Chapter 11
Rohn stopped in the dark. Rose halted at his side. “What is it?”
“We’re there.”
Rose looked up into the black sky. Several yellow squares of light shone out of the mountain’s shadow above her. Harkniss Keep. “Why are we stopping?”
“This is the moment you have to decide, Rose. You have to make up your mind if you’re going to keep our secret.”
“What will you do if I don’t? Will you kill me, or leave me to die in the forest?”
“Of course I won’t. I’ll take you back to your friends, and you’ll spend the rest of the year studying us, the way you planned. No, the only consequence will be that all trust between us and Allies will be destroyed. Our two peoples can never be on friendly terms, and in all likelihood, no one from the Allies will ever come to our planet again. We’ll spread word to the other Clans, and we’ll close ranks against the Allies. If your people ever want to come back here, they’ll have to mount a full-scale invasion with all the power of the military behind them.”
She started to say something, but he laid a finger on her lips.
“Don’t bother telling me the Allies are benign. We know you’re militaristic. You could crush us and force us to submit to you if you wanted to. I won’t deny that, but I don’t believe that’s what you want. You want friendly relations between the Allies and Kratak, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Then your only option is to keep our secret. Do it for me. Do it as a sign of gratitude to me for saving your life.”
Rose choked back a sob. She threw her arms around Rohn’s neck and kissed him. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me. Just return the favor.” He bowed his head. “Please.”
She let him go. “I will keep your secret, and not because I want Kratak to have friendly relations with the Allies and not because you saved my life. I’ll do it because I care about you. I wouldn’t want anything to come between us. If I told anyone what I saw up there, you would never have anything to do with me again. Am I right?”
“That’s right.”
She took his hand and drew him toward the Keep. “Very well. You can trust me. No one will find out, at least not from me.”
They resumed walking, hand in hand, through the dark. Rose recognized the pathway down which her team first entered the Keep. “It’s only a matter of time before one of the others finds out. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I’m sure they will.”
“How will you handle that? You won’t be able to press all of us into secrecy.”
“We can only hope for the best. If we turned down your embassy and flatly refused to accept a research team from the Allies, your authorities would have become more determined than ever to invade us.”
“You’ve got the Allies all wrong. We don’t treat people that way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. I’ve been involved in dozens of research teams to many planets. I’ve seen what happens to them.”
“What happens to them?”
“They realize the benefits of joining the Allies.”
“Has any of them refused to join?”
“A few have been more resistant than others. One or two have had internal conflicts between factions who wanted to join and others who didn’t. They worked out their problems in the end and took their place with the rest of the civilized world.”
“What would happen if a people refused to join and did not work out their problems? What if the entire population decided against joining? What would the Allies do then?”
“I’ve seen that happen a few times. The Allies sent delegates to negotiate with them and eventually convinced them to join.”
“Well, we’ll see, but you can rest assured the entire Kratak people would stand together against joining. They would not submit to any negotiation on the subject. We will never join the Allies except under the most strenuous duress. Do you understand that?”
She faced him in the dark. The first glimmer of the entrance made his eyes gleam. “Why do you have to put such a negative construction on everything? I keep telling you that would never happen.”
“I think, Rose, if you let yourself take an unvarnished look at your own history, you will discover that the Allies are not quite as benign as you claim. You say they sent delegates to these recalcitrant populations and negotiated with them. They eventually convinced them to join against their inclinations.”
“The Allies offer many advantages those people wouldn’t have had, had they remained independent. They have access to advanced medical care, they have more economic advantages and trading options, their people get higher wages for the same jobs—they gained immeasurably from joining.”
He pointed into her face. “There. Right there, Rose. You just admitted they gave up their independence when they joined the Allies.”
“That’s right. They became members in a larger, more productive economic unit.”
“Don’t you think some people would vastly prefer to keep their autonomy, no matter what benefits they had to give up? Don’t you think some people would prefer to make that decision for themselves, instead of having the Allies make it for them?”
“I don’t see why anyone would want to forego the benefits of joining, for any reason. This notion of independence, as you call it, is just another way of punishing the Allies for trying to share the good fortune we’ve all fought so hard to win.”
