CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 32

This wasn't quite all of Draxxon either. His protruding body would have taken up all the space in the Great Hall. No, this was an artist's rendition of what he would have looked like as a relief sculpture of sorts. I craned my neck back to gaze up at his massive head twisting outward from the stone wall, with the antelope horns sweeping back from his forehead and his maw gaping wide to bare his teeth. I blinked at the length and width of each tooth. It was a mouthful of fangs, rows and rows of them. Enormous.

"Are his bones beneath the body?" As soon as I asked I felt stupid because, no, they wouldn't be.

Graysen crossed his arms over his chest, Draxxon capturing his attention once more. "They're in our treasure trove. Most of them anyway."

"Most?"

He brought his gaze to mine and a cold feeling coiled within my stomach to see cunning lurk in his dark eyes. "Later...when we play our game of trading answer for an answer. You can ask that one then."

Ah, he'll make a game of it later. Of course.

I swiveled my body to face him fully, a hand on my hip. "And your sword was forged from Draxxon's bones," I stated, rather than questioned because I knew that.

"Besides the sword, there are other weapons that were forged by the Blacksmith and handed from Wyrm Tamer to Wyrm Tamer. Those ancestors in between can use them as my father did, but he couldn't touch the cursed sword. It can only be wielded by those of us who have the wyrm tamer genes."

Wyrm tamer genes.

"How do you know you have the mysterious wyrm tamer traits?" I asked, curious to know. What made it obvious that he was a tamer?

He uncrossed an arm to point to his eyes.

I raised my eyebrows. Seriously?

I waved my hands about, palm outward, mocking him. "Oooo... You have black eyes."

His jaw ticked and his gaze was still level with mine, but there wasn't a shred of hardness in them. Amusement shone bright and true. He liked my bite. He always had.

I snorted, then jabbed a finger toward his face. "That's your only clue? Black eyes?"

He shifted his weight, his sparkly boots scraping against the stone. He angled his head and tried to tame the grin that teased his mouth. "Every so often the black show up amongst the violet that's prevalent within my family line. And there hasn't been any for over 500 years."

My jaw slackened and my limbs grew lax. "You're the first tamer in 500 years?" I breathed.

"Yep," he said, rocking back on his heels.

Interesting.

And I was born after him.

I didn't know if there was a connection or not. So I stored that snippet away in my box of puzzle pieces that were Graysen and the Crowthers. "And you know nothing about wyrm taming," I scoffed, shaking my head at him as I took a couple of steps closer to the long table where Sage had padded off to investigate for dropped scraps of food.