Page 5 of The Fire Dragon's Mate
My stomach cramped with a mixture of guilt and anger. “They said they all fought the dragon beside you. That you sacrificed yourself to let them get away.”
He harrumphed and nodded, sitting back as he crossed his arms.
“Some of them had burns and stitched cuts,” I continued. “Everyone had bruises and other injuries. Even the ship was burned in places. We had no reason not to believe them!”
“Why are you defending them?”
“I… I’m not. I simply mean that they made it appear that they were being truthful. They said the dragon ate you in one gulp.”
He and the other two men chuckled at that, sharing sly looks between them, and I didn’t understand why.
“Gods-dammit, Phineas, we all thought?—”
“We were told,” the older man interrupted, “that my cousin, Prince Thane of Vahan, disappeared in the night. His menfound his bloody and burned armor the next morning and assumed he’d gone off to fight the dragon alone. So noble. So brave,” he said sarcastically before his tone hardened. “When in truth, they’d knocked him in the head and thrown him overboard. He was lucky he didn’t drown.”
I looked between all three men, not sure what to say. Why so much betrayal? Why all the lies?
“I’ve no idea what they said about me,” Zelig said with a shrug. “But I woke on the shore with a hangover like your brother, which was surprising since I don’t drink.”
Phineas poked a finger against my forehead. It was such a familiar thing—something he’d often done to gain my attention—that I almost laughed at him. But then he said, “What do you think they’ll say about why they return without you?”
I shook my head only to stop when it felt like my brain sloshed inside my skull. “I’ll talk to them. They’ll take us both back, and we can tell?—”
“They left at dawn.”
Of course they had. I’d known they would when I was rowing myself to shore. It was possible they’d even retrieved the launch before setting sail so that they wouldn’t have to explain its absence. And they’d probably used all the explosives by then. If they didn’t detail how the dragon ate me, they could mournfully say that I’d accidentally blown myself up.
“Do you have a ship?” I asked them. “Anything at all? We can go to Xanthous—it’s only a few days away—and tell them what’s happened.”
“Xanthous, the kingdom that sacrificed their only princess three years ago?” Phineas snapped.
“They wouldn’t…”
“They did. Gilda is my wife.”
I had no idea what might’ve happened in Xanthous to cause them to sacrifice a princess. They were an enemy of Besia,my kingdom, so there was no communication between us. It must have been devastating. But wait, now I was conflicted over giving her more value than the common women who often volunteered their lives to protect their fellow citizens.
I looked to Phineas. “What did the dragon do to make her volunteer?”
“Gods, Declan. She didn’tvolunteer. She was woken at dawn and bound to a stake in front of the castle.” He leaned in close. “The night before, she refused to wed a duke from Driseon who was rumored to have murdered his previous wife in a drunken rage. Her parents were getting rid of her for being headstrong and independent when they wanted her meek and sold.”
I wanted to protest. That was against everything we were told about sacrifices. Besia hadn’t sacrificed a woman since Coral Rexana a decade ago. Everyone knew her name, praised her for her willingness to give herself over to the dragon after six ships were attacked while returning to port. Yes, she’d screamed and begged, but that had seemed normal once one stared death in the face.
“Is Coral Rexana here?” I asked quietly.
“She is.”
Honestly, it was something of a relief to know the dragon wasn’t killing the sacrifices or princes who came here. I didn’t understand why they had been allowed to live, but that they had was good at the very least.
“Then why not return home?” I asked him. “Tell the tale of what really happened?”
“No one cared about any of us,” Phineas said with a hard edge to his voice, “so why should we care about them?” He looked away and sighed before saying more calmly, “While I regret that the lie of my death hurt you and that yours will hurtothers, we are not the traitors here. We were granted a better life, and we accepted it.”
“To live with a dragon that routinely destroys crops and livestock just to watch it burn?”
Because that was what didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t possibly forget about or forgive that sort of destruction. His precious dragon was systematically crushing each of the nine kingdoms on some random basis no one could track. And we either tried to appease him or tried to fight him.
“Four years ago, he attacked Keviator,” I reminded Phineas, “then us, then Muidel, then us again. The entire wine country was decimated six months ago, Phineas. The whole of an industry destroyed by dragon fire.”
