This was not Aska, the dragon I’d met in the forest.
As he settled on the ground, I lifted a trembling hand toward his snout. He stared at me, and I stared right back, my heart pounding my ribs.
And then he roared.
The force of his bellow knocked me off my feet, and my backside slammed into the dirt. Shouts erupted from behind me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the beast. His eyes were narrowed slits as he stalked toward me. But then he whipped his head around, like something else had caught his attention.
The dragon sniffed the air again.
His attention landed on a house only a few feet away.
“Reykur!” Rivelin’s shout cut through my terror. “Back away. Daella means you no harm.”
But Reykur was no longer focused on me. He stalked toward the house, his claws punching deep holes into the dirt. The dragon took one last scent of the air, opened his maw, and unleashed his brutal flames upon the building.
I cried out and flattened myself on the ground, wincing at the intoxicating heat that washed over me. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was a heat so all-encompassing that it consumed every inch of me with brutal, unrelenting pain.
Rivelin suddenly appeared, grabbed my arms, and hauled me away. Then he turned to the dragon, as if to call him back. But it was too late. A conflagration consumed the building. Tongues of deadly flames licked the skies. It would only take moments for the building to become nothing more than a pile of ash.
As the fire danced, Reykur swivelled his head our way. A low grumble spilled from his throat as the dragon took a step toward Viggo. He reared back on his hind legs and roared. My heart pounded. The dragon had burned down Godfrey’s house. Would he burn down Viggo’s, too? With Viggo still on the front steps?
“No, Reykur,” I whispered. “Stop.”
A long moment stretched by in silence.
The dragon blinked, closed its maw, then spread his wings to fly. He was gone in the blink of an eye, vanishing into the sky so quickly it almost felt like he’d never even been there, if not for the destruction he’d left behind.
Rivelin knelt beside me, the muscles tight around his eyes. Soot stained his tunic and cheek. “Daella. Are you hurt?”
“She’s fine, Riv,” Haldor said tiredly as he and Odel slowly approached. Odel’s wings were twitching so fast, I thought she might faint from the effort. “But I can’t say the same for Godfrey’s house.”
“That was Godfrey’s house?” I managed to choke out.
Viggo finally emerged from the safety of his steps to join us before the blaze. “Interesting, isn’t it? Godfrey got some votes in today’s trial and now he’s been targeted. It looked like I was about to be targeted, too. By Rivelin’s dragon. Who obeyed Daella when she told him to stop. One might wonder why.”
Every single head turned my way.
31
DAELLA
I stood and faced the gathered enemies. Then I summoned my best smile despite my inward turmoil. It felt like donning an old, familiar set of fighting leathers I thought I’d packed away in a trunk, never to be worn again. For once, it did little to bring me comfort. It just felt wrong.
“That’s quite the theory you’ve come up with. It’s a shame it’s not founded in reality. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d love to finish my ale.” I collected the forgotten mug from the ground. Some of the ale had spilled during the dragon attack, but there was enough left for a few sips. And they were sorely needed. “Someone should probably do something about this fire. We don’t want it to spread.”
Haldor turned to Viggo and nodded gravely. “Have some of your sand?”
Viggo inched closer to the fire and pulled some Vatnor sand from a pouch he wore by his side. He tossed a few grains toward the inferno, whispering beneath his breath. Water gushed forward in magnificent, stormy wave, wild and far greater than anything I’d seen before. Interesting. I never would have expected a fire demon to have a stash of Vatnor sand.
I narrowed my eyes. He’d been quick to accuse me, too.
“You made an error in judgement, love,” Odel said, stepping up beside me as the flames died down. “Riv would never order one of the dragons to attack this place. You should have stuck with Gregor’s crimes. Might have gotten away with it then.”
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remain calm. “I didn’t do any of this. I know nothing of dragons, and I certainly don’t know how to use one in an attack.”
“You’re an orc,” Viggo said with a sneer. “Orcs were created in dragonfire, and then your kind bonded with them. The original Draugr. If anyone was going to order them to target one of us, it’s you.”
I took a step back. “What?”
“Don’t pretend to be so surprised. Mabel told us everything about you,” said Viggo. Odel and Haldor nodded in agreement.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak, too astonished by what he’d said. By the time I’d been born, orcs had mostly died out from a disease that had swept through the world several hundred years earlier. Records of our past were hard to come by. Over time, knowledge of orcish history had been lost. My mother had told me many tales, but I’d never known how much was true and how much was myth.
Isveig had refused to speak with me about it. I’d often wondered if there were things he didn’t want me to know.
But dragons and orcs…it was too wild a story to accept.
Unless it wasn’t.
Rivelin came closer, but his hooded eyes still refused to meet mine. “What’s this about orcs and dragons?”
“It’s not true,” I insisted.
“Mabel has never lied about anything,” Viggo countered. “Orcs were forged in dragonfire, and they know how to control the beasts by bonding with them. Daella is behind all of this.”
Rivelin finally looked at me. His yellow eyes blazed with inner fire, boring through me with enough heat to scald my bones. I lifted my chin and refused to back down. I wouldn’t let them turn this on me. In fact, I had questions of my own.
“Funny, Gregor seems to think Rivelin is the one behind it all,” I said, hating every word of it. “He’s approached me twice now, trying to warn me. Now I see why.”
A muscle worked in Rivelin’s jaw. “And yet you told me you didn’t believe a thing that bastard said.”
“I didn’t.” I folded my arms. “But now that you’re trying to blame this on me, I’m starting to think he might have been telling the truth.”
Rivelin laughed bitterly, a sound so achingly different from these past few days. “Really, Daella? This is your move?”
“Almost all of your competition has been targeted with your things. Your forge got destroyed, your hammers got stolen, then your swords did, too. That was your dragon who attacked, not mine. And now you’re trying to pin the blame on me. Of course this is my move.”
His nostrils flared as he stared at me. “Prove it.”
“Prove what? My innocence?”
“That’s right.”
I scoffed and took a step back, and he tracked my movement like the eagle-eyed elf he was. “How am I supposed to do that?”
He glanced at Haldor, who stood just beside him. The fire demon nodded.