hoping to whisk you away from your true love.”
She stood. “We could play like this for hours, Finnegan. But I’d rather not waste our time. I’m offering you an alliance that you clearly want. So answer my questions, and then we’ll see if some sort of agreement is possible between us, or whether I should head elsewhere.”
He continued to sit, his face tilted to look at her. “Do you think you could keep up?”
“What?”
“If we played for hours. Do you think you’d last?”
“You wanted to cause trouble in Alyssinia,” she said. “You wanted me to run from the palace, to be on your side. You knew about my magic, or at least suspected. Tell me why.”
“If you sit then I will.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her knees inches from the edge of his chair. Then she stepped back, still refusing to break eye contact, and sat, smoothing her skirts around her like she had seen Iris do a hundred times. “I’m listening,” she said. “Tell me.”
Finnegan leaned closer. “You have to understand Vanhelm first,” he said. “Then I think it explains itself. You saw my kingdom on your way here, I assume? What’s left of my kingdom?”
“Yes,” she said. “I saw.”
“The dragons appeared out of nowhere fifty years ago, and burned the whole kingdom away. Most people didn’t escape. Everything was gone. Not good for us, I’m sure you’ll agree. The only thing that keeps my city safe is the fact that dragons will not cross water. If that changed . . . it would not end well. And that’s not all. This city is small. It feels large, but we can only build buildings so tall; we can only squeeze so many people into this space. We’re running out of room.”
She dug her nails into her palms, fighting to keep her voice steady. “So you want my kingdom? Or do you expect my magic to fix things somehow?”
“The former, initially. I was only teasing you at first, you know. About your magic. I didn’t know about it when I came to the castle. I thought to take advantage of the unrest in Alyssinia, get the promised princess on my side . . . combined kingdoms, more space for us, more technology and advancements for you . . . not a terrible plan worth crossing the sea for, just in case you woke up. But Alyssinia is a little backward for my tastes. And then my jokes turned out to be true. How’s that for accidental insight? Once I realized what you were, I knew I had it all wrong. Vanhelm needs to be free of these dragons. And I think you might be able to help.”
She could not have heard him correctly. “You think I can rid you of the dragons?”
“You have magic,” he said. “You can control fire. The first glimmer of power in Alyssinia in almost a hundred years. What else could take on a dragon, if not that?”
“Water magic?”
He laughed. “Good point. But there isn’t much of that around. There’s no magic, except for you.”
She shook her head. He could not be sincere. And not just sincere, but excited. “You’re basing all this on the fact that I can create fire, and dragons create fire too? That’s it?”
“It was only a suspicion, in the beginning,” Finnegan said. “A hope, perhaps. No one knows why the dragons returned, and if you awoke too, if you had fire . . . it was an interesting proposition. But I have more proof now.” He leaned over and caught her dragon pendant between his fingertips. The red eye gleamed. “On the day of your wedding, when you made that fountain explode . . . the dragon glowed. Didn’t you feel it?”
“Yes,” Aurora said. She resisted the urge to clutch the necklace too. “And?”
“You have no idea what I gave you, do you? That pendant has dragon’s blood in it. Why do you think the eyes glow red like that? And it responded to you. The dragon’s blood magnified your power. There’s a connection between them and you, Aurora. And if you learn to control your magic, to really control it, I think you might be the help we’ve been looking for.”
She slid the pendant out of his grasp. The metal was warm, but that was just from Finnegan’s touch. There was no connection there. “I left Alyssinia because they had impossible hopes about my magic. What makes you think I’ll respond any differently to you?”
“Because I want