Traitor (4 page)

“I never lied to you,” he snapped bitterly.

My temper stared to flare up. “You never told me the whole truth, either. Keeping the truth from me while acting like you don’t know anything about what’s going on is the same thing as lying. You’ve known about me all along. You knew what I was capable of—that’s how you knew I could heal your wife.”

He didn’t reply. I saw his hands curling up into fists.

“Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to start telling me anything useful now. You’ll probably leave me to flap in the wind with no idea what’s going on, as usual.” I turned away to put down all my equipment.

When he spoke again, his voice was strangely calm. “It’s not my place to tell you these things. My understanding of what you are is limited. Anything I told you would be a poorly educated guess.”

“Right. Well, whose place is it, then?” I narrowed my eyes back at him challengingly.

Sile stiffened. He glared at me with his mouth pinched up into an uncomfortable grimace. “You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I made a promise. I swore on my honor I wouldn’t tell you anything unless there was no other choice. We agreed that the less you knew, the safer you would be.”

With my arms now empty of my gear and saddle, I stood up and faced him. I flexed my hands, curling my fingers as I summoned some of that strange power that made the air around me hum with wild energy. The heat of it tingled through my chest.

From where he was curled in the back of his stall, Mavrik hissed in disapproval. It made him nervous. But I didn’t stop.

The wooden floorboards under Sile’s boots began to groan, sprouting branches and leaves, which started to entwine around his legs.

“I’m not giving you a choice this time,” I threatened. “Tell me what you know.”

Sile watched the floorboards coming to life like it wasn’t a surprise at all. He didn’t even look scared. “Don’t try to intimidate me, boy. I’ve seen better tricks than this.”

“I know,” I snarled and flexed a bit more of my power. The dragons outside the Roost all sent up a chorus of roars at exactly the same time, answering my silent call like a clap of thunder. “Because you’ve been to Luntharda, haven’t you? Don’t try to lie your way out of it this time, Sile. I know all about it. You went in by yourself, and came out completely unharmed. Everyone says that should have been impossible—that the jungle should have eaten you alive. But now I know there’s only one way an outsider could have made it out without a single scratch.”

I took a bold step toward him so that we met face-to-face. If he was going to lie to me again, I wanted him to be looking at me squarely as he did it. I wanted to see the lie in his eyes. “You knew someone else with power like this. Someone who could make things grow. Someone who could control the jungle and protect you from it.”

Sile’s lip twitched.

“You knew my mother,” I growled through clenched teeth.

Sile’s mouth opened slightly like he was going to argue, but he didn’t. He never said a single word. He didn’t have to. I saw the answer as plainly as I could see the guilt and frustration on his face. I was right.

“Why did you go into Luntharda?” I demanded. “Did you go looking for my mother? Was it about the god stone?”

Mentioning the stone made Sile’s expression harden again. He looked away. “It’s not time yet for you to know that.”

“Why not?” I yelled as I lost my temper.

Sile, on the other hand, was still calm and collected. He didn’t even raise his voice. “Because you haven’t seen it yet. You haven’t seen what this war has done. The citizens of Maldobar are suffering. The poor starve to pay for a war that has turned the very balance of nature on its head. They live in anguish and ruin. But so do your mother’s people. And in many ways, they’ve lost much more than we have. You won’t understand until you see it for yourself.”

I was stunned. Sile was the last person in the world I would have thought might sympathize with the enemy. He was a retired, highly decorated dragonrider. He had fought and probably killed plenty of gray elves before. Hearing those words leave his lips, and seeing the devastated bitterness blazing in his eyes, made me forget how to speak.

Sile took a step toward me, kicking free of the floorboards that had begun to climb his legs. His expression was earnest as he put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it firmly. “If you value your life or those of your friends, then don’t speak of the god stone again. Not to anyone,” he warned. “There are ears everywhere just waiting to hear those words leave your lips. All they need is one excuse to put an axe to your neck.”

