Deny Me, Dragon King novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Forty Days

Posy's whole body arched in my arms, and her skin lit from inside.

Smoke poured from her mouth.

Gold fire ran down her sleeves and ate the blanket to ash.

"Posy!" I screamed. "Posy, look at me!"

The lords scattered back from the heat.

Torren was across the court before anyone else moved.

He took her face in both of his hands, and his palms steamed.

"I've got her," he said. "Linnea, I've got her. Give her here."

I gave her up.

He ran with her, and I ran after him through the keep and down a stair.

Odo kicked open a door ahead of us.

The room was small and hot, with herbs hung from the ceiling beams.

An old woman in a brown shawl stood up from a chair by the hearth as if she had been waiting for us.

"On the table," she said. "Not in the bed. She'll burn the bed."

Torren laid Posy on the scrubbed wood.

The fire in her skin sank back a little, the way it had at the hall, the moment he held her.

The old healer put her palm on Posy's forehead and closed her eyes.

Then she looked at the king, and I saw her face go grim.

"You said it again," she said. "Tonight. Out loud."

"Said what?" Torren said.

"The Denial."

I turned on him.

"You said it again," I said. "In front of her. After she lit your stone."

"I had to..." He stopped. "The south, the treaty, I had to keep the court..."

"She is five years old!"

The words came out of me so loudly that the herbs shook on their strings.

He took it.

He stood there and took it, with his jaw tight and his eyes on Posy's chest.

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