Queen of Dragons

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He smashed through the roof. There was no real reason not to. It was the most expedient way in.

It was a wooden hip roof, sloped and tidy. He descended upon it in full form, hind feet first, his wings straight up behind him for velocity. Against the roar of wind and blood filling his head, the Alpha slammed into a new wave of sound: that of a thousand Others glancing upward, witnessing a dragon of blue and red iridescence descending from the dark evening sky, talons extended, eyes alight. Their screams bounced off his scales. He plunged straight through that shimmer of sound, hardly noticing the humans pointing and scattering along the cobblestone streets. Horses galloped madly away, taking riders and coaches along with them. Vermin and cats and dogs, birds and cattle, all of them shrieking, fleeing, with Kimber as the center of their panic.

The last thing he saw before hitting the roof was a woman in a wig and shawl shedding posies behind her as she ran, her skirts hitched up with both hands, a straw basket still tucked into the crook of an elbow banging against her side.

He tore through the shingles. There was a pair of chimneys, too; red bricks and splinters spewed outward like confetti, tumbling through the air. It was swifter than the blink of an eye and he felt no pain; there was only her, still below him, her colors and scent. A cloudy, curious song surrounding her.

He took out floors. Chairs, beds, chandeliers, tables. All of them empty of Others, because they were still below—and then he was there too, on the ground level, his talons digging into the floor as he skidded to a stop in a large parlor full of pillowed sofas, ripping up rugs and chunks of hardwood. His wings slashed furrows along the walls; paintings crashed; sconces shattered, pungent oil splashing in great clear drops across everything.

He lifted his snout and opened his mouth and revealed his fangs to the Other rushing at him from the doorway.

The Other had a pistol. Still running, he raised his arm and fired, a spark of molten heat that ripped high through Kimber's chest, embedding against something that crunched. A bone.

It was hardly a remarkable feat; Kim took up nearly the entire chamber. So all he had to do was wait for the man to sprint near enough, then bend forward and snap off his head.

The body ceased its forward momentum. It dropped to its knees, and then to its side. The Alpha spat out the head, stepping over the dead man and into the corridor beyond without a second look.

The next human also had a pistol, but he appeared older, more hardened, and he didn't waste his shot. Instead, he stood his ground as the dragon stalked forward, Kimber's tail whipping back and forth, taking out the plaster and walnut walls of the hallway in huge, concave holes. Only when Kimber was near enough to see the spittle on his beard did the man pull the trigger. Kim Turned to smoke, so easy, and then at once back to dragon.

The bullet passed harmlessly through him, thunked into a wall behind him.

The Alpha's lips curled back, the closest thing he could manage to a smile in this state. The sanf man shouted something then whirled about, retreating to a hall to the left.

She wasn't there. Kimber smoked by it—in case there was another gun—and found her chamber, ill lit, crowded with shadows and furniture. The shadows began to flicker; he Turned back to dragon and let loose his fury.

He tore the tops off the lower two bedposts right away. She thought it might have been his wings that sheared them off, but more likely it was his tail, thick and strong, a set of eight razored gold barbs lined neatly along its end. With the iron posts gone she was able to lift both her feet high, still trailing chains but no longer bound to anything fixed.

The chains at her wrist were too short for her to sit up. So Maricara drew her knees to her chest and flipped her body backward; it tore the blanket apart right away, the pins snapping free, dull silver sprinkled across the blue covers. She rolled until her feet met the wall behind the headboard and the chains slapped against the plaster. She used her momentum to finish crawling downward, until she could rise to her knees with her arms twisted before her.

Kimber was a spiral of color and stealth, a glittery reflection from every mirror. He radiated heat; he blurred with every sinuous movement, nearly too fast even for her to follow. One of the sanf still dodged him, though, grunting with effort—it wasn't Zane, who had apparently heeded her advice. He was no longer anywhere in view.

From the mess and confusion of man and beast, something hot struck her in a spatter across the throat. Blood. Kimber's blood.

In the very same instant, she saw him wobble, drop to one knee. His body struck the bureau with the oil lamp at last. It teetered and fell and shattered with a pop into a rosebud of flame, a bud that opened and spread into a fume of soft rising noise.

Both the dragon and the man leapt back. She saw Kimber shake his head in the bright new light, more blood shining slick down his scales. The man saw it too.

Mari gathered herself. She bowed her head and drew her arms inward, her breath held, then released—a groan that burned chest deep, the last two posts bending with her will, the iron screeching—

The links snapped, and she pulled free. Instantly she vaulted from the foot of the bed, found the sanf in front of Kimber—he held a sword, and the tip was dripping red—

She jumped behind him. She wrapped the chain still attached to her right wrist around his neck, and pulled as hard as she could. His back arched; he dropped the sword and began to gurgle, clutching at the links.

