Queen of Dragons

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The sound of the rain peppered her dreams. They weren't truly dreams, more like colors and perceptions and meandering thoughts. She slept in a haze, never fully surrendering to the depths of complete silence, struggling to remain at that cusp of awake: the scent of sulfur and storm in the air; her cheek on his chest; his breath stirring her hair.

It was strange. It was extraordinary.

It had been so long since she'd been with a man. She'd forgotten this, the intimacy of a rainswept night, entangled legs, the weight of a masculine hand upon her waist. But then, in the slow-moving fog of her thoughts, it seemed to Mari she could not have forgotten what she had never before known.

She did not feel anxious in her repose next to him. She felt secure. She felt as if his heat and his embrace and his torso pressed to hers were all things that had been conspired to be—for ages, for her lifetime. She felt that she could sleep like this forever.

And that, of course, eliminated her last hope of real slumber.

It was not yet dawn, but she'd always been able to see well at night. In the deep quiet light that latticed the chamber Maricara studied Kimber Langford, curious.

It was odd to see a man so relaxed around her. No one relaxed around her, not really, not even Sandu. On occasion she would pass one of the looking glasses hung in the castle and catch a hint of her own reflection: silvery hair, silvery eyes, gowns of deep color and skin paler than the moon. She was a winter beast hidden behind a human face, a piercing gaze, a ghostly peril. When she smiled her lips curved cold and beautiful, no matter how she tried to warm them. When she lifted her hands they gleamed with rings and the fuency of her movements; she could circumvent neither.

Before her marriage, Mari had been a brash, grubby maiden, her hair escaping from scarves, her skirts a muddy mess, as delighted as all the other children to romp through the hamlets and meadows. But as a wife.

No wonder her people would not drop their guard for her. The grown woman staring back at her from mirrors with creamy shoulders and plucked brows didn't look anything like Maricara. The creature there shone clear-eyed and diamond-hard, and looked fully capable of devouring man or cattle alike. It rather frightened her as well.

Ah, but this man.this powerful, lovely man, was not afraid of her. He was also a beast and an earl, which seemed to be something like a prince in this country, and he was not afraid. And he was tender, and he was strong, and he was drakon.

She touched a hand to her mouth, observing his. She pressed a kiss to her fingers, remembering how it felt to kiss him instead. She followed the contours of his eyelashes and remembered the intensity of his gaze, the last thing she had seen before he fixed the sheet around her eyes: his own, alight and brilliant, green cool depths and a hunger that had stilled her to the bone.

She'd let him blindfold her. She'd trusted him, beyond the Dead Room, beyond her body and her sight. She'd trusted him, and he had risen to it.

This wasn't love. It was new and unfamiliar, but she had seen love before, and this had to be different. It was lust, certainly, and the inevitable collision of their dragon natures. It was pleasure and astounding satisfaction; every time he touched her, every place, she felt a physical, hot delight. Tangible, like dipping her fingers into the gold dust that lived in the rivers of the mountains, spreading their glimmer across her skin.

Love wasn't glimmer. Love was struggle and anguish, stratagems and long nights of weeping into pillows. Every legend of the drakon involving love ended in full-fledged tragedy; even Mari knew that.

Her parents had scoffed at it; Amalia and Zane had been fully snared. A handful of drakon from the villages professed it, but traditional marriages were arranged. Love might come after that; it might not. Most people trudged on with their lives anyway.

Every now and again flared some great, feverish ardor between a young Zaharen couple, but they always gave the impression of being more miserable than not, prone to sighs and dramatic gestures and extravagant public declarations such as I will surely die without him.

She, on the other hand, wasn't going to die without anyone, and that was perfectly acceptable. In fact, it seemed to Maricara that falling in love was perilously close to what the sanf were so eager to do: rip a hole in a drakon chest. Steal from it the beating flesh of the soul.

Just like her own, Lord Chasen's heart was veiled. All she had glimpsed of it was a knot of thorns and passion. That was also acceptable. She understood knots, and quite enjoyed passion. She had no wish to delve deeper than that.

Power. Position. Desire. She was comfortable with these things. They were surely enough to keep her content.

But.

