizens Restoration Group and Golden Resistance are legitimate groups. I also sent him pics of Nancy, Jules, and Peter. Nancy and Peter are leaders. He couldn’t identify Jules. However, he pointed out that he’s only aware of the movers and shakers in the groups. Not all the members.”

Shey grunted. “I’ve heard of The CRG. They’ve been around for several decades now. I imagine their membership has exploded with New Rosanthe’s aggressiveness. I hadn’t heard of Golden Resistance.”

Adrian cocked his head to the side and lifted one eyebrow. “Do you trust them?”

“Not as far as I could throw them.”

A low laugh shook Adrian’s shoulders, but he didn’t appear surprised by Shey’s statement.

Shey lifted one hand and held it in front of him with the palm up as if he were holding his own future. “Uris-Oladul has done the math. They take a calculated risk now to help us and get their freedom. As long as everything works out, they’ll back our play.”

“But if things go to shit?”

“They’ll sacrifice us, Jules, and anyone else who stands to get swept up by New Rosanthe’s military machine. They’ll claim it was all a ruse to capture us and assist the Federation of Order.”

“Fantastic,” Adrian groaned, thumping his head on the wall.

“Not great, but we have two aces that I’m keeping close to our chest. If we wait and play them at just the right time, we should still come out ahead.”

A dragon.

And a god.

That had to be enough to turn the odds in their favor.

TWENTY-SEVEN

TYCHE

After a delicious dinner, Jules located a brand-new deck of cards. Since they were all from different countries, they took turns teaching each other different games. Tyche bowed out. Complaining of fatigue, he retreated to the second floor, but not before he gifted Haru with a bit of good luck just to make things interesting.

Alone in the bedroom he’d chosen, he pulled out the same fortune sticks he’d been carrying since the damn prison. He sat on the bed and turned them over, inspecting each one. They were battered and worn, but he could still read the symbols. He could feel his magic within the old chicken bones and nothing else.

So, why had the readings been so strange recently?

During their long wait in the forest for Jules, he’d taken out the bones and started tossing them to waste some time, but also to check his own magic. When he’d made these things, he’d been the God of Luck and nothing else. Now he’d accepted the magic for the Goddess of Nightmares and the God of Accidents. Were they affecting his ability to control luck? Was his ability to glimpse into the future in a very limited way cut off?

A gentle knock on his door had him snatching up the bones and holding them in his fist. Jules was not to know who he was, and the best way to do that was to hide all magic-related things from him.