Queen of Dragons

CHAPTER TWELVE

Birds were singing. She listened to them with something like wonderment; beyond the rare eagle or falcon that careened around the mountain peaks, Mari didn't know very much of birds. She'd hardly heard any songbirds over the course of her life. But there were two of them at least, their voices lifting and warbling, a question and an answer, intense, layered harmonies that tangled into beauty. It was a different sort of music from that of stones, she mused. More vibrant. More alive. They were notes that ached in her chest, they came so sweet.

But wait.. .she did know something about birds. She'd heard another one recently.. .what was it? A rush? A thrush.

Yes. A thrush.

And that was when Maricara realized that even though the world was still dark, she was awake. On the ground. Enfolded in a man's arms. Everything smelled of rainwater and drenched moss—

—and him.

She sat up quickly, her hands rising to her face. She tore off the blindfold and blinked down at him, their hips and thighs still pressed warm together. Kimber gazed back at her with a look of calm green, folding his arms behind his head.

"Good morning," he said.

She couldn't speak. She stared from him to the blindfold in her hands, unable to make any sort of connection between the two—and those birds, still singing—

"I'd ask how you slept," he said, "but I already know."

She'd left him at the hotel. Hadn't she? She remembered it. She'd left, and he'd followed, but she'd eluded him, made it all this way—and then—

"My gracious," drawled the earl. "I never thought to see a woman look quite so appalled to discover me in her bed." He raised a knee to regard the brown woolen blanket that covered them both. "So to speak."

Her voice came on a squeak. "What are you doing here?"

"Regretting very much the lack of a mattress, thank you. Pity you couldn't manage to pilfer one along with the pillow. This floor is astoundingly hard."

She realized the blanket had dropped to her waist and snatched it up again, then leapt to her feet.

That, unfortunately, left him uncovered. He didn't seem to mind. She glanced around and discovered the other blanket behind her, kicked it to him. The earl caught it in one hand and drew it over his chest, not quite smiling, while the heat climbed up her neck and into her cheeks.

"No," he said suddenly, as she took a final breath. He sobered. "Don't Turn, Maricara. Please."

And there was something in his voice, a note so close to the sweetness of the birds.it caught her short. She wavered, staring down at him.

The day had risen clear and the monk's cell was suffused with light. Two glass lozenges from the elaborate clover-shaped window were missing but the rest flared crimson and gold, opulent colors lacquered bright across the limestone. A deep red edge fell in a line across his legs, switched to yellow over her feet. He sat up slowly and was caught in its bicolored brilliance; unclad, attentive, as if she might indeed lift to her toes and vanish should he make an untoward move.

She yet might.

"Do you remember anything of last night?" Kimber asked.

Mari didn't answer. Leaves from a sycamore outside the window made a gentle rustling; slender branches swayed between a broken lozenge and a whole one, emerald and sun in the corner of her vision.

She felt flushed and cold together, the scratchy blanket an exquisite torment against her own bare skin.

"Maricara," he prompted. "Anything at all?"

This time she managed to control her voice. "Did we have intercourse?"

His lashes lowered; the almost-smile returned. " That I hope you would remember." He lifted a conciliatory hand. "Relax. You seemed all in, actually. And it happened that I was somewhat tired myself. But if you're feeling rested—no, I'm not serious. Please, just...don't run." Kimber sighed. "I'm sorry. You can stand all the way over there, if you like. You can go stand in the walkway. But we need to talk. I promise not to ravish you. I believe I can manage to control myself that far."

So she took a step back, just one, and he gave a slight nod.

"How long have you been Turning in your sleep?"

She felt the blood rising again in her cheeks. The light from the window began to seem rather painfully bright. "Is that what happened? You found me—when I was in flight?"

"Eventually." He crossed his legs beneath the blanket. "You led me on a merry chase first, though, I can tell you that. There were a few somewhat.. .unsettling moments. I will admit I've developed a newfound interest in cowering indoors, possibly under furniture, during future thunderstorms."

She looked down at her feet. At her own rumpled blanket, her naked toes. A puddle of water shimmered flat on the floor not three paces away, pooled in the pitted stones beneath the window.

The earl spoke more quietly. "You're amazing. Do you realize that? I've flown since I was a boy, I've flown with the best of our tribe but you—frankly, I don't know anyone with skills to match yours. You've mastered moves I didn't even realize were possible."

Her eyes flashed to his. He wasn't smiling. His tone wasn't teasing, or ironic. His expression remained calm and courteous, as if he'd just complimented her on her coiffure, or her arrangement of flowers in a vase. The line of red light rippled down the muscles of his arm, melted into shadow against his flat stomach; the yellow caught the mussed fall of his hair.

"Well," she said, and nothing more.