Kimber's palm shifted against her. He sighed and whispered something in his sleep and slid his hand down her arm.

.. .he was so very like her, more than anyone she had ever met. And so very beautiful.

Mari closed her eyes. With the earl's face turned to hers, she allowed herself gradually to lapse back into that place of rain-scattered slumber.

When she looked next around the room the light had shifted, a gray so dense it was like peering through cheesecloth. Nothing much was clear, save the man standing over them.

Rhys.

Their eyes met. He wore no clothing; his face was expressionless. Without the emerald or hoop in his ear he seemed nearly without life, another specter from her dreams. His hands were loose at his sides.

His lips made a taut smile. His eyes followed the shadowed lines of her figure entwined with Kimber's; the night had been warm and then they'd made it warmer, and together they slept atop the covers.

Mari was a panther, she was a king. She let Lord Rhys's gaze rake her body and did not move.

"Countess," he murmured, and inclined his head.

Then where there had been Rhys, there was smoke, and then simply air. But for the slight creaking of the door upon its hinges, she might have imagined it all.

They flew back to Darkfrith in silence. The clouds had roiled and thickened into a mantle of cotton by the last magenta flare of the dawn. The air still felt of rain but none fell; below them the earth awoke beneath a trillion liquid drops, each one catching the reflection of the sky, the pair of dragons that pierced the pinkened mist in a line, appearing and disappearing according to the whorls of the clouds.

Well, one dragon. The other remained higher, better hidden. Mari wasn't so incautious as to fly openly through the morning. But she did, at times, allow a claw or her tail to reach down and break the vapor beneath her, leaving a furrow of clarity in her wake that nearly at once puffed and amassed and rolled back together again.

Kimber kept within a wingspan. When she'd Turned to dragon after their ascent he had done the same; they both knew he wouldn't be able to keep up otherwise. But Mari hadn't Turned for speed. She could pretend she'd done it because she needed to, because it had been too long since she'd knowingly scraped the atmosphere with her body, and all that was true. Existing strictly as woman or as smoke denied the most important part of her.

But beyond that, beyond speed or function, she'd done it because she knew it would be forbidden. And she wanted to see his reaction to that.

He gave her none. As a dragon he only flew extremely close, so close she could make out the fantastic etching of his scales, rich metallic hues of sapphires and the ruby sun, his eyes brilliant green and lined with gold.

His head lifted. He snorted a breath that made the illusion of smoke, blowing clearer air through the mist, baring his teeth afterward; it looked like a grin.

She grinned back. She closed her eyes and navigated by her senses, the world below and him above, the flavor of morning bright in her mouth.

There were no men waiting for them this time. None of the council lined the drive; there was no one at all nearby, in fact. Kim took Maricara into Chasen the same way he used to go back when he was younger—much younger—and needed to slip inside unobserved: through his far bedroom window. He'd figured how to secure a thin metal strap across the sash, thin enough to remain unobserved from the inside. Protruding just enough on the outside to prevent the lock from clicking fully into place.

It entailed that he Turn human to pull at it. There was just enough room on the ledge to keep him balanced on the balls of his feet. Half the time he'd ended up tipping backward anyway, Turning at the last second to save himself a bruising against the ground. And in none of those times had he tried this in broad daylight, in full view of the lawn and gardens below.

His quarters faced east, toward the woods and the first handsome lanes of the village. The burn of the sun on his back was nothing to the heat flooding his face.

How incredibly sophisticated: the Earl of Chasen, squatting bare-assed on a window ledge of his august and stately home, yanking at a weathered tin strap that did not want to give. He could have simply gone to the front doors—

The strap broke; Kimber fell; the window tugged open.

He entered first, Maricara twirling behind. There was a definite gleam to her eyes when she Turned in the middle of his bedroom.

"Don't say anything," he warned, and went to her before she could give voice to that gleam, taking her by the shoulders to kiss her on the mouth.

"I was merely—"

"No." He kissed her harder.

"—searching for that—"

He brought his hands up into her hair. He felt its weight, cool between his fingers.

