As if he’d shaken off Pend’s humiliation easily, he grinned at me. Caldren was always acting. “You say pig-headedness like a weakness, but I see it as a virtue.”
Caldren thought he could help me to protect Honor, but all he’d done was fail her. I wasn’t sure the royal family was as special as we thought we were. Caldren was a failure, and maybe I was too, if I couldn’t protect her from Pend and the other elder royals. I needed time to figure out how to fix everything.
“I know you’re a traitor to the throne,” I said, cutting through everything else between us. “Pend will try to kill you one day.”
“He will try,” Caldren admitted. “Will you be by his side, Jaik?”
“My loyalty is to my kingdom and my brothers.”
Pain flashed across Caldren’s face again, in the way his eyes tightened at the corners. Then he smiled easily. “You wish you had the courage to be a traitor to the throne too, don’t you, brother? But you can’t quite summon it. You and your friends dance around the edge of rebellion, turning it over in your minds, trying to push each other toward the edge like a dare—but you won’t ever quite jump in.”
He called me brother because he knew it grated me, because I’d just made it clear I didn’t consider him one. Blood matters less than choice. Talisyn, Arren, Branok and Lynx—they chose to be at my side no matter what.
I smiled coldly at Caldren. “I hate to leave our riveting conversation, but Honor needs me. Goodbye.”
I transformed into the dragon there in front of him, and he backed away to avoid being caught in the transformation to wings and fang. Despite himself, I caught the longing in his gaze, the way he looked at me.
“Be safe, Jaik,” he said quietly.
Nothing annoyed me as much as when he pretended to give a damn about me. It was another of his superiority games—look at how he was willing to have a relationship with me still, as if he hadn’t rejected me dozens of times before the final roll of the dice that sealed both our fates.
I soared through the broken roof, turning my gaze away from my once-brother and up toward the bright blue sky.
Chapter
Two
Lynx
When we’d just landed in the north, Honor woke again, screaming. Branok hurried to her side and held his arms up, letting Talisyn slide her into his grip. The wind whipped Branok’s golden hair and hers, swirling fat white snowflakes around us all. Honor’s normal smile was beautiful and bright and called an answering glow in my chest, but now her teeth were bared in a rictus mask of pain.
Branok held her in his arms, his eyes meeting mine. Branok’s expression never gave much away, but I could read my twin, and there was worry in his gaze. “Relax, Honor,” he muttered, his voice irritated. “You’re making it worse. You’re hard to hold.”
He gripped her carefully, trying to keep away from her wounds, but his shirt was still soaked with her blood.
Her hand knotted in his tunic helplessly, and she let out a broken cry.
“Lynx,” Branok growled.
I cupped my hand over Honor’s forehead. “Sleep,” I murmured.
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to fall asleep. I keep having dreams… not dreams, memories. I have to make sense of them, Lynx, help me…”
“I will,” I said, feeling something tear loose in my chest. She was so desperate to face whatever happened in her past—something terrible—even when her body had been torn to shreds. “We’ll get you a healer.”
“Arren already went.” Talisyn’s face was grim. “He’ll bring one from the nearest town.”
I was sure he’d ask so nicely, too. Arren and Branok both played at despising Honor so utterly. But it had to be an act, because why else did they look so enraged at her condition?
“For now, she needs rest. Until we get the healer,” Branok said firmly. He caught my look and added, “I don’t want to listen to her screaming all day.”
“Give her to me,” Talisyn said, reaching out his arms. “I passed her to you so I could get down; I didn’t intend for you to hold her when you hate her so much.”
“I’ve got a good grip on her now,” Branok said, purposefully ignoring Talisyn’s real point. “I’ll take her to her room.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Jaik should be right on our heels, unless his father had hurt him; he’d never been above hurting his sons, or rather having other people do it as he was usually too busy. He outsourced his physical cruelty.
Sometimes, he’d outsourced hurting Jaik to Caldren.
No wonder things were so broken between the two of them.
I followed Branok as he strode toward the castle, daring a look at Alina’s tower in the distance. My asshole father had locked her away—for her own safety, of course. He couldn’t stand to have her in his sight when she was under Lucien’s enchantment. But how could we break her enchantment if we avoided her?
The enormous stone building towered above us. Even now, it made me feel small; everything about my father’s reign was intended to make others feel insignificant. The signs of wealth struck Branok differently, reminding him of the power he was born to wield. Branok had bartered with him for ownership of the castle; I’d never wanted it.
There was never any doubt he would be the one to rule. Jaik’s family had expected both Jaik and Caldren to be dragons. My dragon had been a surprise to our father. I was always too bookish and sensitive for his pride.
Talisyn darted ahead, pulling down the blankets from the bed in the first bedroom.
Branok laid her down carefully. She let out a gasp of pain, then returned to murmuring nonsense before she fell back into sleep. Her red lips parted as she fell asleep. Talisyn sat beside her, stroking her hair, while Branok crossed his arms, looking angry. He was always angry when he was helpless.
I glanced out the window at Alina’s castle on the opposite side of the crystal lake, the rooftop barely visible over the snow-laden trees.
Arren stormed into the room with snow caked to his coat and in his hair. Behind him came a small man, a healer—healers were always prey shifters—with gray hair and a crooked nose. He looked uncomfortable to be in a room surrounded by four dour dragons, but he said good morning and moved to Honor’s side.
He winced sympathetically when he rolled her onto her front and saw the damage across her back. Bits of white bone glinted through the red, and fury tightened my throat.
Magic glowed across his fingertips a moment later, but sputtered and died; the wounds remained just as angry.
“What’s wrong with you?” Arren demanded roughly.
The healer was searching Honor’s body. He stepped back, nodding to her chest, where a puffy red brand marred her skin. “She’s been enchanted not to heal, not until the brand does. It’s a powerful spell. I can’t break it.”
“I’ll find a healer who can,” Arren growled, a promise to us. From the way the gray-haired man shrank back, it might have sounded like a threat to him.
“I can bind her wounds,” he offered. “Until you’re able to find someone who can.”
Arren had already gone, on the hunt for another healer.