Alarm flared through Heath, and he remembered his father’s words after the accident with the chimney.
If someone is going after my family, I’m not going to stand idly by.
Things had reached breaking point indeed. Just as the growing tension had eroded King Matlock’s moderation, events had broken even the duke’s habitual calm.
“This is all largely my fault,” Heath muttered, putting his head in his hands.
“No, it isn’t.” His grandmother’s voice was so sharp, Heath looked up in surprise. “I spent my own youth blaming myself for things that weren’t my doing,” she said, “and I’ll be hanged if I sit on my hands while my grandchildren do the same.”
Heath met her look seriously. “I appreciate the sentiment, Grandmother, but even you cautioned me. You knew Merletta’s presence was likely to cause an explosion, and I refused to listen to you.”
“What does Merletta have to do with all this?” Heath’s mother asked, bewildered.
Heath didn’t answer, his eyes still locked on his grandmother’s. Their silent communication lasted so long that Laura began to fidget impatiently.
“Can I please have a moment alone with my grandson?” the princess asked quietly. “We won’t be long.”
After a faint protest from the physician, and a bewildered moment of hesitation from Heath’s mother, his grandfather herded everyone from the room. As soon as they were alone, Heath’s grandmother spoke.
“Where did Reka take you after you were flogged?”
“Wyvern Islands,” Heath said wearily.
“What happened there?” she pressed. “Tell me exactly.”
Heath did so, noting that while she grew visibly distressed, she showed no sign of surprise.
“You were expecting something like this,” he said quietly.
“I was afraid of it,” she acknowledged, her voice heavy. She shot him a quick look. “And you knew there was a risk as well. Everyone else may have been oblivious to it, but I know you realized the dragons were looking at Merletta and her guardian when they took offense.”
“Believe me,” Heath assured her, “I don’t deny I was being willfully blind.” His voice turned wistful. “I just wanted her to stay.”
His own heart condemned his selfishness. His insufficient warnings to Merletta about caution looked unforgivably weak in the hindsight created by the incident at Wyvern Islands. If only he’d been fully honest with her, as his conscience had told him, deep down, that he should be.
His grandmother was silent for a moment, her eyes full of sympathy rather than the judgment Heath knew he deserved.
“Did you know that there is a way for a dragon to die?” she asked, the soft question so unexpected Heath could only blink at her. “Even ones who’ve chosen immortality, I mean.”
He shook his head slowly. “I thought they were invulnerable.”
“Almost,” she said. “Nothing you or I could do would ever be able to kill them. But there is a way—they just don’t speak of it.”
“I can understand why,” Heath said, intrigued. “How does it happen?”
“By the dragon’s own choice,” his grandmother went on. “Their magic is their lifeblood. Without it they simply…wither away. And although it’s not exactly something they teach their dragonlings, it is possible for a dragon to choose to forfeit its magic, and so end its life.”
Heath stared, transfixed.
“But the magic can’t go into nothing,” his grandmother added. “It has to be received by a living thing. And that creature gets warped by the power it should never have had. Its effects are unpredictable, and the whole process is deeply offensive to the dragons. There was a dark time in their history—many centuries ago—when there was war between them, and many dragons forfeited their magic, for reasons I won’t go into. The dragons who remained called the resulting creatures abominations, and sought to wipe them all out.”
She drew a shaky breath. “They thought I was an abomination when they learned of my magic. They didn’t know of any other way a human could carry it as I do. Now, of course, they understand that our magic is part of us, something we are naturally born with, not something we have received from a dying dragon.”
“The angry dragon called Merletta an abomination,” Heath whispered.
The princess nodded. “When Elddreki told your grandfather and me the history I’ve just told you, he spoke of various types of creatures who received forfeited magic. Wolves who grew overlarge and supernaturally savage. Horses which sprouted horns and gained other strange abilities. They were wiped out by the dragons with relative ease. But they also spoke of enormous fish from the ocean who were warped into something unnatural, and who escaped into the deep. They were harder to catch, but the dragons believed they’d tracked them all down.”
Heath’s mouth had fallen open. “You’re saying Merletta, and all her kind, are descended from these abominations? That their ancestors were fish which were warped by this dragon magic?”