Rage of the Dragon Read Online Free

Torque to the ogres in an effort to save his own skin.
    Aylaen had one. They needed to find all five. They had been planning to sail to the ogre kingdom to take back their spiritbone. But that plan had gone sadly awry. Now they were drifting on a fog-bound sea, surrounded by their enemies, and the fate of her people and her gods was going to be in the hands of a fae child.
    Wulfe was eleven years old or somewhere thereabouts. His hair was shaggy and uncombed; he wore whatever came to hand, which by now had mostly been reduced to rags and was unrecognizable. He was a fae child, if one believed his tale about being the grandson of the Faerie Queen. And he was a savage killer. In his man-beast form, he had murdered and dismembered two men. According to his story, he had been certain those men were going to kill him and he had decided to kill them first. Aylaen had watched him turn into a wolf. She had watched the fur sprout from his body, his teeth lengthen into fangs, his yellow eyes gleam.
    “I listened to the story. Why are you staring at me like that?” Wulfe asked. “What do you want me to do?”
    “You and I are going to hide this away,” said Aylaen. “But first I must ask you a question and you must tell me the truth. Did my sister kill Keeper?”
    Wulfe flung up his arm. “You’re going to hit me!”
    “I’m not going to hit you. Is it true?” Aylaen asked, giving him a little shake.
    “Yes,” he said sullenly.
    “How do you know?”
    “I saw her do it. I was watching her,” said Wulfe. His eyes narrowed. “I always watch her.”
    “Why?” Aylaen asked, startled.
    “Because she hates me. She wants me dead. My daemons keep telling me to kill her, but I don’t listen to them. I know if I hurt her you would be mad at me.”
    “Telling me my sister is a murderer makes me mad at you,” said Aylaen. “So you better not be lying.”
    Wulfe wriggled in her grasp. She tightened her grip. “Tell me what you saw.”
    “Treia was being nice to Keeper, asking him how he felt and if he was in pain and if there was anything she could do for him. She was nice to me once like that and she ended up hurting me.”
    Wulfe shrugged. “He should have known better, for he didn’t trust her, either, but I guess he must have been groggy from being hit on the head. He told her the injury was nothing. He’d suffered a cracked skull more than once in the Para Dix. Treia went to that chest of hers where she keeps her stuff and mixed something in a cup and gave it to him and told him to drink it. She said it would ease the pain. He drank it and then he slumped over and I thought he was asleep. But then Skylan came down and said something to him and shook him and Keeper toppled over and Skylan said he was dead.”
    “And how do you know my sister killed him?”
    Wulfe shrugged his thin shoulders. “Because Keeper wasn’t dead until he drank whatever Treia gave him. Skylan knows what she did,” the boy added defensively. “Ask him.”
    Aylaen touched the spiritbone with the tips of her fingers. She could feel the terrible power, a tingling vibration. Closing her eyes, she saw, not for the first time, the bodies in the river, the corpses littering the street, mothers wailing over dead children, husbands weeping over dead wives; families lying dead in the rubble of their homes: an entire city destroyed.
    She opened her eyes to look at the boy shifting restlessly from one bare foot to the other.
    Aylaen felt the muscles in her face stiffen, her mouth dry. Down below, she could hear the men swearing and shuffling about. They were trying to lift Keeper’s body. Skylan knew the truth about Treia. That’s why he hadn’t answered her. She didn’t have much time. She held out the spiritbone to the boy.
    “You must hide this away. Put this in the same place where you hid the spiritbone for the Dragon Kahg.”
    “You mean in the—”
    “Stop!” Aylaen said harshly. “Don’t tell me. Hide it away now. Hide it quickly