“Um.” Not the best answer in the world. I hadn’t expected it to be her. I can’t exactly tell her I’m a paladin and that I’ve already checked this house for dragons. “I’m just, um… I think you have the wrong house.”
“You’re staying here?”
“Well, we don’t live here.”
Her nose wrinkles when I say “we.” She pushes past me, forcing her way into the living room. She doesn’t seem surprised to see Amelrik, but the other two are a different story. She glances over at me, then at them, a stern look taking over her face. “Which one of them is Cedric?”
“None of them. Is that who you’re looking for? I really think you have the wrong house.”
She ignores me and looks them over, analyzing the situation.
Cedric swallows, seeming nervous.
Amelrik glares at Celeste, inching forward a little, putting himself between her and Cedric.
And Leif just looks sick. And stressed. And worried.
It’s super obvious that there’s something going on here. And that I’m totally lying. And then Celeste sucks in a breath and whirls on me, her face kind of red. “Tell me that’s not Cedric.” Her voice shakes with anger, and she’s pointing right at him.
“It’s…” I want to say that it’s not, even though I know she won’t believe me. But that would also only leave Leif, and I don’t want him getting in trouble for whatever Cedric did.
I’m pretty sure Cedric doesn’t want that, either, because he steps forward, moving past Amelrik and looking Celeste straight in the eyes. “I’m Cedric.”
Celeste glares at me. “What the hell, Vee?”
“What?”
She folds her arms and tilts her head. “Don’t act dumb. You know what. He’s a dragon.”
Cedric perks up a little at that. “How do you— I mean, um, why would you think that?”
Celeste gives him a withering look, but it’s me she addresses when she says, “He’s what, his brother?”
“Cousin, actually.”
“So you’ve been hiding another dragon? And you just weren’t going to tell me?!”
“Obviously not. And he didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, really? He’s been spreading rumors that Warwick’s the murderer.” She scoffs. “As if that could be possible.”
“It is.”
“Of course he’s a dragon,” she mutters to herself, like she didn’t even hear me. “Of course he’d want to blame this on a paladin when really he’s the one who—”
“He’s not!”
“How has he not transformed?” Her face suddenly goes pale as she realizes. “Tell me you didn’t!”
I cross my arms and stare down at the floor, not answering her.
She looks at Cedric again, who looks unwell, then at Leif, who looks absolutely wrecked.
“No,” Celeste says. She marches over to Cedric, pushing up his sleeve to reveal the horseshoe I enchanted. He immediately jerks away from her. She lets him, putting a hand to her mouth and staring at me in horror. “What the hell have you done?!”
I feel my face heat up at her accusation, even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong.
“Saved the lives of two innocent people,” Amelrik says, standing up straight and looking her in the eyes.
“I didn’t ask you, dragon,” Celeste snarls, making “dragon” sound like the worst insult imaginable. She turns to me, jerking her thumb at Cedric, and says, “Is he a freak, too? Is that why you think he couldn’t have done it?”
My mouth slips open. I hate her for saying that, and I feel a pang of guilt for… for I don’t know what. For Amelrik having to hear that from her, even though I’m sure he’s heard worse. “Shut up, Celeste. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I have orders to bring him in, no excuses this time. And no tricks, apparently. I should bring in the other one, too.”
“No!” Cedric cries.
“You can’t,” I tell Celeste. “It wasn’t them!”
“Why should I believe you?” She shakes her head at me, disapproval emanating from her. “You lied to me. You asked me not to tell anyone about Amelrik, and I didn’t, and this whole time, you’ve been lying to me!”
“Because I couldn’t trust you! And you didn’t want to have to keep secrets from the other paladins, and I couldn’t have you telling anyone about them!”
“This is why no dragons have transformed! Warwick says he’s done this a hundred times, and they always transform by now.”
“A hundred times,” Amelrik says, his teeth clenched. “I’ll bet he has.”
“You can’t trust Warwick,” I tell Celeste. “He’s the real killer.”
“Not you, too,” she says. “Is that what these dragons told you?”
“No.” I clench my fists. I’m so pissed at her right now, I’m shaking. “I’m the one who told them. Warwick’s a monster. He tortured Amelrik—”
“So did I.” She says that flippantly, like it’s no big deal.
Sudden rage flares in Cedric’s eyes, so that I’m glad Celeste is focused on me and doesn’t see. She doesn’t need any more reason to bring him in.
“This is different,” I tell her, even though there are a lot of things I’d like to say to her about how she’s treated Amelrik. “Warwick’s been faking dragon attacks. He has this dragon claw—”
“A claw?”
“He’s been killing people and then using the claw to make it look like a dragon did it.”
“Someone would have noticed that.”
“They did! Henrietta said—”
“We would have noticed that. Dragon claws are huge, Vee.” She says that like I don’t know what dragons look like, as if I don’t see them every day. Like I’m still her sheltered little sister who couldn’t leave the barracks for four and a half years.
“But you didn’t. He must have kept it covered. He couldn’t go out in public with it, not openly, so—”
“How do you know he has a claw?”
