Wing & Claw (Fire and Valor #3)

Chapter 1

ROLAND

More than I’d ever wished for my crown or my throne, I wished to keep Aderyn of the Wind Clan at my side.

He was my very best friend, and still, it was impossible.

Not because he was a dragon. There were plenty of dragons who’d taken up permanent residence in Atheldinas or throughout Llangard—Tristram and Rhys even lived in the Spires.

The way Rhiannon told it on the occasion she visited, the Hudoliaeth needed her to keep the candles lit so all the students could read.

Dragons in Llangard were no longer in hiding.

Half-dragons aspired to Tristram’s place and power—not only politically, but because he slipped into his second form so easily now. Each time a half-dragon came to visit the Spires, inevitably he’d find himself trapped in a conversation about how to shift.

It seemed a difficult thing to try and explain, to wholly remake oneself. I certainly had no idea how he did it willfully.

No, the problem wasn’t that Aderyn wasn’t welcome in my kingdom. It was simply that his clan was small and fragile. They needed him. He, his brother, and their sisters were all that was left of the Wind Clan, and I could hardly ask to split them up.

He needed them. For more than a decade, he’d had no one to care for him. No family. He’d been trapped and tortured and left alone, and that was how I’d met him, cowering in a cage while my ancestor stole his blood.

What kind of monster would I be if I tried to tempt him away from the family he’d found?

A worse monster than I already was.

The Wind Clan would visit Atheldinas for a time every year, and having him there—well, he was more than my very best friend.

He was my only friend, really. He knew me as Roland, not as a king or a Cavendish.

Frankly, no one else my age had ever shared a laugh so comfortably with me as Aderyn did.

The people at court were polite, even eager to speak with me, but I couldn’t trust their intentions fully.

But then the seasons would turn, and the Wind Clan would leave.

I let them go, every time with a wave and a smile, as they traveled between Brynaf to the north—the seat of the Summer Clan who’d once taken in Aderyn’s brother, Hafgan—the Hudoliaeth, where Aderyn’s sister Dorte studied, and here, my home, built at its very inception to be uninviting to their kind.

In the years since I’d taken my father’s crown, I’d had the sharpest points of the Spires leveled off. There were places for dragons to safely land.

Was it enough?

I wanted the whole world safe and inviting for Aderyn, and if I couldn’t give him that, how could I possibly ask for more from him?

But going months without seeing him made me feel old and unreasonably tired, given that I’d only seen a couple dozen summers. The only cure for my lassitude was the promise that he was on his way, perhaps not home, but to me.

I tried to make the Spires more appealing to him.

Dragons each had hoards—collections of meaningful things that they loved and kept with them.

Mostly. Some were not so practical. Rhys collected books; Tristram, blades; and Hafgan collected dragons.

Literal dragons. He couldn’t very well consign the Summer and Stone Clans to traveling the land as the Wind Clan did, so he simply visited them. Often.

And Aderyn collected feathers, which were a good deal easier to carry than all of Rhys’s books.

When I had promised to return for him, to save him from his cage and the pain he’d endured, I’d given him a feather. And it was . . . it was all he’d ever gotten, to that point.

Now, he had a thousand, thousand feathers, and more than three dozen birds alongside them.

The first building project I’d pursued only for my personal satisfaction was an enormous aviary to house them all.

It was my favorite place in the world now, if only for the memory of the soft, startled smile on Aderyn’s face the first time he’d seen it and the wonder of all those flapping wings.

Even beneath the aviary’s glass dome, it’d taken some effort to get him to realize it was all for him.

When he was gone and I missed him, that was where I came.

“Not enough yet?” Bet sat on a nearby bench, cleaning beneath his fingernails with the tip of his dagger.

I arched a brow, and Tris shot him a look.

It was hard to understand the significance of a dragon’s hoard if you weren’t a dragon, but Bet?

He was just teasing. Even after all this time, he liked to poke at people just to prove he could get away with it without incident.

He could prod at us, and we’d still love him in his prickly imperfection.

I didn’t mind, and gathering the feathers that’d fallen to the ground went twice as fast with Tris helping, even when Bet was being difficult.

“Are there still some loose?” I shot back, waving a hand at the iridescent teal and green feathers sticking out of the carefully tended shrubs.

The peacocks were a new addition to the aviary, and I couldn’t wait for Aderyn to see them. They were magnificent.

In response, Bet simply looked up. His sharp elven eyes rested where a feather had gotten trapped between the branches of a small tree overhead.

I huffed. “How the hells did it get up there?”

There were trees throughout the aviary, and despite the cold winter outside, we kept the whole building warm with hot water that ran beneath the floor. It was the same water that fed into the public baths, only diverted a little.

I plucked up a stray branch and tried to poke the feather to falling.

Tris and I had already gathered dozens, and I’d add them for safe keeping to the collection Aderyn had already made.

Some went with him on the road, but so many stayed here in the Spires, with me.

It was my duty to keep them safe, and if it gave him a reason to return to me? All the better.

“Lord Forov has made a request . . . ” Tristram hedged, taking advantage of my distraction as I strained for the leaves above.

I paused mid-swing and stared at him. “What?”

“His wife heard you’ve read The Metaphysics of Steel. She’d like to discuss it with you over dinner.”

I frowned at that. “Fine.”

The book itself was dry and sharp, and it wasn’t my favorite, but my . . . well, my father had pressed a copy into my hands when I was very young, and for that reason alone, it’d seemed worth my while.

And perhaps I’d read it again recently, worried that I had missed some essential wisdom that would help me rule Llangard, as if my father had known anything about ruling well.

As if I wanted to be like any Cavendish king who’d come before me.

The Metaphysics of Steel laid out the discipline of kings, but it centered itself on brutality that had no place in my court. Still, I had opinions on it if Lady Forov wished to plumb them, so I didn’t understand at first why Tris looked so uncomfortable.

“Lord Forov’s trying to get a sense of your manners around a woman,” Bet supplied, cutting to the quick.

I scowled. “I know how to act around a lady.”

Tris cleared his throat. “Of course. But more . . . Emperor Joseph has a daughter who’s come of age. I suspect—”

I huffed, straining once again for the feather. “I hardly think a discussion of philosophy is tantamount to a declaration of my intent to marry.”

Despite what I owed Llangard, I wasn’t sure I had any intention to ever do that, and certainly not to a stranger from a foreign empire I hadn’t gotten the measure of.

I gave my stick a particularly hard swing, and the feather slipped from between the branches and floated gently downward. I snatched it off the grass, triumphant.

“I’m happy to be seated beside Lady Forov if Aderyn and his family have not arrived by supper. If they have,” I grinned, flicking the feather so it danced shimmering through the air, “I shall be otherwise occupied, and you may feel free to tell them so.”