The burgundy dragon was snaking his head back and forth in agreement. “This offends us,” he intoned solemnly.
An invisible hand seemed to clench around Heath’s throat, and horror washed over him. His gaze was locked on Reka, who was listening placidly to his more senior fellow’s words. What had the dragon done?
Reluctantly, Heath felt his eyes drawn to the royals. King Matlock looked stupefied. Heath could almost see his struggle not to glance toward the power-wielders. But Prince Lachlan was looking. With a jolt, Heath saw that the prince’s eyes were fixed on him. They were narrowed in an expression that looked inscrutable, but as with the dragons, Heath could see his true emotion as if it was written on his forehead.
Betrayal.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” King Matlock said at last.
Elddreki cocked his head to one side, considering the king. “You are telling the truth,” he mused, sounding intrigued. “You were truly not aware, then, that your power-wielding relatives are practicing their magic clandestinely for fear of reprisals if they use it openly.” He glanced back at Rekavidur, who still looked entirely unruffled. “My own offspring has witnessed it.”
King Matlock’s eyes passed to Reka, and inevitably on to Heath. How could he fail to draw the connection? Everyone knew of Heath and Reka’s friendship. The dragon had even declared Heath to be a dragonfriend at the previous year’s Winter Solstice Festival.
The king didn’t reply to Elddreki’s words. He was still looking in Heath’s direction, his gaze now encompassing the power-wielders at large. A hardness had descended on his face that made the ominous feeling within Heath triple in intensity.
The whole situation was a nightmare. The world seemed to spin for a moment, and Heath felt himself wobble on his feet. A firm hand steadied his elbow, and Percival’s voice sounded once again in his ear.
“They’re taking our side! You did this, Heath, didn’t you? I knew you couldn’t really be against us!”
“I didn’t do this!” Heath hissed, his lips feeling strangely numb. “Don’t you realize what a disaster this is, Percival? Do you really think anyone, including the power-wielders, will gain if there’s war with the dragons?”
“Silence.”
The Duke of Bexley’s voice was harder, more urgent, than Heath had ever heard it. He closed his mouth at once, still trying to master his alarm. He had never dreamed, when he called Reka to come to that frozen meadow, that something like this would happen. He hadn’t expected Reka to carry the tale back to the other dragons, but even so, he wouldn’t have guessed that they would be interested in such petty human problems.
But as his eyes passed again over the assembled dragons, and he saw with his inexplicable sight that strange fire of offense burning inside each, he thought he understood. Percival was wrong. The dragons weren’t taking the side of the power-wielders. They didn’t care about human politics. With a few exceptions, such as Rekavidur and his father, they didn’t generally care about humans at all.
But the magic of the power-wielders came from dragons, and the dragons clearly still felt some sense of ownership over it. They still saw it as an extension of their own power. In their eyes, the behavior of the Valorian crown toward the magic in its population was a slight not on the power-wielders, but on the dragons.
“We still desire peace,” the burgundy dragon said in his deep voice. “Dragons have never been apt to seek out conflict.” At a nod from him, Rekavidur snapped open his wings and took to the sky. He dropped down again quickly, hovering above the stone basin and its faint, flickering fire.
Opening his jaws wide, he breathed his purple-tinged orange flame over the basin, reigniting the Flame of Friendship for another year. Unlike the previous year, the display was not greeted with any exclamations, or applause. Everyone watched in tense silence.
“However,” the burgundy dragon continued, as if his speech had not been interrupted by Reka’s actions, “we offer you a warning. We watch from Wyvern Islands. If our magic is not welcome here, we will not return next year.”
With another incline of his giant, reptilian head, the burgundy dragon crouched against the flagstones, then shot into the sky. The others followed within moments. A stunned silence gripped the courtyard for maybe five seconds. Then pandemonium broke loose.
Heath could sense many eyes on him, and a clawing sensation began to rise up his body. Ignoring Percival’s excited whispers, he pushed out of the block of power-wielders, hurrying blindly through the crowd. He had no idea of his destination, just that he needed to get away from the courtyard.
“Reka,” he muttered, as he maneuvered through the onlookers, aware that the royal family were watching him. A glance back at his family showed him that Bianca looked stricken, and Jasmine terrified. Percival, of course, was still jubilant.
Fool, Heath grunted to himself. Of course Percival couldn’t hear him. He checked his pace for a moment. But someone else could.
“Rekavidur,” he murmured, hoping that no one in the crowd was listening too closely. “Rekavidur, I need to talk to you.”
The dragon’s face flashed immediately before his eyes, the blur of his surroundings showing Heath that Reka was still in the air, flying home to Wyvern Islands. The dragon cocked his head to the side, inviting Heath to go on.
But Heath didn’t immediately speak. A group of three men had caught his eye as he continued to fight his way across the square. They seemed immune to the panic spreading around them, just watching the chaos with sharp, emotionless eyes. There was something about them that was familiar, although their faces didn’t spark any memory inside him.
He took half a step toward them, barely aware of what he was doing. The man standing in the middle seemed drawn to the movement, because his gray eyes snapped suddenly to Heath. The intensity of his expression made Heath falter to a stop, halfway across the courtyard. The other two men looked as well, their eyes narrowing as they took in the strange standoff. Their faces were so expressionless, it made Heath shiver. One was weedy, and so pale both in hair and in skin that he looked faded, almost sickly. The other was thickset, the muscles of his arms bulging out of his tunic.
But it was the one in the middle who captured Heath’s full attention. Two things were exploding across Heath’s mind, so that he hardly knew which to latch on to. The first was that a faint power surrounded these men. It was familiar—tantalizingly so. But Heath knew every power-wielder in Valoria personally. He didn’t remember seeing these men in Kyona, but he had really only spent time with his own generation. The silver-haired man now holding Heath in his gaze was at least as old as his parents. Heath frowned as he tried to figure out whether all the men had power, or just the one in the middle. It was difficult to tell. But it was entirely possible that the man was a Kyonan power-wielder whom Heath hadn’t met in Kynton.
Except, he had met the man, sort of. The other thing making Heath reel yet again in this day of unpleasant shocks was that he recognized the silver-haired man. When Heath had last seen him, he hadn’t been silver-haired, of course. He’d been younger, because Heath had only been five. Heath had seen him in the marketplace, and had recognized his power without knowing that was what he was doing. He’d pointed at the man and declared shrilly that he was different until his mortified mother had him removed from the public place. She’d said she didn’t think the man was Kyonan, but she must have been wrong.
Heath had no idea what to make of the man’s reappearance. Who was he? Why was a Kyonan power-wielder—a royal, presumably—attending the Winter Solstice Festival incognito? All the time these thoughts raced through his head, Heath stood transfixed, his gaze still locked with the other man’s. For a moment, he had the most absurd impression that the man recognized him as well, that he was also reliving that encounter when Heath had been five.
But that was impossible. The man had already been an adult back then, so it wasn’t such a stretch for Heath to recognize him after fourteen years. Heath, on the other hand, had changed dramatically in that time.