"Perhaps, someday, you might want to share a few of your secrets with me. Just a few." "I don't know any secrets."

"Oh," he said, "then perhaps you'd care to hear some of mine."

Mari chewed at her lower lip. Kimber leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees.

"I'm afraid of losing, Princess. I don't like to lose. I never have. I've been the best at nearly everything my entire life, and it's...exhausting. I think maybe you understand what I mean by that. Every man agonizes over failure, I suppose. We don't like to disappoint those who depend upon us, our wives, or our parents or children. But a king must trouble himself with much more than that. By his birth and his nature he is more than his family. He is his nation, and that's what we are, Maricara, both of us. We're kings, and so we are nations. When I fail as a king, when I lose, it's not merely I who suffers. It's my tribe. Those weaker than I, and less able. Every single one of them is dear to me, locked tight in my heart. They look to me for courage and guidance, and God knows I do my damnedest for them, but." His voice trailed off; he shook his head, his mouth tightening.

"It's hard," she said.

"Yes."

Her fingers plucked at the nap of the wool against her thigh. "They can't do what you do. They don't have to, so they don't comprehend. Possibly.. .they even fear you a little."

"Possibly they do."

"But still you defend them. You worry."

"Exactly."

She hesitated, then dropped down in place, tucking the blanket beneath her knees. "So you're afraid of the sanf."

"All evidence suggests I'd be an idiot to underestimate them." "They're only Others. They haven't managed to eliminate us yet."

"Maricara," he said evenly, "should these particular Others come to Darkfrith, should they violate my land, harm a single innocent of my tribe..."

She waited, watching him search for the words, the fine curves and planes of his body shaped in red and gold.

"I'm not afraid of these hunters. I'm afraid for mankind. For what will happen to them. If the sanf declare war.. .I'm not going to lose."

"Yes," she said, and nodded. "I do understand."

"I know." He reached for her hand without hurry, giving her plenty of time to pull away. But she didn't. She let his fingers slip over hers, a light caress, gentle as the summer breeze that roused the sycamore leaves. Her hand was lifted; their fingers intertwined.

"What would you do?" he asked. "In my position?"

She thought of what she had done: warn her brother, flee the castle. At the time she'd believed it the best she could offer any of them. Despite her efforts, her people truly didn't want her among them. They hadn't for years. She'd tried leading them and protecting them, had tried carrying on the way the princes of Zaharen Yce always had, because that's what the Zaharen demanded, justice and power and wealth, the ingrained surety that they were better than all the fragile creatures crawling the earth. They were drakon, and so were better. And in return, the dragons of the mountains had gotten...a girl-child. A peasant who wore rubies and imported French fashions, who flew through nightmares every night and held on to her position by the skin of her teeth.

It had been easy to leave. If she had been a real princess, a true leader, she would have stayed even though they hadn't wanted her to.

Maricara spoke to their clasped hands. "Anything," she said at last. "I would do any terrible thing to save my people, no matter what came." She glanced up at him through her lashes. "In your position."

He regarded her gravely. Over the course of their talk he'd shifted more into the yellow-thrown light; his eyes held a strange, clear glow she didn't think she'd ever seen before. It might have been concentration, or relief, or anticipation. It might have been nothing more than the effect of the clover-leaf window, turning the pale green to greenish gold.

He was going to kiss her. She realized it; she held frozen for it; she could not move. She could not even try.

Kimber tilted toward her. His fingers curled over hers.

"You promised," she whispered, but she didn't really mean it. She didn't really want him to stop.

He came so close his face blurred, and then even closer. He traced words against her cheek, warm, almost inaudible. "This isn't ravishing." Slowly his lips moved to hers, touching, gliding: a languorous, sleek sensation. "This is merely seducing."

Mari found that she was holding her breath. "I don't..." He turned his lips back to her cheek, stroked the tips of his fingers in a line along her shoulder, up to her neck. She felt her eyes close and her head tip back in unexpected pleasure. "I don't perceive the difference."

"Ah." His other palm slid up to cup the back of her head. His legs eased around her hips. His lips brushed to her ear, the rough skin of his chin a surprising scrape against her throat. "For one thing"—his voice lowered to the barest, broken murmur—"with ravishment.. .there's less conversation."

And he bit her earlobe. Not hard, nothing painful, but it sent goose bumps along her arms and somehow tipped her head even more. With both hands in her hair he brought her mouth to his, this time without languor but with fire. With heat and intent, his body ardent, only blankets between them. He held her face between his palms and drew his lips back and forth over hers until she could not breathe.

