The prince’s gaze shifted to his father then. “Sit down. All of you.”
Malcolm threw his napkin on the table and walked out. Cornwall’s eyes shifted from Jori to Malcolm, then he pushed his chair back and went after his brother.
“Malcolm! Cornwall?” Esmera stamped her foot.
Sybil drained her ale and jogged after her brothers.
“Sybil, get back here!” Esmera called, but Sybil walked out the door without looking back.
Jori clung to Griffin’s wrist. “After your performance today, Griffin, you need every possible second with my father.”
King Umbert heard Jori, stopping his fork from reaching his mouth. He looked in their direction, a curious brow arching. His face flushed. His anger was palpable from ten feet away. He had barely spoken.
“He’s in a frightful mood,” Jori added.
Griffin had had no choice but to sit back down.
“Don’t look so put out. This will all be over soon enough. Xavier has a performance in the king’s chambers tonight. If you feel a sense of purpose in visiting Ragnas, go then. No one will miss you.”
But he hadn’t gone to see Ragnas, as he told the prince. He had gone to Maggie’s room, finding it empty. And he knew Xavier had taken her with him. The king’s mood sour, if Xavier failed to perform, if Maggie failed, Griffin foresaw a grim end with Xavier in the arena fed to a draignoch, and Maggie’s tongue publicly lopped off for lying to the king.
Raleigh stormed out of the tower. His back to Griffin, he punched the metal door closed.
“It has been that kind of a day, has it not?” Griffin said.
“You backstabbing fool!” Raleigh grabbed Griffin, throwing him up against the metal door so hard he bounced off, sharp cobblestones digging into his back.
Griffin groaned, the air racing from his lungs. “Have you gone mad?”
Raleigh snared Griffin’s shirt, tugging him up, then punched him in the stomach. Griffin took it in stride, responding with a right cross that sent Raleigh careening into the railing.
Moldark and a soldier Griffin didn’t recognize came across the bridge.
They tackled Griffin, wrenching his arms behind his back. “What’s the matter with all of you?”
Raleigh’s lip split and bleeding, he spat at Griffin’s feet. “I’d tell them to break your arm, but what would be the point? The lass upstairs would only mend it, as she did your hand.”
Griffin couldn’t hide his shock.
“That’s right. I know. I also know the two of you went to see the draignoch—or should I say dragon . . .”
“What’s a dragon?” Griffin asked, trying to hide his shock, and failing miserably judging by Raleigh’s dark laughter.
“I suppose you haven’t seen all of it. You will soon enough.” He wiped the blood off his lip with his thumb, then patted Griffin’s cheek with the same hand. “You would be wise to heed a last piece of advice from me, whelp. Focus on the tournament. Play the part you’ve been lotted. Stay away from the girl.” He glared over Griffin’s shoulder at Moldark. “Men ready?”
“Yes. What do you want us to do with him?”
“Let him go, of course. The people need their champion.”
Indecision hung over him like a dagger on an unraveling string. If Raleigh knew what Maggie was capable of, who else did? The king? The prince?
Likely both.
It all made sense to him now why Jori was heaping riches at her. They wouldn’t kill her tonight. They wouldn’t kill her ever, would they? She was too valuable to them.
So why was Griffin still here?
Griffin had never believed in magic before—but there was no refuting its existence now. He held up his hand, tracing the healed bones. Unknowns frightened Griffin. The draignochs were mysterious, coming out of nowhere in the middle of the night, taking everything from him. Without that great unknown, his life would’ve been set.
Working in the fields with his father, food every night on the table from his mother, a river nearby to bathe in. A fire beside his bed to keep him warm, rather than freezing to death in the tavern’s basement. A step up from sleeping on the frozen streets the first year he arrived in the Walled City.
But they had come.
And all he’d worked for these past years could so easily be taken away. There was a mysterious dragon in the Oughtnoch, an unknown to be unleashed on him in the ring, and then there was Maggie.
What was a dragon? What was Maggie? Worst of all, why did he care so much about her?
The door flew open. A servant, the same who’d brought the ale in moments ago, stormed out of the tower with an unconscious Bradyn in his arms.
“Bradyn? Is he all right?”
“Obviously not!”
As the servant slowed, Maggie flew out the door, her orange dress streaked red. She grabbed Bradyn’s limp wrist. “Put him down! I can help him!”
“Get off.” He tore Bradyn from her, hefting him higher, and then started walking at a brisk pace. “Sir Griffin, I’m taking him to his father!”
“I don’t understand. Was this the king’s doing?”
He didn’t respond to Griffin’s questions or Maggie’s pleas for him to stop. She wanted to heal him, but if she did that in front of the servant, it would expose her magic and Griffin’s awareness of it.
“Stop! Please!” Maggie yelled. But he kept going.
“What happened to him, Maggie?”
Tears brimming, she shook her head, then hurried after the servant. Griffin kept pace, his chest tightening with each passing second.
“Is he badly injured? Maggie. Maggie!”
She either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him.
The servant’s heavy footsteps bounced off the walls as they descended the stairs that ended in the hot kitchens.
The place buzzed with help cleaning up from the banquet. Dishwashing, mopping, wiping; there were staff everywhere, but Buffont wasn’t among them.
“Buffont!” the servant called, spinning in circles. “Where the bloody hell are you?”
A frail man in a greasy gray smock frowned with worry when he saw Bradyn. His hands beckoned for them to follow. He led them around the ovens, which were forever spinning meats, and then through the butchery, which had yet to be cleaned.
Plucked feathers stirred from the piles on the tables, sticking to Bradyn’s blood on Maggie’s hands. She wiped it off on the dress.
Two steps down, into a brimming pantry. In his year of living in the palace, Griffin had never been in here. No windows to keep it cool, the room was stocked with enough sacks of flour to feed the Bottom for years. Buffont was there, his bald head sweaty, his apron covered in flour, holding a stick to the bags, counting.
“Bradyn?” Buffont dropped the stick at the same time his wife, Molly, hurried to them from a room beyond. Perhaps another pantry. Her chestnut hair braided down her back, she rushed in, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Bradyn?” She grabbed his hand and pulled, taking them back through the kitchen to a small cove with a cot that was occupied by another boy. Bent over, the boy’s cheeks black from soot, a bucket between his knees—he was recovering from turning the spit. When he saw Bradyn, he got up to make room for him.
Molly touched the back of his head and screamed. She held her palm up for all to see it was covered in blood. “Sander!” Molly shrieked. “The physician! He’s upstairs. In the hall.”