Page 55 of I Dream of Dragons
“Hm…” She tips her head back and gives me a look. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“What makes you say that?”
“A hunch.”
I sigh.
“You’re too extraordinary for a human,” she goes on.
“So are you,” I counter. “After all, you somehow convinced two darakins to lift you to the palace terrace. How did you do that?”
She shrugs, nonchalant. As if it’s something anyone could do.
“You survived the second trial,” I go on, “when I’m pretty sure none of us was supposed to.”
She nods. “Yeah. I’m a bastard.”
I blink. “Come again?”
Her mouth trembles in a smile. “I’m half-fae. A by-blow. A fae lord slept with my mother and here I am. I don’t look like a fae.” She pulls her hair back, showing me a perfectly round ear. “But I have some of their magic.”
I lean back. That’s news to me and would probably be news to everyone in the palace. “Air and earth magic?”
“What else?” She gives me a rueful smile. “Fat load of good it did me in the arena. I mean, okay,” she says as my brows lift, “itdid help. The darakins at least were intrigued enough to help me, despite my lack of fire magic. But the water? Not my thing.”
“Understood.”
“Unlike you. You were swimming like a fish, like you belonged in the sea.” Her voice is hushed. “I saw you from the tower I was scaling. As if you were a mermaid or something.”
This time, I force a laugh and stand up. “I’m not a mermaid.” At least that much is true. “I’ve got to go.”
Take a bath. Eat something. Rest. My feet are killing me.
As I turn to leave, she says, “Hey… That guard… Tru? Wasn’t that his name? The blond one?”
“Yes. What about him?”
“I overheard him talking to another guard, saying…” She hesitates. “Saying that Athdara can’t be trusted to do the right thing and needs to be handled. Mind you, no idea what the right thing is supposed to be. Do you know anything about it?”
“Tru loves Athdara,” I say. “You must have misheard. Besides, Athdara is on their side. Handled, how?”
“I don’t know. That was all I heard.”
“He’s a friend.”That was what Tru had told me about Jai. And,“He has saved my life many times.”
Had Jai confided in Tru his thoughts of killing the king and stopping Phaethon?
With a small wave, I set out to find my room and bathe, eat, and rest. Distracted with Mera’s comment, I get lost a few times until I finally enter the right corridor and spot my door.
But guess who’s waiting there for me? The man who’s been living in my mind tithe-free since I boarded that barge in the swamps. The man I said I wouldn’t go after.
That’s right.
Jai.
“There you are,” he says quietly, giving me a flash of a smile.
He looks so beautiful and tired, so utterly and completely spent. So human, beaten up and bloodied but still fighting.
