Chapter 4: What Are You Hiding

Alexander POV

She was still waiting for my answer.

Nine-thirty. The poison was still in my blood, only held down—like a horse reined in tight, ready to bolt at any moment. Crumbs of cake clung to her chin, and her eyes were bright, as if she were waiting on a verdict that mattered a great deal.

The thin gold line was still there on the back of my hand. Faint, like someone had hidden a golden thread inside a piece of charred wood.

Not a trick of the light.

"Ben," I said without turning. "Close the door."

The door closed. Ben stayed outside. A smart man.

I looked her over again.

Too thin. The gown was two sizes too large, hanging loose at the waist, gathered in one hand. Her neck was slender enough that one of my hands could close around it. The bones of her wrists stood out sharp, like a bird that hadn't grown its feathers in yet.

This was not what Julian's informant should look like.

At the very least, Julian's informant should be fed.

"What did Julian send you to do?"

"To—to be an anchor."

"And what else?"

She thought about it seriously. "He also said... to not make you angry."

"Did you make me angry?"

"I—I don't know." She glanced nervously at the crumbs on the floor. "Not yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then..." she asked quietly, "how much longer?"

I stared at her for three seconds. She was genuinely asking.

"Come here."

She didn't move. She looked at me, then at the sword across my knees.

"I'm not going to cut you. Come here."

She shuffled forward one small step. Then another. Like walking on ice.

Too slow.

I reached out and caught her by the wrist, pulling her forward. She stumbled, her knee striking the armrest of the wheelchair, nearly falling into my lap.

The dragon stirred in my chest.

I leaned close to the side of her neck and drew a deep breath.

Linen, rain, honey. The same scent. Still muffled, as if something were smothering it.

"Are—are you... smelling me?"

"Yes."

"You smell," she said quietly, "like medicine. Bitter."

I stopped. In three years, no one had dared say that to my face.

The medicine was brewed by the palace dragon-physicians—three bowls a day, so bitter even the dragon wanted to vomit. I had assumed I could no longer smell it.

"And also," she added, "your sword... it's digging into me."

I dropped the sword to the floor.

The relief on her face was obvious. A dragon's blade, deemed uncomfortable by a bride—surely the greatest disgrace of its life.

My gaze fell back to the chain at her collar.

"Turn around."

She hesitated, then turned, both hands clamped tight over her chest.

"I won't take it. Just one look."

"R—really?"

"Dragons don't lie."

That was a lie. Dragons lied all the time.

But she believed me. Slowly, she lowered her hands.

I undid the clasp. The chain slid from her neck, and the moment it landed in my palm—

The scent exploded.

Not slightly—tenfold. As if someone had lifted the lid off a boiling pot, as if throwing open a window and colliding head-on with all of summer. Sunlight, rain, honey. And beneath it, a layer I had never smelled before—cold, clean, like wind at ten thousand meters.

The dragon inside me went mad.

Not the usual madness. It didn't want to tear anything apart.

It wanted.

It wanted to circle her, hide her, put her in the deepest vault and let no one look.

My fingers clamped down on her wrist. The edges of my nails began to harden, to sharpen. I could feel my pupils lengthening.

She turned her head.

When she saw my eyes, her face went white.

The last person who had stood this close to me during a fit had been an assassin. The next day, the servants had needed three buckets of water to scrub the wall clean.

Run, I said in my mind. Run.

She didn't run.

Bang!

The door burst open. A gray-black shape shot through like a cannonball, landing on her shoulder, wings spread, baring a mouthful of fangs at me—at its own master—sparks rolling in its throat.

Cinder.

My bonded beast. Protecting her. Keeping me away.

At the door, Ben held up a scorched sleeve, his face like he'd seen a ghost: "Your Highness, I tried to stop it—it slipped right under my arm..."

No one paid him any mind.

Because she had done something even more unexpected.

She lifted her other hand and laid it gently over the one gripping her.

"Your hand... it's so hot." Her voice was trembling. "Are—are you... in a lot of pain?"

The dragon stopped.

And then—I hate to admit it—it made a low sound in my chest.

Purr. Purr.

Exactly the sound Cinder made in her arms.

Ben's mouth fell open and stayed that way.

I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, forcing the sound down. Then I released her wrist and fastened the silver pendant back around her neck.

The scent shrank back at once. The dragon flicked its tail in displeasure, but it lay down.

My nails became nails again.

The gold line on the back of my hand dimmed along with it, fading until it was nearly invisible, like a lamp someone had turned down low.

I stared at it for a long time. Lit when the pendant came off; dim when it went back on.

Cinder still crouched on her shoulder, red eyes fixed hard on me, tail curled once around her neck.

Traitor.

Cinder had been with me eight years, and in eight years it had perched on no shoulder but mine. Now, for a girl it had known less than two hours, it was baring its teeth at me.

"Keep it on," I told her. "No taking it off without my permission."

"It was... already mine," she protested quietly.

"You're mine now. So it is too."

She blinked, as though carefully working through the logic of that.

"Then..." She calculated for a while, then looked up. "Are you mine too?"

A violent cough came from the doorway. Ben.

I looked at her. Her expression was utterly serious, not a trace of joking. She simply wanted to get the equation right.

"...Eat your cake," I said.

"Oh," she said, and obediently picked up the second piece.

I leaned back in the wheelchair and started to think.

A single pendant, able to smother a person's scent like that. Not jewelry—a ward. Very old craft, one only the finest dragon-physicians could make.

Someone didn't want any dragon to smell her.

Who? The Vance family? Unlikely. If they knew she smelled like this, they wouldn't have locked her in a woodshed—they'd have locked her in a vault.

"Who gave you this?"

"M—my mother."

"What did she do?"

She thought for a long time. "She... could sing. And she'd bandage hurt birds."

A useless answer.

"When did she die?"

"When I was f—five." She lowered her head. "She drank a bowl of soup, said she was sleepy... and went to sleep. She never woke up."

I said nothing.

I had seen many ways to die. Someone who drinks a bowl of soup and never wakes usually isn't sick.

But looking at her face, I didn't say it.

I pulled the slip of paper from my coat—the scale had lit up. Not just gold, but silver too—and threw it into the fireplace.

The flames curled, and the paper turned to ash.

"Ben."

"Here."

"The people at the shrine today—the priest, the witnesses. How many in all?"

"Seven."

"Question them one by one." I watched the fire. "What color was the light they saw today?"

Ben paused for only a second before he understood. "Gold, Your Highness. Only gold."

"If anyone remembers another color," I said, "have him come to the East Tower and tell me in person."

No one would come.

"And the one in gray?"

"Held. Don't let him die." I said, "I still have use for him."

A bride with no scales, lighting silver at a blood oath. Let that word leave Blackmere, and by tomorrow every dragon in the city would come to sniff her. I hadn't yet figured out what she was. Until I did, no one was to touch her.

Julian had sent her. She might be an informant, might be poison, might be a trap I hadn't yet read.

But for the first time in three years, something could make the dragon inside me lie down.

Poison or cure, I wanted it.

"Send for Mrs. Bloom. Clean her up, put her in something warm."

"Yes. Back to the west wing—"

"The East Tower."

Ben froze. The East Tower was mine. In three years, no living soul had gone up there but him and Mrs. Bloom.

"Starting tonight," I said, looking at my bride, "she sleeps in my room."

The piece of cake in her hand dropped with a soft thud to the floor.