Page 56 of Fated Flames: Volume Two
“Your Majesty, please,” Serah says, and my shoulders knot up against my neck. Why is she calling me that again? Is it because there are others around, or is she angry at me? I momentarily sink deeper into my second form in search of the answer but find nothing except the same rage at Tallin’s coming here.
“Are you saying you aren’t the wyvern leader, Lord Tallin?” Serah asks. She glares at me when she says this, like she’s worried I’ll tear his head off.
I am considering it.
The wyvern’s throat bobs as he fights to swallow. It’s difficult when your neck is being bent like wet wood. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
The scales running down my back lift. “Lies,” I snarl down at him. He’s lost all reason to come here and lie like this. “You were appointed leader when I was still a fledgling.”
“A farce,” he grates out.
“To what end?”
“I don’t know.”
My first form rumbles out a laugh, and Tallin shivers as he should. “So you expect my queen to believe you’re pretending to be the wyverns’ leader while you don’t even know why you’re doing such a thing?”
To my surprise, he releases a mirthless laugh himself. “I don’t even know who the leader is.”
When I bare my teeth at him, he shuts his eyes and gives in to the pull of my grip, willfully exposing his throat. Serah’s guards remain quiet, but I sense their shock at his submission.
“I did not come to lie,” Tallin says. His trembling stops. “I came to save my kind.”
Flames lick at the back of my throat. After he’s filled my princess’s tent with the reek of fear, this sudden show of courage enrages me. What game is he playing?
That he’s trying to make my princess pity him is obvious. But why humiliate himself to do so when she already offered to draw water for the wyverns? Did he think she would change her mind? Does he doubt her benevolence? My teeth sharpen at the thought.
A different thought trickles in, one I hadn’t considered, one that fills me with an unfamiliar sense of dread.
What if Serah begins to wonder why someone so desperate for water didn’t make an offer for her? What if she asks Tallin?
No, she wouldn’t. Openly asking a question like that is the way of a dragon, not a human princess who hardly raises her voice. But she’s already shown herself to be fiercer than I expected any human could be. What if she does ask? What if she asks about other offers?
What if she asks about that Sileshian wyrm I thought of leaving in the desert for the vultures to pick clean?
I stare at the pulse throbbing in Tallin’s neck, at the lifeblood pumping there.One snap of my jaws would silence him forever, my first form whispers. The problem would be solved. This one, at least.
“Your Majesty.”
Her voice draws me back to the tent, to the guards, to the sound of small flames whispering in their lanterns. My eyes settle on my princess, on the face I first saw beneath the blessed stars, and my mind remembers what it must—killing the wyvern leader, false or not, would mean war between their kind and mine. That would endanger my subjects. It would endanger her.
These are the reasons I’ve let Tallin live.
I must remember them.
“Perhaps,” Serah says with perfect calmness, “if Lord Tallin had a moment to think without his hair being pulled from his scalp, he might be able to answer your questions more to your satisfaction.”
Would she be this gracious if she knew how he plotted to have her? I avoid the question that follows.
Would she be as gracious to me if she knew what I’ve done?
It doesn’t matter. She’s allowed me her name. She’s accepted my stone.
She’s mine now, and no one can take her from my clutches.
I jerk Tallin’s head back once more for good measure and then release him. Stepping back beside Serah, I fix him with a warning look.
“Talk, Tallin,” I say.
