Rylan moved quickly. He strengthened his link with Bothymus and convinced him to eat the goat. The valerian took some time to do its work, but soon enough, Bothymus stilled and his eyelids grew heavy. When he lay his head down and fell asleep, Rylan applied a thick salve to his wound to help fight the poison. Then he applied a compress treated with an unguent that helped fight infection. Jorrik, Quinn, and Lorelei assisted him in wrapping a bandage around the base of his wing. They’d keep him under sedation over the next day to prevent him from removing it, and by then they’d know if he was getting better.
Throughout, Lorelei seemed beside herself with worry. At first, Rylan thought it was because her foray into the forest had blown up in her face, but way she kept pacing and staring at Bothymus convinced him she cared deeply for the big indurium.
“We should let him rest,” Rylan said to her when he was satisfied they’d done all they could. He motioned to the crop stone, still wrapped around Lorelei’s right hand. “If you don’t mind, please take that off. The quieter his mind is, the better.”
Lorelei stared down at it and shook her head. “Yes. I had forgotten about it.” She unwrapped the stone and put it in a leather pouch at her belt. “Sorry.”
Jorrik and Quinn left to tend to the other dragons, several of which were still riled by Bothymus’s tirade. Rylan, meanwhile, gestured Lorelei toward the eyrie master’s burrow. “Can we talk?”
“Of course.”
They went inside and sat at a small table near Jorrik’s desk, which was laden with towers of papers that looked ready to topple should either of them breathe too hard. The rest of the room was cozy, mostly due to Jorrik’s wife, who was a particularly good decorator.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Rylan began, “but I tied my fortune to yours when I let you leave the residence.”
Lorelei picked at the edge of the wooden table with her thumbnail. “No one else saw me.”
“You don’t know that. My father is a thorough man. He’ll have the entire household questioned. It’s entirely possible someone saw you drop from the deck, and everyone knows I like to smoke there after a meal.” When she said nothing, Rylan pressed. “You came to spy on a meeting of the Red Knives you learned about in Ancris. I take it you found it?”
She dug into a crack in the tabletop and scraped at the bare wood. “Does your hatred of your father extend so far that you’d let an inquisitor he’d expressly forbidden from leaving his residence to pass? Or was it his seat you were trying to embarrass, and through it, the empire?”
Rylan was taken aback. She hadn’t hit the mark, but she wasn’t far from it, either. “I don’t hate my father.”
“Then why did you let me go?”
He could hardly tell her that he hoped she’d find out what was happening with the Knives since Aarik’s death. Feigning amusement, he said, “You’re acting like you wish I’d stopped you.”
The trill of a young brass came through the small window behind Jorrik’s desk, and Lorelei looked toward it. “Yes, I found the meeting. It was at the barrow mound beyond Tallow. Llorn was there. I thought they’d gathered to anoint him, but they were there for something else entirely.”
“And that was . . . ?”
“They raised Llorn’s sister from the dead.”
Rylan felt his jaw drop. “Morraine? You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
It was all he could do not to slap his own forehead as she described the details: Llorn addressing the gathering; Rhiannon holding the wisplight; the druins chanting around the sarcophagus; Morraine, black marks around her neck, rising from within. Rylan knew precisely where Llorn had gotten the wisplight, of course. It was the one he’d stolen from the gallery in the Alevada estate. He vaguely recalled Morraine’s remains having been placed in the barrow mound after she’d been sentenced and hung.
How foolish he’d been. He’d actually believed Llorn wanted the wisp because the empire was treating it like a trinket. Llorn had played into Rylan’s desire to see the wrongs of the empire righted, which meant he knew about Rylan before he came to Hollis’s shop. Llorn offered the bait and I swallowed it whole.
He realized he’d lost track of what Lorelei was saying. “And then the cobalt dropped in front of me,” she was saying. “It breathed and caught me in its spell. I’d be dead or captured by the Knives if Bothymus hadn’t swooped in and saved me.”
“Did Llorn say what he mean to do with Morraine?”
