“You are his brother.” And his jailor. His torturer. I’d believed Hilde, but it was different seeing it for myself. “Is he alive?”
Draki’s eyes churned with things I lacked the language to read.
“Is he alive?” I screamed it, shoving at him, but the warlord was unmoved. I punched Draki, and it was like hitting a boulder, but I beat my fists against his body and howled the question over and over. “Is he alive? Is he alive? ”
My gifts slipped their reins and the air became a vortex pivoting around us, the boat jouncing so that I had to hold on to Draki to keep from tumbling out. Draki stood as still as one of the stone pillars jutting from the sea, saying nothing, his unblinking gaze fixed on me.
“Where is my medallion?” I tore at his tunic, but there was no necklace. “Where did you find me at the Mountain of Fire? In the crater? Or when I was drowning in the glacier?”
The Dragon said nothing.
I’d known something was wrong in the ice cave the moment I’d kissed Draki. But the kiss in the crater—it was real. It was Reyker.
We’d found each other. And lost each other again.
“Where is he?” My voice had frayed to a strangled whisper. “I want to see him.”
The storm circling us died, and I wasn’t certain if I’d let it go or if Draki had smothered it. Finally, Draki spoke, gripping my flailing wrists. “Give me what I want, and you will get what you want.”
Be Draki’s consort, knowing Reyker was alive?
I spit in his face.
He smiled, my saliva dripping down his perfect nose and cheekbone. “Your outburst caused quite a scene. Consequences must be dealt out. The guards you slipped past will be executed for their mistakes, and dear Hilde will have to be punished as well, since she must have helped you. Shall I whip her with a branch from a thorntree? I had the Green Isle emissary bring me one of those too.”
It was my turn to smile. “Good luck finding her.”
Draki pulled me onto his longship and tied my boat to it, steering us back to shore. Dragonmen met us on the beach. “The priestess is missing, Emperor,” one of them said. “We’re searching, but no one has seen her since the magiska ran from the temple.”
Draki turned to me, eyes narrowed.
I waited for my punishment, for him to strike me, or order me to be whipped as my father had, but he only shook his head before vanishing into the tunnel. Still I heard him speak, as if he was standing right next to me. “You will be the death of him, Lira. You will damn yourself and drag him down with you.”
CHAPTER 36
REYKER
“You look like shit, Lagorsson.”
Reyker rubbed at the ache between his eyes. “Good to see you, too, Brokk.”
The big man clapped him on the back hard enough to jar his bones. “I mean it. I’ve seen you look like all sorts of horses’ asses, but this is by far the ugliest. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
When he’d first left for Dragon’s Lair, Reyker had slept restlessly. His dreams were empty without Lira, but he would not go to her—whatever her reasons, she had asked him to stay away. He worried that something had happened to her spirit at the glacier after he’d left her. He feared that he would never see her again.
Since the slaughter at Hidden Falls, he had barely slept at all. Every time he tried, the fleshless corpse of Jarl Sigmundsson was there, jawbone wagging, reminding Reyker that his soul was damned to the Mist. The nightmare tossed him back into wakefulness quicker than being doused with a bucket of fjord water. To ward off facing what he’d done, he had hidden in Vaknavangur for the past weeks, helping Hamund and the others with the rebuilding, wearing himself ragged until he finally felt steady enough to make the journey to Fjullthorp. To tell Solvei that the only way the Mountain Renegades would get the information they needed to stop Draki was for her to give up her head.
“I need to speak with the jarl,” he told Brokk.
“She went to meet someone at the mead house, though I bet she’d want you there. Another Dragonman contacted her, willing to turn traitor.”
“Who?” A trap—that was his first thought. No one considered betraying Draki and lived long enough to tell anyone about it. No one but him.
“Let’s go find out.”
Brokk headed to fetch a horse from the stables, and Reyker was about to mount Vengeance when a voice stopped him.
“Reyker!” It was Alane, the tract-seeker. She ran to him, as if she might throw her arms around him, but stopped herself at the last moment. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
“Are they treating you well, Alane?” She looked no worse than the last time he saw her. He glanced around for the sea-farer and the bone-healer. “And your sister magiskas?”
She spoke haltingly, a mix of graceless Iseneldish and Glasnithian. “Jarl Solvei treats us well enough. She made us pray to her gods and bleed a goat and—well, it was strange, but it allowed us to use our gifts here. She sends Bronagh out with her sailors and Keeva with her patrols. She makes me spy on the Dragon. And on you.” The girl stared at her feet, chewing her lip. “I saw what you did to those men at the waterfall, but I told her the warlord did it.”
“Alane . . .” He felt like he might be sick. “Gods aflame, I’m sorry you had to witness that.”
“I know it wasn’t your fault. He made you do it. Right?”
There it was—a flash of doubt, of fear. It was justified, yet it still wounded him. “I was forced,” Reyker agreed, not sure if the lie was more to comfort her or himself.
Most of her distrust ebbed. There was a rosy warmth to her demeanor he’d not seen before. Though he barely knew her, she seemed a much different girl than the one he’d fought beside in Dragon Bay. But then, the man he was off the battlefield was nothing like the monster he was on it.
“Are you staying in Fjullthorp?” Alane asked. “Have you come back for good?”
“I can’t.” He cringed as her face fell. “I’m only here to speak with Solvei, and then I must leave again. I promise as soon as I’m able, I will take the three of you back to Glasnith.”
“Take Keeva and Bronagh. There is nothing left for me in Glasnith.” She brushed her fingertips along the cuff of his coat, tugging a loose thread from his sleeve. “I would rather stay here.”
“Here? You want to join the Renegades? But—”
Brokk cleared his throat loudly behind them, where he waited atop his horse.
“I’m sorry, Alane. I have to go. We’ll talk again soon.” He gave her an awkward pat on her shoulder and mounted Vengeance.