The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) by Dan Michaelson (list of e readers .TXT) 📗

than some of the others within the city. I’d grown up around livestock, and realized how tied to them that we were. Of course, the livestock I’d raised had not been nearly as intelligent as the dragons.

I continued to rub my temples as we made our way through the streets, passing a few other people, though many of them were heading toward the palace as well.

I caught sight of a dozen soldiers marching along one of the side streets, their bright chain mail gleaming in the sun. I knew the king had traditional soldiers that complemented the dragon riders along with the dragon mages, though in the time that I’d been within the city, I had not seen any of them.

As we neared the palace, Thomas didn’t slow. I wished he would take a moment, give me a chance to adjust, but unfortunately, I didn’t have that chance. He hurried forward and we reached the outer wall leading into the palace grounds.

Once there, he glanced over to me. “Are you going to be able to handle this?”

I licked my lips. “I’m going to be fine.”

“Good. The king has little patience for those who come before him unprepared.”

“I am unprepared,” I said.

“You can’t look as if you are unprepared.”

“I’m not exactly sure how I can look like anything else,” I said. “I don’t know what we are supposed to do.”

For that matter, I didn’t know what purpose I had for coming to the king. The only thing I knew was that Thomas wanted me to. It was tied to the Djarn, whatever happened in the forest, and perhaps tied to the fact that he wanted to prove that they had a connection to the dragons.

Or maybe . . .

I rubbed at my temple, trying to clear my thoughts. I knew Thomas’s ranking had changed. I didn’t know anything about it, other than what Brandel had said—and what Thomas had alluded to.

Could that be why he was going to the king?

Maybe Thomas wanted to use me to prove some point to him.

When he reached the gate leading into the palace, Thomas nodded to the two guards standing on either side, hands resting on the hilt of their swords. Even healthy, I wouldn’t want to mess with them. They were both enormous, with builds that made them look like blacksmiths, and I could imagine that they would have no difficulty wrestling down a wild boar.

They motioned for us to go past.

Once inside, I frowned.

“Just traditional soldiers?” I asked, glancing back toward the iron gates.

“You would’ve expected something else?”

“I don’t know if it’s something else so much as it is . . .” It was hard for my mind to feel like I could work through the problem, though that was exactly what I needed to do. This was a problem, and I had to come up with the answer. “Why not dragon mages?”

“What makes you think they aren’t?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I would have felt something.”

Thomas regarded me for a moment. “Would you have?”

I shrugged. “I think so. I can feel you and your connection to the dragons now.”

Thomas snorted. “Because I’m holding on to it.”

Was that it? Maybe it was, though the more I focused on what I felt, the more uncertain I was. Maybe it really was only that he was holding on to that power now, but maybe there was something more to it as well.

I turned and looked behind me, focusing on those two guards, but I didn’t feel anything from them that would suggest that they were attached to the dragons in any real way. If they had been, I thought I should feel something coming off of them, and there was no sense of that. It was an emptiness, though not the kind of emptiness I would’ve expected from somebody who had a connection to the dragons. This was an emptiness tied to an absence of a connection.

Strange that I would be so acutely aware of that. Even stranger was that as I walked alongside Thomas, I could feel his connection to the dragons, and the way power flowed from him, cycling out and toward the dragons within their pen. Every so often, he would shift that connection, sliding over to another dragon, before moving on and attaching to the next. Even now, Thomas was changing his focus, holding on to different dragons as he approached the palace. There had to be something here that he intended, though what was it?

“Do I need to hold on to my connection to the dragon?”

Thomas looked over to me. “Have you ever released it?”

I took a deep breath, and I could feel the power of the green dragon coursing through me, flowing outward as it cycled up and into me. “Not that I can tell.”

He chuckled as we made our way through the garden leading up to the palace. Shrubs lined the path. Occasional flowers were visible through the openings in the shrubs, and their fragrance filled the air. Trees grew in the garden off of the main pathway. Up ahead of us, another pair of guards blocked our way, and I could feel something coming from them. A connection to the dragons.

Those were dragon mages.

I didn’t even need to get close to them to know. I could feel the energy and recognize the power that radiated off of them as it pressed outward, sweeping toward me. I didn’t know if they were even aware of how they were pulling on power, or if it was something only I was connected to somehow. I glanced over to Thomas to see if he knew as well, but there was nothing from him to suggest that he did.

Why should I be so attuned to it?

As we approached, the two dragon mages turned their attention to me, power flowing outward, sweeping across me. Both were men with close-cropped hair, wearing jackets and pants rather than chain mail. Both carried swords, though given what I detected, I doubted that they