“Why would he kill me for telling him about a vision?!” Kaden was completely baffled.

Cronley let out a deep sigh. “There are four lords in this country that control the different districts. You have met three of them. I control the lands here in the north. Lord Enderton, your lord, he controls the south. Loratyk is in the East. The one you haven’t met yet is Lord Mordon. He controls the West. You might meet him on your pilgrimage, but he keeps to himself for the most part so it might be a long time before you personally come across him.”

“Okay…” Kaden was confused where he was going with this.

“The four of us essentially rule the country while King Rondyne relaxes in a land of luxury. He doesn’t like this to be disrupted. You bringing him information that his ambassador, who is supposed to handle everything for him with the other nations, was actually betraying him and everyone else, is going to anger him greatly.”

“So he’ll be even more mad about the visions?”

“Exactly.” He rolled his shoulders back in a stretch. “If you bring him words that there’s an impending war involving all of us, his lords and the matriarchs, it means he personally has to be more involved.”

“You think he will kill me because he’s lazy and doesn’t want to do his job?”

Cronley swallowed hard and said, “we did not have this conversation in this matter. You did not hear any of this from me.”

All Kaden could do was scoff.

“If you tell him that we are going to war, that the dragons themselves are worried about it, he will try to hide and avoid it the best he can. He will not put more effort into avoiding it. That would require him to personally have to step in and govern the nation. It would also be admitting that he hadn’t been before then. While we do his job for him, we are not allowed to say we do his job for him.”

“How does this man have any power if you four do everything?”

Cronley pursed his lips. “I ask myself this often.”

All he had ever heard about the king was that he was a nice man who brought prosperity to their nation. To learn that he really didn’t do a thing but sit on the top of a pile of gold, it was a blow. He didn’t think he could be any more shocked than he was, but here he was, mouth agape at the way his land functioned.

“We will tell him about the visions later. Not right after the news of the ambassador. I’ve already spoken with the grandmaster here. We will not be letting this information of visions go any further than us. You are welcome to discuss it with your trusted individuals, but I highly recommend you be careful about who you share that information with.”

It wasn’t a threat, but a warning. If the king was so willing to hide the truth, and he had so much control while doing nothing, then it would be wise to heed that advice. The dragons at the citadel had told him the water was tainted. Did this mean that there were more people in charge that were serpents, or did it mean that the king was just as much of a problem?

Kaden leaned back on the bed, his arms propping him up. He let his head fall back as he took a deep breath and held it. Pushing it out with a loud huff, he said, “So when we arrive there with words of deceit, how do I keep my head?”

“You tell him what you told me, but in greater detail. You need to speak with your companions about the night’s events on how to get your story straight. When you tell your tale of saving dragons, the four of you need to speak more highly of your own actions. Make him think that the rest of the nations are praising you, a water nation rider, over the others. He is all about appearances, so make him think you made him look the best.”

“You want me to lie? To get them to lie?”

He waved his hands up and down as if he was holding weights in his palms. “Not lie, exactly. Just embellish the truth some.”

Kaden didn’t know how the rest of them would feel about that. There was only so much they would go along with. How was he going to explain that they needed to talk him up to his king so they could keep their heads? Would they even believe him? They were already so far into the minute politics of the lands that he knew they would reluctantly accept it, but he didn’t like that he had to even ask.

Pushing the chair back, the Lord stood and brushed his pants back down. “I trust you will keep you silence about how I spoke of my king. It would do us both harm for anyone to know how candid I spoke.”

Kaden nodded.

“No, seriously, it would be considered treason and we’d lose our heads.”

Kaden couldn’t help it. The laugh erupted from him.

Lord Cronley cracked a smile and winked before opening the door. “We will fly out within the hour or so. You best be getting fed and packed. It’s going to be a strange day.”

Kaden nodded and the man was gone. He didn’t expect the king would be happy with the news they were bringing, but he also didn’t think he would possibly murder him. So far, the people of authority he had met had at least respected him and eventually listened to what he had to say. The prospect of someone just outright ignoring and punishing him for the truth was such a strange concept.

He had met the other riders not too long later. He had caught them in the hall as they were about to descend to the main hall for breakfast. Pulling them into an empty room, he gave them a short version of what he had been told.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“We have to lie?” Asked Reese as he crossed his arms in irritation.

“Well, no. Yes? Kinda.”

Evonne nudged Reese. “Don’t you lie to your dad about how things go?”

“And get whipped for it? Absolutely not. You cannot keep secrets from that man.”

“Because he has some vast spy network or something,” laughed Sayori.

He raised his eyebrow. “No, because he can literally sense when you’re lying. It’s part of his specialized skills.”

They all gave surprised “Oh.”

Their silence hung in the air. Rolling his eyes, Reese said, “Anyway, so we need to act like you alone were the savior of the night and that you alone caught the ambassador.”

Evonne tilted her head. “Well, he was the reason we caught the ambassador.”

Sayori waved her hands out. “How are we supposed to tell him that we caught the ambassador if we can’t tell him about your visions?”

Kaden hadn’t even thought about that. How were they supposed to explain his involvement if they couldn’t explain how they caught him?

Reese clapped. “Blood magic. Go with that angle. It’s forbidden, right? Say we were looking for the Lord Commander and you used your super water magic senses and could tell someone was using blood magic or something. Make something up about it. Say it is something the wild matriarch gave you that you can tell. Literally no one can fact check you on that.”

