this.”
“You must,” Aron told him, preparing to use his graal to force the issue rather than let Stormbreaker join him as an oathbreaker. “Stone needs you. Eyrie needs you.”
“And I would wager Eyrie needs you, too, Aron, Son of the Wolf.”
Both Stormbreaker and Aron startled at this new voice.
Platt entered the room as quietly as any Sabor, his black boots making no sound on the polished infirmary floor. As always, he was dressed in simple stitched leathers, and he carried no weapons save for his powerful mind-talents and the dragon-form always waiting to burst free of human essence.
He raised his hand, and his graal froze Stormbreaker in place, making certain that Stormbreaker didn’t change his mind and strike Aron’s head from his neck.
“I didn’t bring my people out of hiding just to save Dari and Kate, as I told you on the battlefield.” Platt sounded almost angry, or at the very least, worried. “We came for Nic, and for you, too, Aron. Now Nic is lost to us, but you—this—this doesn’t have to be. How can our alliance with the Fae survive if you all go about killing your best talent, and your strongest warriors?”
Aron’s cheeks heated.
He couldn’t believe he was feeling flattered, here on the floor of the infirmary, waiting to be beheaded.
“Stormbreaker—I mean—Lord Dunstan can’t let me go, or he’ll be as much a criminal as I am.” He pressed his fingers against the floor to keep himself in position for his own execution. “I know it may make little sense to you, but like the trial at the Ruined Keep, Stone’s strict codes of justice serve a deeper purpose.”
Platt didn’t seem persuaded. “Cayn spare me from Fae honor. Especially that of Stone.” He let out a breath, and then his lips twitched into a smile more dangerous than five of Stormbreaker’s swords.
“Perhaps I can offer another solution,” Platt said.
Before Aron could argue, a burst of Stregan graal rendered him senseless.
The last thing he perceived was Stormbreaker’s jagged blade clattering harmlessly to the stone floor between them.
• • •
“Look at it this way,” Snakekiller said to Aron as they rode slowly on talon-back through the mists, as they had been doing for over a cycle now, through Dyn Ross, through Cayn’s arch, past the Watchline, and into the depths of the Deadfall. “Stone has much to do beyond reading our charges and searching for us. It may be many years before Dunstan gets around to sending assassins after his sister and a runaway Stone Brother—who by the way, is also a dynast heir.”
She smiled, turning the spiral benedets on her tanned cheeks into nothing but tiny circles. She looked so very human in her black tunic and breeches, but Aron couldn’t help sensing her viper essence, which seemed ever closer to the surface of her skin the farther south they went.
“You’ll be as much legend as Canus the Bandit,” she said, winking at him to lessen the tease. “Before he gave up his veils and turned legitimate again, I mean.”
Platt, who kept pace beside them on foot, let out a soft laugh.
Aron felt outnumbered. He had since Kate had departed with the aid of some Stregans and a few Sabor, shepherding the children they would be sheltering to the Stregan stronghold. It had been just the three of them for so long after that, shrouded in the fog, that Aron wondered how he would begin to adjust to life around people again.
“You’ll learn much in the City of Dragons, Aron.” Platt sounded confident. “By the time Stone tracks your path—if they ever do—no assassin will be able to touch you.”
Aron appreciated this promise, but he knew if Stone ever did come for him, he would meet his fate with as much honor as he could muster.
The mists around them grew a bit thinner, and Tek gave a happy whistle.
Aron didn’t share his talon’s optimism, because he had seen the fog dissipate before, only to re-form at double strength over the next mountain rise. He guided Tek forward beside Snakekiller and her bull, but as Platt crested the rise, he stopped and waited for them, his body tense with anticipation.
Aron almost choked up, remembering his ride to Triune, and how he had felt when Stormbreaker brought him to the lip of the valley, to view his new home below.
How could this hidden city in the mists possibly compare?
His pulse picked up, but he tried to brace himself for disappointment and acceptance. It’s what he would need to face this