“Wh-what I’ve got?” I stood there, trembling and uncertain.
“You know what he means!” Sasha Sanchez came up to me and glared into my eyes. “Go on—shift!” she screamed at me so loudly that I started backwards and nearly fell. “Show us your Drake!”
“I don’t have a Drake!” I gasped, taking another step back from her. “Please, I don’t know what the, uh, Blind Crone was talking about. I wanted to tell everyone the truth but I couldn’t.”
Pedro Sanchez looked at me in disgust.
“So it was all a lie—something they paid that blind old bitch to say in order to make the people accept a non-Drake as their queen.”
“I don’t know about that.” His mother was eyeing me in a crafty, speculative way I didn’t like a bit. “The Blind Crone could not be bought—and she was never wrong, though sometimes you had to interpret her words. What did the prophecy say now?” She closed her eyes and recited from memory.
“Drake Flame cannot Harm her
Drake Fire will but warm her.
She cannot be Burned
When her Lesson is Learned”
Her husband frowned.
“What are you saying, Sasha?”
“Only that perhaps this little puta won’t be able to let her Drake out until she learns the lesson that we are serious,” Pedro’s mother said, frowning. “And since the Blind Crone specifically said that Drake Flame cannot harm her, I think we ought to put her to the Trial of Flame.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but the Trial of Flame sounded like a really, really bad thing. And the shocked and horrified look on Ari’s face didn’t do anything to make me feel better, either.
“You can’t do this,” he said hoarsely. “Kaitlyn is telling the truth—she has no Drake within her to bring out with the power of flame! You’ll only succeed in killing her!”
“We shall see about that.” Chamberlain Sanchez motioned to the other men he had brought with him. “Out of your robes and shift. We need at least four males with the hottest flame possible to peel away the skin and release the girl’s inner Drake.”
Oh God, I really didn’t like the sound of this! I felt sick and my knees were weak. I wanted to run but where could I go? I was literally surrounded by people who apparently wanted to burn me alive. Also, I couldn’t leave Ari and his family to die—though I had no better idea of how to get them free than I did of how to free myself.
All around me the Chamberlains the Senior Sanchez had recruited for his evil coup shed their robes and began to shift into their Drakes. None of them, I noticed numbly, had the power to shift as smoothly and quickly as Ari did. Their transformations were grotesque—their faces and frames swelling and bulging, growing scales and tales and snouts and talons, until at last four huge Drakes surrounded me.
Now I understood why they had decided to do this in the Feasting Hall—they wanted to be in a part of the palace large enough to accommodate their Drakes when they shifted. And now those same Drakes were going to burn me with their fire—presumably to make my own, nonexistent Drake come out.
“Get ready,” Sanchez—who had remained in human form commanded them. “We’ll push her to the center of the room and then you’ll all breathe flame as one. If that doesn’t release her inner Drake, nothing will.”
“Wait!” Ari’s voice rang out and I saw that he was staring at the older Sanchez. “Wait, Sanchez—you cannot refuse me the right to say goodbye to my L’lorna,” he said.
“I told you, Reyes, she’s not your L’lorna anymore—she’s mine,” Pedro Sanchez sneered. “Or she will be if she survives the Trial of Flame. If not…” He shrugged. “Then I guess she’ll just be a grease spot on the floor.”
Ari’s face was pale but his voice was steady as he spoke—not to Pedro but to Pedro’s Father and Mother.
“You know that if you take my L’lorna and kill me, my soul will haunt you and your son all your days and bring bad luck to your family for seven times seven generations. You know it is true!”
Pedro Sanchez sneered at this but I thought his mother and father looked distinctly uneasy. But the older Sanchez clearly wasn’t about to let his superstition get in the way of his ambition.
“Shut your mouth, boy—you don’t scare us!” he barked.
But Ari kept talking, still staring steadily into the older man’s eyes.
“Only give me a little time to bid farewell to my L’lorna and I swear I will not curse you or haunt you. My spirit will ascend to the Sky above the Sky Lands and leave your family in peace. Please, just give me a chance to say goodbye.”
The Senior Sanchez seemed to hesitate a moment but finally he gave a sharp nod of his head.