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
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