"Indelible," she gasped, when he broke for air. He pressed his face to her neck. Her arms came up around him; he felt the laughter rocking her. "The perfect English word. I believe I have it right. Indelible. I'll never, never forget—"

"Splendid," he muttered. "Tell everyone, why don't you?"

Maricara spoke with measured consideration. "I doubt very much I could do the scene justice. One really had to be there for the best effect. Do you have a gown anywhere in this chamber?"

He did not. Even Lia's quarters were a floor away. If it were not for the fact that the day was passing, and people would be looking for them, and the sun sloped bright across his rug from the newly washed sky.

He left her in his dressing chamber, running her hands over rows of shirts, strolling slowly alongside the faceless wooden heads that held his wigs. One entire cherrywood closet was devoted to everything bejeweled, coats and waistcoats and buckles and fobs; his last image of her was of her standing before it, her hands clasped behind her back, her fists locked above her hair. Slowly she drew a foot up and down the back of her calf, her toes curling.

He left while he was yet able to leave. He would find something of Lia's, it was closer than the Dead Room, and then he'd get back to her. It wasn't quite yet noon. There were voices echoing in and about the mansion, but the tones were low and muted. They carried no urgency. Kimber's door had a good lock.

He found a frock of his sister's in her dim, dustless room. It was steely blue and frothy white and looked like something he'd seen her wear to tea a few times; it hardly mattered. It would fit Maricara, no doubt a damn sight better than that gray thing she'd had on last night.

But as he was leaving, closing the door carefully behind him, Kim registered that the voices he'd been hearing were becoming more distinct. They were more than the usual background of questions and commands of the servants, a gentle swell of sound he typically managed to disregard in any case. These were the voices of men, about twelve of them. The council had convened.

He found them in their splendid chamber, not yet seated. They stood in clusters, grand old dragons with their hands on their hips, a few holding glasses from the sideboard. They were stout and gaunt, perfumed with oils and powder. Their tones struck a chord that carried all the way to Kimber by the door: heated, quarrelsome. In the stark light from the world beyond the windows they stood rigid and muttering, eleven men shining with pearls and gold, the sun sparking rainbows off their crystal cups. The richly fruity aroma of port spread in eddies throughout the room.

The longcase clock struck noon. All the others joined in, all the songs, the ticking seconds banged out in a wild Babel of chimes.

Kimber wanted, for one very vivid, very heart-stopping instant, to back away. To ease one single step away, and then another. To disappear into the warren of the house, to take the hand of the princess and vanish.

Like his parents had done.

He stood frozen with it. He was split into two, half-in and half-out of the doorway, and then Rufus Booke glanced over at him, his heavy face lighting, and the instant passed. The last chime died away, and Kim took his step forward, into their midst.

A honeybee was trapped in the silk folds of the window curtains. Mari opened the window, pushing with both hands, then pinched the edge of the curtain up high between her fingers to free the bee. It flew in a dizzy circle, bumping once into the glass, then found the fresh air and rolled through the opening, a noisy black dot vanishing against the green.

She leaned her forehead to the pane in front of her, enjoying a long, deep breath tinted of apples and flowers and elm. It was odd that the heat didn't bother her quite as much as it used to. In fact, right now it felt very good, casting color on her white skin, revealing in intricate detail the fine weave of the shirt she'd donned, the diminutive twists and coils of the lace at the cuffs.

She might go down as smoke to fetch her own garments. She told herself she did not because she had no reason to think the door to her cell would not be closed and locked; there would be no entry without the key. She would wait for Kimber. She would laze in the sun, and wait.

With her arms at her sides, the lace spilled past her fingers. The Earl of Chasen was larger than she; the breeches she'd pulled on were too big as well. She'd had to roll the waist over twice just to get them to stay up.

Maricara tipped her face to her shoulder and inhaled. She thought she might be able to smell him in the linen. She might even catch the scent of their coupling on her skin—though that was imagination. The sun addled her brain.

She was addled. It was the best explanation for this astonishing, scotch-warm feeling in her chest. The butterflies of before gathered and thickened into anticipation, into joy and light. When she concentrated on him it only intensified: his face, long brown lashes and crystal-green eyes; the smooth-muscled curve where his shoulder met his arm. The touch of his fingers, slow and soft, or firmer, more urgent. His dragon grin. His human smile.

