Page 130 of The Last Dragon
He goes still—eyes wide—blinking like he’s trying to understand my words. I take a step forward.
“And the dragons are hunting us.”
His mouth falls open, but no sound comes out for a long moment.
Then he blurts out. “What?”
Valous raises a crystal glass of amber liquor to his lips with shaky hands. “So let me summarize this,” he says, taking a sip. “There’s more than one dragon. The general is lying and…you’re dying.”
“That’s right.”
He stares at me for a moment, unblinking. Then his eyes stray to the glass. “And you were in a cave, hiding from Grogol, and her leg got grazed by a dragon,” he says, pointing at Nida.
I nod. I haven’t told him about the dragon’s voice in my head. I tried to find ways to tell him, but if it sounded insane in my head, it would probably sound worse if I opened my mouth. Still, I don’t know whether that voice was actually the dragon talking, or the venom taking over. My guess is the latter.
“I’ll need more of this.” He sighs and twirls his drink in a crystal glass, then swallows it in one gulp. “So, what do you need me for?”
“Tell me anything you can,” I say.
He scoffs. “Tellyouanything? I’m surprised you even want to know something from me when you have a whole castle-worth scoop.”
“Maybe there’s something you know that can make sense out of all this.”
Valous’s eyes flick to Nida, then back to me. “Alright, there might be something,” he says. He pours another glass from the decanter beside him and downs the whole thing. “A while back, I had some… business at the tavern. Cashmere snitched a bit and informed me that an outsider was willing to make a trade with information from the other Holds—in exchange for a safe stay here in the tavern. I figured this was a great way to gain outside information. The price on that…” He clicks his tongue. “But theguy never showed up. I was getting ready to leave when I noticed something… Two men walked in, one cloaked, the other not. I thought that was my guy, but quickly I realized it wasn’t.”
“What about him?” I ask.
“The cloaked guy startedpreachingabout The Mountain. The Mother. The way he preached was unlike anything I have seen before.” His eyes dart to the sides again.An Acolyte. Something about that day is bothering him—something that even the guy from the shadows can’t shake. And I have to know what it is.
“What do you mean by that? How come?” I ask, and his eyes are back to mine before they shift to Nida, quickly looking her up and down.
“The uncloaked guy, never seen him before, and from what I could tell, he was an apprentice. But the other guy,” he pauses. “Even if I didn’t see his face, he seemed familiar.”
“Familiar how?” My patience is running low.
“In the way he walked,” he says, matter-of-fact. “The way hemoved.” His eyebrows furrow. A sudden nervousness clouds him—he pulls out a coin from his pocket and starts fiddling with it, tapping it against the table. He twirls it from one finger to the next, but drops it. The sharp clink of metal against wood chimes in the quiet.
“How did he move?” I hiss through my teeth, my patience running thin. Valous lifts his chin—and the coin, studying it again.
“With absolute silence. Calculated steps. Spine straight. There’s only one place that teaches you to walk like that. And only years of experience make it look so effortless.”
He can’t be serious. Was the man—
“A commandant,” he says, and I hold my breath.
“And the other?” I ask quickly.
“Some new kid or something, thinking he was doing his due diligence, but clearly had no idea what he got himself into. Cashmere snooped around to only come across a single name.”
I watch his every move—closely—when a slight smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“The name,” I dare to say. But now his white, pearly teeth flash through a wide, malevolent grin. I never realized the Acolytes had infiltrated the Corps so deeply—that even our highest-ranking officers were recruiting soldiers for a purpose far from what we’d been told. It was never about killing dragons. Never about humanity’s survival. It was about ensuring the legacy of the Mother lived on. He straightens and clears his throat.
“I almost forgot the name until recently,” he says, darting his eyes toward Nida once more and clicking his tongue.
My heart rate increases. I furrow my brow, clenching and flexing with an empty hand, signaling my impatience. “The name, Valous,” I growl. He looks at me with slight doubt before he finally speaks.
“Ward.”