She'd never known such a thing. She'd never been kissed in such a way. She'd had no idea that kiss meant this whispery, butterfly nervousness in her veins. The scent of him wrapping around her, filling her pores. Kimber's hand slipping under her hair, down her back, his fingers spread, urging her nearer. Her heart leaping in her chest. Her fingers against his arms, feeling the smooth flex of muscle and tendon, strength that pulled her nearer still, until their bodies grazed, because the blankets had somehow fallen aside.

His tongue brushed hers; he tasted of man and smoke. Their lips parted, clung, returned to delicious friction. The dragon in her woke to barbarous joy, lifting her blood into light, into fire—everywhere his skin met hers, every flushed, sensitive place. He made a sound in his throat and closed his arms hard around her and—

Maricara Turned to smoke.

She didn't mean to. It happened without her volition; one instant she was there with him, feeling her heart throb, feeling the butterflies rifle through her veins—and the next she was near the ceiling, no heart, no panic. Just vapor, diaphanous against the stone.

Kimber remained motionless below her, still seated on the floor with his legs apart, a very obvious empty space where she used to be. After a long moment he glanced up at where she lingered, then climbed to his feet.

"Come back," he said. No anger. No accusation. His voice carried a shadow of tension, but the chiseled contours of his face revealed only that same polite patience he'd displayed before their lips first met.

It was enough to give her weight, to let her trickle down to earth and pour into the shape of a woman.

She knelt and scooped up the blanket, wrapping it tight around her, her hair tugged in its folds. Kimber remained where he was, out of the light with his hands by his sides, looking at her askance.

"I'm sorry," she blurted.

"No, I'm fairly certain that's what I'm supposed to say. Poor princess, we keep going about this backward. First we kiss, then we sleep together." He ran a hand through his long hair, pushing it from his cheekbones with a little more force than necessary. "It seems we were teetering at the edge of ravishment, after all. So. My humble apologies, Your Royal Grace." And he dropped his hand to execute a flawless bow, made only slightly unreal by the fact that he wore no clothing, not even the blanket any longer. And that he was still fully aroused.

Mari tore her eyes away. "I do not—" she began, and gave up, and started over. Damn it all, she was blushing again. "I didn't plan that. I meant no insult."

"Well, that's a relief. Never fear, I'm a thick-skinned sort of fellow. I've had far worse responses from the ladies fair."

She didn't want to delve into that, to wonder what worse might be, and what ladies he meant. She didn't want to think of him like that, or like this: charming and nude and impersonal, as comfortable in his own skin in this bare colored chamber as he was an earl in powder and velvet and pearls. She didn't want to feel that she had to explain herself, to speak of the butterflies.

But she was speaking anyway. She was wringing her hands. "You see, once I—"

"Please." Kimber shook his head, his tone now peaceful. "Lovely black dragon. It's forgotten. Look there, have you noticed the angle of the light? It's close to noon at least. If we don't get back soon, Audrey's going to accost every unfortunate pig farmer in the region, searching for us."

"Yes. All right."

But he didn't move, and she didn't. They only gazed at each other.

Mari broke it off first. She bent down, retrieved the other blanket, grabbed the pillow by a corner of its cover and placed them both by the lantern against the wall, out of easy sight. She found the blindfold she'd tried wearing for the first time last night and felt a new wave of embarrassment, crumpling it in her hand, tossing it on top.

She'd thought it would help. She'd thought if she could not see anything, if she couldn't actually open her eyes in the middle of the dreams—

"I suppose I can return for all this later," she said, knowing that she never would. She did not turn around. "Very well. I'm ready."

"Maricara." Still peaceful calm. "How old were you when you wed?"

She closed her eyes. He couldn't see her face; it didn't matter, but she did it anyway. "Nine years. Eleven months."

There was a pause. "How many days?"

"Three."

Outside the leaves kept up their quiet murmur. The day was warm and sparkling bright. The songbirds began again their ballad of bejeweled notes.

"Did he hurt you?"

She kept her tone untroubled. "I was a virgin. Doesn't every husband hurt his bride?"

"No," Kimber answered. "Not every one." Another pause. "You will return with me to Darkfrith, won't you?"

"Yes."

"Good. There's something there I think you'll appreciate."

She did look at him then, turning just her head, a quick glance from over her shoulder. "What is it?"

Kimber smiled at her, a true smile, and it was like watching the sun rise to paint light across the mountains. "A safe place to sleep."

She would fly there. There was nothing he could say that would convince her to cinch herself back into human clothes and climb into that coach for the daylong trip to Chasen Manor—especially with his sisters as company. She supposed she could have ridden in the second carriage, the one they had to rent to transport her safe, but the thought of trapping herself inside a tiny, enclosed space, jostling over ruts and ridges and mud holes for an entire day.