She had her own secret smile; she kept it as she drew a cuff in to tickle beneath her nose, and took another deep breath.

A pair of children emerged from the break in the woods. One boy, one girl, both about ten years of age. Her skirts were beige and blue and rumpled. His collar and knees were smeared with mud. They were arguing about something, a stick and ball, the river that had taken the ball.Mari listened to them without moving.

She remembered a time when she had been that girl, and Sandu had been the one ever scolding her. These children were tow-haired, and their words were foreign, and the place was foreign too. But they were the progeny of her kind. As if they'd practiced it, at the precise same moment both of them glanced her way, found her framed in the window and in light, even from such a distance.

The girl lifted her hand in a wave. After a second, the boy did as well.

Mari raised her hand in return. She pressed her palm to the glass as the pair of them walked on, still arguing.

And there were more voices arguing. There was her name, her title. The words like a cold splash of water in her face: imprison her.

She cocked her head. She pushed away from the window and looked back quickly at the doors that led to the sitting room, that led to the hall. Both remained open.

Too much a risk.

Despite its size and maze of hallways, it wasn't hard to find her way down to the main level of the mansion, where all the men were. She felt them, of course, but they weren't even bothering to keep their voices low.

The soles of her feet felt very warm against the marble floor. Can we even trust her?

She walked by three footmen without pausing. A scullery maid hung back in a corner of a gallery, a mop in hand, her face downturned, still dipping a curtsy as Mari passed. No one looked directly at her. Like mice pinned between the paws of a cat, they were frozen, trepidation and an acrid tinge of fear shrouding them like a cloak.

After all, Kimber, we don't know who she really is.

This was an ominous, familiar dream: a giltwood mirror hung by the master stairs, her own reflection a brief moving shadow. She glanced over and there was the princess once more, pale and ghostly, cold and bright. Her hair was a rough black streamer down her back. Her eyes were dragon eyes, liquid silver. Glowing with radiant light, they dominated her face.

Where her loyalties lie.

She did not realize she had that Gift. No one had ever told her, and she had not known. It gave her the look again of a beast behind a mask. No wonder the little maid would not lift her head.

She is my wife.

No, my lord, she isn't. She isn't yet.

As Mari reached the portal of the room that held all the men, the conversation choked into silence. She breached the entrance, standing alone before them.

"Good afternoon," she said, and even her voice sounded different inside her head, smoother, darker, with a song of menace and despair lurking beneath her words.

She found Kimber in their midst at once, his face and body half-angled to hers; no doubt like the rest, he had felt her approach. In the next instant he completed his pivot, coming to her in a quick, easy stride. He took her hand in his own. She allowed him that, keeping her focus now on the other men in the room, their faces and closed, defensive postures. They were grouped en masse in a block of unvarnished light; when one turned his head to steal a glance at the man beside him, his wig let loose motes of flour, bright as snowfall in the sun.

Their square of tables was just behind them. It was littered with papers and empty cordial glasses. A scribe sat there staring at her, his quill pinched between his fingers, too gone to his thoughts even to rise to his feet.

"Your Grace," the earl said. "I apologize. I have a gown for you."

"No need." She freed her hand, smiled at the standing men and watched two of them rock back on their heels. "As you can see, I've made do."

"Maricara."

"Yes."

Kimber waited until she looked at him. With the daylight shining behind him he carried a nimbus, his face in shadow, even his eyes cast dark. He made a short motion toward the table. "Sit down."

"No," said one of the men, and broke from his pack. "Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but this is a private meeting of the Council of the Drakon. We permit only members to attend. Perhaps the princess would care to retire to the—to the chamber we've prepared especially for her."

"Not really," she said, still smiling. "Why? Do you imagine the princess cannot hear you from there?"

"Madame, I don't know what you—"

"Since you are discussing me, my loyalties, and my future, I believe I'd like to have a say. If there are accusations to be made, I'd enjoy the opportunity to respond. Or are you not so enlightened as that? In my land, even the lowest of serfs may lay claim to the right of defense."

The man who had tried to get her to leave spoke again, shaking his head. "This is not a trial."

