Page 69 of Kingdom of Dance

Guilt seeped into every corner of Obsidian’s mind. It had been his own clumsy enchantment that had brought Lorne’s attention to the roof where he and the princess were both hiding. If he’d just applied himself, developed the magic that was always clamoring for attention within him, he could have kept her safe, prevented her from the injuries and indignities she’d suffered.

But then, he argued with himself, if she really was under some kind of a curse, wasn’t it further evidence that magic was harmful, distasteful, not to be trusted?

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so conflicted.

Closing his eyes, he sought vainly for sleep. His mind was pulled in too many directions to settle. He kept going over the conversation he and Zinnia had eavesdropped on. What had Lorne meant, with all that talk of power gifts from an unknown benefactor? Who would be willing to gift extra magic to a criminal, and to what end? And how many times had this happened, for the city’s underworld to be rife with whispers about the practice? They were ominous questions, and he wasn’t surprised that Zinnia wanted to know the answers. The mystery was why she didn’t bring her brother along on her investigations. Did she really not want him to know?

But that didn’t feel quite right, and not just because of the level of relationship he’d observed between the siblings. He remembered how Zinnia had asked him if he’d heard the conversation. She’d seemed pleased when he said yes, almost excited. Had he heard something that she wanted him to know, but couldn’t tell him herself? If so, what piece of information was the crucial one?

He cast his mind back over the conversation yet again. The basic outcome was clearly that Lorne was disappointed with the information he’d received. He’d scorned the idea that the Enchanters’ Guild was behind these power gifts, and had spoken as if he had better information on the true source.

But if it wasn’t the guild, who was it? Another group of enchanters?

Obsidian wasn’t satisfied. Lorne had called the guess about the guild “so far from the mark”. The truth must be nothing like the guild.

But who else could gift excessive magic, if not a group of enchanters and enchantresses? Did Lorne really know, or was it just bravado? Did Zinnia know?

Once again he remembered her expression when he’d said he overheard the conversation in the warehouse. It was frustrating to feel that she’d wanted him to understand more than she could say, and that he’d missed the hidden information altogether.

The thought triggered something in his memory, and his eyes shot open in the darkness. He’d felt that way once before when speaking with Zinnia. When she’d quizzed him on dragon lore, with that bizarre energy to her words. She’d stepped close and whispered a secret, and he’d been sure for a moment that he was approaching the heart of the matter. But they’d been interrupted, and she’d never finished explaining.

He thought about what she’d said, about the secret she’d imparted. She’d told him to be careful with the information, and he’d been surprised at the time that she would share something so sensitive with him. She must have had a reason.

What had she told him? That more than one royal had sought magical help from her dragon friends, and that they’d provided it, in defiance of the supposedly ironclad agreement between humans and dragons.

In all honesty, he hadn’t actually believed it for a moment. He’d been able to tell that she wasn’t lying, of course. But she’d never told him where she heard the information, and he’d assumed she’d been pulled into believing a piece of sensational gossip. His best guess had been that she was using that gossip to hint that he should ask the dragons for help—something he was unwilling to consider doing.

After all, the very fact that she’d told him about the so-called breach of the agreement—freely and in as many words—had made him think that it couldn’t be central to whatever secret was keeping her bound. Every other time she’d been asked, she’d seemed unable to speak freely. But he’d been foolish not to follow it up sooner. She’d clearly told him for a reason, and just because it wasn’t the main secret didn’t mean it had no bearing.

His mind sifted through it all, trying to put the mismatched pieces together. Perhaps he was grasping at straws in his attempt to forge a connection between the two cryptic conversations. But if there was a connection…

Obsidian could only see one way in which the information could intersect. Someone was giving enchanters additional magic, someone shadowy but powerful. And some dragons had been known to breach the agreement, in order to help humans with magical problems. If that was actually true, was it possible that there were also dragons breaching the agreement in the other direction? Using their magic to harm humans, through the medium of human enchanters and enchantresses? Could the mysterious benefactor Lorne mentioned be a dragon?

The thought was horrifying, and so shocking that Obsidian felt foolish for entertaining it. Dragons were mysterious creatures, but some things everyone knew. And one of those things was that dragons had never—not in all the generations of their co-habitation with humans—used their magic to intervene in human affairs. They’d never attacked, never assisted, never even shown undue interest.

Even Obsidian, with his general distrust of anything associated with magic, had never even considered the idea of duplicity from the beasts. It wasn’t in the nature of dragons to pretend, or so he’d thought.

And yet, he couldn’t forget Zinnia’s strange intensity when she told him about her dragon friends’ activities. And hadn’t she given no reaction to the idea that no worse person existed in Solstice than his grandfather? Was it possible that the architect of her suffering wasn’t a person at all?

It was a long shot, and he knew it. But at this point, he was willing to pursue any possibility.

His thoughts swirled in slow circles, until eventually even such weighty matters were driven out by more immediate concerns. When his eyes drifted shut, he was no closer to sleep—all he could see, emblazoned on his eyelids, was the image of Zinnia, hunched up in an alley, shivering with shock and fear as she tried to master herself enough to proceed into the next dangerous situation. It had tested his self-control to its limit, resisting the urge to reveal himself, whether to comfort her or to insist that she turn back, he didn’t entirely know.

But even worse than that, another memory floated before his mind—the princess standing defiant and determined before the criminal enchanter, letting out a hard laugh that bore no resemblance to her usual light chuckle as she told him that whatever he did to her, she’d endured worse.

The thought was enough to keep him wide awake, his fists clenched and a helpless anger coursing through him with such force that his magic seeped out and drifted aimlessly through the air.

There had been no lie in her words.

* * *

Obsidian was up with the sun, accustomed from his time on the front lines to surviving on very little sleep. He intended to meet with the king before breakfast, but there was something else he wanted to do first.

Zinnia’s refusal to see a physician the night before had reminded him of her supposedly superficial injury, and he went in search of the man as soon as he could find a servant able to direct him to the right quarters. The physician was clearly an early riser as well, because he was already in his consulting room, into which he waved Obsidian with a friendly smile.

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” He cast a glance over him. “You look in good shape to me, but I know appearances sometimes lie. I don’t have much call to tend to battle injuries here at the castle, but I know well from tending the late King Thorn that some wounds have lasting effects.”

His eyes lingered on the scar on Obsidian’s jaw, but Obsidian just shook his head.

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