Gold Dragon (Heritage of Power #5)(7)
He smiled at Mladine, and she smiled back. If the surrogate mothers thought him odd for being half-dragon, or having an overly developed interest in building things, they had been too well schooled to show it.
“Have a seat, Mladine,” Sardelle said. “My students should have some snacks for us soon.”
“Should I be relieved you don’t make me prepare snacks as part of my training?” Trip had seen Ylisa and Ferrin cracking eggs and manipulating stirring spoons with their minds.
“I wasn’t sure if you would consider it beneath you. Though knowing how to make cookies and tarts is a good skill to have. Even if I didn’t acknowledge that until I was a mother myself, and someone with frequent winged houseguests who enjoy sweets.”
When Mladine sat down, the other two mothers quizzed her on the dragon. Trip listened as the story was relayed in more detail and grew troubled.
Something needed to be done. Nobody would be safe as long as dragons were marauding in Iskandia. His siblings wouldn’t be safe.
He vowed to change that.
3
Trip smoothed his uniform, tucked his cap under his arm, and scraped his fingers through his short hair, aware of the guards at the solarium door eyeing him surreptitiously. He wasn’t sure if it was because he looked too young to have been invited to this important meeting at the castle or if it was because there were rumors going around the capital that he was a powerful sorcerer. He decided to hope for the former, since the latter had resulted in a write-up in a newspaper and a couple of old ladies on the street making superstitious gestures at him for warding off evil spirits.
When he’d envisioned journalists writing about his exploits, it had involved heroic flier battles in which he saved the country from certain doom. Not articles that speculated about his heritage and suggested that dragons had sent him to live among humans as a spy.
He hadn’t received much better treatment from the guards at the front gate, who had patted him down before letting him enter the castle, and told him he would have to leave his sword with them. Trip had been mortified when the guards abruptly changed their minds, saying he could go right in and that he and his sword should have a nice day.
Azarwrath hadn’t confessed to the mind manipulation. He hadn’t needed to.
“You can go in, sir,” one of these guards said, no doubt wondering why Trip had been standing in front of the double granite doors leading into the king’s solarium for a minute without knocking or saying anything. “Most of the others are already inside.”
Yes, his senses told him that King Angulus, Sardelle, Zirkander, Blazer, Duck, and Kaika, along with a dozen people Trip didn’t know, waited within. Finding them all in there added to his nerves—was he considered late?—but maybe he would be able to slink into a back corner, unnoticed.
As he lifted his hand toward the handle, a faint clacking noise sounded from around the corner of the wide corridor leading back to the castle’s main entrance. He didn’t have to reach out with his power to sense a dragon in that direction—Shulina Arya—though the noise was somewhat perplexing. She had shape-shifted and had a significantly diminished aura. Otherwise, he would have been aware of her approach much earlier. Was she in human form? Interesting. So far, he’d only seen her as herself or as a golden ferret.
Ah, he sensed Rysha walking behind her. He smiled and stood tall, feeling much better about heading in to see the king with her at his side. From what he had observed before, she wasn’t intimidated by Angulus at all. Probably because she was noble-born and her family rubbed elbows with other noble people, kings included.
“What is that?” one of the guards asked, picking up the rifle that had been at his side, its butt against the floor by his boots.
“Wheeee!” came a young woman’s voice from around the corner.
“You can’t do that in here!” someone shouted.
As Trip was trying to sense exactly what the shape-shifted dragon was doing, she came around the corner, and he got his first view.
Shulina Arya, in human form, rode some kind of wheeled board with a crate attached to the front half of it. Handlebars stuck out of the top of the crate, and she bent low, grinning as she gripped them and steered around the corner.
A golden blonde ponytail set high atop her head flowed behind her, and her violet eyes gleamed with pleasure. Freckles splashed her cheeks and nose, and if Trip had to guess her age—her human age—he would have estimated sixteen or seventeen. She’d told them she was a few hundred years old, but that was young from the dragon perspective.
“Stop,” one of the door guards cried, striding forward and lifting his rifle, as if someone on a crate scooter in the castle represented a great threat to king and country.
The other one also sprang forward with his rifle.
Trip, fearing for their safety if they tried to shoot a dragon, reacted on instinct. He used his mental power to jerk the weapons out of their hands. They flew back and landed in his grip before he could consider if he’d made a mistake—was there a rule against magically confiscating the rifles of castle guards?
Shulina Arya barely seemed to notice the exchange. Still grinning, she waved and rolled past the double doors at top speed, continuing past the solarium and toward the courtyard garden, her wheels hitting the cracks between the floor tiles and sounding like trains riding the rails.