Far simpler to fly. Kimber knew it too. In front of his siblings he attempted to persuade her, but in the end, when it was down to just the two of them arguing in her antechamber as the others waited downstairs, he gave a shrug and began to remove his clothes once more.

He would not, naturally, allow her to go alone.

As if she hadn't spent her life that way. As if she hadn't crossed the world by herself, in moonlit dreams and awake. But one look into his eyes was all she needed to realize he would not be moved on this.

"The sanf are out there," he said flatly.

"I won't be going anywhere near them. They'll be roasting in the heat on the ground. I'll be high above."

"And I'll be right beside you."

"That's really not necessary."

"Indulge me. Consider it a favor. Just think of all the ways you might demand repayment."

He said it with a perfectly temperate expression. There was no reason at all for her gaze to drop to his lips, to remember in a flush of warmth their languid touch and taste, to feel that wonderful, awful nervousness wash over her again.

"I promise you'll get the chance," the earl added, mild.

Mari felt her mouth go dry. "Another promise."

"Aye. And if I break it, well.. .perhaps you'll be merciful. A man is only so strong."

She'd heard of chameleons, odd little almost-dragons that changed their skin to match every new environment. In the plaster-and-gilt civilization of the Seaham resort Lord Kimber Langford did no less. In nearly the same short amount of time she had taken to drag a brush through her hair and slip into a robe—she was going to Turn, after all, no matter what he said—he had transformed into someone new: his jaw clean-shaven, his queue tied neat, his coat of pressed silk redolent with something both musky and pleasant, like myrrh. Even the seams to his stockings were straight. By all outward appearances he was a wealthy, entitled peer of the realm once again, shining with silver buttons and garters.

Only his eyes betrayed what dwelled inside him. Against the glamour of the chamber they glowed cool, phosphorous green.

It was a Gift, a rare one. And it didn't manifest in their human shape without animal provocation.

She faced him squarely. "You were going to fly anyway. I overheard you tell your brother."

His mouth quirked; he draped his coat across a side table. "Resourceful. But didn't your parents teach you that eavesdropping isn't very polite?"

"My parents had no hope of it, I hear everything." Mari shrugged. "I can't help it. And I also cannot help but wonder why you'd take such a risk, especially given your aversion to being sighted in daylight as a drakon in any form."

"It seems prudent to have a guard in the air for the journey."

"Rhys could do that. Or one of your men."

"Yes," he said. "But they're not me."

Mari walked to the wing chair by the cold, swept hearth, arranged the folds of her maroon satin robe carefully and took a seat, relaxing back as if she were in no hurry to travel anywhere. She leaned her head against the cushion. "You're planning to hunt the sanf yourself, aren't you?"

"Not right now."

"Good. Because they'll be anticipating that. They'll be waiting." "So I thought."

"If they figure out exactly who you are—"

"Maricara. Right now I'm trying to persuade you that the safest course of travel back to Chasen Manor is by coach, tucked nicely inside with my guard and my kin. That's all. Since I plainly haven't the slightest chance in hell of convincing you of that, I am simultaneously calculating the safest flight path home. A path that will lead us far from where we last sensed the hunters. I've no desire to greet them today. Certainly not with your neck on the line as well."

"Better to leave them behind here," she said, unconvinced. "Better to let them wonder and sweat."

"Yes." He moved away from her with a sudden, menacing grace, going to the window, tapping two fingers hard against the glass. He spoke in an undertone, the taps accentuating his words. "By all means, let them sweat."

"Return for them later, when you're better prepared. They won't give up so easily. They'll remain here at least a few more days. In fact, I'll come with you," she offered, when he did not speak. "We'll hunt them together."

"Two kings," he murmured—but didn't turn away from the window. His eyes reflected color off the glass, green against the bright blue sky.

"Yes."

"Smart kings let the peasants do the fighting for them," Kimber noted dryly.

"That rather works out, as I'm secretly a peasant."

"And I'm bloody George III. You've made your point, Your Grace."

She turned her cheek to the cool damask of the cushion. "Then we agree. Today we'll both go as smoke above the coaches. Two guards in the air, rather than one. Tomorrow.. .we'll be royal again."

The earl inclined his head, capitulation tempered by the sardonic curl of his lips. "Splendid. I cannot wait to hear my sisters' reaction to this."

"And your council's."

"Naturally, yes, the council. They'll welcome us home with banners and ballad singers." He glanced back at her; some of the dragon glow began to fade from his eyes. "You're deuced mulish, you know."

Mari crossed her left leg over her right, keeping the robe modestly draped across her lap. "I don't know what that word means. But I do know I'm doing exactly what you would, in my position."

"Pigheaded," he said.

"Precisely."

So they flew. Side by side, two gossamer-gray clouds that drifted high against the wind, and joined edges so often they began to seem melded into one.