"You will not hurt him," she snarled in Romanian. "You will not—"

Voices were calling from some other part of the building. Human voices, coming closer, high-pitched. Flames from the broken lamp found a swathe of purple silk and leapt all the way to the ceiling.

Kimber Turned to man. He picked up the sword of the sanf inimicus, fire a glorious bright halo behind him, and pierced the heart of his enemy with one short thrust.

Mari released the body. She caught the earl by his arms and kissed him, a kiss so rough and sudden it hurt, and tasted of blood, and he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her back harder still.

A new human staggered to the doorway, a man in a uniform with a metal badge on his chest, his hand cupped to his face.

"Oy! You there! You two!" He glared frantically about the room. "You've got to get out of here!"

She pulled away, panting, her chest and stomach wet with the blood that still flowed from a hole too near his heart. By then the man had darted into the room, followed by another, both goggling from the lump of the fellow on the floor to the two of them, naked amid the flames.

"I can't Turn," she said to Kimber, under the gathering roar of the fire. "I've tried. I'm trapped like this."

"Come on!" cried the second man. He stooped to grab the body of the sanf Kimber had stabbed, dragging it along from under the arms. "Follow me!"

Kimber wiped a hand absently across his chest, smearing the red into channels with his fingers. He looked down at his palm with his blond hair in his face and then back up at her. Smoke lifted black and coiled around him, clouded into her lungs.

She coughed with both hands over her mouth, managing to ask, "Can you fly?"

His lips curled into something that was not a smile.

"Bloody hell," shouted the first man, back by the door, "what's the bloomin' matter with you two?"

The fire consumed the ceiling. It made a merry frame around the door. The man pulled back and vanished, and Kimber Turned, and Maricara climbed, chains and all, upon the powerfully broad back of her mate, the Alpha dragon, hooking her legs above the bones and leather of his wings.

She twined her fingers into his ruff. She clenched her thighs and ankles and hid her face between her arms as he twisted around with one smooth, powerful movement, his tail striking the outer wall.

Plaster sloughed away; burning embers whirled; brick went to dust. He hit the wall again, and again, and then there was a hole there, larger and larger, and fresh air, and the night.

Kimber clambered through it, his golden claws shining with firelight.

And all the people gathered around the blazing, elegant, gray-faced building set back on this mannered street in Threadneedle began screaming once more.

She kept her head down for most of their flight. The summer wind felt remarkably chill against her unclad body, but Kimber was warm, and that made it all right.

Maricara turned her cheek to his neck. She closed her eyes and traced her fingers along the pattern of scales that flowed from his jaw to his shoulder, discovering perfect symmetry, the rhythmic pull and release of his muscles beneath, magic made actual flesh.

I love you. The words circled through her, a magic just as potent as the body beneath hers. You're strong, you're going to live. I love you.

Drop by drop, one single splash of crimson at a time, his blood fell in silence down to the distant curve of the earth.

Such a silence also lived in the shire. It was as if with the loss of Kimber's blood—with the loss of his brother, and the maiden—nearly everything bright and vital had drained from the land as well.

The earl, naturally, did not die. His skin grew very pale; his face took on the smooth, hardened cast of ivory. He spent time alone in his quarters, more time than he clearly wished. She heard the servants whispering about it from their nooks and crannies in the mansion, how he directed the tribe from the darkness of his sanctum, how he would eat only sparingly, and sleep in short hours at a spell, day or night, in either his bed or hers.

She knew that already, of course.

He was powerful, and stubborn as she was, and he would survive. But he would need time for healing, and time had become the fresh new enemy of the drakon. No one knew when or where the sanf inimicus would next strike.

Darkfrith was a machine that slowly lumbered into gear for war, and Kimber still stood at its helm. The protections that had been in place before were strengthened, layered throughout the land from house to house and soul to soul. No one traveled alone here, not any longer. Not even Maricara. She'd told the earl and then his council of Rhys, and of Zane, and of Lia and the diamond. She'd even gone back to the place of her capture by carriage—she could not yet fly—but just as Zane had said, Rhys was gone. Neither she nor any of the drakon men with her had been able to unearth a hint of him.

And she had tried, more than once, to tell Kimber something else. Mari would sit opposite him in his bedchamber, the two of them dining by candlelight or daylight, or by the grace of the moon. Her head would lower; her lips would begin the words that had come so easily to her in that London dream of red sky and stars: I love you. But something always managed at the last second to strangle her short. She gave herself a thousand excuses, that he looked too weary, or too distracted, or that too many people interrupted them at all hours, family, physicians, council members.

