"So you've struck a deal. You'll help the Benevians and in return... she will protect me."
Tish stood very rigidly beside Rudra, who trembled ever so slightly. She wasn't sure whether it was from nervousness or pure rage.
Nayan Dev stood in front of them, arms crossed. "So that is the... mutual agreement you've struck with each other," she said, looking at Tish, impressed. "How did you manage to make him agree?"
Tish tried to give her most casual shrug. "I am a very good negotiator."
Rudra's shoulders jumped, and he made a tight fist.
"Bullshit," Nayan said flatly.
Tish was partly scared, partly expecting Rudra to grab her by the throat and hurl her at the sky like a cannonball. But surprisingly, the Dragon Prince was keeping his temper in check quite well.
So it was really true. The Parthan dragon, the unruly beast who had terrorised Benevia and haunted Tish's nightmares for a year, was really afraid of spoons. Of all things... spoons.
Tish's eyes flickered to Rudra's face for a few seconds. His facade was calm, broken only by his clenched jaw and one stubborn vein popping on his forehead.
She almost felt bad. Almost.
From what she had understood of Saroth, that man was devoid of sympathy. The so-called "healer" who had forced Rudra's first transformation had left bloody evidence of it behind: a coat, now hanging in Tish's wardrobe back in her room at Rāva's temple. Saroth had gifted it to her like a ceremony, as if Rudra's pain were an important lesson a veteran healer ought to pass on to a novice. When he saw how uncomfortable she was, he had asked for it back. Tish had refused. She couldn't stand the thought of Rudra's tormentor holding it, so she took it with her.
But nobody's pain could be a lesson. Especially not when it was that of a six-year-old child.
And now Tish was fairly certain that this same healer was the source of Rudra's trauma about spoons. Why, she didn't know.
Briefly, she recalled the day she had spoken with Saroth in the unfamiliar cave deep in the Perma Forest, right before he had "treated" Rudra to help him transform back from his dragon form to his human form.
She remembered asking him how he treated Rudra's issue with transformation. The man had opened his mouth wide, showing his yellow teeth and pale tongue, and pointed inside the cavity. "Well, you see the soft palate here..."
It couldn't be...
Tish tried to focus on the matter at hand. She didn't have time to spiral about Rudra's childhood trauma. She didn't want to.
Because if she did... she would, like Nayan, start seeing the Dragon Prince as a human being instead of a beast. And if that happened, she wouldn't know what to do with her hatred. What to do with her rage. What to do with her grief over losing Saya.
"Now, about Yakov," Tish started. "Did His Highness Prince Mamon find him?"
"He remains missing," Nayan said uncomfortably. "He asked the villagers, but they pretended to be ignorant."
Pretended. An interesting choice of word. But in this situation, Tish couldn't help but agree.
"Your soldiers are searching for him, of course. Leonhart has led one group to search the woods around the wall, and another group, led by Prince Mamon, is searching every place inside it. As for me, I came back from the kitchen. There is nothing suspicious there." Nayan nodded at Tish. "I have been told to check the women's quarters and the spaces where men can't enter. The women here will trust a Saintess more than a soldier, and we are the only two women in the group, so we search together. You're coming with me."
Fair enough. Men couldn't, shouldn't, enter women's private places. "Let us go, then," Tish said. "We should find Yakov before the day ends. Night will only make things harder."
As Tish followed Nayan, Rudra followed them.
"Didn't you hear what she said?" Tish hissed. "It's a woman's space!"
"I don't give a fuck," Rudra said shamelessly.
Of course he didn't.
Tish turned to Nayan for help. "Say something!"
Nayan just walked faster.
"Don't look at her." Rudra grabbed Tish's elbow abruptly, with his usual lack of respect for personal space, which was so annoying. "Look at me!"
"Let. Go!"
Rudra just pulled her closer. "You think you are oh so smart, using my weakness against me to make me save your people?" He leaned in so close that Tish had the urge to slap his forehead to make him step back. "You are just making me more certain I should have burned down Benevia and dragged you back to Partha that day!"
His eyes were glowing with the rage and hatred Tish had become so familiar with... so familiar that she could finally see past them. She could see the desperation.
"Then do it," she said, tilting her head up to hold eye contact. Their noses were almost touching, but Tish didn't back down. "Do it here. Drag me out of the town. Fly away." She pressed further. "But I'll scream every second of it that the Dragon Prince fears no beast, not his father, not even the Sword of Mamon, but spoons." She beamed. "But. Of. Spoons. The townsfolk will hear. Our soldiers will hear. Hell, the shapeshifters will hear." Her eyes flickered to Nayan's back. The General had walked off a good distance while they continued arguing. "She will hear."
Tish bluffed, mostly, because she had to.
Rudra's eyebrows twitched. "You vile little snake!"
"Scared? Little prince?"
For a second, Rudra's face turned red with rage. Tish was afraid she had pushed him too far and that he would now follow his "fuck it, I'll burn everything" policy.
But then Nayan called out, "Quit it, you two! I have babysat a spoilt lizard all my life. I'm not babysitting a glowing candle as well! People are dying here!" She sounded tired. "Grow up, you two!"
Did she just call Tish a glowing candle?
Nayan's scolding landed exactly as she had hoped. Rudra's expression went blank. Tish walked faster to catch up with the Parthan General. "But still," she said, more softly now, "he cannot enter."
"He'll wait outside," Nayan grumbled.
Rudra didn't protest.
Tish turned around to find Rudra pointedly looking away from them. It was such petty, childish behaviour from someone who cut down necks in the blink of an eye that it made Tish feel... things she didn't want to feel.
They walked quietly for several minutes until Nayan led her to a series of small cottages by the wall. Houses of Kroskoslav peasants. Houses a lot like the ones where Tish had lived with her parents before they gave her away to the Temple. It made her heart squeeze painfully.
"I'll go inside first," said Nayan, and she entered without looking back.
Tish waited a moment to catch a fleeting glance at Rudra.
He was still doing it. Looking away at the sky with a stubborn chin and flat eyes.
"Look," Tish started, "I don't mean to use something like... like that to gain the upper hand over you—"
"Just go inside."
Tish didn't press further. She left Rudra there and entered through the wooden door to catch up with Nayan.
The Parthan Prince wasn't happy. But it still made her feel more confident to have a damn dragon on her team than none at all, no matter how grumpy.