Chapter 22
Soren
The true leader? What insanity is Tallin spouting off?
My princess’s eyes seek mine, and I’m tempted to drag the fool out and finish him now.
Moments before the wyvern skulked in here, Serah said I could marry her early, that I could have her fully as my own weeks before I expected.
Now Tallin shows up with his wyvern stench and his foolishness to interrupt that?
To beg and writhe like a wyrm on the floor of her tent?
I give his head a vicious yank.
“Your Majesty, please,” Serah says, and my shoulders knot up against my neck.
Why is she calling me that again? Is it because there are others around, or is she angry at me?
I momentarily sink deeper into my second form in search of the answer but find nothing except the same rage at Tallin’s coming here.
“Are you saying you aren’t the wyvern leader, Lord Tallin?” Serah asks. She glares at me when she says this, like she’s worried I’ll tear his head off.
I am considering it.
The wyvern’s throat bobs as he fights to swallow. It’s difficult when your neck is being bent like wet wood. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
The scales running down my back lift. “Lies,” I snarl down at him. He’s lost all reason to come here and lie like this. “You were appointed leader when I was still a fledgling.”
“A farce,” he grates out.
“To what end?”
“I don’t know.”
My first form rumbles out a laugh, and Tallin shivers as he should. “So you expect my queen to believe you’re pretending to be the wyverns’ leader while you don’t even know why you’re doing such a thing?”
To my surprise, he releases a mirthless laugh himself. “I don’t even know who the leader is.”
When I bare my teeth at him, he shuts his eyes and gives in to the pull of my grip, willfully exposing his throat. Serah’s guards remain quiet, but I sense their shock at his submission.
“I did not come to lie,” Tallin says. His trembling stops. “I came to save my kind.”
Flames lick at the back of my throat. After he’s filled my princess’s tent with the reek of fear, this sudden show of courage enrages me. What game is he playing?
That he’s trying to make my princess pity him is obvious. But why humiliate himself to do so when she already offered to draw water for the wyverns? Did he think she would change her mind? Does he doubt her benevolence? My teeth sharpen at the thought.
A different thought trickles in, one I hadn’t considered, one that fills me with an unfamiliar sense of dread.
What if Serah begins to wonder why someone so desperate for water didn’t make an offer for her? What if she asks Tallin?
No, she wouldn’t. Openly asking a question like that is the way of a dragon, not a human princess who hardly raises her voice. But she’s already shown herself to be fiercer than I expected any human could be. What if she does ask? What if she asks about other offers?
What if she asks about that Sileshian wyrm I thought of leaving in the desert for the vultures to pick clean?
I stare at the pulse throbbing in Tallin’s neck, at the lifeblood pumping there. One snap of my jaws would silence him forever, my first form whispers. The problem would be solved. This one, at least.
“Your Majesty.”
Her voice draws me back to the tent, to the guards, to the sound of small flames whispering in their lanterns.
My eyes settle on my princess, on the face I first saw beneath the blessed stars, and my mind remembers what it must—killing the wyvern leader, false or not, would mean war between their kind and mine.
That would endanger my subjects. It would endanger her.
These are the reasons I’ve let Tallin live.
I must remember them.
“Perhaps,” Serah says with perfect calmness, “if Lord Tallin had a moment to think without his hair being pulled from his scalp, he might be able to answer your questions more to your satisfaction.”
Would she be this gracious if she knew how he plotted to have her? I avoid the question that follows.
Would she be as gracious to me if she knew what I’ve done?
It doesn’t matter. She’s allowed me her name. She’s accepted my stone.
She’s mine now, and no one can take her from my clutches.
I jerk Tallin’s head back once more for good measure and then release him. Stepping back beside Serah, I fix him with a warning look.
“Talk, Tallin,” I say.
But not too much.
To his credit, he doesn’t sulk over his discomfort or pretend he isn’t in pain. I know he is; I used my first form’s strength just as I felt him resisting me with his own. He rubs a moment at his strained neck before beginning to speak.
“I did briefly lead the wyverns. That is true. But our customs for ruling are the same as yours, and I was defeated in combat several years ago now.” His hands, resting on his thighs, briefly tighten. “I have played the role the victor assigned me ever since.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “Which is?”
The hands now open. “What you see. A sneering, conniving leader who sows discord with his neighbors.”
“If it is only a role you play,” Serah says, “then you play it well.”
I wonder if she sees the proud smirks of her guards. Even Tallin grins.
“I fear that isn’t a compliment.”
“It isn’t,” she confirms.
The wyvern bends at the waist and bows low. “I beg you to forgive my words when we first met. They were vulgar, and they were not my choice.”
I don’t want to hear Serah forgive him, so I demand, “If you fought this so-called ruler and lost, then tell us who it is.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I couldn’t see him.”
“And why not?”
“It was a moonless night.”
My chest swells with outrage. My princess indulges him, and this is how he repays her? By spewing lies a child would know better than to try?
“Even I can see on a dark night, Lord Tallin,” Serah says.
He shifts. “Of course. If one of your guards wouldn’t mind bringing a light closer to my eyes…”
Her guard Yarl is standing closest, and when she nods to him, he retrieves a lantern from where it hangs. I’m pleased to see the rest of his flight shift closer to Serah.
“Water is scarce, Tallin,” I warn. “If you make me waste any putting out a fire you caused, I’ll have your head.” One fling of his arm could set the tent alight.
“I understand.”
Yarl bends to bring the lantern to Tallin’s face, and I watch as one of the wyvern’s pupils narrows and the other doesn’t. As the light flickers over the unresponsive eye, a pale line bisecting the pupil glints back at me.
“A fledgling injury,” Tallin says quietly. “One I’ve been able to keep from everyone but my wingmates.”
Dragons and wyverns have been enemies as far back as the oldest of my kind can remember, and still, there’s a respectful silence when Yarl withdraws the lantern.
We may be enemies, but we are all warriors.
At the very least, Tallin has lost his depth perception and exposed a tremendous vulnerability. I cross my arms and regard him.
“How did you win the right to rule then?”
He shows a trace of annoyance at this. “My ears are still sound, as well as my nose.”
“Then I’ll ask how you couldn’t smell your opponent.”
There’s a reason dragons say you can smell a wyvern flying downwind in a sandstorm—there’s a sharp tang to their scent, like hot metal or lightning.
Tallin’s scent is a distinct coppery one.
Seltzen’s was like iron. The wyverns likely grow accustomed to their smells, as everyone does, but to ignore them entirely? Impossible.
“I could smell him,” Tallin says, “but I never have again.”
“Do you not meet with him?”
“He communicates by letter and rarely.”
“Where are these letters then?”
“Burned.”
How convenient.
Before I can continue interrogating him, Serah reaches her fingers up to touch my own. Some feeling passes over Tallin’s face at the sight of her hand on mine. Regret? Sadness? I think again of the thin, pulsing skin of his neck and how easy it would be to seize the artery within.
“If what you say is true,” Serah says, “you have given us a great deal of confidential information. Why?”
Tallin gazes down at his outstretched hands for a long moment. It grates on me. “Because,” he says finally, “it’s all I have to convince you to come. You asked me why I’m here without my wingmates, and I gave you the truth.”
He lifts his head to look at her.
“I’m not the wyvern leader, and the one who is, he’s going to let us all die.”