“W-what?” Dain straightens. “Me?”
“We’ve seen you fight. We’ve seen you shoot. We’ve seen you hunt. We’ve seen you climb that cliff and sedate those harpies. You’re as good as the girl.” Geraint nods to me. “Without that pesky royal title.”
He laughs at his own joke and then continues. “We can’t ask for a princess. We can ask for an orphaned boy who only gets his place at the princess’s side through charity.”
“What?” I squawk. “Dain is not an orphan, and it’s certainly not charity—”
“Just because one’s parents are alive doesn’t mean one isn’t an orphan. Perhaps not legally, but inside…” He meets Dain’s eyes. “I know that look. The look of a boy without family. We can give you that. A family who will welcome you and value your skills, far more than any princess or queen. You don’t come from their world, boy. You know that.”
“He has a family,” Wilmot says through clenched teeth. “He has—”
He stops short, and I look over sharply, waiting for him to set this horrible man straight. To tell him that Dain is his son, and we are his family. But Dain’s looking at Wilmot, and I can’t see what passes between them, but Wilmot stops mid-sentence.
Before I can speak, Dain says, “I’ll go.”
“What?” I say. “No.”
Alianor takes my arm, squeezing it. “He’s right, Rowan. Dain isn’t one of us and never will be. Better he goes with people who’ll value him, and we take the prince.”
I blink at her. Her eyes widen in a look I know well. She’s up to something. They all are. Only in a nightmare would Dain agree to join poachers. Only in a nightmare would Wilmot let him go and Alianor trade him for a prince. We could get out of this. It would take a fight, but we’d do that before we’d ever leave Trysten or Dain.
Trysten is the only one who hasn’t figured it out, and he’s protesting loudly, but Dain insists he wants this. I realize I need to protest, too, or it’ll seem strange if we’re all happy to let our companion leave.
“We can’t let him go,” I say.
“I don’t like it,” Wilmot grumbles, but it’s a fake grumble. “Are you sure you aren’t doing this because you’re upset about something, Dain?”
“No, I’m doing it because he’s right. I don’t belong here.”
Wilmot insists on a moment with Dain, to be sure of his intentions. Geraint’s men don’t allow the two to go off and speak privately, but they give them some space. When they finish, Wilmot stalks back to Geraint.
“Spring,” Wilmot says. “You may have him through the winter, and in spring, I want to check up on him.”
“Of course. You know where to find us.”
Wilmot snorts. “You’re no fool. You’ve already abandoned that settlement. You stole a dragon egg. You aren’t going back there.”
“Dragon egg?” Geraint rolls his eyes. “You really believe this boy’s mad tales?”
I open my mouth, but a look from Wilmot warns me to silence. If we press them to admit they have an egg, they might attack to keep us from following them.
They negotiate. Then we escort Dain to our camp, where he grabs his pack and walks away, Dez trundling along at his heels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The plan is for Dain to sneak back tonight and tell us where to find the camp, so we can retrieve the egg. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Wilmot insists we give Dain a chance, though. Trust him. Trust, too, that Wilmot would never expose Dain to danger. They want Dain, and they didn’t mistreat Trysten. Dain will be fine. If he can’t escape, we’ll find and free him.
We don’t move our camp, and Wilmot has told Geraint that. We are staying here “in case” Dain changes his mind and we need to renegotiate. It’d be more suspicious if we just moved on.
I’m supposed to take the next shift for guard duty, but I’m not sleeping. I’ll drift off and then start awake feeling like I’m missing something.
Dain. We’re missing Dain, and I cannot stop worrying about him.
Does anything that Geraint said resonate with Dain? Not that he would ever join poachers, but could this make him reconsider his place with the monster hunters? Question whether he belongs?
Does he feel orphaned? Abandoned by his family?
Does he feel as if he doesn’t fit in? I’m a princess; Rhydd is a prince; Alianor is a warlord’s daughter. Even Trysten is the son of a king and was raised in a noble family.
There’s more that’s keeping me awake, though. I trust that if Dain is questioning, we’ll have a chance to discuss it. What’s also bothering me is that every time I fall asleep, I drift into last night. Not the part where Doscach took me into the mountain, but before that. Back to my waking dream.
I keep seeing the moon and stars snuffed out by a black shadow that glides over the camp. I keep seeing that fog, smelling it, feeling my mind floating back toward sleep. I keep hearing everyone around me deeply slumbering.
You forgot this, a voice seems to whisper.
Forgot what?
It doesn’t answer, just keeps replaying the dream that was not a dream.
I blink awake.
The dream that was not a dream.
But it did start as a dream, didn’t it? I dreamed of the darkened sky and the gliding shadows and the mind-numbing fog and the others so soundly asleep.
Except they had been deeply asleep. Wilmot and I haven’t discussed how I’d gotten past his guard, because I suspect he was embarrassed to admit he’d fallen asleep. That wasn’t like him. At all. He is constantly telling us that if we get sleepy on guard duty, we must wake him rather than risk drifting off.
As I sit there in the dark, the fire flickering behind me, I see the dragon. I see her head coming down to mine, her breath washing