And every time, it was as if he knew. She'd summon her nerve and lift her head and open her mouth and every time, no matter what he was doing, he'd pause and look back at her, fixing her with a gaze of light, fervent green—and her voice died in her throat.

She did not like to consider herself a coward; she'd said and done things far bolder than this, certainly. Yet the Earl of Chasen kept so beautiful, so somber and apart. Even as they shared a bed and their bodies, she felt the distance yawning between them, a chasm she could not manage to bridge, at least not with words.

There were occasions when she'd glimpse him in some ordinary moment—pulling on his coat; sharpening a quill with a penknife, tiny shavings curling paper-thin around his fingers—and feel as if she'd surely suffocate if she couldn't speak what was in her heart.

But she didn't. He never seemed to mind at all.

It took her nearly a week to regain the Gift of dragon and smoke. A week of being forced to travel only on human feet, to witness the mansion and the village and the woods from always this same human level. Mari walked whenever she could, burning off the restive energy that seemed stored up in her legs, swinging her arms hard with every step, letting the sun gradually heal the faint red lines that encircled her wrists.

It frightened her more than she would ever admit to think she would linger forever in this state. Whenever she attempted what had nearly always come so easily to her—vapor, animal—what happened instead is that the faint, sultry notes of Draumr resurrected around her, sent those tendrils of music to sink into her once again, binding through her until her very cells froze solid.

Zane was gone. Draumr was gone, both consumed by flames or the anonymous London night; none of the drakon sent to the city afterward had been able to discover a trace of them, either. But it seemed that neither man nor stone would let her forget that instant in the brothel, four languorous words spoken nearly under his breath: You will not Turn.

It was somewhat ironical that now that the dragons of Darkfrith soared with less secrecy than ever in their history, Maricara was kept fettered by her own body to the ground.

Damned Zane, and damned diamond. In fact, damn the whole world. All she'd ever wanted was to be free. And now, with Kimber secluded and her talents no longer so wondrous and rare, she found that her freedom became more of a burden than imprisonment ever was. Even the sky seemed both leaden and beyond her, clogged with gauzy bleached clouds that arched high above, only to bend with the weight of the horizon to smother the far-flung hills.

On the sixth day of her incarceration in her human shape, she took quill and ink and a sheaf of papers out to the pavilion of seasons. She sat on the swept marble floor and attempted to compose a letter to her brother, her skirts massed about her in a bubble of silk and lace, the beds of her nails slowly staining India black.

The broken pillar had yet to be repaired. Whenever her gaze drifted to it, it seemed to grant a sideways grin back at her, as if a giant had come and taken from it a single bite.

Once, only once, she heard the thrush again. Her head lifted; she brought up a hand to ease the sudden crimp in her neck and her eyes now fell upon the manor, the line of glazed windows that led to the earl's balcony. The feathered gargoyle, sneering his limestone sneer.

Kimber was standing there on the balcony gazing back at her, his forearms braced against the railing, his weight on one leg. Ivory and tousled gold, a shirt that ruffled in an upsweep of breeze. He stood unmoving, watching her.

Like the little girl from the woods Mari had espied that bright afternoon not so long ago, she lifted a hand to him. But the earl only straightened and walked away.

Mari sighed and glanced around her at the crumpled balls of paper she'd made from her seven botched attempts to explain to Sandu all that had happened. But she could not explain it; she hardly understood herself all the undercurrents tearing at her life, and the leader in her was loath to put too much into writing anyway.

There were a few things she did have a firm grasp upon, however.

One thing, at the very least.

She gathered her papers and quill once more. She went back inside the manor house.

She found him not in his chamber but hers, slouched in the chair someone had brought in to replace the broken Chippendale. This one was smaller, upholstered in blue and green and even more spindly delicate than the last. She doubted if one of its legs would even nick the door.

"Comfortable?" she asked him, as she leaned against the iron frame.

"Not very." He didn't look up from his contemplation of his shoes. "I can't imagine for whom they construct these things. I've seen kindling sturdier than these arms, and the cushion's so slick I can hardly stay in place."

"Tiny human ladies," Mari said. "Who take tea in sunny parlors, and nibble celery and twigs, and drink lemon water for dinner. They never fear sliding upon anything."

"Ah, that explains it. Perhaps all I need is a bit more lemon water in my diet."

"You'll be very hungry as you watch me dine on bread and wine. And I won't share, no matter how nicely you plead."

The corners of his lips lifted a little; his gaze remained lowered. Three of the seven candles in the candelabra were lit; they cast a false warmth across his cheeks. "I appreciate the warning. Although, 'tis a pity, since I've lately been thinking on how to polish up my pleading."

