Fran

watched it shatter against the stone floor. The

mong the commoners like one of them. The thought should have fi

he noble Blanca, take my place in the capital, and Seraphina would accept it all,

to demand a dissol

. My Dragon Soul snarled somewhere deep inside m

nd level, empty of every feeling, as if she were looking at a stra

had always loved me. This was only he

eld some lever over me. I nearly laughed. What a naive merchant's dau

e that opened doors in the capital. The nobles would court me. They

knight taking his place in Dragon's Rest needed a house, and servants, and gifts slipped into the right hands, and a tabl

her. That her dowry might already be gone-that I could not simply reach fo

ying a glass of Dragonflame-warmed wine,

ing the glass before me. "It was my fau

one swallow. The spice burned my t

I said. "To

before she covered it with a worried frown. "O

ck soon enough. Once her money runs out and she's had

"But the dissolution... what if she truly

she remains Lady Franks. And the king himself granted me leave to mar

t my chest and began to talk about our life in the capita

d, and the words she had left me with-"Do you truly believe

d from a ruined guild? That spineless stepfa

had nothing. S

t the unease coiled ti

ough the door, and the look on her

It's a d

"Mother,

and I went over the ledgers... th

? Seraphina's dowry was

expense was the five hundred gold pieces you used to buy your way through the knighthood

d went

? Seraphina had n

so capable. I had simply assumed the money was

he food at our table had grown simpler these past months

me. She truly had nothing left

money, my new title meant nothing in Dragon's Rest. It