He turned away. “Just think about it. That’s all I ask.”
She followed him toward the door. “I don’t have to think about it. I already know.”
The light grew stronger, and they entered the passage leading down to the hall. Light surrounded them on all sides, and the heat radiating up through the floor drove Rose’s anxiety away with the chill. She relaxed into the safety of thick stone walls around her. No dragons could get to her here.
Her friends met her in the hall and mobbed around her. “Rose! Thank God you’re safe.”
“I’m okay. Just let me sit down.”
They made room for her to get to a chair before they bombarded her with questions. She told them everything—how Damen rushed in and told her Moira was hurt, how she followed him to the waterfall but didn’t find Moira, how Rohn saved her from the morlock, and how the red dragon carried her up to its nest, where she found Moira near death.
“Then the dragon came back, and I started fighting with it. Rohn...Rohn came back just in time and scared the dragon away.”
The team let out a collective sigh of relief, and talk broke out on every side of her. How had he frightened it away? He must be superhuman. Rose lapsed into silence when she noticed the Harkniss family sitting across the room. They watched their human guests with fierce eyes. They knew the truth.
Rohn observed her and listened to every word she said. He would pay close attention to everything she said from now on to see if she kept his secret. Then the truth hit her like a ton of bricks. She wasn’t safe from dragons down here in this Keep. She was surrounded by them. Every person sitting in this room, right down to beautiful Asya Assan holding hands with her son Ben, was really a dragon in the form of a person.
Her skin crawled when she watched Ben lean toward Asya and whisper in her ear. What would he say if he knew such a beautiful girl was really a dragon in disguise? What would he think when he saw her long, sinewy neck bobbing back and forth and heard her tail whistle through the air? He would find her repulsive.
The whole family gave her the creeps, now that she knew the truth. What did she ever see in Rohn? Even now, she recognized that green color pattern undulating and shifting under his skin. It was the same green of the dragon’s scales when it fought the red dragon, his brother. What did that brother look like in his human form?
The tumult died down, and the team drifted to different parts of the room to talk to the Krataks. Reyna talked to Damen, and Tanner sat down next to Fay. Were all these Krataks out to seduce the members of her team? Was that their plan to thwart the Allies in their supposed attempt to gain a foothold on the planet?
She couldn’t look at them anymore. What should she do next? Should she still try to contact Rex? Why had she conveniently left out the fact that Moira was still alive in Rahni’s nest?
If she told her friends the truth, they would probably want to mount a rescue operation to bring Moira back. That would lead to awkward questions and even more awkward answers. As far as the rest of the team was concerned, Moira was still missing.
How would they react if Rose suddenly gave up searching for Moira? They would certainly come up with some awkward questions if she suddenly lost all concern about finding her.
She had to pretend she still didn’t know where Moira was. Rose certainly didn’t become less concerned for her, out there in the care of a dangerous dragon, even though she did know where she was. For all intents and purposes, the team still had no representative. She still had to contact Rex, but what would she tell him?
A thousand doubts and possibilities whizzed through her mind, but she came to no firm conclusions. She stared straight in front of her, not seeing or hearing anything.
After almost an hour of quiet social interaction, a silence fell over the room. Rose looked up to find Reyna studying her from across the room. Damen still talked into her ear, but her eyes rested on Rose. What was she thinking? Was she seeing the dreadful secret weighing on her sister’s mind?
Reyna always possessed a sixth sense for anything out of the ordinary. Rose should have thought of that before agreeing to carry this secret into the Keep. Keeping the secret from Reyna would be hardest of all, not only because Reyna could sniff out a secret with unerring accuracy, but because Rose cared so much for her sister. She respected no one in the world more than Reyna. Reyna shared all her secrets from the time they were little girls. Rose sought out Reyna whenever she had a problem she couldn’t solve.
Rose looked away, and her eye fell on Rohn. He looked back and forth between the sisters. He saw the exchange between them, and he saw Rose lose her nerve under Reyna’s steady gaze. Did he have any clue what he asked when he pressed this secret on her?
Rose excused herself and hurried away to her room. She threw herself on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. If only she could stay in her room for the rest of the year, she would never have to face any of them, ever again.