"No," agreed Mari softly. "It sounded far more like a conviction."

Another man pushed through the others, stomach first, and this one she recognized. It was the squire from yesterday, Rufus, the one who had fled into the night.

"Who was that woman you were speaking with in the spa?"

Mari regarded him evenly; the earl remained a shadowed presence against her shoulder. "What woman?"

"The blonde one. The one you met after that bloke began yelling. In the pump room, before the doors."

He did not appear to be in jest. He stared at her with bushy gray brows and blue-sharp eyes, his hands holding hard to the lapels of his coat.

Maricara lifted a shoulder in dismissal. "There was no woman."

The squire shifted his gaze to Kimber. "You saw her, my lord."

"No," answered Kimber carefully. "I did not. As I mentioned before, I was busy dealing with the man and the hotel workers. I didn't see the princess escape the pump room."

"There was no woman," Mari said again, stronger. "Why would you fabricate such a thing?"

"Fabricate!" scoffed Sir Rufus. "Indeed! I know what I saw."

"And I do not."

"Blonde woman! Tall! Green frock! She wore amethysts. She had you by the arm." "I'm telling you all, that did not happen." "Then you, Missy, are a liar—if not worse."

She kept her expression serene. She kept her feet rooted to the ground, to the rug, the cut pile rough against her toes, as the dragon in her rose and rose.

A hand came to rest upon her shoulder. A voice spoke through the buzz of rage in her ears, low and sleek.

"Have a care, Booke. You're treading deep waters."

"Great God, man," burst out the squire. "Open your eyes! She's bewitched us all! You see a female who can Turn, you see a bride, but she's an outsider to us! She's a threat! Use her, yes! Wed her and bed her, aye, but have a dram of faith in our ways as well! We don't know her. She left that room with a stranger, I swear it, with a woman wrapped in odd music. I saw them both! And then together they were gone."

Mari was beginning to shake. She thought to conceal it; she hid her hands behind her back and the grip on her shoulder squeezed and tightened and shifted to her arm. But no one was looking at her anyway. Everyone was looking at the squire.

"First our scouts disappear, then she shows up, fills our heads with some nonsense about human hunters, works us up and then vanishes herself—it's all been a game with her. One of our gels is missing, and this creature is off cavorting with strangers. Look at her, my lord. Look." From across the chamber Sir Rufus gestured to her with a flat, open palm. His voice went to gravel. "Does she look like anything we can trust?"

She stared back at them all, her spine straight, refusing to lower her gaze. One by one she held their eyes until at last her gaze moved to Kimber, to the earl, standing at her side.

But she could not read his face. He was golden and beautiful. He had stroked her bare body, had wooed her and kissed her lips and found his rapture inside her—but she could not read him.

His lashes lowered. His hand dropped from her arm.

Mari lost herself then. She lost the feeling of princess, of winter-cold beast. She felt her heart become lead in her chest, a solid dead-weight.

"There was no woman," she repeated one last time, straight to him.

The squire's cheeks grew very red. "Aye, and isn't this what we've feared all along? I told you, Chasen. I told you and your father. This is why we needed to get to them first, before they tried any trickery—"

"Booke," Kimber said.

"Why we needed to see this Zaharen castle for ourselves, to study the land and the people before we moved to occupy—"

The earl did not speak again. From the corner of her eye he only moved his hand, a quick downward slash of his fingers, but it cut the squire visibly short. "Occupy what?" Mari asked.

No one answered. Even Sir Rufus seemed to have recalled his wits, his mouth thinning into a narrow dour line.

"Occupy what?"

She looked up at Lord Chasen, who had shifted from her side—at the light that lifted colors from the rug to emphasize the shape of his chin, his cheekbones and brow; at his eyes now very visible, glacial pale.

He slid a step from her. With a sudden formality he offered her a bow, though it wasn't deep, and his hands remained at his sides. "Your Grace. Would you do me the honor of leaving this chamber? It is a closed meeting of the council, and we have much to discuss."

"Yes," she said thinly. "I see."

She did not rush, she did not tarry. In his shirt and breeches she only turned around and walked away, the rug beneath her feet giving way to buttery wood by the door.