“That’s why you’ve been hiding all this time, isn’t it?” I dared to ask as I finally found my voice again. That truth had been staring me in the face all this time, but I had only just now been able to make sense of it. “That’s why someone tried to sabotage your saddle, and why the Lord General was going to execute you. It wasn’t some kind of ritual.”

Sile’s grip on my shoulder slackened some. Once again, his expression told me everything.

As long as I was on the right track, I decided to take it a step further. “You know something about the god stone, don’t you? Something worth killing over … ”

He didn’t speak. As his hand fell away from my shoulder, I saw him nod slightly—just once. He did know something. And whatever he knew was putting his life in danger. He was living in constant fear for himself and for his family. He probably felt like he couldn’t trust anyone after what had happened here at the academy, and now he was worried that anything he told me would definitely put me in that same danger. Why else would he still be trying to protect me?

My anger started to dissipate. I felt sorry for him. I didn’t understand why he was involved, or what had happened to cause all of this, but it was obviously affecting him. He had the same weary, dark circles under his eyes Bren had.

“We don’t have much time. You need to leave soon.” Sile turned away to look at Mavrik. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

I doubted anyone would believe me if I did. I wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten here in the first place. But as he started to walk away, I just had one more question.

“What about Beckah?”

Sile stopped mid-stride. He shot me a glare that probably would have singed my eyebrows right off my face if I’d been standing a little closer. “What about her?”

“I just wondered what made you change your mind about her. You trained her to fight. You sent her into battle without a wing end. You did everything you said shouldn’t be done for a girl.” I tried to at least keep my tone neutral, even if my questions were somewhat accusing.

I knew I had no place to interrogate him about his parenting choices. After all, he’d threatened to rip my ears off if he ever found me messing with his lovely young daughter. Unfortunately, that ship had sailed. I was in love with her. And now I wanted to know why he had gone from being adamantly against her being a dragonrider to training her for it himself.

“I did what had to be done.” He didn’t sound happy about it at all. “There’s a reason she was chosen. I may not agree with it, or understand it, but at this point those choices are no longer mine to make. All I can do is try to prepare her for the worst.”

“She could get hurt,” I reminded him. “Or killed.”

Sile snorted and cast me a dark, almost mocking smirk. “You won’t let that happen.” It sort of sounded like a threat.

“There may not be anything I can do about it, Sile. No matter how much I love her, I can’t bring people back from the dead. And at the rate she’s going—”

He was on me before I could finish getting the words out. He lunged so suddenly, I barely had time to react. He took a swing at my face, and I blocked. He tried to grab one of my arms and force me down into a grappling hold, but I knew these tricks already. I hadn’t just spent a year in absolute hell for nothing.

I twisted myself around, wrenching free of his grasp. Before I could catch myself or even think about it, my body reacted. I punched him hard across the cheek, twice.

I could have stopped there. I probably should have. Those hits had only been instinct, after all, and he was the one who’d started it in the first place. But it felt
so
good to get a little vengeance for all the frustration and lies. So I hit him again, one more time, right in the gut. That one was just for spite.

We broke apart and staggered back, glaring at one another. I was poised, ready to dive right back into the fight again if he sprang at me. My face was burning with rage as I waited to see what he would do.

I had a pretty good idea why he had jumped me in the first place. Now he knew how I felt about his daughter. Considering her current situation, it was probably a bad time to bring that up. Regardless, I had my own reasons for wanting to punch his nose in. I hadn’t completely forgiven him for holding out on me—keeping valuable information out of my grasp. Not knowing that stuff had almost gotten me killed several times now.

But Sile wasn’t going to budge. I knew him well enough to guess that much. He wouldn’t tell me anything, no matter how many times I hit him. He’d never tell me what he really knew about my past, my mother, or what my father stealing the god stone had to do with any of this.

“Not bad.” Sile laughed dryly as he wiped blood from the corner of his mouth onto the back of his hand. “Looks like you did learn something after all.”

“Why did you even come here?” I tried to sound intimidating. “Was there a reason? Or were you just checking to see if I was still alive?”

