Traitor (31 page)

The longer I sat, the more my mind began to wander. Thinking of my friends in Maldobar made my chest feel tight with unease. Thanks to my mental bond with Mavrik, I knew Felix and Beckah had survived the battle in Barrowton. But I had no way of knowing what had happened to my half-brother, Roland. I could only pray and hope that he had survived and that he would be waiting for me at Mithangol with the others.

“You’re awfully cheery this morning. Something on your mind?” Jace was joking sarcastically as he sat down next to me. The sudden sound of his voice made me jump and all the birds around me scattered and disappeared into the trees.

Jace was still staring at me expectantly, waiting on my answer, but I just shook my head. I didn’t feel like sharing my thoughts just yet. Anything I said to him now was bound to ruin his unusually happy mood.

His whole demeanor had changed practically overnight and it was a side of him I’d never witnessed before. He was in love and it was painfully obvious. He now looked at Araxie like a blind man who was seeing a rainbow for the first time.

It made me miss Beckah terribly. Just the thought of her put a pain in my chest that took my breath away. I couldn’t stand still.

“Hey.” He caught me by the arm before I could slip away. For an instant, I saw that fierce, instructor-ish glare return to his eyes. “I’m serious. If there’s something—”

I cut him off before he could finish. “How do you think the other members of Blue Squadron are going to react to what we’re about to do? What about the rest of our dragonrider brothers? Do you think they’ll understand? Or join with us?”

Jace’s steely expression hardened. I could practically see his mind racing over those questions.

“It’s been long enough. By now, everyone most likely assumes that we’re both dead,” I continued. “If you go back, you’re going be associated with me as an accomplice, for better or worse. Those still serving Hovrid are going to use your past to defame you and make you out to be a criminal. Even if we do put the stone back and restore the balance, you will have to live with that stigma forever.”

“I’ve already been a criminal once, Jaevid,” he murmured darkly. “So that doesn’t exactly frighten me.”

“Then are you sure you want to go back to being one again?”

He hesitated. It was only a second or two, but it was enough to let me know that I had hit a nerve. Of course he didn’t want to go back to that. Who would? And now he was in love with Araxie. He had found a place here, in Luntharda where he could start over. What was there for him to go back to in Maldobar? He had no family—he’d told me that himself. He had no dragon, so it wasn’t as though he could go back to being a dragonrider. He had nothing there.

“Don’t talk circles around me like I’m some kind of idiot. Just say whatever it is you want to say,” he growled.

I leveled my gaze on him. “I want you stay here.”

Once again Jace fell silent.

“Stay here with Araxie. Start over. Let the past die with your memory in Luntharda.”

He slowly let go of my arm. “And what about you? You can’t fight Hovrid alone.”

“I won’t be alone.”

“You said it yourself—how do you know any of the other riders are going to side with you? Let’s say you do managed to kill Hovrid. When you do, all hell is going to break loose right over your head. Every rider and soldier in Maldobar will be coming straight for you. There won’t be anywhere to hide. You may not even make it back to the border with the stone. They will hunt you down like a dog and they will kill you.” His voice got louder as he started to get angry. It was attracting attention. Behind him, I could see Araxie and Kiran watching us suspiciously.

I straightened, squared my shoulders, and looked
down
at him—after all, I did have a few inches on him. “They will try. But I’m not that easy to kill.”

I met Araxie’s worried gaze. I wasn’t sure how I would ever explain this to her—at least not in a way that she would understand.

“I don’t have much family left in the world that would ever want to claim me, let alone care about me,” I said quietly so that only Jace could hear. “Those I do have are precious to me. By asking you to stay here, I’m entrusting you with one of those people. Do you understand how important that is?”

Jace scowled down at the ground silently.

I took that as a yes.

“Good.” I patted him on the shoulder to try and reassure him. “Try not to let her down.”

“No, you try not to let us down. Got it?” He returned the gesture and gave my shoulder a firm squeeze. “Fly hard. Fly fast. Don’t look back.”

I was back.

Standing on the boundary between Maldobar and Luntharda, I looked up and finally saw the starlit sky stretching out over a landscape I knew well. It was broad and beautiful, glittering with clean silver light that made the dew-covered grass sparkle across the grassy valley before me. It had been months since I had seen anything but trees and branches for as far as the eye could see.

I was standing on an all-too-familiar muddy road—one I’d never actually visited in person before. Not physically anyway. My dreams, however, had brought me here many, many times. This was the place where Hovrid had murdered the true King of Maldobar and duped my father into stealing the god stone for him.

This was the place where the course of history had changed.

Looking at the place where I knew the king had taken his last breath put a strange chill down my spine. It was the worst sensation of déjà vu I could imagine, although there were no lingering remnants of that incident now. No bones. No blood. No tracks in the mud. That had been more than twenty years ago, after all.

“This road will take you to the human city you call Barrowton.” Araxie spoke softly as she stood beside me, staring at me as though she were trying to read my thoughts. She hadn’t questioned my decision to go on alone. I suppose she trusted my judgment more than I had ever realized.

“I will send a sign when I’m drawing close with the stone,” I told her. “Be ready. Muster what warriors you can and anticipate a fight—I’ll likely have all the forces of Maldobar on my heels.”

She sighed uneasily. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her chewing on the inside of her cheek. “The people—our people—who are still in the prison camp … ”

“They will be set free,” I assured her.

Her expression darkened. “How can you be sure? What if the king who takes the throne in succession to Hovrid has the same hatred for us?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “He won’t. He doesn’t now.”

