Eona - Alison Goodman [174]
I shrugged. “Nothing is wrong with me,” I said. “Except too much goat.”
He smiled, squeezing my hand. “It is not my favorite meat, either, but it is certainly abundant.” He lowered his voice. “The things we do in the name of duty.”
His attention was claimed by Soran with yet another drunken story of battle prowess. I watched him graciously accept a piece of roasted goat from a fresh platter, his eyes meeting mine in a quick slide of amusement. The intimacy of the glance sent a wash of warmth through me that distilled into a single sharp ache of desire.
Where did my duty lie: with this powerful, beautiful man who held my hand and named me moon to his sun; or with the dragons, the source of my own magnificent power? Somehow I had to find a way to serve the interests of both. Yet what if it came to a choice between them? I shifted uneasily on the cushions: Ido was also bound up within that terrible question. As if he had heard my thoughts, the Dragoneye raised his head. There was fear in his eyes, and it chilled me with foreboding. Ido was as much in the balance as Kygo and the spirit beasts. He was tied just as tightly as I was to the dragons and their destiny. And that destiny was walking toward us with a black folio strapped to its arm and madness darkening its mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I WOKE THE NEXT morning to the sound of a shouting voice. Blearily, I focused on the tent roof above me, the open smoke circle at its peak pinked with dawn light. Pain drummed through my head, each spike sending a wave of nausea into my body. I struggled up on to my elbows and winced as loud barking erupted, the camp dogs roused into their own sharp rhythms of alarm.
Vida rose from her bed on the rugs, both daggers drawn, and crossed to the tent door. “Get up, my lady,” she whispered. “Something is happening.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed seat. “Is the battle starting?” The possibility closed a vise of fear around my gut.
“No, it’s not the battle alarm.” Vida pushed the door open a crack, her eye pressed against the slice of light, head cocked for listening. “It is one of the scouts. He is shouting something about a demon ripping through Sethon’s camp.”
It was no demon: the pain in my head told me it was Dillon. He had arrived, and with him had come hope—and dread. Snatching my trousers from the wooden press, I pulled them on, half hopping across the rugs to the airing rack. I scooped up my tunic and slid my arms into its wide sleeves.
“Vida, help me put on my swords.” I knotted the inner laces of the tunic and wrapped the sash around my waist.
She held up the sheath. I plunged my arms through the brace and shrugged its weight into place on my back. Without the protection of a breast band, the straps dug into my chest, the sharp physical pressure a strange kind of anchor in the turmoil of my fear. Vida bent to secure the waist strap, clicking her tongue at the stiffness of the ties.
The door shuddered under a hard barrage of knocking. “Lady Eona, the emperor commands your presence. Now!” It was Yuso’s voice.
“Done,” Vida said, stepping back from me.
“My ancestors’ plaques,” I said. “Where are they? I must have them.” Kinra had helped me hold off Dillon once before. Perhaps she would do it again.
Vida lunged across to a small basket on the ground and dug through it. “Here.” She held out the leather pouch. “May your ancestors protect you, my lady.”
“And yours, too, Vida.”
As I took the pouch, her hand closed around mine. A brief press of hope and fellowship.
I tucked the pouch into my sash and pushed open the door. A blaze of pain rocked me on my feet. Captain Yuso bowed, his shrewd eyes noting my recoil. Beyond him, men ducked around