Queen of Dragons

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She had traveled across a continent without accompaniment. She had crossed the skies, and bathed in secluded tubs, and supped on cold meats and cheesecakes and slices of gingered pineapple, delicacies all purloined from the finest of houses. She had been alone, and not lonely.

But Mari had accompaniment now. Oh, they were not so bold as to follow her openly, not even the footmen who had dashed ahead to open the main doors before she reached them, or the gardener and his assistant who glanced up from their bed of mulch to watch her stride past, sweat-dripping faces beneath the brims of straw hats.

Not the three young kitchen maids, also in the garden, clipping herbs and whispering behind their hands. The gathering of boys behind them, holding baskets.

There were drakon everywhere in this shire. They trickled through the woods still, clouded the cobalt sky. They watched her without approach. They waited, she knew, for the order from their Alpha. That was all that held them back.

The air felt opaque. It felt so heavy and wet she could hardly force it into her lungs.

Mari angled toward the staggered break of trees that marked the forest closest to the manor. She crossed a bed of violets and pinks, crushing perfume beneath her heels. The shade of a chestnut dappled her shoulders and dazzled her vision, and the chestnut touched branches with an elm, and the elm took her into the real woods, and then she was inside them, and the air was cool on her face, and she could draw breath again.

She set her back against a rowan. A copper-winged butterfly zigzagged through the holly and bracken; she closed her eyes against the matted green leaves and summoned the cold.

Snowstorms. Winter.

Mountains and boars and white fields. Frost rimming windows; icicles frozen from eaves.

Zaharen Yce.

It had been raised in crystalline towers and wide, high terraces, a true sanctuary for dragons. Only later did it grow walls and an armory, transforming with deadly grace into a plain sound fortress. It could withstand cannons and cascades of flaming arrows. The portcullis was of iron. The oaken doors still held the indentations of a battering ram wielded four centuries past—the doors had not yielded. Time had proven again and again that humans could not breach the castle.

Dragons, however.. .oh, dragons could.

She brought her fists up to her eyes. She felt her lips pull back in a grimace of a smile and did not know if she should scream or weep.

An occupation. They planned to occupy her home—to invade it. They had planned it all along, perhaps for years. Perhaps from the very first. And the Zaharen—proud and cloistered and unwary—the Zaharen would fall because these dragons were stronger than her kin. By Gifts and wiles and smiling false diplomacy, they were stronger.

Damn them to hell.

And Kimber.Kimber.

The shaking that had taken her in the council's chamber stole up through her limbs once again, bleak and icy, colder even than that snow she remembered.

In her darkest musings she had imagined something like this. It explained their repeated requests for her location, to come to her or have her come to them. But she'd also thought that these English drakon would be more like her own folk, remnants of a once-mighty race, with pockets of power and a majority of thin-blooded people. Before coming here, Lia had been the only one of them Mari had ever known, and certainly Lia had been formidable, but no more formidable than Maricara herself.

Even if her worst fears proved real, she'd thought the Zaharen would prevail. They had the castle and at least a hundred good strong men who could Turn, and so would prevail.

But she had been wrong.

Darkfrith, a haven, was far larger than she'd imagined. There had to be close to a thousand here who could Turn.

A thousand.

It would be a massacre.

She would leave, then. She would fly home. She belonged to the Zaharen, by birth and by marriage, and this time she would not abandon them. Let the earl and his English kin come; her people would still fight. Let them see what might there was left in the Carpathians.

She shoved from the rowan in a surge of determination. Another butterfly shivered up and away, but Mari barely heeded it. She took two steps into the dark humid forest, her power cresting—a mere second from the Turn—

But then she heard music. Stone music—not the notes from the spa—she had no idea why the squire would invent such nonsense; it was surely just another part of their plot—but this was something broken and queer and hauntingly familiar. Mari knew this song. She knew that melody.

Through the sultry heat a chill crept over her skin. She paused, rubbing her arms, glancing around at tree trunks and wildflowers bent double to rest their heads upon the ground. A breeze stirred the rowan and quieted the song; she waited until the air settled again, listening. And then she began to walk.

It was such a slight, unsettling thing, so faint beneath the other sounds of rocks and metals and running water that she lost it three more times. And there were twigs and bugs and she should not be walking, but she knew if she Turned now, she'd have the immediate attention of all those not-clouds dangling above her. Mari had faith enough she could escape them when the time came. But first she just wanted to see.

She walked a good while. The sleeves of Kimber's shirt caught against the brushwood, and once she splashed into a flat little stream throttled with muddy debris. After a half hour her feet were filthy and perspiration had the linen clinging like translucent skin to her torso and arms, but the notes were getting clearer.