Jace was shooting me a puzzled look. I guess he hadn’t put together who would be in line for the throne. With the true king and all his progeny dead thanks to Hovrid, the next king would have to come from the most powerful noble family in Maldobar.

“There will be peace, one way or another,” I promised. “So wait for my sign.”

Araxie nodded quietly. I could sense her apprehension. She was anxious about what was to come. I was, too, in a way. I knew what had to be done, I knew I could do it; I just wasn’t sure what the cost was going to be, not only for me, but also for my friends and loved ones.

“Oh, and see that Jace doesn’t get himself killed.” I winked at her playfully. “That is, if you don’t mind babysitting my human pet.”

She managed a small smile in return.

I kept my farewells brief and set out down the muddy road under the cover of night. There was no one in sight for miles, no farms or houses. No one dared to live this close to the jungle of Luntharda.

It took me well into dawn to finally reach the remains of Barrowton. As the rising sun burned the horizon deep scarlet, I saw the charred remains of the city rise up before me. The smell of death was strong on the wind. Smoke still drifted out from behind the battle scarred walls.

I did my very best not to look into the empty eyeholes of the dead that still lay, unburied and forgotten, all around the city. Dragons, men, and elves all lay together in that mass grave, rotting away to nothing but bone under the summer sun. The faces were unrecognizable now, but I was still afraid to look—afraid of seeing the armor of someone I knew.

Normally, there would have been soldiers inside. Infantrymen who were supposed to be holding the city to ensure the elves didn’t try to retake it. Maybe even a few dragonriders flying patrol patterns. But the place was deserted. It must have been uninhabitable on the inside with no place left for anyone to hide out. That, or Hovrid had passed an order to have poisoned salts poured into all the city wells. Tainting the water supply like that was a sure fire way to make sure no one could ever live in that city again. It was a common war practice in Maldobar.

All of a sudden, an explosion of color erupted into my mind. Pinks, orange, greens, and blues swirled through my brain an instant before I felt the ground flinch under my boots.

Turning around, I was greeted by a blast of hot, smelly dragon breath on my face.

Mavrik pushed his snout against my chest and sniffed me vigorously. He chirped and growled, rubbing his head so hard against me that it nearly knocked me over. Meanwhile, he was sending me a storm of images—questions about where I had been.

“Easy, there. It’s good to see you again, too.” I was trying to keep my composure. I couldn’t, though. Not for long. I was so glad to see him. I wrapped my arms around his neck as far as they would reach and put my forehead against his scaly hide. “I’ve missed you, my friend.”

He made a deep grumbling, purring sound.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” I knew I didn’t have to explain. He could see the thoughts and worries that raced through my brain. He knew what I planned to do and exactly how dangerous I suspected it would be. “But once this is over, maybe we can both retire for a while.”

A sticky, prickly dragon tongue swiped my cheek. I gagged. Dragon spit is about as smelly as it gets. It’s a stink that lingers. And their tongues are a lot like a cat’s; covered in little prickly barbs that feel like sandpaper. Put that together and dragon “kisses” are not a great experience.

That is, unless that dragon happens to be yours and you have been separated him for a few months.

“Really? Come on.” I laughed and scratched that special place behind his ears that made him purr even more loudly.

He was content to crouch down while I fixed my bag to his saddle and checked things over. I was glad to find everything was exactly as I’d left it. Some of the leather had been roughed up and scuffed, but apart from that everything was in good shape. I could ride to Mithangol without having to make any resupply stops. It would take a day and a half, maybe two if the weather was bad.

Something behind me clattered noisily—almost as though someone had tripped over something.

Immediately, I froze in place. Mavrik’s lips curled back into a snarl. He began hissing and letting the black spines down his back bristle up. I put a hand against his neck to keep him steady. Then I slowly turned around.

Kiran was standing only a short distance away, his eyes wide with horror at the death and carnage all around us. He looked even more terrified when Mavrik flared his wings and snapped his jaws threateningly. The color drained out of his face until his skin and hair were almost the same shade of washed out silver.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

He suddenly seemed to remember that he wasn’t supposed to be following me. He dropped his gaze as though he were ashamed—or maybe just embarrassed that he’d been caught. “My loyalty lies with you,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Please do not send me back. I want to help.”

“Does Araxie know you left?”

He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “By now I’m sure she does. I took my leave while they were … well, you know.”

“Ah.” He didn’t have to finish. I got the picture. “This isn’t a guided tour, Kiran. You know what Hovrid is doing to the gray elves in this kingdom. He’ll do the same to you if you’re caught.”

Kiran looked back up at me with a determined scowl. “I have to be here, Jaevid. I made someone a promise. I am not afraid.”

I was about to remind him that fear had nothing to do with it, but then I realized what he’d called me. He’d never used my name before.

“If you take your plans to your human allies without a gesture of good faith from the gray elves, they might not believe that we truly do want peace. Am I right? I will go with you as validation—so they will know we are in agreement.”

I had to give him some credit. He made a good argument. I couldn’t exactly disagree with that. “So be it. But you know, you’ll have to fly with me.”

His multicolored eyes went wide. “O-on your dragon?”

I glanced back at Mavrik, who was still growling and swishing his tail like an angry housecat. His yellow eyes were narrowed suspiciously in Kiran’s direction.

“If he’ll allow it.”

Mavrik snorted. He sent me a mental image of himself chewing on what looked a lot like one of Kiran’s dismembered legs.

I tried to reason with my cranky dragon. “Don’t be like that. He’s on our side. It’s just until we get to Mithangol.”

“He doesn’t like gray elves?” Kiran asked uneasily.