Page 34 of Dragon’s Ending

DOMINIC

I was heading across the back garden towards the woods when my phone sounded with Rhodri’s tone.

My heart sank as I dug my phone out of my pocket to find his text. Study. Now.

Wondering what the hell I’d done this time, I turned on my heel and headed back to the house. No time to waste when he sounded like that. I pushed Rhodri’s limits—a lot, some might say—but these days, I knew when not to. Thank God he’d texted me before I was out of range of the Wi-Fi.

He wasn’t sitting behind his desk, for once, but instead was standing in front of the empty fireplace. He didn’t say anything as he ran his gaze over me from head to foot. Just as well I’d scraped the mud off my boots at the back door.

I couldn’t work out what was in his expression. Some anger, sure, but that was always there when he looked at me these days. Resignation? Hope, maybe? Whatever it was, it was different from usual, so I tried to stop my own face settling into its dealing-with-my-father expression of mild scorn.

“You’re coming to a meeting with Abimelech Mortimer this evening,” he said, and I could only just hear what he said next over the pounding in my ears. “I presume you do have a decent suit?”

“I do,” I got out through a dropped jaw. For one impossible, dizzying heartbeat, I stared at him. He wanted me to be part of this.

He turned away. “I’ll be leaving in forty minutes,” he told the fireplace.

It took a moment, but I realised. Nothing had changed. He couldn’t bring himself even to look at me.

I headed for the door, unsteady somehow after that wonderful, stupid hope that had lasted all of three seconds. He didn’t want me there, so why the fuck was he taking me? Maybe Mortimer had asked for my presence. But why would he do that?

I was ready and waiting by the front door thirty-five minutes later. I kind of hated myself for it, but I couldn’t risk Rhodri leaving without me.

He drove, of course, and my suit would never be the same again after spending two hours in the bucket seat of his Aston Martin. Neither would my back.

I kept quiet for the first half hour, while he listened to some political podcast. But when it finished, I cleared my throat. Which annoyed me, because it sounded like I was nervous.

“Do I need to know anything about the context of this meeting?” I asked.

He was silent for several minutes. As we were the only car on this particular bit of road, it wasn’t traffic holding his attention. I’d decided I wasn’t going to get an answer when he finally spoke.

“Abimelech Mortimer is manoeuvring,” he said. “He’s behind this drive to get our history gathered and recorded centrally, yet it’s not clear why.” He tapped his finger on the leather of the steering wheel a few times. “I don’t know how history advantages him,” he confessed at last, and it took all my self-control not to draw an audible breath. Rhodri never confessed to not knowing something. Especially not to me.

“Perhaps it’s not the history so much as working out what parts of it each family wants to hide,” I said. “Because knowing what we don’t want to be revealed gives him leverage of a kind.”

Rhodri tilted his head in acknowledgement, though he still didn’t look at me. “Perhaps.”

He said nothing further, and I wasn’t going to push my luck. I relaxed instead into that cursed seat and thought about the very little I knew of the way Ben had arrived here. From an English dragon family, desperately excited to discover that Welsh families had records that went back centuries. We hadn’t been exactly free of turmoil in this country, but maybe things had been less turbulent and that was why we still had our records. Or perhaps we were simply less paranoid than English dragons, who appeared to have destroyed records even when they didn’t mention the d-word, just in case.

Rhodri eventually pulled into the car park of a hotel, where his car looked practically average. Other midlife-crisis sports cars rubbed shiny shoulders with high-end sedans, reflecting the fact this hotel’s restaurant had a Michelin star.

Inside, the place did nothing to change my mind about the average bank balance of its guests. The carpet was like walking on clouds, and polished antique furniture boasted enough flower arrangements to make me glad Glenys wasn’t here—she’d have snaffled the lot for the wedding.

Rhodri steered to the bar where, with an inward eyeroll at myself, I ordered an orange juice. It wasn’t as if a single alcoholic drink would render me incapable, but he’d probably assume it would. Plus, I could just imagine his horror if I’d ordered a pint. He had his usual gin and tonic, and we found some leather armchairs where I sipped the cloying, too-sweet orange juice and didn’t look at Rhodri.

A familiar voice cut across the hushed, upscale peace of the bar. “Dominic.”

Not exactly friendly, but not exactly not. I rose to my feet as Heath Gruffydd crossed the room to me, and I saw the imposing figure of his father at the door.

“Here to see Mortimer too?” Heath asked, curiosity in his eyes. “We’ve just come from him.”

He looked me up and down and I could see the moment he bit back a crack about my suit as he became aware of Rhodri sitting there. Heath was in shirt and trousers, a little different from his usual t-shirt and jeans but not exactly to Rhodri’s standards.

“Mr Bedwyr,” he said, with a respectful nod.

“Heath. Robin,” Rhodri added, tilting his head to Heath’s father.

If only they hadn’t been there, I might have got something out of Heath about his meeting with Mortimer, but with our respective heads of family there, we could hardly gossip. We weren’t supposed to know one another that well—they had no idea we met up at least once a month to fight it out in the skies over the castle.