Mari entered the cell. She placed her belongings on the desk behind him, coming so close her pannier brushed his sleeve. He did not move.

It was not yet time to sleep, and not yet time to dine, not even tea and celery. She eyed the bed and then his back. The bandage wrapped around his chest shone a paler white beneath his ironed shirt.

She'd often touched it in the night. She would stroke her fingers across the linen wrappings, using all her tricks and senses to gauge his injury beneath, searching for fever, or infection, or even pain. But his heart always beat calm and constant against her hand. Nothing slowed it, not even slumber.

She sat upon the edge of the bed. She began to remove her pumps.

The earl said, "Why haven't you left yet, Maricara?"

She angled a glance up at him from beneath her lashes. His smile had become much more dry.

"You were so eager to do so before. I've the feeling twenty thousand dragons could not stop you if you really wished it."

"They tried very hard," she said, after a moment. "Two of them nearly caught up."

"Two! What stalwart fellows. I'll have medals struck for them."

"You're very harsh."

"No," he said. "Merely tired. And more than a bit at the last of my reserves." He rubbed a finger along the line of his nose, then raised his gaze to hers. "Why haven't you left for home yet, Princess Maricara of the Zaharen?"

She removed her second shoe, holding it in her hands. It was high-heeled and pink and the buckle was silver filigree, and her ink-stained nails looked very common against it.

"I did discover something more in London," she said to the pump. "More than Zane, or the delis inimicus."

Kimber's voice sharpened. "What?"

"I discovered," she turned the pump slowly over and over in her hands, "that. ..I would surely die without you."

He paused. "How gratifying. I agree that I was somewhat useful in rescuing you, but I've no doubt you would have managed to determine a way out of it, Your Grace, had I not shown up."

"No." She looked up at him. "I mean, yes—probably. Eventually. But what I meant was, I love you. I discovered that I love you."

He stared at her, unreadable. He seemed very large and male in the satin-lined chair.

"You needn't gawk at me like that," she said, defensive. "It's true."

"Sorry. I find that I'm.. .I'm rather without words."

"Love," she enunciated, leaning forward from the bed. "I love you."

"Women in love typically don't flee the object of their affections. Not even drakon women."

Mari shrugged. "Well, I told you. It happened in London."

He began, softly, to laugh. He brought his hands to his face and drew his palms down his cheeks; she realized anew how pale he was, how handsome and haggard. His long hair captured the light in lion colors, gold and wheat and palest dun.

She set the pump aside and slid to her feet. She crossed to him and dropped to her knees, taking his hands in hers.

"I didn't want to be in love with you. I didn't want to believe in love at all. It's never happened to me before. And to be perfectly frank, I'm still not entirely happy about the whole thing. I think—it's going to be exhausting. You're domineering and devious and I've noticed that whenever we're not kissing, I wish we were." Her voice had grown nearly plaintive; she stopped and cleared her throat. "It's a damnable situation. I don't know what to do about it."

He eyed her from the chair. "I'm pigheaded, too. Pray don't forget that."

"Certainly not. It was the next thing I was going to mention."

"My sweet, your notion of love is unique, to say the least. I wonder that you haven't written me sonnets already. Something like 'Ode to the Blackguard.'"

"I don't know what a sonnet is. But I wouldn't use the word 'blackguard,' precisely."

"It's a poem. Nothing." He looked down at their hands, her fingers tight over his. His mouth took on a strange slant. "What word would you use, then?"

"To best describe you?"

"Yes."

"A single word. Let me think." She sat back on her heels, drawing her fingers slowly free; his feet were caught in her skirts, motionless between her knees. "I would say 'mine.' 'Ode to the One Who Is

Mine.'"

He shifted. His feet pulled back and he bent closer, his eyes taking on a new cast, burning and intent beneath their brown lashes. "Are you thinking of kissing me now?"

"Well—since you mentioned it."

Without taking his gaze from hers, he lifted her hand. His lips lowered, not touching her skin, just enough so she could feel the warmth of his breath across her knuckles.

"And now?"

"I had no idea you were such a flirt."

He brought her hand to his cheek, her fingers bent. He closed his eyes and released a shaky breath. "I think I have the remedy to your situation."

Mari rose up and pressed her lips to his.

"You were taking too long," she murmured, and that won a new smile from him, a taut curve against her mouth.

He buried his fingers in her hair. The kiss lengthened, deepened, until her chest went tight and her own breath was less than steady, and the dragon inside her that wanted to come was a jig and a fever beating quick through her veins. She pulled away, offered him her own dark smile, and at last—at last!—Turned to smoke.

