Page 61 of His Greatest Treasure

I’d maybe kept him safe from someone on the outside by stopping them being able to break the protections that kept intruders out. I couldn’t do anything to protect him from someone who’d been invited in.

Chapter 24

Alfie

Having to face the hag in the morning was horrible.

She scuttled right up to me and leered at me, getting too close for comfort and assessing me with malevolent eyes. I didn’t need a dragon inside me to have the instinct to shrink away from her.

“The spells are strong. It will take time to break them.”

“What spells?” I asked.

From where he was standing on the other side of the room, Lord Somerville said, “You do not need to know what spells, Alphonse.”

“Oh. But they’re on me, aren’t they? How do I know they’re safe if I don’t know what they are?”

“They are safe.”

I should have stopped talking. I willed myself to keep quiet. Yet it didn’t make a difference because my mouth was on a totally different system from the rest of me and I was about as nervous and unsettled as I had ever been, standing under the watchful eyes of the hag and my father.

“Who would put spells on me, though? That doesn’t sound very nice and I’d rather they weren’t there. Do you know who did it, Lord Somerville? Can’t you get them to take them off me?”

My father drew himself up, looking pinched and proud, and I shrank down, realising I’d really annoyed him.

The hag cackled. “He put the spells on too deeply. He can’t get them off, not easily. He’s tried. They have been loosened.”

I gawped. “You meanyouput them on me, Father?”

“You are my son. It is my duty to protect you.”

“So they’re protection spells?” I actually felt a bit better about it, if they were. I didn’t mind being protected. I suppose dragon elders are meant to protect their clan.

Then something occurred to me.

I blurted my question out before I could stop myself.

“If they’re to keep me safe, then why are you taking them off me? Shouldn’t you leave them on? I don’t want to be hurt, and I know that nothing can break into the territory but I think—”

“Alphonse!”

My father’s voice cut through me like a blade of ice. I stopped talking immediately.

It was as though he had frozen my tongue in place, and all I could do was look at him out of scared, startled eyes.

“I have told you before not to blabber. You will do as you are instructed and stay silent, is that understood?”

Somehow, miraculously, I managed to stop myself from speaking. I nodded my head and Lord Somerville turned his gaze from me to Madame Trevellian.

“The spells should not be damaged. I have not attempted to remove them.”

She cackled again, and it sounded far too gleeful in the heavy atmosphere. I felt chastised and small, and the hag appeared to delight in it.

“Yet the spells are damaged, Lord Somerville. Perhaps it is to be expected. He is long past the age he should have shifted. Perhaps his dragon has attempted to get out already.”

I clamped my jaws shut so I didn’t blurt out my questions, but I had so many of them. I didn’t dare to ask them, though. Already I could see how this would go. I didn’t want answers from either of the two people in front of me.

Madame Trevellian circled me and my skin prickled as she walked behind my back. I didn’t like not being able to see her.

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