Page 95 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
I twisted into a kneel, dragging breath after breath until the blaze subsided. The last thing I wanted was to hurt anyone else.
“I can only train you so far,” Adara said, completely devoid of emotion. “The rest is up to you. You have no idea what you’ll have to face.”
I spit the reddish dust from my lips, a roar in my ears. “Then tell me.”
Adara pursed her lips. “Ask The Dragon.”
“Your Grace!” a cry came from the path.
Leesa barreled into the courtyard, apples falling from her basket and rolling into the dirt.
“The prince’s warriors have returned,” she yelled, not breaking her run. “He’s not with them.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
EVIE
“Ambush,” one of the warriors rumbled over the chaos as he rubbed the caked blood from his face and the shaved sides of his head with a reddening cloth. “They sent their mind-controlled reptiles down from the hills. They’ve gotten bigger and meaner. If the prince hadn't been there, they would have slaughtered all of us.”
I struggled to keep my composure and my head behind the hood. If Zandyr had saved them, he was alive. The gods couldn’t be so merciless to take him away after he’d protected his entire Clan.
The Serpents could control reptiles, big and mean ones, apparently. My shin stung with the memory of the snake’s fangs.
Zandyr had said my attackers weren’t from around here. Had he been talking about the Serpents?
So many questions and not a hint of an answer–or of Zandyr.
“Why do we always have to camouflage ourselves as questionable peddlers?” Adara whispered from underneath herown cloak. All of her anger from before was gone, as if nothing had happened.
But it had and I remembered.
She grimaced at the crates she and I carried, filled with ointments, bandages, pain relievers, and the steaming buns Goose had just taken out of the oven when we’d left in a hurry.
Bloodied and scarred hands kept reaching inside the crates.
“They should see their future queen,” she went on. “You’re safe among Zandyr’s warriors, wounded or not. They have sworn loyalty to him with their lives.”
It was easy for her to say. She wasn’t part of the reason so many people had come back with lifelong scars and even harsher memories.
“I already said you didn’t need to accompany me,” was my only muttered reply.
“They came from the northern side. Swarms and swarms of them, the bastards,” another warrior said. He laid down on a gurney, alternating between drinking straight from a liquor bottle and pouring the amber alcohol onto the massive wound on his thigh. “I’ve never seen the prince so ferocious. He obliterated one of their generals when the fool said he should bring back what he stole. There isn’t anything left of him to bury. Thank the gods for The Dragon.”
What he stole? Had…had that Serpent general been talking about me?
Phoenix Peak’s gates had been opened and wounded warriors still filtered through. Blood Brotherhood civilians stood behind the entrance, giving them gauze, food, and prayers. It seemed everyone in the Capital had gathered today to help those who had protected them.
The healers rushed around with herb pouches and satchels filled with stones that had symbols seared onto them.
No sight of Zandyr in the chaos.
My fingers glided over the small vials of blood on my uniform.
Zandyr’s blood. He’d bled to protect me.
A hollowness was quickly filling my chest.