“I saw it in his room. There’s a trunk with blood on it—”
Celeste gasps. “So you were in his room! Another lie. I can’t believe you.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Right. So, if I go into his room, I’ll find a dragon claw?” She sounds super skeptical about that.
And I hate having to admit that she won’t. “He got rid of it. It’s in the pond, behind the manor house. I know because I found it, and that’s when he tried to kill me. He—”
“The pond’s frozen over.”
“There’s a hole in it. He cut a hole in it to dispose of the claw, and when I found it, he pushed me in. He tried to kill me!”
Something in my voice must make her believe I mean it, because her expression changes, becoming less skeptical and more worried. She looks me up and down, like she’s trying to decide for herself what happened. “You saw him?”
“Well, no, but who else would it have been?”
She bites her lip, considering. “I don’t know if I should believe you. That water’s so cold, Vee. If you’d really fallen in—”
“I was pushed.”
“—you wouldn’t have been able to get back out again.”
“Amelrik saved me,” I tell her.
I see the wheels turning in her head as she pieces together the fact that that means he must have been at the manor house, or at least on the grounds. She scowls for a second, but then her expression softens, and she says, “I’m glad you’re okay. You are, right?”
I nod, wrapping my arms around myself, trying not to remember how close I came to not being okay ever again. “I know Warwick did it, but even if you don’t believe me about that, you have to admit that something weird’s going on there.”
“If I look at that pond and there’s no hole in the ice—”
“There is. But be careful, Celeste. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
“If there’s a claw in there…”
“Then you�
��ll believe me?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I believe someone tried to hurt you, but you’ve also done nothing but lie to me since you got here. If you hadn’t, maybe this would have all been solved a lot sooner.” She glances over at Cedric.
I swallow, fear suddenly making my throat dry. “You can’t take him. You can’t tell anyone about them!”
“Vee.”
“You can’t! And I was with them during the last attack. They couldn’t have done it. So whatever you think is going on, it’s not true!”
“I have orders,” Celeste says, but I can hear in her voice that she’s torn. “And I don’t like lying, especially not to the other paladins. They’re trusting me with their lives.”
“Please, Celeste.”
She opens her mouth, looking like she’s going to argue some more. Then she takes a deep breath, exhales, and says, “I came to Cedric’s house to bring him in—”
“No! You—”
“—but no one was home. I don’t know where he went. That better be true the next time someone comes to check, because it won’t be me, and whoever they send in my place won’t be so lenient.”
My eyes start to water, I’m so relieved. “Thanks, Celeste. You don’t know what this—”
“Don’t thank me,” she says, giving me a disgusted look. “He may have helped you save my life six months ago—” she jerks her head toward Amelrik—“but consider this me saving his. Now we’re done. This is the last time I do anything for you, Vee. It’s clear you’ve chosen them, him, over me. Over us. You’ve made your choice, and the next time I see you, we’ll be enemies.”
23
GET IN HIS WAY
I’m quiet as me and Amelrik make our way back to the inn. We stick to the side streets, hoping to avoid any paladins. The plan is to grab our stuff, then meet back up with Cedric and Leif and figure out where to go from there. Going to Leif’s would be too obvious, and neither of them wants to endanger any of their friends or have to explain to them why the paladins are after them. So our best bet is finding an inn on the other side of town where hopefully no one knows them.
But that’s not why I’m quiet.
Amelrik keeps glancing over at me, a worried look on his face. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” I say, my jaw clenched as I dig my nails into my palms. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because she’s your sister?” He takes a deep breath. “You grew up together, and she just said—”
“That we’re done.” Repeating it out loud doesn’t make it sound any more real, but it does make a weight lift off my chest.
“Yeah.” He hunches his shoulders, shoving his hands in his pockets, and looks over at me. “That’s hard. I mean, I know she’s not my favorite person, but she’s important to you, and if you want to talk about it—”
“I feel weirdly relieved.”
I can tell by the look of surprise on his face that that’s not what he was expecting.
It’s not what I was expecting, either. “Things have been weird with her since we got here. No, before that. Ever since… Ever since I freed you from our dungeon.” Or maybe it was when I started talking to him in the first place. “She wasn’t even there when I did that, but it changed me. It… it meant I wasn’t who she thought I was—who she wanted me to be—and Celeste only likes me when I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to.” I roll my eyes at that.
“If I wasn’t in your life, this wouldn’t have happened.” He says it like it’s a fact. Not like he blames himself exactly, but just like it’s the truth, which I guess it is. “She wouldn’t have made you choose.”
“She didn’t make me choose. I did that on my own. And if she can’t accept the ways I want to live my life, that’s her problem, not mine. Or yours.”
He nods, exhaling a little in relief, like maybe he was kind of worried about that.
“And not that my life comes down to choosing between you guys, but even if it did? I’d pick you, no question.” Not that he would ever ask me to. Another difference between him and Celeste. “Me and her might have grown up together, but we’re not at all the same.”
“You can say that again.”
