Page 22 of Lady Dragon
It was a kinder embrace than hers would have been had she paid him more attention—though no less final. In his defense, he didn’t even scream before she heard him hit the ground with a distant, yet significant crunch far below, never to move again.
Kirek dove for the body on the floor. She turned her over as gently as possible on the stained rug.
And… it wasn’t Samansa. The girl’s hair was darker upon further inspection, her features entirely different.Dara, Kirek recalled. The lady’s maid.
Flat, brown eyes stared at the ceiling, sightless. She was dead. Kirek could hear Samansa’s deep breathing on the other side of the double doors before her. Asleep, then.
Not dead.
A sigh of relief hissed through Kirek’s clenched jaw. The assassin had come this far and no farther, though his true goal had doubtlessly been the princess. Kirekhadfollowed her instincts fast enough, thank the skies. There was an open book on the floor next to Dara’s body, looking as though it had fallen with her from the daybed. She must have been reading out here when the assassin had come upon her in his quest to reach Samansa. A smaller, narrow door was cracked to reveal the maid’s simple chamber, the candle at the bedside table unlit. Dara must not have been able to sleep, perhaps in fear of the earlier assassination attempt… or because she had been watching over the princess, out here. Although, why that would have been left up to a maid was beyond Kirek.
Standing, Kirek made for the outer door across the room that she now understood to be an antechamber to both the princess’s and the maid’s resting quarters. She unbolted it from the inside and opened it onto four startled guards. Jamsens drew his sword on her almost immediately.
Kirek bared her teeth. “You have the wrong creature, my friend,” she said softly, gesturing inside. “And the wrong place, and the wrong timing. Your princess should be dead as well, not only her maid.”
He blanched as his eyes snagged on Dara, but in credit to histraining, he continued scanning the room for danger. “But only you’re in here.”
Kirek sneered at him. “Check the cobblestones below”—she caught him with arms of steel before he could step farther into the room—“quietly, and remove the maid’s body first before Samansa can see it. She would be… unsettled.”
Kirek didn’t know why she cared, but she did. And she’d already decided to not care why she cared.
Jamsens himself looked sickened at the sight of the body, and yet he made some silent gestures to the other guards to do as Kirek had said while another guard held a sword leveled at her—a pitiful show of force. Jamsens moved to the window to verify the other body on the ground below.
“That still doesn’t answer the question ofwhatyou are doing in here?” he snapped—quietly, at least—spinning on her as the other two guards gathered up the poor dead girl and began to carry her out. The third guard still held his sword at the ready. Kirek ignored him.
“Checking on the princess,” she said simply.
“Through the window?”
She shrugged. “Same route the assassin took, not to mention the last one, who came by way of the women’s quarters—the easiest to get around the mere inconvenience ofyou.” Jamsens started to sputter but she rode over him in a low, dangerous tone. “Why weren’t there any guards inhere, especially after the earlier assassination attempt? These aren’t the baths.”
“These are the princess’s rooms!”
“And?”
“She’s a young, innocent woman, as is—was—Dara, and it’s not appropriate—”
Kirek scoffed loudly enough that she worried she might rouse the princess—who still sounded solidly asleep. Kirek wanted her to stay that way. Samansa could face what had happened in the morning, after she got some rest and, hopefully, regained strength enough to manage it.
“Then I’ll stay in here if you won’t, especially since Dara is no longer occupying the space.” And with that, Kirek dragged the daybed out from the wall into a more advantageous position, scooped the book up off the floor, and threw herself onto the oversoft cushions, tossing her legs up while she was at it. She needed to study humans, after all, and reading about them qualified. “Get this mess cleaned up” was all she said after that, as she flipped to the beginning of the book and ignored the rest of them.
Jamsens could only stare. But he didn’t argue before moving to obey.
7
SAMANSA
Samansa awoke to find that the lady dragon had likely slept outside of her bedchamber door—if indeed she slept like a normal human—and only belatedly remembered in her muddled morning state that she wasn’t supposed to think of Kirek by that title.
The princess thought she recalled someone, or several someones, checking in on her last night, but she’d accepted a heavy sleeping tonic to soothe her nerves and better get some rest, and she hadn’t fully roused when they had. Besides, she figured additional concern for her safety would be an obvious repercussion of the assassination attempt outside the baths. And yet, the last person she expected to find watching over her wasKirek.
But there the dragon girl was, stretched out in the morning sun on the daybed like she owned it, fully dressed in fitted leathers, daggers and all. She’d even pulled the long couch out from the wall and moved it into the center of the room—the better to see all doors and windows from her state of recline, by the looks of it. Never mind that she was currently three quarters of the way through a book.
The rug was conspicuously missing, but this newpresencewas more catching of Samansa’s attention. She tried not to stareat the hard planes of the dragon girl’s abdomen and those muscular thighs underneath the tight leather. Shecertainlydidn’t try to recall what Kirek looked like without her armor, in only her skin.
“Does Jamsens know you’re here?” was the first, inane thing the princess could think to blurt.
“I imagine so, since he left me here last night,” Kirek said, utterly unconcerned and already sounding bored by the topic. She tried to go back to her book, which, Samansa realized with some horror, was a long-winded tale of epic romance that Dara favored. The princess was surprised Kirek could stomach it—but again, other things were more surprising.
