Chapter 62
A MEETING HELD, A SECRET REVEALED, A PLOT THICKENED
The flight to Calumbria wasn’t a long one when a Great Red was fueled by an indurus spell and rage. When Dirk arrived, he was insufferably itchy and irritable and in desperate need of his emotional support cat. If she was visiting with Sir Eustace, he’d settle for the ferret.
Jaxson Sloop came awake during his fall to the ground. Dirk had deliberately missed dropping him over a haystack, aiming for a patch of green grass void of oxeye daisies. The traitor didn’t deserve a soft landing or flowers.
The faux deckhand cried out when he hit the ground. “You broke my arm!”
“I did nothing of the sort. If I was going to break anything of yours, it would’ve been your whole body. And the only reason I’m not doing that is because I don’t want to disappoint my princess.”
It was true. Dirk’s rein on his rage was thinner than a thread. Something savage twisted inside him, urging him to take his revenge, but then he’d never be able to face Millie, or Bradley. He was a good dragon, but his control was slipping.
Jax scuttled back like a crab, looking left and right. “Where’s Fink?”
“You’ll never see him again,” Dirk snapped. “And if I ever see you again, meat sack, I suppose I’ll find out whether or not I like my steak rare or well done.”
He whipped away, flattening the man against the grass with a blast from his tail.
Jax slitted his eyes against the peppering of hay and clover leaves until the wind died down and the dragon was far away. Cradling his broken arm to his chest, he struggled to his feet, brushed the debris off his vest and trousers, and stole into the nearby village.
It was an old settlement, the round stone cottages with their sod-covered roofs hunching together like dozing trolls.
On the outskirts of town, closest to the community well and the dirt road, was a new-looking inn and stable.
No candles burned in the windows, signaling the owners and tenants had all gone to bed.
But he snuck a look through the glass all the same, because one never knew who had a spot of insomnia and was warming a bit of milk and honey on the stove, and he didn’t need anyone witnessing him stealing a horse.
What he discovered were two insomniacs, one blonde and female, the other gigantic and male, attempting to dispel their mutual sleep disorder with vigorous physical exertion that involved the trestle table, not one speck of clothing, the woman’s ankles propped on the man’s shoulders, and lots of steamy eye contact.
Flabbergasted, Jax slipped in the dewy grass and knocked his forehead against the windowsill. No one heard it above the robust groaning of the trestle table, and Jax, rubbing his brow, slipped off into the stables.
There, he helped himself to one of the horses and turned its head south.
His bare heels rammed into its ribs again and again until the poor beast arrived at Cedarcross lathered and exhausted.
Jax sold the horse for a quarter of its worth, since he had run it nearly to death, and sewed the bulk of his coins into the hem of his vest. The harder it was to get to, the less likely he was to gamble it away.
Then he waited. For days, maybe even two weeks.
He spent his time drinking, chasing a few skirts, and performing acrobatic feats in the town square for tips.
He didn’t get nearly the money he would have if Fink had been performing alongside him—cute little animals were always good at convincing the children to ply their parents out of a copper or two.
But what he earned was enough to fill his belly with ale and stew every night with a few coins leftover to pay for a strumpet who didn’t have crotch rot.
Finally, the stagecoach he’d been waiting for arrived. Jax sat down across from the hooded men in the corner booth of The Hollow and helped himself to their ale.
“You failed,” Prince Chandler spat.
“I don’t think I have.” Jax wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his wrist, slid the empty tankard back across the table.
“Then we have very different definitions of failure. And only mine matters.” The prince raised a finger, and Raleigh lurched across the table and seized Jax by the front of his vest.
The tavernkeeper, alerted by the sound of breaking glass when the tankard fell to the floor, quickly looked away from their table.
“It’s the dragon,” Jax rasped.
“What about him?”
“He’d not a Great Red at all. He’s a luck dragon.” Jax had seen the slinky blue body with pearly horns and claws, clear as day, before he’d passed out from the pressure of the force crushing him against the ceiling.
“You lie. No luck dragon has ventured past the Tianzi mountains in centuries.” Despite Prince Chandler’s doubt, he lifted a finger and Raleigh shoved Jax back into his seat.
Jax gulped in a deep breath. “It’s no lie. He’s only pretending to be Great Red. Here.” When he slipped his hand inside his vest, the prince’s bodyguards tensed. But he only pulled out a single white feather—stolen from the dragon’s room by his little bandit companion.
When Jax had coerced the ferret to spy on the dragon, he hadn’t understood the feather’s significance at the time. Not until he’d seen the luck dragon unglamoured for himself.
The prince snatched the feather from his fingers, turning it over in the candlelight to examine its pearlescence. Not even a pegasus feather shone with such radiance.
“It’s true,” he whispered.
Weeks ago, a courtier had dragged his disgraced son by the ear into Chandler’s court room with a similar story, but Chandler hadn’t believed then. It was just too preposterous, especially when spewed from the mouth of the recently disgraced, yet here in his hand was proof to the contrary.
It was a young luck dragon, too, for the feather had yet to mature from pearlescence to true white.
Young or old, it didn’t matter to the magic that could heal this land.
All it needed was a luck dragon’s heart, and now the prince knew exactly where to get one.
And lucky for him, the second Skybreaker crossbow and its Damascus steel crossbolts had just arrived at the Strip en route inland. Perfectly poised to claim it.
But the crossbow and its mount were heavy, meant for traveling across road or packed earth, not sand. It could be done, but it’d be easier to lure the dragon within range with the perfect bait.
“Oh you stupid creature,” he murmured, pocketing the feather. “You were hired to kidnap her, not fall in love with her.”