The forest opened up into a meadow. It was sprinkled with scarlet campion and bluebells, a good many of them flattened to the earth. Dirt had been kicked up. The smell of man and steel sopped the air. And blood.

Sanf inimicus.

She moved cautiously into the grasses. She glanced up and around and stepped sideways like a crab, unwilling to keep her back fixed to any one spot, even though the scent of the sanf was hours old.

There was the blood, a few drops, nearly the same color as the campions they decorated.

And there was the song. It was an emerald, buried beneath a clod of sticky brown dirt. She crouched down and dug until she found it, two halves of uneven green, a gold wire hoop that had been mashed into a lump.

Rhys's emerald. Rhys's earring. She touched a finger to the petal of a campion and felt the small, electric thrill of dragon blood, freshly dried.

Mari stood. She rubbed the pieces of ruined emerald between her palms, gauging grit and music and sharp edges, and blew the air between her teeth. The canopy of trees above her head made a skein of branches and leaves without a single nest of any kind, not from birds or squirrels.

This was not her concern. None of it was. Not any longer.

But the broken flowers ruffled with the breeze. A cricket nearby began a tentative creak, and then one more. Within three chirps it was joined by a fellow; together they made a low, urgent sawing.

Mari plucked the blooded campion. She wiped the moisture from her face with the cuff of her sleeve and began the trek back to Chasen.

She came upon the gardener first. She walked straight to him—he had moved from the bed of mulch to the violets she had trampled, resettling the stems—and watched as his gaze lifted from her feet to her bare scratched shins, to the oversized breeches and soiled, transparent shirt. When he reached her eyes she held out her fist to him.

"Here," she said. She dropped the earring and wilting campion into his hastily lifted hands. "Take these to your lord. Tell him I found them in the woods, about five miles distant. And that now I am done."

Night fell. It was moonless, no clouds, only stars to pierce the inky black—stars and torches and lanterns. Voices that did not call out, but whispered like a river running constant through the trees and darkened lanes. Voices that purled, They're here, where do we hide, whom do we trust?

The drakon searched for their missing in silence. They sent out parties in groups; no one traveled alone. Not any longer. Men went to smoke to curl stealthily through the forests; women blocked all openings to their homes, their children confined to parlors, bright eyes fixed on doors, carving knives and loaded pistols kept like embroidery on their laps.

Their domain had been breached. A young prince had been taken. Mari knew he wasn't a prince, not really, but to these people, Rhys Langford was as near as they would come.

She remembered the flaxen-haired Englishman found dead in the mountains, the particular gray tinge of his skin. She remembered the man in the mines, the rigid curl of his fingers, the gape of his mouth. She thought of Rhys and his pirate's grin and wished that of all the people she had met in this place, it had not been him.

From her seat against the polished glass dome topping the manor she watched the many dots of light that illuminated Darkfrith, stars tilting above, bobbing flames below. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, still dressed in Kimber's clothing, because she would not risk going down to the Dead Room, no matter the wealth and memories she had stored in the cell down there.

She did not think any of them could sneak up on her. But she was unwilling to be proven wrong.

At least the night was cooler than the day. The glass kept a pleasant heat against her back, not much, only enough to keep her comfortable. She leaned her head against it, watching the man drawing near across the slate tiles with half-lidded eyes. The roof of Chasen Manor was unlit and so was he; as he walked toward her the curve of the dome sliced across his body, blurring, a figure of shadow and sheen.

The entry to the roof was on the other side of the dome. She'd chosen this spot in particular so that she could see him approach. So that he would not have to Turn, and come to her as any other being but the earl.

"You're still here," Kimber said. "As you see."

He stopped at her feet, balanced on the slope with one boot above the other.

"Twenty men," she commented, without moving. "Would their time not be better spent searching for your brother, rather than wasting the night hovering around me?"

She couldn't make out his smile but she imagined it, thin and sardonic, with no humor behind it. "Will you give me your word you won't attempt to leave Chasen?"

"Absolutely. As many words as you wish."

"Why, thank you, that's most reassuring. Isn't it delightful to discover we understand each other so well. I've four times as many men searching for Rhys. And I do not consider it a waste in any sense to ensure your security." The earl paused. "Do you feel him anywhere?"

"No," she answered, with real regret.

Someone Turned to dragon overhead, silent, falling and rising. Mari lifted her head, squinting until she found the shape of the beast against the sky, a black winged rope beneath a blacker heaven.

"Do you think I can't elude them?"

"I think that if you could, you would have already done so, Princess." "Perhaps I was only waiting for you."

