House of Dragons

by K. A. Linde

  “What are you doing?” She jolted up at the sight.

  “Lie back, please.” He gently pushed her back into place.

  “That’s not how healers work.”

  He chuckled softly. “It’s not how tribe healers work.”

  Kerrigan didn’t know what he meant. The only healers who could process the craft, who were strong enough in healing, were tribe healers. Helly was the greatest healer in hundreds of years, more powerful than almost any who had been rumored to come before her, except perhaps the ancients. What would she have to say about this glowy blue light? What was the light?

  But she didn’t ask those questions. She let Amond go to work. Really, she didn’t have the energy to fight him off anyway.

  He took the light and first cast it across her body from head to toe. “Your shoulder is severe, but you have a cut on your arm and a contusion on your head. Also, you’ve suffered from a sprained ankle.”

  She frowned. “Not recently.”

  “No, it looks many years old. It never healed right.”

  How could he know that? It hardly even bothered her anymore. She’d jumped off a dragon wrong and rolled her ankle. When the weather was particularly bad, it still irritated her.

  Amond said nothing more despite surely seeing the questions in her eyes. Then, he plunged the light into her shoulder. She stiffened in shock and confusion, but it didn’t… hurt. It didn’t feel like anything really. The whole thing was just disconcerting. If she concentrated, she could feel a slow trickle of the glowy ball moving around inside her shoulder… almost like a bug under her skin. It made her shudder in revulsion. But Amond only looked at her shoulder a few minutes before removing the light. Immediately, she felt… empty. Her entire body sagging.

  “What the gods?” she said.

  But he was already back to work, running the glow across her cut, into her skull—which, gross—and then even to her ankle. Each time the glow went through her, she felt like bugs were crawling around inside her, and she wanted to escape, she wanted out, but as soon as it was gone, she felt like a loch addict, craving more.

  Within minutes, he was done. Minutes.

  She couldn’t fathom it. A healing of this magnitude usually took at least an hour. The magic worked with her natural healing elements and stitched everything back together. And even so, she was usually drained and exhausted after it. As if it had taken just as much from her as it had from someone else. The herbal remedies that Darby was proficient at were usually better for anything less problematic, as they didn’t exact a price.

  “How do you feel?” Amond asked, releasing the blue light as if it had never been.

  She slowly shifted into a sitting position and experimentally rolled her shoulder. It felt good. No, better than good. No more pain, no exhaustion, no protrusion on her head. And, yes, even her ankle felt good as new.

  “What did you do to me?” she gasped.

  “I healed you. You look much better.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  Amond smiled faintly and then rose to his feet. “I don’t believe that you’re ready for answers yet, Kerrigan Argon.”

  She startled at her given name. No one used it. Hardly anyone even knew it.

  “How…”

  “The healing sometimes is a connection,” he admitted. “Do not fear. It is against the healer’s code to divulge information.”

  Gods, what had he seen?

  Fear must have shown in her eyes because he tentatively reached out and touched her hand. “Not even to Dozan.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “No… many only see what is right in front of them.”

  “Why do you work for Dozan when you have these abilities?”

  “Instead of the mountain?” he asked with no accusation.

  She nodded.

  “Not all knowledge is equal. Especially not knowledge that disrupts the balance of our society and what is most commonly accepted.”

  He looked at her purposefully. He knew about her visions. She should have been terrified, but somehow, she wasn’t. She trusted that Amond could keep the secret, that it was part of his code. She didn’t know if it was because he had just healed her or if it was because he kept his own healing secrets hidden. But she understood perfectly what he was trying to impart to her. Her visions would not be a welcome new knowledge inside the mountain. That much she was well aware of.

  25

  The Knife

  She wanted to ask Amond more questions, but Dozan appeared then and dismissed him as if he hadn’t just done the most miraculous thing she had ever seen.

  “Where did you find him?” she asked Dozan.

  “Amond?” he asked as if he didn’t know. “Around. As I find most of the strays.” He stepped into her until there were mere inches between them. He brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Like you.”

  She stepped back. “Don’t.”

  Anger flared in his dark irises. “You come to me in your time of need. Always to me. And still, you deny what is right in front of your eyes.”

  “I don’t deny anything,” she quipped. “I just see what you really are.”

  “And what is that, Ker?”

  She grimaced at the nickname. Anyone else could say it, and it hardly bothered her, but she remembered him whispering it over her skin and breathing it into her ear as he held her naked against him. She remembered giving in to this once before and how much of a terribly bad idea it had been.

  “Shall I recount our history?” she asked him.

  “Allow me,” he said, circling her like a hawk. “Five years ago, I saved your live. I brought you here as the broken prince of the Wastes and healed you. Though I’d had no reason to do so. You fell in love with me.”

  She winced at the bald statement.

  “It wasn’t love,” she growled.

  “Fine. Then, you were obsessed with me. What was I to do with a twelve-year-old’s obsession? Nothing. I was sixteen. You were just a kid. So, I sent you away. I sent you back to the mountain.”

