Chapter Fifteen
DOMINIC
I was heading across the back garden towards the woods when my phone sounded with Rhodri’s tone.
My heart sank as I dug my phone out of my pocket to find his text. Study. Now.
Wondering what the hell I’d done this time, I turned on my heel and headed back to the house. No time to waste when he sounded like that. I pushed Rhodri’s limits—a lot, some might say—but these days, I knew when not to. Thank God he’d texted me before I was out of range of the Wi-Fi.
He wasn’t sitting behind his desk, for once, but instead was standing in front of the empty fireplace. He didn’t say anything as he ran his gaze over me from head to foot. Just as well I’d scraped the mud off my boots at the back door.
I couldn’t work out what was in his expression. Some anger, sure, but that was always there when he looked at me these days. Resignation? Hope, maybe? Whatever it was, it was different from usual, so I tried to stop my own face settling into its dealing-with-my-father expression of mild scorn.
“You’re coming to a meeting with Abimelech Mortimer this evening,” he said, and I could only just hear what he said next over the pounding in my ears. “I presume you do have a decent suit?”
“I do,” I got out through a dropped jaw. For one impossible, dizzying heartbeat, I stared at him. He wanted me to be part of this.
He turned away. “I’ll be leaving in forty minutes,” he told the fireplace.
It took a moment, but I realised. Nothing had changed. He couldn’t bring himself even to look at me.
I headed for the door, unsteady somehow after that wonderful, stupid hope that had lasted all of three seconds. He didn’t want me there, so why the fuck was he taking me? Maybe Mortimer had asked for my presence. But why would he do that?
I was ready and waiting by the front door thirty-five minutes later. I kind of hated myself for it, but I couldn’t risk Rhodri leaving without me.
He drove, of course, and my suit would never be the same again after spending two hours in the bucket seat of his Aston Martin. Neither would my back.
I kept quiet for the first half hour, while he listened to some political podcast. But when it finished, I cleared my throat. Which annoyed me, because it sounded like I was nervous.
“Do I need to know anything about the context of this meeting?” I asked.
He was silent for several minutes. As we were the only car on this particular bit of road, it wasn’t traffic holding his attention. I’d decided I wasn’t going to get an answer when he finally spoke.
“Abimelech Mortimer is manoeuvring,” he said.
“He’s behind this drive to get our history gathered and recorded centrally, yet it’s not clear why.
” He tapped his finger on the leather of the steering wheel a few times.
“I don’t know how history advantages him,” he confessed at last, and it took all my self-control not to draw an audible breath.
Rhodri never confessed to not knowing something. Especially not to me.
“Perhaps it’s not the history so much as working out what parts of it each family wants to hide,” I said. “Because knowing what we don’t want to be revealed gives him leverage of a kind.”
Rhodri tilted his head in acknowledgement, though he still didn’t look at me. “Perhaps.”
He said nothing further, and I wasn’t going to push my luck.
I relaxed instead into that cursed seat and thought about the very little I knew of the way Ben had arrived here.
From an English dragon family, desperately excited to discover that Welsh families had records that went back centuries.
We hadn’t been exactly free of turmoil in this country, but maybe things had been less turbulent and that was why we still had our records.
Or perhaps we were simply less paranoid than English dragons, who appeared to have destroyed records even when they didn’t mention the d-word, just in case.
Rhodri eventually pulled into the car park of a hotel, where his car looked practically average. Other midlife-crisis sports cars rubbed shiny shoulders with high-end sedans, reflecting the fact this hotel’s restaurant had a Michelin star.
Inside, the place did nothing to change my mind about the average bank balance of its guests. The carpet was like walking on clouds, and polished antique furniture boasted enough flower arrangements to make me glad Glenys wasn’t here—she’d have snaffled the lot for the wedding.
Rhodri steered to the bar where, with an inward eyeroll at myself, I ordered an orange juice.
It wasn’t as if a single alcoholic drink would render me incapable, but he’d probably assume it would.
Plus, I could just imagine his horror if I’d ordered a pint.
He had his usual gin and tonic, and we found some leather armchairs where I sipped the cloying, too-sweet orange juice and didn’t look at Rhodri.