Kimber climbed closer, then eased down beside her, crossing his legs. "How fortuitous. Here I am."

"I've been thinking," she began, angling her gaze now at the glow of a lantern that marked a slow, wavering trail through the forest. "About what your squire said."

She felt his attention, although he watched the lantern too.

"I cannot.actually recall leaving the pump room."

"Oh?"

"I remember leaving the table. I remember the husband stopping me in the hallway afterward. But in between.. .there's nothing."

He turned to look at her.

"I wanted you to know that before I left. I wasn't lying before; I'm not like you. But I realized—later on—that I did not remember." She shrugged. "Perhaps there was a woman. Perhaps it was your missing girl. I don't know. It's a mystery for you to unravel after I'm gone."

"Maricara."

"And I wanted something else. Something to take with me."

He shook his head. He was at the ragged edge of his restraint; she felt it. She heard it in the tempered tightness of voice. "What?"

"This."

She lifted a hand to his face. She found his cheek, unshaven, and the heavy warmth of his hair, unbound at his shoulders. With her other hand she held him steady and brushed her lips to his.

He allowed it. She'd feared he wouldn't, that in his state of hunt and disquiet and eagerness to shackle her to the ground, he would be in no mind for kisses, not even this one, soft and in the dark, and with her eyes closed, so that she could not see even a hint of his features.

He covered her shoulder with his palm. He held very still, and when she pulled away, he said only, "Was that supposed to be a good-bye?"

She felt herself color a little.

"You're very young," he said flatly. "And for all your worldly ways, I fear more than a little naive.

From the moment we discovered your existence, Maricara, there became no question of our people joining into one. You've seen the life we live here. Our foundations in this society, our careful disguise. Without the Zaharen, our survival was sustainable. But with you, with the very fact of you, everything must change. You will change, and I will change. For the good of us all, we're going to unite. We will have rules and opinions and I don't expect we'll agree on a great many things. But this is how it will be. As my wife, you're the perfect liaison for all the drakon living in Transylvania."

"I don't want to be a wife," she said, her hand still cupped to his face.

"I'm sorry to hear it. Because it's going to happen one way or another."

"My people will fight you. We are ferocious fighters."

"I'm sure you see that that would be a great waste of lives. Even counting your kin, there are so few drakon left. I'd hate to lose more of us in fruitless battle, especially with the delis inimicus panting at our heels."

She dropped her hand. She sat back again, propped her head against the dome and looked up at the stars.

"Is this truly how you want our futures to unfold?" she asked quietly. "War and bloodshed. You're determined?"

"Let me you ask you something, Princess. Why did you come here?" "You know why."

"A letter would have sufficed as warning for the sanf. The rings were ample proof. There was no need for you to show up in person, unless you had another motive."

She was surprised into a laugh. "You think I came here to marry you?"

"I think," he said, "that somewhere in your heart, you knew where your fate would lie. That there was no drakon of the Zaharen who would match you as I would. You were wed to an Alpha because that's what that black dragon simmering in your blood demands of you. You will wed an Alpha once more. Pendant que nous vivons, ainsi nous devons etre." The warmth of his touch modified, became lighter, a bare stroke down her arm. "I regret you heard what you did with the council. I regret there isn't more time to convince you that I'm right. I'm not your enemy, Maricara. Like it or not, for better or worse—I'm your husband, and your mate. King to king. Soon you'll be a queen as well. Neither of us can change it. It is why you came to me. Why fight what's over and done?"

Her throat had gone dry; she swallowed and looked away, and was glad he could not see her face. "How romantic. I'm quite swept off my feet."

Kimber's fingers tapped lightly against the backs of her own. "I can shower you with rose petals if you'd like. I can feed you Swiss chocolates and bathe you in French champagne.. .but you'll have to come with me inside for all that." He looked at her aslant. "Will you?"

"No."

The stars glinted silver and blue and gold and pink. Clouds of smoke drifted above, tails and twists of deep charcoal.

Mari said, "You can shower me with petals up here."

She felt him change, felt that edge of frustration in him sharpen and splinter, transforming into something else.

"I'll wait," she said.

It was no time for dalliance; she knew it as well as he. No time for anything more between them but the end rushing closer, enormous, inevitable. She had come to this place and brought with her the devil's wind, a searing ill harbinger of exposure and death and everything hazardous to a people woven from fiction, from threads of mist. She had not meant to do it, but it was done.

Yet the Earl of Chasen only fixed her with a hot, intent look she didn't even need to see to feel. Then he was gone, his clothing settling down to the roof with a sigh of cotton and leather, his boots falling over to lightly strike the tiles.