Sile let his arms drop. He stood, frowning at me like I was still a big disappointment to him. Before, that look had always hurt my pride and my feelings. Now it just pissed me off.

“No,” he said coldly. “I came here for two reasons. First, I heard about what happened on the island during the battle scenario. Is it true that your power didn’t affect any of the animals possessed by the sickness?”

I swallowed uncomfortably. I didn’t exactly have happy memories of the battle scenario. What happened on the Canrack Islands was supposed to have been our final test to see if we were fit for the battlefront. But it had ended up a complete disaster. The madness that was now spreading through the animals in Maldobar like a disease had already infected the whole island. We had barely made it out of there alive. Well … most of us, anyway.

“Yes,” I answered at last, letting my gaze fall to the floor.

Sile’s brow furrowed deeply, like this wasn’t part of his grand master scheme. “Then my second reason for being here will be much more difficult than we anticipated.”

“Why? What are you talking about?”

“You have to go into Luntharda.” He looked at me squarely, like he was daring me to refuse. “Knowing the jungle won’t obey you is going to make that very complicated.”

I practically had to scrape my jaw off the floor of Mavrik’s stall. “Are you insane? I can’t go in there! I barely made it off that island, and that was only because Felix dragged me out!”

“You don’t have choice.” Sile rolled his eyes like I was the one being unreasonable. “Your power hasn’t fully manifested yet. And you’re going to need it—all of it—very soon. So a ritual must be performed, you must be chosen publically, and we’re running out of time for that to happen. The longer we wait the further the sickness will spread. More and more people will die.”

“What ritual? How do you even know all of this?” I tried to ask.

He acted like he hadn’t heard my question. “The abilities you’re using now are child’s play compared to what you are truly capable of. You have to perform the ritual, otherwise you’ll keep collapsing every time you try to use too much power. That’s part of the balance.”

I was struggling to keep up with what he was saying. Actually wrapping my mind around it was something I’d have to work on later. I spent a lot of my spare time trying to figure out the things Sile told me, so it’s not like this was anything new.

“Are you even listening?” He swatted the back of my head to get my attention again. “Quit standing there gaping like a beached fish and remember what I’m telling you.”

“Sile, I can’t go in there,” I argued. “If the jungle doesn’t kill me, the gray elves definitely will. They hate me every bit as much as humans do. And they’ll hate me even more when they see me dressed like a dragonrider. They’ll cut my head off before I even get a word out.”

He gave me another weird, sadistic grin. It was probably the most disturbing thing I had ever seen. “You should be so lucky. Your mother’s people aren’t as forgiving as humans. And they don’t offer quick, painless deaths to their enemies.”

I swallowed hard.

“But you’ll be fine, more or less.” He didn’t sound worried at all, even as he grabbed the front of my tunic and yanked me closer. He stuck his hand down the front of it and started feeling around. I was about to take another swing at him when he pulled out my mother’s necklace.

I tried to snatch it back from him. “Hey!”

“Good. You still have it,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Keep it on you at all times. Never take it off. Understood?”

I shot him a glare. “It’s just a necklace. It doesn’t mean anything.”

As much as I wanted to believe that, my heart wasn’t convinced. A haunting memory from two years ago, when I was a fledgling, came back to me as soon as he brought it up. A gray elf had recognized it, and even asked where I’d gotten it. I had almost forgotten about that.

At the time, it hadn’t mattered. There had been other things I was way more worried about—like rescuing Sile and keeping my friends safe. Now, as I watched him examine the bone-carved pendant carefully, I started to get anxious. I was beginning to wonder how much I had been overlooking. All this time, everyone had been telling me to focus on my training, not to let myself get distracted, and to put all my other worries out of my mind. Had keeping my eyes fixed on that one goal made me blind to the hand of fate moving around me?

I was starting to think so.

“Sile,” I started to speak. My tone must have caught him off guard, because he dropped my necklace back against my chest and stared at me with concern. “I found a scimitar at my father’s house. It had the mark of a stag on the hilt. Someone told me it was the royal crest of the gray elves.”