The bed was only feet distant; even as smoke she could ruffle the blankets a little. She Turned to woman atop the mattress, gathering the crisp cool cotton in her hands, burrowing into the sheets. She tossed back the covers for him with a flourish as he stood by the chair, watching.

"My Lord Chasen. Would you mind very much just closing the door on your way over?" Maricara asked him.

He didn't mind at all.

The candles burned down to stubs. She was awake for that, although Kimber was not. He was stretched out on his good side, truly asleep, when the last flame smoldered into orange, and then black. For a few lazy minutes afterward the air carried a slight, acrid tinge that gradually dissipated back into more neutral stone and cloth and honey. And him.

She thought she'd never grow weary of that, his scent. Of how when she rubbed her face against his shoulder he was scented of her too, and that was a very fine thing.

"Lower," he said.

"What?"

"Try that a little lower." Kimber rolled to his back, reaching for her, his palms skimming up her arms. "Dear Princess. I'm putty in your most capable hands."

"Hmm," she said, exploring. "I hardly think so."

His laugh was a pleasing rumble. "Well.so to speak."

She found his bandage again, sobering, feeling the ridges of his rib cage, the heat that rose steadily from his smooth skin.

"I don't know how these matters are supposed to go," she said finally, in the dark. "I was raised amid mountains and the Milky Way. But it seems to me that if a lady tells a gentleman she is in love with him, even if she's actually just a serf, he ought to either reciprocate the emotion or else leave the room."

"Oh? Is there not a third option? Perhaps, say, a thorough ravishment instead?"

"That is hardly gentlemanly. And I don't think you should call me Princess any longer, either. I'll be a countess, I suppose."

"No, beloved. Remember? A king."

"I'll settle for queen."

"Queen Maricara. I like it."

She found his shoulder, muscle and solid shape, a feathery caress up to his jaw. He turned his head and kissed her fingers.

"I'm still waiting," Mari said.

"I beg your pardon. Ahem. My sweet lady of grace, I do most devoutly admire, cherish, and adore—"

She pushed away from him. "Never mind. If you can't take it seriously—"

He stopped her with one hand, pulling her back down to him. Both arms lifted to keep her there, sprawled half across him, the sheets a tangled mess at their hips.

"I love you," he said softly. "Black dragon, so much. I do love you. I." She felt his fingers at the small of her back, restless, stroking up and down. "When you disappeared—when I thought they had taken you, and then when I found you there in that room, I."

She said nothing, only laid her cheek to his chest, listening to his voice come from inside him, hushed and deep.

"I don't remember as much of it as I should. All I really recall is your face. The fire. Those men." "You were very brave," she whispered.

He gave a short laugh. "Did you think it bravery? 'Twas only madness. The beast losing control." "I think," she said, "we were all a little mad back there."

His hands fell still, warming her back. "Things are about to get worse. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, Kimber. I do."

"Nothing can happen to you. Not ever again. When I saw you on that bed—the chains, and those bastards—"

He did not speak for a long while. She lay hushed now, her body rising and falling with the force of his respiration.

"Nothing must ever happen to you," was all he said at last.

"It will be difficult." She lifted her face to his neck. "The delis are sly, and widespread. But you were right before. We're stronger together than apart."

"I don't want this war," he said, rough. "I don't want to fight anyone, not the Zaharen, not the Others. I want to live in a world with you like the one I grew up in, one with families and laughter and the very best of secrets to bind our hearts together, but that's gone now. Rhys is gone, and more of our kind than I care to count."

"We will win."

"Do you think so?" She felt him shake his head. "It seems all I dream of is blood and death, my brother's face. That missing girl. And when that happens, I awake wanting only vengeance."

"Justice," she said.

"Death." He pulled a pillow from beneath him, tossing it hard aside.

Mari pressed her hand to his chest. "This is who we are. This is how we survive. They hunted us first; it's always been that they hunt us first. But we will be the ones to end this, my lord. I promise you that."

"I want to believe you. I wake, every goddamned day—"

"Yes," she interrupted, serene. "I know very well what it's like to wake from nightmares. It helps, very much, to have the one you love at your side when that happens."

His sigh lifted her high; as he exhaled his arms wrapped closer around her.

"Say it again."

"I promise we'll win."

"No." He rolled them back aside and raised to an elbow, his face touching hers, his hair draping soft and aromatic against her throat. "Tell me you love me."

"I love you, Kimber Langford, Alpha of the drakon. I love you."

"Then that's enough," he whispered, his lips to her cheek. "That will keep me believing."

1 August 1782

Your Grace:

Others come. Prepare for Invasion.

—M.