After a moment, his voice floated up from beyond the edge of the parapet.

"Great King. I'm afraid you'll have to join me down here, if it's petals you require."

He would not be able to bring them to her as smoke; she had no idea how he'd manage it as a dragon, either.

She Turned, following the scent of him to the garden, to a corner of arbors and pergolas and long, sweet grasses, and rows and rows of windows shining black above them.

He stood in the shelter of one of the arbors, a profusion of vines and red roses tumbling from the wooden slats. Fragrance twirled around him with honey-slow leisure; her first breath as woman was spiced and pungent, nearly too strong. It made her head spin.

She had Turned right against him. She had taken that breath and then leaned up to him with her bare body and kissed him, hard and open, her hands clutching at his shoulders. He caught her to him, returning her hunger with his own. She heard the rustle of rose leaves, the shifting of gravel beneath their feet that felt hard and real and wonderful all at once, like him.

He drew her farther with him into the arbor, shadows so thick she lost the image of him entirely; he was heat and muscle and touch. She felt his arms lift, held above her: rose petals floated down, patting her nose and her chest and her arms, skimming the surface of her hair. A few still clung to his palms as he lowered his hands to kiss her again; one trembled at the corner of her lips; another at her collarbone, a perfect fit to the hollow at the base of her throat.

"There," he murmured. "There. You look like."

"You can't see me."

"I can." His mouth found the petal at her lips, his tongue tracing its shape, tracing her. "Lovely girl, I can."

Mari closed her eyes and caught her breath, tipping back her head. "Like what, then?" she whispered.

He smiled against her. "Like an elfin queen. Like a dragon king." Like mine, he nearly finished, but kissed her full on the lips instead.

He wished for light. Torchlight, sunlight—to see her openly again, beyond the gleam of milky skin, beyond the dim luster of her hair, the gray-night shine of her eyes. Her lips were dark, and her hair was dark, and her nipples, God, her nipples were dark and plump and hard against his palms. He opened his mouth over her pulse, the tender column of her neck, dragging his lips lower, half-crouching to rub his face to her chest. Lifting her, hearing her low gasp over the drumming of her heart. But she was light in his arms, hardly a weight at all, and his mouth found one perfect tip, warm and puckered. He suckled her, and heard her gasp become his name.

He needed this. He needed this moment—not very long, not forever, just enough to wipe clean his worries right now, to bury the weight of his title and honor and the bitter fear for his brother in the lush promise of her body. In her kisses, and her taste, and her legs wrapped hard around him. There was a terror running through him so raw and deep it made him tremble; he was a leader and man, and he stood at the ruin of all he loved—and he just needed this one stolen moment with her to forget—

Deep, deep inside him, in a place so hidden and quiet he didn't even have a name for it, Kimber knew that the terror was winning: He was quaking apart. He could not think of his brother without anguish; it was a pain so profound, so vast it seemed to transfigure his very blood. He seemed made of lead now, not flesh, lead that was both numb and slow, useless against the vicious cold eating away at him from inside and out. He was desperate to help Rhys and could not. He was desperate for his tribe. Whenever he closed his eyes the image of the broken emerald burned like a brand behind his lids. The shattered stone. His little brother dead. Tortured. Rhys's heart—his heart—

If he came apart, Kim honestly didn't know what would be left behind. Nothing good. Nothing of use to the drakon, or his wife.

Perhaps Maricara sensed his secret trembling. She was mystic and surprising and when she looked up at him now, surrounded by roses and night, Kim actually felt like he was drowning, surrendering to her mysterious depths. He grasped at that, grateful. Aye, he could drown in her, and be free. There was nothing he wanted more in this instant than that.

Her legs lifted to encircle his waist. Her fingers clenched against his shoulders. She arched back and for one glorious instant he saw her gently silvered in the starlight: her throat and jaw and shoulders, slender muscles held taut, and then he'd swung her back into the protection of the roses and the subtle dark, giving his back to the barbed canes. Kim raised his head to nuzzle her neck and lowered her onto him.

He found her entrance. He was eager for her, he was aching for her, to the point where he nearly forgot where he was, forgot the garden and the manor and the drakon all around them. The dry leaves of the roses sketched patterns on his skin. Thorns pricked, drew blood. He didn't care.

She was here. She was ready. She kissed him with her tongue in his mouth and took him inside her and all thoughts of location, discretion, smoke, blew away, incinerated. He heard a noise, a deep visceral sound of pleasure, and realized it had come from him.