  “Where I belonged,” she cut in again. “Then, you murdered your family and took over!”

  Dozan grinned. “I took ahold of my birthright.”

  “That’s one way of putting it, Dozan.”

  “Four years later, you came back to me. You’d had another vision. I was the only one who would understand.”

  He said the words with such longing. The words she had said to him in the same manner. Her cheeks heated. Her obsession had burned away, but she’d been sixteen then, and he’d just turned twenty and the king of his own empire. More beautiful and more dangerous than ever before. She’d replaced her obsession with desire.

  “Should I continue?”

  “No,” she growled.

  She remembered what had happened next and why he was trying to use it against her now.

  “I’d love to recount that night for you, if you’d like, Ker,” he said, stopping behind her and running his finger across her shoulder.

  “Let’s not,” she got out, taking a step away from him. Trying to hide the hitch in her breathing.

  Dozan Rook might be her first obsession, her first love, her first everything, but she wasn’t stupid enough to make him her second too.

  “Pity,” he breathed, still so close. “Then, perhaps, you’ll explain to me why you brought the prince of the House of Shadows into my territory.”

  She pointed at her shoulder. “Stab wound, remember? He brought me.”

  “Then, what were you doing out with him?”

  “Aw, jealous, Dozan?” she asked teasingly.

  His jaw was set. “The House of Shadows is not an ally. They hate humans and half-Fae. They torture and kill us for sport. They are even worse than the Society and that damn terrorist organization, the Red Masks. What happened to you in that alley five years ago is the least of what they would do to you. So, why exactly do you trust one of their kind?”

  Kerrigan took a small step back. Dozan actu
ally sounded… worried? No, that couldn’t be right. She knew the history of the House of Shadows, how much they hated humans and half-Fae. After all, Fordham had treated her poorly for weeks. In fact, they still hadn’t managed to say more than a few pleasant words to each other. But he’d still offered to help her after she had helped him. And he hadn’t made any kind of move to torture and kill her. He seemed like a sad, broody boy who wrote sad, broody boy poetry.

  “And yet, he’s here,” she countered. “Not in the House of Shadows.”

  “You think that’s because of the goodness in his heart? He’s here to win a dragon. What is someone from the House of Shadows going to do with a dragon?” he demanded. “What they always did before the walls were put up to protect us—war. If you do not see that, then you are deluded.”

  It didn’t make sense. Why would her visions be pointing her to help Fordham if he wanted to start war? As far as she could tell, her visions pointed her toward ways to stop catastrophe… not create it.

  “I think you’re wrong about him.”

  “Ah,” Dozan said, crossing his arms. “And what makes you think so? Is he playing all the right strings for you?”

  “As you did?” she spat.

  “Mark my words, that prince out there is not what he seems. And he will be the end of you, if you let him.”

  She scoffed.

  Dozan might be a lot of things, but he was not prophetic. He didn’t like Fordham and clearly hated his people for their history. But he was just judging him for all the things others had done. As so many had done to Dozan for his family and their murders. She didn’t know what Fordham was doing here, but she no longer accepted that his plan was to torture and kill her.

  “This isn’t the reason I came here,” she said, crossing her own arms to match.

  “You didn’t just come to be healed and yell at me? I’m shocked, princess.”

  She glared at him. “You didn’t even ask what happened.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “When an assassin is set out after me, then yes.”

  “An assassin?” he asked incredulously.

  “She already killed Lyam, and she tried to kill me tonight.”

  He shot her a dubious look. “Who would want you dead that much?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” She had no clue who wanted her dead that much. Plenty of people believed that half-Fae shouldn’t have rights, but there wasn’t a long line of them who wanted her specifically dead. “I have the assassin’s knife.”

  “You are full of surprises. Let’s see it.” He held his hand out.

  She smiled dangerously. “Fordham has it.”

  Dozan’s face froze in anger. He looked like he wanted to yell at her for her stupidity or possibly throw her back down on the pallet. There was a fine line between pain and pleasure when it came to Dozan Rook.

  “Fine,” he said and opened the door.

  An angry princeling thundered into the small room. His storm-cloud eyes were a hurricane. His body a barely contained ripple of power.

  “The knife,” she said, holding out her hand before he could say anything that would make Dozan not help them.

  “You’re healed,” Fordham said.

  “You actually seem pleased by that fact,” Dozan said, his words one second away from striking him down. “I wouldn’t have guessed that from your kind.”

  Fordham looked at Dozan as if he were the scum under his boot. All of Dozan’s carefully worded criticisms of Fordham’s home and character came to the surface in that moment. He looked the imperious prince, hatred flaring across his features at being addressed by a lowly human. But what came out of his mouth…

  “My kind or not, she was in my care,” he snarled at Dozan. “And thus, my responsibility.”

  “You two can bicker all day if you’d like—after we figure out where that knife came from,” she snapped, stepping between them.

  Fae prince versus human crime lord. She had a guess who would win that fight. Especially after seeing Fordham’s dark magic unleash against the assassin. She knew Dozan had tricks up his sleeve. He ruled here after all. But it wasn’t something she wanted to witness. Men!

