“How stupid do you think I am?” I muttered.
“Not stupid at all, except when you choose to be. We need to decide what to do about Lucien.”
I turned toward the woods, saw Damyn standing there, his arms knit over his chest impatiently. I kept an eye on Jaik and Tal, ready to dart toward them if he was an illusion. That meant I lost sight of him until I stepped into the deep gloom of the forest. I chewed my lower lip, ready to run.
“Honor.” Damyn said politely, stepping out of the trees. I let out a squawk of distress.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’ve had happier greetings.”
“You scared me?” I said.
He let out a short laugh. “Nothing seems to scare you, Honor, even when it should.”
“Rude. What are we going to do about Lucien?”
“His disappearance is a problem. However, I thought perhaps Lucien Finn could arrive with me today.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You’re going to have to go back to the Academy as Lucien,” he said. “Convincing the academy that you disappeared for good reason won’t be too difficult when the rest of the dragon royals come and go as they please.” His voice took on a slightly irritated tone.
Then he went on, “It’s the other dragon royals that you’d have to convince. I thought I could fly in while Honor’s taking a nap, and Lucien could appear.”
“That sounds exhausting,” I said. “Just like everything else about being Honor and Lucien at the same time.”
“I know it’s not an easy situation.” Damyn didn’t sound sympathetic, but I wasn’t sure he was able to manage that emotion after years of dealing with shifter antics at the academy. “But I have faith in you.”
Something warm ignited in my chest at his words, and that warmth might’ve been flooding into my cheeks, too. I rushed to cover it up with a question.
“Tell me something, Damyn. Why does King Pend hate me so much? When he knows who I really am?”
“He shouldn’t,” he said, “He should realize Jaik is lucky to have someone like you. Someone who can genuinely be his equal.”
“I noticed that you didn’t actually answer my question,” I shot back. “I have a feeling you know something about that prophecy, Damyn. There’s a reason Pend doesn’t want me close to Jaik and it’s not because he thinks that I’m a squirrel shifter, not good enough for Jaik to dip his dick.”
“Language, Honor,” he scolded.
“You have to help me,” I told him firmly, crossing my arms. “They need to know what I really am. The longer this goes on… they’re going to feel so betrayed.”
“I can’t tell them any more than you can,” he said, his eyes clouding. “I’m bound to the dragon king by my oaths, by the magic.”
“If your loyalty is to Pend, why are you here?”
“I never said my loyalty was to Pend. It’s to the dragon king.”
I stared at him, perplexed. What the hell was he talking about? “To the old king? The one who was murdered by the Scourge?”
“To the old king,” he confirmed. “I swore an oath of secrecy about the prophecy, bound with magic, and I won’t survive breaking that oath.”
I frowned at him, having a hard time believing that the magic could devastate anyone that completely. “The old king sounds really dramatic.”
His lips parted in a faint smile. “Perhaps. Jaik doesn’t entirely trust me, and in some ways he’s right. But neither does Pend.”
“So should I trust you?” I demanded.
He shrugged one big shoulder, which was a very comforting response. Then he said, “I’ve got to get out of here before they see me. Meet me back here at two—and try to stay out of trouble.”
“I’m always trying.”
“Not very hard.”
I scoffed. Damyn stopped to ruffle my hair. “I’m glad to see you made it out of there alive, Honor,” he said, his voice quiet. “I was worried about you.”
His words softened something in my chest. I didn’t know what to say; I wasn’t used to Damyn’s warm, brotherly presence. Something in me glitched like a spell going wrong when he was kind. He seemed to only see me as a student, a young dragon royal in desperate need of help and correction in equal measure. It bothered me.
By the time I had any idea what to say back to him, he had already melted into the shadows, and Jaik was calling.
That afternoon, it was hard to disentangle myself from Talisyn and Jaik to convince them that I needed a nap, until I mentioned the magic words rest and healing, at which point Jaik all but threw me over his shoulder and carried me to my room. Talisyn looked disappointed not to get a chance to cuddle.
As soon as I’d locked the door behind me, I went to the window and opened it, letting the bracing air slap me in the face. In a flash I scrambled up onto the windowsill, then jumped down to the next balcony. When my hands caught the railing, my back ached fiercely, but I managed to keep going, until I landed on my feet in the snow. I dashed into the forest.
Damyn cocked his head at me. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the dragon within, in his keen green gaze and his mannerisms. “Before we go inside… is there anything you want to talk to me about, Honor? I raised more questions than I answered earlier, I’m sure.”
“Is that an invitation? Because I do have a lot of questions I would love to have answered.”
“If you ask me a question that I can tell you the answer to, I always will.” He couched his language carefully. The dragon royals looked up to Damyn, but they didn’t know how much they could trust him with, given his proximity to the elders.
“Here’s one thing you might be able to explain to me, because I don’t think Jaik or Cal ever will. What happened between the two of them?”
He heaved a sigh. “It’s a mess, isn’t it? They’re both such good men, yet they try to force everyone into a ridiculous scheme of choosing sides.”
“The royals chose Jaik, but they all used to be friends,” I filled in.
Damyn nodded, shifting from foot to foot in the snow. “The royals were all born within a few years of each other. It’s hard for dragons to bear children, and they used magic to force the birth of heirs. They hoped their sons would grow with close-knit bonds. King Pend rules, but he needs the other Elders.”
“Did their wives get any say in this timing?”
“No, I don’t think the Elders really cared very much how they felt.” Damyn admitted.
“Are the Elder Dragon Royals evil?”
“No, I wouldn’t say anything that simple,” he said, “it’s always been more complicated than that. At any rate, Pend raised his sons to be heroes, always striving to be the best—including against each other. He always bet that only one would be a dragon, and he pitted them against each other mercilessly. Caldren was older, stronger. Crueler, at times.”