“And maybe I lied to her, but only because she wasn’t trustworthy. I get why she’d be upset about that, but I was trying to protect people, and she never listens to me. Not really. And whenever we talk, it just feels so… Not fake, exactly, but like we can only pretend to get along until I mention something about my life, and then she acts like I’ve violated some unspoken rule. Feeling like I can’t talk about the things that are important to me really sucks, and it doesn’t feel like a real relationship.” And it’s especially not the kind of relationship I want to have with someone who supposedly cares about me.
He reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“I had to tell her twice that Warwick tried to kill me before she even acknowledged it. Who doesn’t hear someone when they say they almost got murdered?” Anger boils up in me just thinking about it. “I don’t know if it’s because she thinks so little of what I have to say that she actually didn’t hear me or if she just didn’t believe me, but I don’t really like either of those options.” Though at least she cared that I almost died, even if she doesn’t believe me about how it happened.
Amelrik’s grip on my hand tightens, like he never wants to let me go, and I know he’s thinking about what happened yesterday.
I swallow, because I’m thinking about it, too.
Yesterday, I felt glad just to be alive. Today, I feel pissed off. Not about being alive, but that someone tried to kill me.
Someone who didn’t think anything of ending my life, as if it was theirs to throw away. As if what I want doesn’t matter. And not that it’s the same thing at all, but the fact that what I want doesn’t matter to Celeste—and maybe never did—just makes it worse.
I stomp my boot into a pristine patch of snow, feeling the satisfying way it crunches beneath me.
Everyone at the barracks thought I didn’t matter. Not until I got magic, and even then, they just wanted me to fall in line and become a good little paladin like everybody else. My father didn’t care what I wanted for myself, and neither did Celeste.
The only people who have ever listened to me, who have ever truly been my friends, have been dragons. Amelrik most of all, but also Odilia, and Osric, and Godwin, and Hild, and everyone else we hang out with at Hawthorne clan, and now Cedric, too. They’ve made me feel like I fit in, even though I don’t. Or, at least, I shouldn’t. I’m human. I’m a St. George, someone who should be their enemy. But they don’t see it like that.
And now my own sister, who should care what I think, who should want me to be happy, never wants to see me again, because my life doesn’t fit the box she’s always put me in.
But my life isn’t hers to control.
It’s not anybody’s to control. Not her, and not the monster who pushed me into that pond. Who so easily could have ended my life just to keep me quiet.
I’m fuming over that, holding Amelrik’s hand a little too hard—not that he seems bothered—when I hear Warwick’s voice. Or, at least, I think I do.
But Amelrik hears it, too. I can tell by the way he freezes up, a look of pure terror on his face. He pulls his hand away, like he’s afraid to leave it there.
Maybe he is.
Warwick’s voice is coming from an alleyway. He must be around the corner. Him and one of his underlings, because he’s talking to somebody.
“You think I care what the people of this town want?” he says, his voice snide and condescending.
“N-no,” the underling answers—a guy, though I don’t recognize him or anything. “But they’ve been complaining.”
“Of course they have.”
“The governor’s been talking about taking down the barrier, and I think—”
“If I ever want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. And the barrier stays where it is.”
“But with a human seria
l killer on the loose—”
“Nonsense. I’ve told you, it’s a dragon.”
“You’ve said that, but I’ve been, er, well, not thinking, exactly. But it seems like the killings don’t add up. Because I’ve talked to a few of the townspeople who knew Henrietta, and she said—”
“She was a silly woman eager for attention. And as for the barrier, only the Strongshields can take it down. The governor can whine all he wants, but there’s nothing he can do.”
It’s the casual-yet-haughty way he says that that makes rage flare inside me. Not that I wasn’t already pissed off, and not that I didn’t already hate him. But this is something new. Something stronger.
Amelrik’s taking deep breaths beside me. He’s staring at his hands, like he’s willing them not to change.
We’re on a mostly empty side street, but we’re still out in the open, where just anyone could wander by and see if he did transform. He can’t do that here. Some part of my brain is telling me I need to get him out of here, that what might be happening to him is more important than this, but I can’t move. I can’t tear myself away, and the anger overshadows everything else I’m feeling.
Warwick St. George tried to kill me, and he doesn’t care.
He gets to go about his day, his life, as if nothing happened. As if he’s not a horrible monster who’s been murdering people. As if he gets to decide whether anyone lives or dies based on his whims.
I remember the way he said “girl” the other day, as if I was nothing. An annoyance. Someone who he was sure was going to get in his way and therefore shouldn’t exist.
And if I thought I was feeling rage before, I’m really feeling it now. Because he might think I don’t matter—the whole world might think I don’t—but I do, and I am going to get in his way.
“I’m okay,” Amelrik says, though he sounds super freaked out and not actually okay at all. “I’m not going to… I’m okay.”
But I’m not.
Something in me snaps. I can almost feel it break. One moment, I’m a sane, rational person, and the next, something primal in me takes over. I feel a visceral need to stop Warwick, to take back control of my life—the life he tried to steal from me, that he did steal from others. To prove that he’s not in charge of what happens to me. I am.
Honorbound Page 18
