Chapter 5
“Takes a slinker to know one,” I quip back. Should’ve given more thought to that. Not my finest work. But I don’t really have time to exchange verbal barbs with him.
Lucan steps forward. His thick eyebrows have a deep line between them. His dark-blond hair is turned brown when wet, though golden highlights still glint in the last of the twilight.
“What’re you doing, Isola?”
Going to see if my mum is still breathing, I almost say. Almost. But then I remember how well that worked out for me last time.
The Creed hates Mum. The vicar has all but said he’ll kill her himself if I step out of line. And Lucan is nothing if not an extension of his father.
“I was out to get some medicine when the dragon attacked. I’m going home.” Lying is so easy when you don’t care about the person you’re lying to.
“Your home is in the opposite direction.” He’s close enough that I can see his eyes. They’re a frustratingly beautiful shade of hazel, if I’m being honest. Well, if I’m being really honest, all of him is quite annoyingly attractive, given he’s the spawn of the most evil man I know.
“Oh, is it?” I feign confusion as an excuse to take in my surroundings, stepping back in the process. “Weird, I must have gotten turned around.”
“I can escort you home.”
I’d rather walk with a silver dragon than you. “Such a generous offer, but not necessary.”
“I think I should.”
“Really, I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.
See you tomorrow.” Those last three words are ash on my tongue as I dart away down a side alley.
Lucan shouts after me. I hear his footsteps hammering the cobblestones.
But I have a solid head start, and after years of the vicar’s training, I know exactly how his son is going to think.
I rip off my cloak, hanging it on a loose shutter before sprinting in the opposite direction. It might buy me only a second of him being fooled. But that’s all I need.
Even though he probably knows where I’m going… The thought has me running faster still, my heart straining with every beat against the cage of scar tissue between my ribs.
I catch my breath at a crossroads. To the left is Mum’s apartment. To the right is where the dragon fell.
One step left. Pause. “Damn it all.” I turn right and run again.
I know where she’s going to be because Mum, for all her brilliance, doesn’t have a sensible bone in her body.
She’s as reckless as Saipha, but where Saipha is all the “good” kind of reckless—wanting to kill dragons and walk the wall before she’s allowed—Mum is the “bad” kind of reckless.
The kind that has her questioning the Creed, conducting illegal research that gets her kicked out of a guild, or—
Holding back a green dragon’s jowls as she works to pry out a dragon fang.
“Mum.” My voice fails to carry over the growing rain. I rush over. “Mum.”
“Fascinating, very fascinating…” she mumbles.
“Mum!”
She jolts, and the dragon’s jowls snap shut. Her eyes turn toward mine—one black, one gold. “Oh, hello, Isola.”
“Don’t ‘oh, hello’ me and smile like we’re about to sit down for dinner.
” I gesture at the dragon carcass. The only reason my knees aren’t completely jelly and I’m not frozen in shock is because of the gaping hole in its chest. My father might be a man of few words, but he certainly can speak loudly through his inventions. “What’re you doing?”
“Researching.” She pats her satchel.
“Oh, dragon-burned hells, Mum, taking dragon parts is one of the most illegal things in Vinguard.” I know it’s useless to tell her.
She’s lived here all her life as well, went through the Tribunal, worked in the Earthtender’s guild, and lives under Creed rule.
Mum knows every law, and I sometimes feel like she treats them as a checklist of what to break next.
“How am I supposed to know if I can’t look?” She shrugs and turns back to the corpse. “It’s rare for me to get to one this fresh. Usually the red capes are swirling by now.”
“And they absolutely will be, any second.” I grab her elbow, Lucan flashing across my mind. He’s close, too. “We need to go.”
“All right.” She sighs as if I’m the one being utterly unreasonable. “One more thing.”
“Not one-more-thing. Now.” I tug her arm, all my careful plans for the night unraveling.
My hope waning before my eyes. Even if I knew I couldn’t be saved, I was hoping that maybe I could do something, in however short my life ends up being, to actually help Vinguard.
Rather than lying as a beacon of false hope and then dying to a Mercy dagger.
“I need to check under the scales.” She pulls back the scales in the opposite direction, like petting the fur on a cat the wrong way. “No sign of scourge dust… You know what this means? The dragon isn’t making the scourge, so they are truly creatures of—”
“Explain it all to me back at your apartment.” I tug hard enough this time that she takes a step away from the dragon. “We need to go because I actually have—”
The light of Mercy lanterns reflects off the wet streets, outlining the inky pool of dragon blood encircling Mum’s boots. Even if we did run, they’d find us. Dragon blood stains worse than ink. Mum’s boots would leave a trail and will be a damning crimson forever.
“Halt!”
I freeze.
“By the order of the Creed, you are—” A familiar silhouette walks forward, backlit by Mercy lanterns.
Tiny lightning bolts dance around the silver pauldrons that cap his shoulders, highlighting hair a familiar shade of red.
I remember the night Father etched sigils into the underside of that plate. “Oh, for Valor’s sake. Isola?”
“Hi Marius,” I greet Saipha’s father with a weak smile. Good job, Saipha. Your father managed to find Mum, all right.
His eyes drop to Mum’s boots. Our proximity. He sighs as heavily as I imagine my own father would, then says, “The law’s the law. Arrest them.”