“Your brother has always deserved better than the way your family has treated him. You aren’t a better man than Caldren because you inherited the dragon. You need to find a way to make up with him. The two of you are stronger together.”
“My father doesn’t want me to have any relationship with Cal, and I thought you were entirely loyal to our father.”
Damyn smiled thinly, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m loyal to what I think is right. Just as I believe you almost always are, Jaik.”
Jaik’s lips tightened but he didn’t argue. “I’ll think about what you said.”
“I’ll take it. I think that’s the best I’ll do. I just wanted to check in on you all,” Damyn said. “Lucien is still recovering from everything he’s experienced. I think it would be for the best if he recuperated at the Academy and waited for your return.”
Branok snorted. “A few more days without Lucien Finn? However will we manage?”
“I’d just as soon keep him a thousand miles away from my sister.” Lynx’s gaze rose involuntarily to the tower where Alina was kept, and a shiver ran down my spine. She was trapped—but was it Lucien’s fault or Branok and Lynx’s?
“Lucien.” Talisyn jerked his head, gesturing me away from the crowd.
I followed him cautiously, dripping red droplets across the once-pure snow. “What?”
“Are you all right?” he asked me, genuine concern written across his face. “You’re not telling us everything.”
“I’m fine,” I promised.
He rubbed his shoulder absently.
Was he hurt? The thought made something protective flare inside me. “Are you fine?”
He seemed to notice what he was doing, and smiled at me distractedly. “Oh, yes. One of the guards at Alis’s castle hit me with a cursed blade, I think. It still hurts. But I’ll be fine.”
“Did you see a healer?”
Talisyn’s smile widened. “I will, Mother.”
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re my one friend in the dragons’ wing.”
Talisyn’s smile flickered.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said you’re my friend.” My voice came out bitter.
“How can we be friends when you’re always lying, Lucien?” Talisyn asked, his voice light despite the heaviness of his words. “Friends tell each other the truth.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, passed it to me to staunch the blood. Then he nodded and walked back to the others.
The five dragon royals closed ranks around Damyn, deep in conversation with him.
It must be nice to belong inside that circle.
Chapter
Thirteen
Lynx
I cornered Damyn to ask him what he truly knew about Honor’s parentage.
“Don’t you think I would tell Honor anything I knew?” Damyn stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
“I don’t know, Damyn. Is your loyalty to us and to Honor or is it to our parents?”
Damyn looked genuinely hurt at being questioned. Perhaps he still thought we had the same relationship as when I was a child and I looked to him as a surrogate father. He had always been far kinder than Joachim was to Branok and me.
“I have my oaths that bind me. Beyond that… my loyalty is always to what I think is right, Lynx. Sometimes, that means I’ll be loyal to the Elder Royals, and sometimes, that means I’ll be loyal to you.”
“I thought we knew each other too well to lie to each other. We both know that the only way you survived to such an old age as a dragon shifter is by being totally loyal to the Elder Royals.”
Damyn’s voice came out hard. “If that’s what you think of me, then why are we even having this conversation?”
I felt momentarily at a loss. Damyn’s hard gaze reminded me of when he was training us on the battlefield, a kind but relentless teacher.
“I do think you care about what happens to all of us. Even Honor.”
Damyn’s eyebrows arched. “Even Honor?”
I only had a few minutes with him before he and Lucien left. “Everyone knows the Scourge killed the old king. But did they really?”
Damyn stared at me. “What makes you question that?”
“Our fathers lived for over a hundred years, but they had their sons within years of each other. That must have been an act of magic. So, isn’t it strange that the first king was the only one who didn’t have a child at the same time as his lords?”
“It is strange.”
“We were all born bound together as, well, not as friends. We’ve had to work to be friends, but we were all born connected to each other. The ling would’ve wanted an heir to pass on his powers.”
“So you think that there was no heir to the throne.”
“I’m saying that doesn’t make much sense to me, unless our fathers were plotting against the king. Unless we were a part of that plot.”
It felt dangerous to even say those words. I was accusing our fathers of something terrible. There was something that shouldn’t even have been possible, given the way magic bounds the crown. We knew that if we were ever going to rebel against our fathers, we’d have to face not just them, but the magic itself that controlled our kingdom.
Damyn ran his hand through his hair, looking as if he were debating what to say. “Did you know that I served under the king before you were born, Lynx? I was a very young squire. My father died when I was a boy, and the Scourge took my mother. I was raised by the Order of Dragons.”
“You never told me that. I’m sorry.”
“There are worse ways to grow up.” Damyn gave me a sad smile, as if he realized it was worse to have a cruel father than a dead one.
I knew my father wasn’t a good man. I knew he would kill for the kingdom; we all would. But he was also the kind of man to kill for power. It made me think of something that Damyn had told me once.
I didn’t remember anymore what I had done to anger my father so badly one day when I was ten, but my father had punished me by dumping armfuls of my journals and notebooks into the fire. Joachim had given me this look, this look that told me in one glance how useless he thought I was, that he despised me. That look was even worse than losing all my notes and memories captured in those journals. Then he turned on his heel and walked off into the night.
My eyes had blurred with helpless tears, the kind I hated for anyone to see. Through the blur I’d seen Damyn smothering the fire. He’d been quiet for a while, but he’d stayed there by the ashes until I came and sat down beside him.
Then he had told me, “Some of us are born to terrible men. That doesn’t mean we can’t grow into great men, and I know you will, Lynx.”
For some reason, when I thought about that story, I thought not just about what my father might have done to the old king, but what I had done to Honor. The girl had done nothing to me, so why hadn’t I been on her side? Why did my brother and I have to see everyone as enemies except for a handful of hard-won friends?
Branok said that was the price we paid for being royals.
Maybe it was a price we were extracting from everyone else.
Chapter
Fourteen
Caldren
Dawn was just rising, and Morick kept falling asleep in the bushes.
“Wake up.” Nora shook his shoulder. “The early bird gets the king’s gold.”