Chapter 55 #3
While dragonstone was formed from a fire dragon’s bones, dragonbreath is the name for the embers that could become trapped in the center of other creatures’ bones.
Creatures killed by fire dragons. Where the marrow in their bones would burn out, fire could be trapped, allowing the bone to be later cracked open and the fire released.
Supposedly.
Given that a fire dragon’s flames are said to have burned hotter than Ember Fire, I’m not sure I believe the stories.
It seems to me that any creature burned to death by a fire dragon would have been rendered to ash, bones, and all.
Certainly, finding a bone containing dragonbreath would be nearly impossible.
“What about the fae who carried out the forging?” I ask, pushing through my increasing frustration.
“Unknown.” Victor grimaces. “Their identity is concealed. At least in the texts we have access to.”
Forcing myself to continue speaking as if nothing’s wrong, I say, “Brother, I have one more question.”
“Ask it.”
I wrap my hand around his right shoulder. “Have you ever ground iron to dust?”
Victor recoils so swiftly that he knocks parchments to the floor. “Never.”
I don’t let him go. “Do you know of any Iron Fae who has?”
“If I did, I would have told you. Immediately.” Victor’s green eyes are wide, and his face is pale, the scars stretching across his injured side. “Even our father was not such a fool. The grains are too small for us to control.”
What Thyra told me about an Iron Fae dipping his blade into iron dust is even more concerning to me now. I was hoping Victor would have seen or heard something that would allow me to identify the offender, particularly as they’re likely to be part of my workforce given their easy access to iron.
As for the truth of Thyra’s story, I don’t doubt her for a second. In all my exposure to lies and liars, there was nothing but a haunted truth in her words.
Her experience also explains her mention of iron dust back at the cabin. She believed that Cassia dipped her arrows in powdered iron without a care for the consequences.
I release Victor’s shoulder and step back from him. “Make your own judgment about attending our mother’s event. I won’t command you either way.”
He doesn’t let me leave so easily.
His hand snakes out, closing around my forearm. “If someone’s grinding iron into dust, I need to know.” His lips twist. “If it got into the air…the water… the burns would be as terrible as Ember Fire.”
“Worse,” I say. “They would be worse.”
Even at my cruelest, I would never sanction the creation or use of iron dust.
The consequences would be horrifying.
A storm brews in my mind as I leave Victor’s quarters.
Thyra was attacked five years ago. Five years for this fucking fae to produce more iron dust. Take it anywhere. Do anything with it. And right under my nose.
Attempting and near-failing to cage my fury, I stride past the anvils and cold fires, only to stop.
Something else Thyra said suddenly registers: The Iron Fae who hurt her brought sweet liquor to trade.
That liquor could only be thistleberry wine. The only sweet liquor produced in the Iron Kingdom.
The metalworker who tried to accost Thyra in this forge the other day reeked of thistleberry wine, but lowborn can’t afford it. If he was being paid in wine for stealing iron from my forge…
Sharply, I detour toward the maze of corridors to the right of the main forge.
I had that lowborn thrown into a cell and vowed to deal with him later.
Well, it’s later.
Quickly reaching the cells, I find the main door open and the room within overly quiet.
There are only three cells, divided by floor-to-ceiling stone walls. Steel bars cover the front of each cell.
The first is empty. So is the second.
But a hand and forearm protrude through the bars of the third, extended at an awkward angle across the floor.
Unmoving.
I don’t need to open the cell to know that he’s dead.
Strangled, it looks like. Up against the front bars. Many hours ago, judging by how cold his skin is. Whatever rope, cord, or weapon was used to choke him must have been taken away.
But a glint of silver catches my eye.
Within the man’s extended hand, I spy the edge of a coin.
Another fucking coin.
A Frost coin had struck me in the back during the fight at the village—a coin that was somehow at the location of Thyra’s father’s assassination. Then an Ember coin had rolled out of the pocket of the assassin who tried to kill Thyra.
Now, it takes me a glance to recognize the markings of an Iron coin, clutched in the hand of this murder victim.
If I suspected Mother before, I’m certain now that she’s connected to these deaths. Whatever fae she’s sending to do her bidding—the man who hurt Thyra with iron dust, the lowborn assassin who killed Thyra’s father, and whoever killed this man—she has remained many steps ahead of me.
Too many steps.
And now she plans a public celebration where the kingdom’s most powerful highborn will be in attendance.
Hadrian said she’ll strike hard, but it will be worse than that.
She’ll strike to kill.