Page 105 of Vicious Is My Throne

“You’re all thinking it, though,” he snapped, and several of the other males winced, slowly backing away. “Even you, Finnian. Don’t tell me you aren’t.”

“Where is this dragon of yours?” the older male—Finnian—asked, scanning the brightening sky through the thick latticework of branches. “He’s coming back, isn’t he?”

“If he can find me, he will. Like Bran rightly pointed out, the trees look the same. Luckily I landed here where there’s no blight. Otherwise, I’d be dead.”

A chorus of agreement met my statement, and except for Bran, their stances relaxed enough I knew they wouldn’t be killing me out of hand, because a dragon offered everyone a chance at survival.

“Why come out this way?” Finnian’s eyes dragged over my shorn head, the battle-worn armor, and this time, when his gaze returned to mine, there was a different sort of wariness there.

“Seems like you’re a long way from home.”

I cradled my broken arm so the bones would heal right. “That I am. I’m on a reconnaissance mission for the queen. The blight has almost reached Blackcastle, and she wanted a status report on Caladrius and Varitus. In case we have to evacuate the city, she wanted to know what areas remained safe so her people had somewhere to go.”

Murmuring filled the small grove before Bran cut them off.

“What queen?” one of the other men sneered. “Solarys doesn’t have a queen.”

“It does now. Queen Anaria,” I told them with no small amount of pride. “She killed the Shadow King and took his place.”

“That’s the story I heard,” Kael, the male with the deep, gravelly voice, said. “New queen, big black dragon.”

Someone added, “We heard the wall on that side of Caladrius fell too. Is the Varitus ward still holding? That’s where we were heading before we got trapped here.”

I surveyed the small island of green around us. No bigger than fifty feet in diameter, the safe zone contained some untouched trees, a few clumps of thorny bracken, and somewhere beyond echoed the faint sound of running water.

But all around us, that shifting blackness waited.

“There’s a stream here?”

“Contaminated,” one of the men immediately supplied. “You’d be a fool to drink the water; it’s black as coal. We’ve been collecting rainwater, but we’re down to the last few drops. Let’s hope today brings more rain.”

I pushed to my feet, half expecting my legs to give. Surprisingly, they held. Now that I was up, the men’s eyes bounced between me and Bran, whose chest puffed out like a turkey’s.

“Show me this stream.”

Not to drink, but as a possible way out of here.

Tavion had explained how they’d washed the black ooze off. Maybe I could use the stream like a road and walk out of here. The idea was worth investigating, and I had to keep moving.

Better than sitting here spinning tales to keep myself alive.

“Does anyone know how far we are from Varitus?”

“A few miles, maybe.” A blond-haired male muttered. “Hard to say since the forest is so overgrown, but before the blight cut us off, we passed a farmhouse where I used to sell sheep. Way I remember, that farm was less than three miles from the northern gate.”

Finnian cuffed him on the back of the head. “You never fucking thought to mention that before?”

The sheep herder gave the old man a sullen stare. “Didn’t think it was important, Fin, given we’re fucking trapped.”

I headed toward the fast-running water, hope flaring when I saw the swollen stream. So much water running so swiftly, the color was dishwater gray. Not safe enough to drink, but maybe we could walk through it.

Tendrils of black stretched up the shoreline like veins of rot, stretching over rocks but going no further. I spun in a slow circle, wondering what strange magic kept the blight at bay. A tumbled pile of moss-covered stones sat to the side of the stream arranged in an almost perfect circle.

“What was that pile of rock?” I asked the sheep herder. “Do you know?”

“Legend has it a witch used to live in this part of the woods. The old woods, not the new forest, mind you. But that was a few centuries ago. Those stones are all that remains of her hut.”

A few of the men crossed themselves and sent up prayers to the Old Gods.

---