Page 61 of Crown of Ashes and Awe

“You really want to hear this, Lennon. You really do…if you care about your seraph.”

After a long beat, she answered.“I’m listening.”

“Lennooon!”Griffon’s call came from the opposite end of the corridor. She’d said once that he had excellent hearing, and I smiled knowing that Ciro wouldn’t be pleased to be interrupted while trying to woo Griffon’s mate.

I moved closer to my door and pressed my ear to the crevice between it and the wall, hoping to hear Ciro’s frustration clearly. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t imagine better entertainment.

As for Griffon, in calling out Lennon’s name, his message was clear. He was warning her that she wasn’t to make any deals in order to help him.

“You give up your mate and agree to stay here, with me, and I will spare the creature.”

“Spare him what?”

“For starters, how about those wings. Have you ever seen a seraph without its wings?”

Lennon said nothing.

“I’ll admit,”Ciro went on,“that I haven’t seen one either, but I am curious. Is he as attached to them as you are to your blue?”

Still, she held her tongue.

“Come now, Lennon. Agree to stay and I’ll allow him to leave.”

“All of them. You have to let all of them go. No, wait. I need to word this right. You will let all of them leave The Soundless, healthy and whole, without so much as a scratch, and you will give them safe passage to the palace in Ristat.”

Griffon shouted her name again.

“All of them? You must be joking. Twelve criminals? I’m sorry, my dear, but justice must be met.”

“All of them or nothing. And Kivi too.”

“That’s out of the question. A DeNoy and her dragon separated? Even Kivi would never stand for it. And without her, you wouldn’t have a place here.”

“Negotiations are over,”she said.“Come back tomorrow with an offer that doesn’t include me staying here, with you, for eternity.”

“Oh, no. You misunderstand. I wasn’t offering you eternity. What fun is that?”His voice turned creepy.“Millenia after millennia, we’ve grown weary of our paradise. But a contract is a contract, and we are doomed to remain here, in The Soundless, for the most part. We can come and go when needed, but our community as a whole is contained. As much a prison as it is a refuge.”

“Why don’t you negotiate with the king? Or, do that hibernation thing they talk about?”

“The gevri is not for the DeNoy. The heartstone does nothing for us, only for our dragons. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve thought of something better… You may or may not have noticed, but there are fifty DeNoy here, with their dragons, including myself. And that number never changes. We constantly keep an influx of new blood, but we will never have more than 50 at one time.”

“So you’re getting rid of the extra. By what, eating them?”

His laugh made my blood run cold.

“You’re only half right. A DeNoy’s dragon is only allowed to eat human flesh in the arena, and only if the opponent’s dragon dies first.”

My stomach turned. I’d only worried about dragon fire. I’d never imagined being eaten…

“Let me start from the beginning,”he continued.“First of all, at every Moonless Quarter, we invite a number of the Outer Soundless to compete for the chance to be matched with a dragon. As a DeNoy yourself, you know what sets you apart. You know what it is to hear the cloch realtas. And because many of our kind…look for affection…in the Outer Soundless, there are plenty of that population with DeNoy blood in their veins. Out of twenty, we are sure to find at least one.”

“You invite them? They volunteer? Or you force them here, just like you forced us?”

“Only volunteers. They believe it is a great honor to become DeNoy. What other excitement can they find in their bucolic lives?”

“Disgusting.”

He chuckled without warmth.“Withhold your judgment to the end, my dear. When we find the chosen one, we send the rest away with tales of grand rituals and extraordinary delights, so they will spread the word. And each time we ask for volunteers, we have more than we could want.”

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