Chapter 22: The Lamp

I told Bram what I had seen before the sun came up.

He listened with his eyes shut and his forehead against mine.

"I remembered the lamp yesterday," he said. "I didn't want to say it out loud until it was true."

"It's true."

"Then we ask Lucan."

We went to the lodge study at dawn.

Ilyan came with us, because Bram asked him to.

A fae in the room meant nobody could swear to a false thing without him knowing.

Two guards in grey livery stood at the study door.

Bram looked at them once, and they stepped aside.

Lucan sat at his desk with a cup of tea, and he did not look surprised.

"The son and the dragon," he said. "And a fae for a witness. How civilized."

"The lamp," said Bram.

Lucan's cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

"On the lawn that night, you stood in a dry coat in the rain," Bram said.

"You had a brass lamp. I smelled oil in the hall. It wasn't dragon fire."

"No," said Ilyan, softly, from the door. "Dragon fire has no smell."

Lucan set the cup down.

The silence stretched.

Then he laughed, one short, tired breath.

"Eleven years," he said. "I did wonder how long it would take you to ask, boy."

He shook his head.

"I'd have said a year at most. I underestimated how badly you wanted not to."

My stomach turned over.

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