Sayori started snickering. “He’s not wrong. Let’s go with that. We were looking for the Lord Commander to see how the interrogation was going, or some nonsense since you two are besties now because you’re the best water rider ever, and you felt the blood magic usage. You then caught and defeated him just as the Lord Commander joined you. There. That’s the story.”

They all laughed at it while shaking their heads. Kaden swallowed the snickering down, taking a deep breath before saying, “Are we really going to lie to the king like this?”

“Yes,” Reese said as he patted Kaden’s shoulder. “We absolutely are. And we will never speak a word of it to my father, so we can keep that lie going.”

They spoke more about how to present it, but mostly agreed to avoid it unless asked directly. Eating in the great hall was a bad idea. All the water mages there were staring at them and speaking in hushed tones. They quickly stuffed their faces and climbed back to the roof to find their dragons.

Zuma was splashing in the pool, again. He didn’t realize how much the dragon missed water until there was a pool to splash in. It seemed several mages had been working through the night as the roof of the temple seemed to be mostly intact again. A thunder of clanking echoed across the water, causing them all to turn. Several mages were throwing dragon armor into a pile.

“Is that for us?” asked Evonne.

Behind them, Lord Cronley’s voice boomed, causing them to jump. “We won’t let another one of you be shot down from the skies. They may not fit all of your dragons perfectly, as they are for blue dragons, but they’ll be better than nothing at all.”

Sayori swallowed hard. “Do you anticipate us running into another group of ballistas?”

“No,” he said with a firm tone. “You never can be sure with the serpents. Their name is well earned for how quick they move. We never see them coming before we’re already on top of them.”

It took a bit of coaxing, but Kaden eventually got Zuma out of the water. The other three dragons, including a freshly healed Taldor, were getting strapped into their armor with the assistance of several mages. Zuma kept huffing and puffing at them as they pinched and prodded them with straps and plating.

It didn’t take long before all of them were ready to go. He looked around for the Lord, but he had lost him while they were getting ready. He looked at Beelin and laughed at how they had to manipulate the armor around the lankier body of a wind dragon. They were sometimes referred to as wind snakes, but he imagined that was going out of fashion as the house of the serpents was gaining notoriety.

A loud roar pulled their attention to the sky when an extremely large dark blue dragon came barreling down toward them. It landed with a thud and he felt the tower shake. The dragon wasn’t as big as the matriarch, but it was still extremely ferocious in size. Zuma looked extremely small next to it. It reminded him of how large the Lord Commander’s dragon had been.

Lord Cronley was tightening his own armor as he walked up to them. “This is Xada. I will be riding them today, escorting you all to the capital keep. They don’t care much for other dragon breeds, so I advise you to keep your dragons a respectable distance away. They shouldn’t do anything, as they know better, but I wouldn’t put it past them to make a threatening snap here or there. It’d be best if you three just made sure to keep your dragons safe.”

They shared concerned looks with one another, but gave him a reluctant nod.

Reese said, “do I need to be using Beelin to make another funnel so we get there quickly?”

He shook his head. “No need. With Xada’s size, it should produce the same effect for your dragons when it comes to speed. Their wings beat through the air with much more force. They have been known to lead dragon teams in battle.”

“In battle,” gasped Evonne. “How… how old is Xada?”

He squinted in thought. “I am not Xada’s first rider, nor it’s second. Let me think.”

Turning back toward the massive, dark dragon, he was counting on his fingers. Kaden hadn’t realized that the dragons could live that long. He had assumed the matriarchs had long ages, but he had no idea how long a full grown dragon would live. How did they even get as big as they were? He hadn’t seen a single dragon eat a thing. At least nothing outside of the glowstone Zuma chomped down on.

“I want to say 350ish years?”

Kaden felt like his eyes would fall out of his head. “Three hundred and fifty years old?”

“Yeah! They like having a connection with humans, so they tend to pop in and out of the nests from time to time. I was fortunate to be meeting the matriarch to see if I could bind with a dragon when they were visiting. We hit it off and have been partners ever since.”

“Did you name them Xada then, or had someone before done so?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure how your own realms keep track of your dragons, but yes, we have extensive lists and tracking of all the dragons we know about here. Xada has been Xada for as long as we’ve known about them.”

That they knew about. He had cut his eyes to Kaden when he said that. No wonder the fact that he had been blessed by a matriarch was such a surprise. If they were tracking all the dragons over time, having a whole matriarch out there hiding from them must have been a shock. Did dragons like Xada know of these other matriarchs?

“Where did Xada go when they weren’t at one of the temple nests?”

He shrugged and said, “apparently to wild nests like where you matriarch is hiding out. We really had no idea. There are several older dragons we simply lose track of from time to time. We assumed they were just traveling around, enjoying life. Who are we to question what a dragon does?”

Xada gave a huff of steam at that comment. It was as if they were agreeing to the statement. Lord Cronley laughed.

“They have opinions.”

Kaden joined him in laughing as he looked to Zuma. He knew that behavior all too well.

“Xada had participated in the last few large skirmishes between the nations. That’s why they’re not the most keen on the other breeds. They have their secrets. Sadly, the dragons don’t really tell us exactly what they think. They can’t speak.”

Kaden had to avert his gaze. He had heard them speak several times now. The dragons had their secrets. It was true.

But he was their secret keeper.