Page 54 of Dragon Heir

“I’ll escort you,” he says, hand on the hilt of his sword. He walks along with us. We’re nearing the end of the hall when Professor Sinetar steps from his study.

“Princess Vynessa,” he says, bowing deeply. I expect to find amusement in his eyes or teasing, but he avoids eye-contact when he straightens. “Perhaps I could have a word with you. Ladies, you don’t mind, do you?”

He gives my ladies in waiting his most charming smile. Kimbra goes bright red and starts tittering behind her hand.

“She’s wanted by the queen,” the guard barks, a little too close. The man has blond hair, cut short and choppy around his face. His attention is fixed on me.

“This is part of the queen’s business,” Sinetar says with a grin, taking my elbow. Before the guard can object again, Sinetar pulls me into his room, then sticks his head out. “Get comfortable. We’ll be a couple of minutes.”

With that, Sinetar closes the door and turns to me. My heart hammers so hard I’m sure he can hear it. I don’t know what to expect. Usually it would be him tossing me on the desk and ravaging me, but there’s too much tension in his expression.

“Isn’t the queen expecting us?”

“Not now.” Sinetar throws open his closet and tosses me a set of leather trousers and a top that looks like some kind of harness. “Forget queenly manners. That’s the least of your worries.”

“What’s going on?” I ask as I try to gather the leather outfit into my hands.

“You need to be able to protect yourself. Put on your armor,” he says, as he paces behind me. He grabs the laces on the dress that my ladies so recently tied me into. His fingers move deftly, and I get the feeling I’m not the first woman he’s helped out of an elaborate dress.

“Sinetar,” I say, “Why are you acting like—”

“Today will be a training day,” he says.

“Training for what?”

“For combat,” he says. He finishes unbuttoning me, and I hear his breath catch as his knuckles graze my skin.

Goosebumps explode across my back. “Sinetar?”

“No,” he whispers in a low growl. “I’m turning my back while you dress.”

This more than anything tells me something is very wrong. Sinetar isn’t acting like himself. Pax and True were both missing from my room. Yadira’s moment of vulnerability, and the fact that I think she lied to that guard.

“Now, Vynessa,” Sinetar growls. “We don’t have time.”

Working quickly, I pull on the outfit, which fit as if it were made just for me. The leather is buttery soft and melds to my skin like…Well, a second skin. The trousers hug my legs in safety, though the top leaves little to the imagination.

Since Sinetar is my teacher, he probably had it made just for me, though I’m not sure how he knows my measurements so exactly. He gave me the Queen’s Day dress, so he must have some intel about my sizing. As soon as I’m dressed, Sinetar opens the back door to his study, one he’s never even acknowledged when I was there for tutoring sessions.

He herds me through a gleaming marble hallway, hurrying me so fast that I can’t even begin to memorize the twists and turns we’re taking. Dragon-head torches burst into light when we approach, and the intricately carved eyes seem to follow us as we pass. The marble itself isn’t a flat texture like the stone that we use back home, but full of character and swirling pattern, as if alive.

In one hallway, the top is open to the sunlight streaming down, with vines hanging in from above. Birds sing in the leaves, swooping from one end of the hallway to another. Beyond the vines, large, colorful bodies fill the sky, greens and blues, reds and browns. “Are those all dragons?” I ask incredulously, staring up in shock.

They’re so far away, but there must be hundreds of them. I remember how awestruck I was to see the lone one flying over the academy, and now I wonder if it was one of my guards arriving on campus.

I point to the sky as my heart thumps hard in my chest. “Sinetar, do you see this?”

“Keep your head down.” Sinetar pulls me to the wall of the courtyard, through an archway, and stops in front of a door. Then he unlocks it and pushes it open. “Come on.”

Beyond the door is only darkness. He gestures for me to lead the way, but I don’t like anything about this situation. I don’t like his abruptness that belies a nervousness I’ve never seen in him before. I don’t like the fact that hundreds of dragons are heading to the palace, and I have no idea what’s going on.

Spinning on my heel, I run, but I don’t get three paces when a wall of wind slams into me. The air sweeps me straight off my feet, and I grab for the door frame, but the wind is too strong. It sweeps me into the darkness and immediately dies.

“Sinetar!” I yell, running for the door.

The wind rises again, holding me in place as I fight to get to him.

“I’m sorry, Vynessa,” he yells over the howling wind. He’s a silhouette in the doorway, and I can’t see his expression. The wind cuts off. “You’ll thank me for this later. Time to claim your claws.”