  Fordham slowly retrieved the knife from his cloak and passed it to Kerrigan.

  “Thank you,” she said as she turned the blade in her palm. It was light, about eight inches long, and as sharp as death. The pommel wasn’t fancy, but it had a small bird engraved into the handle. “This is the knife the assassin tried to kill me with. Can you tell us who made it?”

  Dozan gripped the handle and twirled the blade in his hand. Show-off. He’d always been skilled at blade work. Kerrigan had taken lessons in the mountain to try to catch up, but he stayed one step ahead of her. As infuriating as it was.

  “Tendrille steel,” he said faintly.

  “Well, that explains how she cut through my shield,” Kerrigan grumbled.

  Tendrille was a pure metal found north in the heart of the Cascade Mountains. Legend said that when the dragons had been exiled from their homeland of Domara, the gods had cast them from the sky and to this world. That act left behind enough Tendrille to fill a mountain—the Holy Mountain. The dragons’ most sacred site and a place where Tendrille would never be mined.

  Making it as precious as it was rare. It was the strongest substance on earth, light as a feather, and immune to magic. Most weapons were made of an alloy with just a small percentage of Tendrille. They couldn’t cut through shields, as this one surely had, but it made them strong and light and valuable.

  “Whoever owned this is wealthy,” Dozan continued. “Must be to have this much Tendrille in this blade.” He frowned down at the bird sigil she had seen earlier. “And a raven on the handle.”

  “What does that mean?” Fordham asked gruffly.

  “A raven,” she whispered. “Like Rahllins’ men?”

  “Indeed.”

  Kerrigan saw Fordham’s look of confusion and explained, “Clare Rahllins is a rival gang and weapons dealer on the north side of the the Dregs. I didn’t think that she worked in Tendrille.”

  “Nor did I,” Dozan said. “Interesting.”

  “Do you think she sent the assassin?”

  “It’s more likely that she sold this blade to whoever sent the assassin,” Dozan said.

  “Could you find out who that is?”

  Dozan’s sharp golden eyes met hers. A small smile spread across his sensual lips. His russet hair was almost brown in the dark lighting. “And what will you give me if I could?”

  She should have seen it coming, and still, it felt like a punch to the gut. Healing her could be done for free or a small collection from her winnings. He had an incentive to keep his fighters alive. But information… well, that was something that came for a price.

  “What do you want?” she asked with a frustrated sigh. Of course, it could never be this easy. Especially after she had rebuffed him earlier.

  “A big fight with all the elements.”

  She just met his triumphant stare. This was what he’d wanted from her for so long. He’d wanted to put her abilities on display in the ring and watch her best his opponents. Not any of these small peanuts fights she had been competing in the last year, but a high stakes, high profit fight. He wanted to use his little half-Fae girl to destroy anyone in her wake. He knew that she’d draw a crowd, that she’d bring him a lot of money, but she’d never wanted that. She hadn’t wanted the fame or the money or the target on her back.

  “No yields. No tap-outs. A fight to the death.”

  “Out of the question,” Fordham spat.

  “Fine,” she ground out. “You get us the information. Help us figure out who is trying to kill me and why. And I will fight for you. One fight.”

  Dozan held his hand out, and she put hers in his.

  Another bargain struck.

  26

  The Training

  Fordham didn’t say a word as they headed back toward the mountain. She fingered Lyam’s
compass in her pocket. At least one good thing had come out of all of this. The rest made little sense, and tying her fate to Dozan even more than she already had felt like suicide.

  What other choice had she had?

  She had less than a month to figure all of this out or else her life was over.

  By the time they stepped back inside the cool interior, the exhaustion she’d been fighting off since she’d been stabbed hit her full in the face. She dragged the rest of the way back to her rooms. She turned to face Fordham, prepared to thank him for his help and wish him good-night, knowing she’d probably never see him again, despite his assistance with the assassin and Dozan.

  But he beat her to it.

  “You are not what I expected.” His gray eyes no longer held that malice. The tension that permeated him had…released.

  She coughed a laugh. “I’ve heard that before. More trouble than I’m worth?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. You’re brave.”

  She glanced up at him in surprise. His body was close to hers. A lock of his midnight hair had fallen forward. She hadn’t expected him to say anything… kind.

  "Well, I guess we’re even now,” she told him.

  But still he didn’t move. He remained in her doorway. His gray eyes swirling and then finally settled. She swallowed hard at that look. She’d always found him attractive, but without all that sinister energy radiating off of him, she felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Having these feelings would only mean getting burned.

  Her heart thudded as their energy mingled, brought together by destiny or time or just this very moment after all that danger. And maybe it wouldn’t be wrong to want something for herself in the midst of all of this.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. They were almost touching.

  “But you are also stupid,” he said.

  And there it was.

  She sighed and stepped back. Spell broken. “Well, thanks.”

  “You cannot fight to the death.”

  “The bargain has already been made.”