The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(17)

“Do you think they have a room with three beds? Or will we be sharing?” Trugg raised a brow at Jyn. “I’m good at sharing.”

“You get to sleep on the floor.” Jyn stepped in front of Kol and began moving toward the village.

Trugg moved to Kol’s side. “Somehow my considerable charms never work on her.”

Kol and his friends entered the open gate that led into the village and moved down the main road toward the heart of the town. A handful of children playing in the dirt near the gate stared at the Eldrians, their eyes wide, and then took off running toward the village, yelling something about visitors.

“Their welcoming committee is kind of creepy,” Trugg said as they passed rows of tiny cottages with thin wisps of smoke curling from their chimneys and barren ground surrounding their foundations.

“Maybe they don’t see many outsiders here,” Kol said, but as they neared the village proper, a din of voices on the road ahead of them sent his dragon heart pounding. They rounded a corner, leaving behind the cottages for the brick and board storefronts that made up Tranke’s main street, and a crowd of villagers was waiting for them. The children from the gate were standing off to the side, staring at the Eldrians as the crowd surged toward the visitors.

“Need some cloth?” A woman lunged in front of Jyn and held up a length of pale pink linen. “Make a trade for a jewel.”

“I have buckets. And bricks.” A man grabbed Kol’s sleeve. Trugg growled and slapped the man’s hand away. Kol’s dragon heart pounded faster, and the fire in his chest burned.

“I can launder your clothes.”

“I’ll polish your boots.”

“My family is hungry. You can spare some food, can’t you?”

“I have a sword to trade. Please. A jewel from you might be enough to convince a merchant from Súndraille to take my family out of Ravenspire.”

Villagers surrounded them, and more were coming. All of them were calling out, offering services, trying to trade, or simply begging for riches the Eldrians didn’t have to give. Kol had brought a few bronze coins and some small jewels, enough to give them a night or two in an inn with a meal when they needed it, but with his army steadily losing ground to the ogres, he hadn’t had time to make a formal request for funds from the royal purser. Instead, he’d taken what was left of Brig’s monthly stipend and borrowed the rest from his friends.

“We can’t help you,” Trugg said gruffly as he pried yet another hand off Kol’s arm.

“Let us pass or it will go poorly with you, humans,” Jyn snarled as a man grabbed her hands and implored her to buy a pair of teacups from his wife.

The man reached for her again, and Trugg shoved himself between the two, his dark eyes glittering with his dragon’s fury as he said, “Touch her again, and she’ll destroy you. And if she doesn’t, I will.”

People surrounded them, pressing in from all sides. Above the gathering crowd, Kol spotted a sign that said White Wheel Tavern. Beneath the sign, a girl with curly dark hair and pale skin stood staring at the crowd, her gloved hands fisted in the skirt of her green dress. She met his eyes and jerked her chin toward the tavern. He frowned, and she lifted one hand to beckon sharply. Unlike the wild desperation he saw on the faces around him, she looked calm and focused.

It was trust her or deal with the mob himself without giving in to the violent pounding of his dragon’s heart. He made a split-second decision and nodded to her. She whirled and disappeared inside the tavern. A boy with the same pale skin and curly black hair followed in her footsteps.

“Come on,” Kol said as he shouldered his way through the throng, Trugg and Jyn at his side. “We’re going into the tavern.”

“Maybe we should just shift and get out of here,” Jyn said.

“The second we stop to shift, this crowd will be all over us.” Kol firmly pushed a man’s arm aside and ducked beneath the outstretched hands of another. “And since we have to give in to our dragon hearts to shift—”

“Our dragons would attack,” Trugg finished for him.

“Maybe that’s a lesson these people need to learn.” Jyn shoved past a girl who was holding a dirty rag doll up for trade and motioned Kol toward the tavern.

“They’re desperate,” Kol said quietly. “They’re just doing what they can to survive. We can’t hurt them for that. Besides, if we attack Ravenspire citizens in our dragon form within Ravenspire borders, we violate the treaty my father signed with Irina years ago, and we’d lose our opportunity to have any upper hand in the negotiations.”

They reached the wooden sidewalk that ran in front of the tavern, and Kol immediately moved toward the door.

“If we go inside, we’ll be trapped,” Jyn said.

“I think there’s a way out.” And, skies above, please let him be right about the girl and her intentions. If he led his friends into a trap, they’d have no choice but to shift.

Behind them, the villagers shouted and begged, but the pleading had disappeared from their tone, and anger had taken its place.

Kol, Jyn, and Trugg raced into the tavern seconds before the mob of furious villagers began shoving through the doorway, their eyes wild as they screamed for the Eldrians’ cloaks, boots, and coin.

“This way!” The girl waited by an open door in the far wall that led to an alley. “Hurry.”