Maricara answered it by parting her lips and sinking deeper. Her arms cradled his head; his hands supported her buttocks, cupped her to him, lifting and helping her. They rocked together, and she was wet and stretched and velvet around him, her heels pressed to his spine, her fingers twisted in his hair. He'd never felt anything like this, never known he could make love to a queen in a garden and think, Yes, this is what I need, this and her.

He felt her body begin to tighten. He felt the coming of her release before she even caught her breath, before she stopped breathing entirely. She stiffened against him and made the smallest, most amazed little noise—it finished him. He squeezed her bottom and pumped into her and felt the bounce of her breasts against his chest. He thrust up and pressed her down to him so hard it felt like pain, the best pain he'd ever felt. Maricara jerked against him, coming again. And Kim spilled his seed in her, and let the roses have his blood.

That, she thought, still clasped to him, sated and sore, the floral scent of the garden now overwhelmed by frank musky sex. Mari let her head rest against his, her lips in his hair, tasting salt and satin. She closed her eyes, learning the curves of his skull beneath her fingers, precious and new.

That was good-bye.

She fell asleep standing against him. He was holding her upright with one arm around her waist and the other crossed behind her head, keeping her close, her temple to his shoulder, her long hair brushing his hips, his back bloody and stinging and his dragons above them both flitting silently back and forth, night terrors on the wind.

He had to leave her. He had to rejoin his kin in the sky. Even the time he had taken to find her on the roof of his home was precious seconds leached from Rhys, but Kim had done it anyway, and now he had to go.

He'd not parted well with her this afternoon, and it had bothered him. He'd spent the day and evening remembering that, the expression on her face, as he'd plunged into the search for his brother and Honor and tried to let the hunt consume him, as it should.

Shock. Hurt. And then, worst of all: detachment. She'd lowered her eyes and shut him out and walked away, and even though he'd known she would not be able to get far—he'd placed guards on her with just the sweep of his finger as she'd stalked out the manor doors—Kimber regretted wounding her.

Because she was his wife. His fire and his heart. She was.

And he'd truly not wanted to hurt her.

But he couldn't leave now without knowing she was safe. He had to know that someone he loved was safe.

Kim turned his face to hers, closing his eyes, his lips to her forehead. She roused a bit, lifting her head, and blinked and looked around them from the circle of his arms. In the waning starlight the roses bloomed wolf-gray, textured petals above them and surrounding them, and sprinkled at their feet.

"Beloved," he said. "Come inside with me."

She brought a hand to her face, pushing back her hair. "No, I.. .I don't want to go back there." "To the—to your room?"

"Not alone."

"You won't be alone. I'll come with you," he temporized. "For now, at least." She sighed, a rush against his skin. "No."

"You're exhausted. You need to rest."

She tipped her face to his. Her eyes had that hollow cast he'd last seen over dinner in Seaham, uncanny weary and bright. "Not yet," she said, and took a longer breath. "I'm not tired enough yet."

He said, soft: "Mari."

"Not yet," she repeated, her voice breaking. She pulled from his arms. "I'll be here, black dragon. I'll be your anchor. I won't let you fly."

She made a sound like a laugh, but it was small and turned into a yawn; she smothered it with one hand. Kim found her other, lifting their joined fingers to point at the balcony outside his chambers. "There. Do you see it? The window to the far left of the gargoyle, the one with the beak and the feathered wings—it's open. That's where we'll go."

He went to smoke on nothing but faith that she would follow; after a few seconds, she did. Together they wound through his bedchamber, over to the bed. Room after room was unlit, not even the golden lamp of Moorish glass on the nightstand left to gutter. Every drakon of the shire had a role to play this night, and none of them was of servant.

His sheets were soft, washed with French soap, dried in wind and flowery heat. He flipped them back for her and waited, and the lovely blue haze that was the princess coalesced, became form and corporeal beauty. She regarded him from the other side of the mattress, frowning a little, swaying very slightly.

"I'll be here," he said again.

She climbed into his bed. She pushed down between the covers and closed her eyes, one arm flung across the pillows.

Within seconds, she was asleep.

He meant to stay beside her only a short while. There was so much he needed yet to do, so many urgent things, and, when he'd lain atop the duvet at her side, comfort swept over him like a sweet, sweet narcotic; he'd meant it to last only so long as to ensure she knew he'd kept his word.

She slept. Kimber kept watch, or he thought he did. He was studying her—what he could see of her—in the vague dark of his canopied bed it was more like the notion of her, the curving line of her chin, the smoothing of the night along her upper arm—and when he next looked up, the sky beyond the balcony had brightened into green, the cumulus clouds just visible at the edge of his windows stained orange and deep cool orchid.

It was dawn. He awoke alone in his rumpled bed.

Maricara was gone.