The Last Dragon King (Kings of Avalier #1)(49)
I pulled her into a hug and she wept on my shoulder. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my heart broke for the fact that I would never have Drae to myself. But I vowed right then and there to never again see the king as an object of desire. Out of respect for Joslyn, who clearly loved him.
When she pulled back, she wiped her eyes. “Tell me a story. Take my mind off of this.”
I nodded, starting to pace the garden, trying to think up a story from my childhood that would make her laugh. “When I was young, my father had just died and we didn’t have coal for the fireplace. Ironic considering where we live, but coal had to be bought just like everything else. Without my father’s wages, my mother feared it would be a terrible and cold winter.”
Joslyn looked at me with concern. “What did you do?”
“Well,” I murmured, pacing the grass, “I had heard that the people of Gypsy Rock kept warm by burning dried cow dung patties… except we didn’t have any cows in Cinder Village. Only dogs.”
Joslyn suddenly burst into laughter. “You didn’t!”
I grinned, turning to face her, delighted that I’d gotten her to laugh and lifted her spirits. “I am happy to report that dog shit burns pretty hot when—”
The words died in my throat. A man suddenly appeared behind Joslyn. His one hand went around her mouth and his other held a knife to her throat. He wore the Nightfall crest on his armor. The glint of steel from his mechanical wings flickered in the moonlight.
I stood there shocked for a split second and then reached for my knife at the back of my shirt. Then leaves rustled behind me and someone grasped my wrist, clenching it hard until I dropped the blade.
“Not so fast,” a male voice like scratchy wool said.
My heart hammered in my throat as I looked at a terrified and shaking Joslyn.
“Which one is the wife-to-be?” the man holding Joslyn asked whoever held me.
Small tendrils of smoke leaked from my nostrils and I pulled on my dragon power.
The male behind me squeezed my hand tighter, immobilizing me. “Yours.”
It happened so fast.
One second Joslyn was standing upright and the next the man was dragging the blade across her throat and her life blood was dribbling all down her gown before her body hit the floor.
“Take that one too. She’s the backup.” A man I recognized stepped out of the woods.
Bonner. A Royal Guardsman. A traitor.
I’d never liked him.
The man holding me pulled out his blade. The crushing grief and realization that Joslyn was dead slammed into me, tearing me in two.
An inhuman wail ripped from my throat as heat, and rage, and anguish, consumed me. A burst of blue fire exploded outward, and then everything went black.
FIFTEEN
“Arwen.” A familiar panicked voice roused me. “Arwen!” There was a light slap on my cheek.
My eyelids sprang open and I came face to face with Drae.
His panicked green gaze ran the length of my body. “Are you hurt?” he said.
I blinked a few times and then looked down to see that I was completely naked. My clothes had burned off. Little bits of ash and soot stained my skin. My gaze peered out around the garden, and the memory of everything came back to me.
“Joslyn,” I whimpered, my lip quivering as my body started to shake.
The king reached down and pulled off his tunic, and then helped me sit up, threading my arms through the garment. Soldiers ran around the garden barking orders and taking up arms, but all I could see was the beautiful dark hair splayed out on the grass and the puddle of blood under Joslyn’s body.
“I… I couldn’t save her,” I sobbed.
The king hauled me up into his arms and I peered down at two corpses. They were burned like animal meat. I must have… my power…
“Someone betrayed me. Who was it?” the king growled as he walked with me in his arms, tucking me tightly to his chest.
“Bonner,” I croaked.
The king’s jaw ticked and his arms pulled tighter around me. As we passed Cal, the king stopped to face him. “Take Bonner’s wife in for interrogation. If she knew he was a traitor, banish her and their children to Nightfall.”
Cal nodded and then took off running.
Nightfall was no place for dragon-folk… I guess that was why the king would ban traitors there. The second you stepped foot on their soil, they killed you if you had an ounce of magical blood in you. I didn’t care about that right now. I couldn’t get the image of Joslyn being bled like a goatin out of my mind.
My body shivered as a deathly cold crept over me.
Drae slapped my cheek and I gasped, realizing I’d blacked out again.
“She’s going into shock,” Dr. Elsie said.
When did Dr. Elsie get here?
I peered around, looking at the black dragon scale-patterned wallpaper and dark gray lacquered four-poster bed. Drae deposited me on the charcoal silk sheets and stared down at me, wide-eyed. “She burned up half the garden, exploded with dragon fire at least twenty feet wide.”
Dr. Elsie pulled an elven healing wand from her doctor’s bag and held it over me. I’d seen an elven healing one time. An elf came through town while traveling the perilous Narrow Strait, the small bit of neutral land in Nightfall territory that led from Embergate to Thorngate. One toe outside of the strait and the Nightfall warriors would stick an arrow in your back with legal right.