Eona - Alison Goodman [81]
“She was the last Mirror Dragoneye before the Mirror Dragon fled,” I said. “Her name was Charra.”
Dela stiffened, her hand tightening on the red folio.
I held my breath, but she said nothing. No doubt she would vent her disapproval later, but even she would have to admit I could not tell him the truth. Kygo knew Kinra as a traitor. He would not accept any words that she had written, nor act upon them. And with such an ancestor he would trust me even less.
“Do we know why the dragon fled?”
“No, Your Majesty. Lady Dela has not yet found that information in the folio.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “But now we know what the return of the Mirror Dragon really means. My father wanted us to believe that you and the dragon are the symbols of hope and a blessing on my reign. But you are not.” His eyes opened. The exhaustion in them sharpened into certainty. “You are the bringers of doom.”
“That is not true,” I gasped. “You cannot say that!”
“Ten Dragoneyes dead, my empire poised for a war, the land unprotected and ripping itself apart.” His full mouth thinned into accusation. “And it all started when you brought back the Mirror Dragon.”
I glared at him. “I did not bring her back. She just . . . appeared.”
“But you were in the arena, where a girl should not have been. You gave her the chance to come back.”
I dug my fingernails into my thighs, wanting to claw at his face and force him to say he was wrong. He had to be wrong. Otherwise, it meant I had somehow caused Ido’s slaughter of the Dragoneyes—and Sethon’s coup, and the war that was to come. He could not lay all of that on my shoulders.
“It is not all doom, Your Majesty,” Dela said into the fraught silence. Her skin had paled under the sunburn, either from the pain of kneeling on her injured leg or the risk of speaking. She held up the folio, the black pearls wrapped tightly around it. “The second verse gives hope. Lady Eona can restore the dragons’ power.”
“Hope?” He gave a bitter laugh. “I do not find much hope in the words ‘Hua of All Men.’” He strode across the room again. For all his exhaustion, he still moved with authority. “Go, Lady Dela.”
She looked at me and hesitated—a dangerous show of loyalty.
“Now!” Kygo shouted.
With an agonized apology in her eyes, Dela struggled to her feet, bowed, then backed out of the chamber.
“Stand up, Eona,” Kygo said.
I rose, my legs trembling with rage. He began to pace again, his quick steps taking him behind me, out of my sight line. Every other sense strained to keep hold of his position as he circled. “Why should I believe this portent, Eona?” He was at my left. “I cannot read ancient Woman Script. The Contraire could be lying for you.”
“Lady Dela is loyal to you. As I am.” I should have stopped, but my resentment surged into more words. “As I have always been.”
He closed the distance between us until he was less than a hand-span in front of me. Too close. I did not raise my eyes, but I could smell the hot male tang of his anger—and I could sense something beyond words filling the space between us.
“Loyal? You are loyal only to your own goals,” he said. “From the very beginning you manipulated everyone to get into the arena, and you have not stopped since.”
I looked up at the unfair judgment. “Everything I have done has been in your service,” I said hotly. “You are jumping at shadows that do not exist. You blame me because you are afraid of things you do not understand.”
Blood rushed to his face. “You think me afraid?”
He might not want me as his Naiso any more, but he was still going to get the truth. “Yes,” I hissed. “You are afraid because you are out of your depth.”
He raised his fist. I tensed, waiting for the blow, but he turned away. Three strides and he was at the laden table. He grabbed its edge and flipped it over in a crack of wood and slither of parchment. “Do you know what all that is?” he demanded. “That is our numbers. We have one trained man to every twenty of my uncle’s. One horse to ten. Most of