“I trusted him, and he betrayed me!”
Last desperate flames clawed at her.
Betrayed!
Her own dragon eyes glared at her, full of hate, full of fire.
Betrayed! the dragon cried.
Then it was finished. The husk of her body lay empty, the fire gone forever.
36
The Dragon watched the men carry King Fidel’s treasures from his vaults and place them in piles about the courtyard. He picked up a golden goblet. The soft gold melted at the touch of his hands, and the elegant curves sank into an unlovely lump. He tossed it back to the pile with a smile. The shape was nothing, the beauty unnecessary. All that mattered was the gold.
As the sun sank low, casting the dark shadow of the palace over the eastern courtyard, the duke came to the doorstep, his arms folded across his barrel chest. “That’s most of it,” he said. “Only a few chests left.” His eyes spoke other things, but fear restrained his tongue.
“Good,” the Dragon said. “Now you may bring Fidel and his son to me.”
The duke blinked. “His son? The brat was dead long ago.”
“I think you will find otherwise if you go now and fetch the king to me.”
The duke’s eyes narrowed. He pointed to two of his men and ordered them down to the dungeons, then waited at the top of the steps, watching the Dragon move from one pile of treasures to the next. Things were not going as he had expected when he made this bargain many months ago. Certainly he could take the throne once the king was dead, but how could he hope to keep it? Not an ounce of Parumvir’s royal blood flowed in his veins, and without the promised marriage to the princess he could not hope to justify himself to the angry people of this land. The best he could anticipate would be constant battle, constant unrest, and if the Dragon took much of this treasure . . . But surely he could not carry it all away with him, or even very much?
The duke spat on the stone steps. Curse all dragons and their bargains.
“Unhand me!”
The duke turned at the frantic voice, and his eyes widened with surprise. The two soldiers he’d sent to the dungeons returned, one of them dragging King Fidel by his chains and the other, lo and behold, holding Prince Felix by the arm and the back of the neck. The young prince flailed and kicked viciously against the much larger man but to no avail.
“What is this?” the duke roared.
“We caught him in the dungeons, my lord,” the soldier holding the prince replied. “He was with the king, tried to free him but had no key, you see. Little urchin – ”
The duke grabbed Felix by the shirt, yanked him from the soldier’s grasp, and lifted him off his feet, snarling into his face. “What are you doing still alive?”
Felix, white as a sheet, could not speak, suspended as he was in the air. Fidel rallied himself and raised his arms, chained together. “Don’t hurt the boy!” he cried. “He . . . he’s not my son, just a servant who wanted to help me, but he’s nothing, really! Send him away. Don’t harm him.”
“Not your son, eh?” The duke drew his long dagger. “In that case you shouldn’t care if I – ”
“Wait.”
The duke froze as the Dragon’s hiss tickled his ear. He dropped the prince and backed away as though stung. The Dragon stooped down and gazed into Felix’s face.
The prince stared back, then suddenly cried out and flung his arms over his head, recognizing the tall man’s eyes as the same burning orbs that had glared over the wall at him the night the Dragon came.
“It is as I thought,” the Dragon said, straightening and looking down on the boy cowering at his feet. “You have poison in your veins. They couldn’t work it all out of you, could they, little prince? Your sister has proven disappointing, but you perhaps – ”
“No!” Fidel screamed, pulling against his chains so hard that he fell on the stone steps. The soldier holding the end of his chain kicked him in the side, but the king struggled up. “No!” he cried again. “Don’t touch him! Leave him alone!”
The Dragon looked at him and shook his head. “Wretched man. Your daughter succumbed to my kiss with hardly a thought. Your son will, in time, do the same. You cannot protect them. You never could.”
He waved a hand to the soldiers. “Chain both of them in the yard,” he said. “I will deal with them when I return. But for now . . . ” He smiled, and flames wreathed his face. “For now there is no hurry, and I have a promise to fulfill. I must gnaw her bones.”
His black cloak billowed into black wings, and his body became long and sinewy and horrible by the time he reached the broken gate. The men of Shippening scurried from his path like so many cockroaches scuttling into safe nooks in the rubble of the wall. He crawled over the twisted metal into the road leading down into the city.