“No, he—”
Someone knocked on the door. “Lorelei?”
“Be right there!” She stood. “My partner, no doubt here to give me a dressing down.” She smiled awkwardly. “Thank you for helping Bothymus. I won’t forget it.”
She turned and left, leaving the door open behind her. Waiting on the deck beyond was her partner, Creed, the tall cuss with the pepper gray hair and the impeccable beard. He stared at Rylan as if he were the cause of Lorelei’s misfortunes, then turned and followed her down the walkway.
Rylan remained in the eyrie while Bothymus slept. The other dragons were naturally skittish, but over the next several hours, they settled somewhat. Andros returned after reckoning with four of his fellow dracorae. All five wore a combination of brightsteel and overlapping dragonscale, carried steel-tipped lances, and had crossbows slung against their backs. Andros strode toward his mount’s perch on the far side of the eyrie without once looking at Rylan or Bothymus.
Jorrik, returned from calming an irritable brass fledgling, stopped on the walkway nearby, and jutted his chin toward Andros and the others. “He’s a prize, that one, isn’t he?”
Rylan grunted. “I take it they’re off to hunt the cobalt?”
“They are, indeed.”
They’re more likely to catch a wisp in their bare hands, Rylan thought. The cobalt was long gone, as were the Knives and the druins. Andros and his Talon would find nothing.
Jorrik went about his business, leaving Rylan alone with Bothymus. The dragon’s chest heaved with breath. The frill along the top of his head twitched every so often, likely from a dream.
Rylan was tired. He needed some sleep. But he couldn’t shake the part he’d played in Llorn’s plans, stealing the wisplight for him. Morraine was a very powerful druin. Llorn was stacking wood, piece by piece, and someday soon he would set it ablaze.
Aarik had wanted Rylan to check on Master Renato in Ancris. A voice inside his head told him to let it be, that he was only asking for trouble. But he couldn’t let things rest. He wouldn’t. He needed to get to Ancris, and to do that, he needed to convince his father to let him leave Glaeyand.
The answer came as he stared at Bothymus’s bridle and its golden fetter. He left the eyrie, wended his way to Valdavyn, and requested to speak to his sister, Willow. It took some time, but soon enough, Willow came to the receiving deck. Beneath a stormy sky, the two of them strolled along the walkways of upper Glaeyand.
When Rylan had explained his proposal in full, Willow stopped walking. “Let me understand,” she said as a stiff wind whined through the canopy overhead. “You want Father’s leave to care for Bothymus in Ancris so that you can curry favor with Quintarch Lucran?”
“In our father’s name, yes.”
“You have no other reason to go.”
“None.”
“Then, why didn’t you ask Father yourself?”
“Because he’s annoyed with me. He wouldn’t listen, and this is important. The election is five weeks away, and Father’s seat is tenuous.” They continued across a suspended bridge. After making sure they were alone, Rylan said, “It’ll only get worse for him if news about the amendment leaks.”
Willow glanced around as well. “You know about that?”
Rylan nodded. “And even if word doesn’t leak, Father’s denial of Praefectus Damika’s request is going to look all the worse when Quintarch Lucran learns what Lorelei saw at the council of Knives.”
A gaggle of children raced along a walkway a few trees over, the farthest behind pelting the others with pine cones.
As Willow watched them, Rylan continued. “We both know Father will probably win the vote of the patricians, but he still needs the quintarchs’ vote of confidence. How can tending to the wounded dragon of a quintarch’s daughter fail to do anything but help?”
“You’ve hardly showed an uncia of gratitude to Father for taking you in when your uncle died. How can you expect me to believe you care about his interests?”
“Because I care about the Holt, and I genuinely believe he had the Holt’s best interests at heart when he struck that deal with Aarik.”
Willow’s brows pinched. She stared out over Glaeyand’s expanse, then looked at Rylan again. “He might not agree.”
“Just speak to him, please.”
She strode away, erect, her long black hair tossing in the wind.
Rylan called after her. “Thank you, Willow. I owe you.”