Page 37 of Dragon Blood

Footsteps sounded on the worn stone behind her. The breeze shifted, dragging familiar scents across her face.

“Kolina,” Launia, her long-time friend and commanding superior of the patrol fleet, spoke.

It was time.

She knew it by her old friend’s tone. Soft for their centuries of friendship and affection, firm in her deep sense of duty.

Kolina wouldn’t make it difficult for her. She turned, holding her gaze, looking neither left nor right to the guardians flanking her. Zayli and Marli, by rank.

Protocol.

They would escort her to the Council. By force, if Kolina insisted. She wouldn’t. If she was seen to cooperate, it would earn Astred and Kai more time. She hoped they were long, long gone by now, to wherever Astred needed to go to find the answers to save them from whatever was brewing.

Zayli stepped forward, shackles in hand, stopping short when Launia held up a hand. Kolina lifted a brow, finally turning to meet her niece’s eyes. The spark in them told Kolina all she needed to know. Marli stared straight ahead, gaze locked on the horizon.

She wouldn’t have much more time.

Zayli believed that Kolina was complicit in a plot to injure the queen.

The scapegoating was in full swing.

Kolina’s heart beat faster.

Kai was gone. Kolina was not.

She straightened her shoulders.

It is time.

She nodded to Launia, who turned, leading her toward the passages winding down to ground level.

They would walk through the public spaces, visible to all, allowing the town and citadel citizens to see her being guided by the guardians to the council hall.

Theatrics.

Politics.

She wondered who would lead the inquisition against her as the locals gathered in whispers, following behind as they went.

As a member of the Queen’s Honor Guard, Kolina was known. Her mother and clan matron had been easing the way for her to take her place on the council. Grooming her.

Had been. Until everything had begun to change with the impact of a little plane on the tail end of their archipelago.

Her daughter Kymri’s destiny had crash landed, setting their little world ablaze, like toppling dominoes, until there was no room to replace the fallen tiles as they had been.

Not when the queen welcomed the stranger, albeit with caution. Nor when she left her sanctum to battle the invading enemy. And especially when she left her lands and people to make peace with that arch enemy.

The enemy that had for centuries threatened the autonomy of their sovereignty.

And Kolina had played her part in all of it.

She’d even done the forbidden and brought her male child to the heart of their protected culture.

The whispers grew to murmurs. Murmurs to grumbling, escalating to audible accusations.

“Traitor!” Someone shouted as they ascended the steps to the council hall.

She paused, turning to sweep the gathered crowd for the one with the bold voice at her back.

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