Deny Me, Dragon King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Gold Eyes

Torren clears the hall and the healer examines Posy while Hesper calls it a lowland trick, until she demands a Blood Trial that night.

Torren took Posy out of my arms before I could stop him.

He did it carefully, with one hand under her head.

He hadn't.

I could tell from how stiff his shoulders were.

"Clear the hall," he said.

Nobody moved for a heartbeat, so he lifted his voice and the braziers flared with it.

"Clear it!"

The lords went out in a rush of silk, and Rosamund went last, looking back at me over her shoulder.

A one-eyed guard captain shut the great doors behind them and stayed on the inside, huge and silent.

That left the king, the child, and me.

Posy lay against his collar of gold scales with her gold eyes half shut.

"You smell like a campfire," she told him.

"Do I?" he said. His voice had gone strange.

"It's nice. My head doesn't hurt when you hold me."

He looked at me over her curls.

All the cold had gone out of his face, and what was under it looked like a man who had been hit.

"How old is she?" he asked.

"Five. Her birthday is in the spring."

I watched him do the sum.

His jaw went tight.

"Midsummer," he said.

"Yes."

"You never said."

"I did say," I said. "I wrote to you."

Before he could answer, the side door opened and a tall woman in white robes walked in without being asked.

A silver braid hung to her waist, and a flame brooch burned on her collar.

Hesper Quillon, High Seer of the Flame Temple, looked at me.

"Majesty," she said. "I came the moment I heard."

"Heard what?" Torren said.

"That a lowland woman has walked into your court with a drugged child and a story."

My hands closed into fists.

"She isn't drugged."

"Ember-moss in the tea," Hesper said gently, as if explaining to a slow pupil.

"A pinch, and a child smokes like a chimney."

"Peasant mothers use it at the temple doors to beg for coin."

I knew ember-moss better than she did.

I had grown it behind my cottage for ten years.

"Ember-moss makes smoke come out of the nose," I said.

"It does not turn a child's eyes gold."

"And it does not bend a flame across a hall to the one man in the room with dragon blood."

"A clever speech," Hesper said. "She has had six years to prepare it."

"I had six years to raise her," I said. "The speech took one night."

Torren glanced from her to me.

It was a long look that decided nothing.

The captain by the doors cleared his throat.

He came over, went down on one knee with a creak, and held out a wool blanket to Posy.

"Wrap up, little flame," he said. "It's cold in here for anyone who isn't a lizard."

Posy looked at the black patch over his left eye.

"What happened to your eye?"

"A bad dragon bit it," he said.

"Did you bite him back?"

"I did."

Posy laughed.

It turned into a cough, but it was a real laugh, the first I had heard in nine days.

The captain winked with his one good eye, and my chest hurt.

"Odo Brannick," he told me, quietly. "Captain of the guard. Whatever they say, I'll see she's warm."

I could have wept at that, but I didn't.

I turned back to the king.

"I am not asking for a title," I said. "I'm not asking for money or a place at your table."

"The healer in my village says there is one cure for ember rot, and it lives in your fire."

"Put your hand on her chest tonight, and I will take her home before sunrise and you will never see either of us again."

Torren's gold eyes dropped to Posy, then back to me.

For a moment I thought he would say yes.

Hesper stepped between us and laid her hand on his arm.

"Majesty," she said. "If this child is truly of your blood, the Ember Throne must know it."

"Not a woman's word. The old law gives us the Blood Trial."

"A drop of her blood on the ember-stone. If she is yours, the stone will wake."

"Tonight, in the Hearth Court, before witnesses."

I saw the small smile at the corner of her mouth, and it frightened me more than a cutpurse's knife.

"Do it," Torren said.

I stared at him.

"You trust her?"

"I trust the stone," he said.

He looked down at Posy and then at me, and for the first time his voice cracked.

"If she is mine, I need to know."

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