A familiar voice cut across the hushed, upscale peace of the bar. “Dominic.”
Not exactly friendly, but not exactly not. I rose to my feet as Heath Gruffydd crossed the room to me, and I saw the imposing figure of his father at the door.
“Here to see Mortimer too?” Heath asked, curiosity in his eyes. “We’ve just come from him.”
He looked me up and down and I could see the moment he bit back a crack about my suit as he became aware of Rhodri sitting there. Heath was in shirt and trousers, a little different from his usual t-shirt and jeans but not exactly to Rhodri’s standards.
“Mr Bedwyr,” he said, with a respectful nod.
“Heath. Robin,” Rhodri added, tilting his head to Heath’s father.
If only they hadn’t been there, I might have got something out of Heath about his meeting with Mortimer, but with our respective heads of family there, we could hardly gossip.
We weren’t supposed to know one another that well—they had no idea we met up at least once a month to fight it out in the skies over the castle.
“One for the road, Dad?” Heath suggested in his father’s direction.
Robin moved into the bar, removing his long, black coat as he did. “You’re buying.”
Heath rolled his eyes at his father but grinned, because he’d got what he wanted. “You good?” he asked, gesturing to us, then his eyes fell to my orange juice and I saw him actually bite his lip to stop himself ripping the shit out of me in front of Rhodri.
“We’re fine, thank you.” Rhodri spoke to Heath, but his eyes were on Robin.
Taking that as my cue, I went to the bar with Heath. I hoped Rhodri would realise I was being tactful by taking myself away from the two heads of family, but he’d be more likely to think I was going there to tip a pint of vodka into my orange juice.
I glanced back to see Robin had taken my chair and they were talking in low voices. Probably wanting to compare notes on Mortimer without giving anything away to one another. This was my chance to dig, I realised.
“You know what Mortimer wants with us?” I asked, hitching a hip onto a bar stool.
Heath’s blue eyes seemed sincere on my face. “Not a sodding clue. The only thing I did pick up is that he’s a cunning old bastard. Powerful, too.” He shivered slightly, and though he’d done it for effect, there seemed to be something there that wasn’t just for show.
A member of staff crossed the room on hushed feet and spoke in a low voice to Rhodri. He stood, and I instantly abandoned my conversation with Heath to follow him out of the room and across the lobby to a private sitting room.
An elderly dragon rose from his chair to meet us, and I had to work harder than I’d ever done to keep my dragon from surging to the surface and showing in my eyes.
This man was a threat, pure and simple. Oh, he looked perfectly civilised, in a beautiful dark suit with the suggestion of gold cufflinks visible and a silk pocket square that matched his sober tie, but there was no mistaking the aura of power and savagery under the exquisite tailoring.
It made sense why this man was the leader of all the dragons. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever standing against him in anything. And that was without the fact he was so damn influential in the human world that his face was already familiar to me from the news.
He offered his hand to my father with a wintry smile. “Rhodri, good to see you again.”
Then he looked at me, delaying for an instant before extending his hand.
Summing me up and letting me know he was doing so.
At that moment, something in me settled.
This was familiar ground—being judged, and always, always found wanting.
Well, he’d find out soon enough that I didn’t care about his opinion of me.
“How do you do,” he said. “I’m Abimelech Mortimer.”
“Dominic Bedwyr,” I supplied. Our handshake was brief, and I gleaned nothing from it other than his surprising wiry strength. He must be around ninety years old, but he stood and moved as if even age and gravity were under his control.
“Have a seat. Tea?”
Rhodri accepted, and I found myself nodding because it appeared to be the expected response. The member of staff who’d shown us to the room disappeared out of the door, there was the murmur of voices outside, and he came back in bearing a tray with china cups and teapot.
I admired Mortimer’s efficiency in lining things up so that we didn’t have to worry about being interrupted by humans later, when discussing dragon business.
I also felt the offer of tea had been a test of some kind, but I had no idea what kind of test it could possibly be.
Maybe to check how civilised we were. We were Welsh, after all, and I knew how some of the English viewed us.