Page 3 of His Greatest Treasure

Father cut me off. It was for the best. I even managed to snap my mouth shut when he spoke.

“The Guardian has reported a break-in. Someone has attempted to get into the territory. Until we are certain that they were unsuccessful, you are to stay inside where you can be protected.”

Something twitched inside me again. Maybe I was getting sick.

“Yes, sir.”

“You will not leave the castle unchaperoned until I say so.”

“Yes, sir.” And, seriously, because I was an idiot, I asked, “Are we in danger?”

“Not inside the castle, you’re not.”

“But on the outside? But Morgan’s on the outside!”

“Morgan is inside thecuraidh’s territory and is protected.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Sure, he said there were protections around them and any dragon clan would have spells and protections layered up around their territory, but they were onlycuraidhand they wouldn’t have the same sort of power that we did.

“Perhaps Glimmer could go and help make their protections stronger?” I suggested. It just went to show how worried I was about Morgan because I’dnever dared to say something like that to Father before. It came far too close to telling the elder what to do.

As I expected, Lord Somerville’s eyes flashed with anger and I was sure I saw his dragon in them. It was pale silver and strong, which is why he was our elder. Nobody else looked him in the eyes and I’d grown up with the assumption that it was rude, so I kept my head lowered and peeped up at him to check what he was doing.

“Morgan is well protected. You are my concern right now. You will stay inside.”

“Yes, sir.”

That ruined my plans for the evening. I didn’t know what I was going to do now. I’d always spent my evenings with Morgan and now he was gone, they stretched out ahead of me in long, long, isolated hours. There were only so many books I could read, after all.

It looked like I was going to spend a long evening worrying about somebody breaking into thecuraidh’s territory and murdering my brother.

My stomach cramped again. Maybe I really wasgetting sick.

Just before he left, Father added, “And you will say nothing of this to anybody. This is family business. Nobody outside the house needs to know.”

I stayed where I was, waiting for my father to leave. I didn’t want him to hear what I was about to do.

Peeking out of my room, I glanced each way in the corridor to check nobody was there and then I got my phone out of my pocket.

And my big brother absolutelyrefusedto take my call.

Panic jumped inside me and I began to pace my room. What could stop him answering his phone? What if he were too injured to reach it? How would I know?

I walked in circles, faster and faster, and kept ringing Morgan again and again.

When he finally answered, I nearly burst into tears with relief.

The trouble was, I hadn’t planned what I was going to say. It meant I splurged words in any old order and poor Morgan, on the other end of the phone, had to calm me down and get me to talk through it rationally.

I started out about to tell him that we’d had a possible break-in and that he should be wary in case whoever-it-was decided to attack other dragons’ territories as well, but half-way through I realised that Lord Somerville had forbidden me from telling anybody.

Morgan tried to reassure me that I wasn’t disobeying our elder. “You can tellme.”

“Are you sure? Because Lord Somerville said we weren’t to tell anyone. Do you count as someone?”

There was a pause on the other end, and to anyone who didn’t know Morgan, it wouldn’t seem significant at all but Ididknow him. He was trying to think of a way to make me feel better but he couldn’t come up with anything.

“I’m family,” he said at last.

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