Azarwrath hadn’t confessed to the mind manipulation. He hadn’t needed to.
“You can go in, sir,” one of these guards said, no doubt wondering why Trip had been standing in front of the double granite doors leading into the king’s solarium for a minute without knocking or saying anything. “Most of the others are already inside.”
Yes, his senses told him that King Angulus, Sardelle, Zirkander, Blazer, Duck, and Kaika, along with a dozen people Trip didn’t know, waited within. Finding them all in there added to his nerves—was he considered late?—but maybe he would be able to slink into a back corner, unnoticed.
As he lifted his hand toward the handle, a faint clacking noise sounded from around the corner of the wide corridor leading back to the castle’s main entrance. He didn’t have to reach out with his power to sense a dragon in that direction—Shulina Arya—though the noise was somewhat perplexing. She had shape-shifted and had a significantly diminished aura. Otherwise, he would have been aware of her approach much earlier. Was she in human form? Interesting. So far, he’d only seen her as herself or as a golden ferret.
Ah, he sensed Rysha walking behind her. He smiled and stood tall, feeling much better about heading in to see the king with her at his side. From what he had observed before, she wasn’t intimidated by Angulus at all. Probably because she was noble-born and her family rubbed elbows with other noble people, kings included.
“What is that?” one of the guards asked, picking up the rifle that had been at his side, its butt against the floor by his boots.
“Wheeee!” came a young woman’s voice from around the corner.
“You can’t do that in here!” someone shouted.
As Trip was trying to sense exactly what the shape-shifted dragon was doing, she came around the corner, and he got his first view.
Shulina Arya, in human form, rode some kind of wheeled board with a crate attached to the front half of it. Handlebars stuck out of the top of the crate, and she bent low, grinning as she gripped them and steered around the corner.
A golden blonde ponytail set high atop her head flowed behind her, and her violet eyes gleamed with pleasure. Freckles splashed her cheeks and nose, and if Trip had to guess her age—her human age—he would have estimated sixteen or seventeen. She’d told them she was a few hundred years old, but that was young from the dragon perspective.
“Stop,” one of the door guards cried, striding forward and lifting his rifle, as if someone on a crate scooter in the castle represented a great threat to king and country.
The other one also sprang forward with his rifle.
Trip, fearing for their safety if they tried to shoot a dragon, reacted on instinct. He used his mental power to jerk the weapons out of their hands. They flew back and landed in his grip before he could consider if he’d made a mistake—was there a rule against magically confiscating the rifles of castle guards?
Shulina Arya barely seemed to notice the exchange. Still grinning, she waved and rolled past the double doors at top speed, continuing past the solarium and toward the courtyard garden, her wheels hitting the cracks between the floor tiles and sounding like trains riding the rails.
One guard sprinted after her, his hand dropping toward a truncheon at his belt. The other whirled on Trip, eyes bulging as he spotted his rifle in Trip’s hand.
“That’s a dragon,” Trip said, hoping that would explain everything.
“You took my rifle, you witch.” The guard snarled and leaped for him.
Azarwrath reacted before Trip did, raising an invisible barrier. The guard struck it chest-first and stumbled backward.
“I’m just protecting you,” Trip rushed to say.
Another “Wheee!” sounded farther down the corridor. Shulina Arya had found another corner to go around. The guard, boots pounding the marble tiles, could be heard running after her and ordering her to “cease and desist, right this instant.”
“If you were to shoot a dragon,” Trip added to the glowering guard still in front of him, who had also pulled a truncheon from his belt, “the bullet would ricochet off its—her—defenses, and might come back to hit you. Or one of the priceless vases on those stands all along the hall. I’m trying to help you.”
“Trip,” Rysha blurted, running into view. When she wore her uniform, as she did today, she usually looked professional and dignified, but right now, a frazzled expression stamped her face as she ran toward him. “She got away. Did you see—”
“Stop!” the distant guard yelled as Shulina Arya came back into sight, her scooter somehow zipping along at top speed even though she wasn’t using her foot to push off the floor.
She rounded the corner too quickly and brushed one of the stands holding one of the priceless vases Trip had referenced. It wobbled alarmingly before settling back to a stop.
Rysha reached Trip’s side, and Azarwrath lowered the barrier so she could step close and grip Trip’s arm. He wasn’t sure if it was to push him to safety or because she needed emotional support.
Shulina Arya rolled past them, looking like she was having far too much fun to stop caroming around the castle for a meeting.
The double doors opened silently behind Trip. He might not have noticed except he sensed a familiar presence.
Sardelle leaned her head into the hallway. “Is there a problem out here?”
The guard that had been chasing Shulina Arya since the beginning raced past, his face red, his arms pumping and his truncheon clenched in his white-knuckled fist.
“Uhm.” Trip groped for something more articulate to say, but he hadn’t started reading Duck’s vocabulary-laden classics yet, so fancy words eluded him.
Sardelle watched, her face impressively serene. Or maybe she was just good at masking her thoughts.
“Ma’am.” Rysha turned hopefully toward Sardelle. “Are Shulina Arya’s parents in there?”
Sardelle’s serene expression shifted into one bordering on bemusement. “They are.”
“Maybe they could convince her to—”
Shulina Arya rolled back into view again, this time returning from the king’s vast audience chamber. “Coming through, human friends!” she called.
Trip tugged Rysha out of the way as Sardelle pressed her back to one of the open doors to make way. The guard looked like he wanted to lunge forward and tackle Shulina Arya as she approached, but she wrinkled her nose, and he froze in tableau.
She zipped past Trip, the breeze ruffling his hair, then weaved around some large potted plants as she disappeared into the solarium.
Trip didn’t stretch his senses out toward the people inside—he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they thought of the intruder, nor did he want to witness it if a legion of the king’s bodyguards tried to tackle her—but he still felt the ripples of alarm and surprise.