Dragons Realm (32 page)

“I did not touch her be­fore I left the castle for the battle of Dra­cos Cove, nor have I lain with her since, and she is grow­ing rest­less, de­fens­ive, and des­per­ate. She’s been sid­ling up to the king, and he is start­ing to re­spond with curi­ous glances, not-so-in­no­cent touches, and in­ap­pro­pri­ate in­nu­en­dos. If she were to be given a vial of elixir at just the right time…if I were to leave her alone with my father…I be­lieve he would sire her off­spring, al­beit un­wit­tingly. From there, it would be a simple task to ma­nip­u­late her memor­ies, to con­vince her that the child was ours. I have already in­struc­ted my cook to put a few drops of the elixir in her morn­ing tea at the start of each day.”

Mina gasped, stunned by the rev­el­a­tion. “And you would do that for me?
For us?
”

“I would,” Dante answered without pre­amble, “and that brings me to my ori­ginal pro­pos­i­tion.” He stood once more, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and bent to grasp both of her shoulders in his hands. “As for my side of the trade, I would of­fer you im­mor­tal­ity, Mina Louvet. As soon as the child is born, as soon as it’s safe to trans­form you, I would make you im­mor­tal.”

Her jaw dropped open, but she didn’t speak.

She couldn’t.

Her head was still spin­ning in circles.

“If you would con­sent to be my lover, to come to me of your own free will, I would give you back the power of choice. You need only come to me when you choose to; you need only wel­come me out of de­sire; and you need only sur­render to my touch when you de­sire to share my fire.” He reached down to take her hands in his, raised them to his lips, and pressed a be­guil­ing kiss into the cen­ter of her palms, each one in turn, his pas­sion­ate sap­phire gaze never leav­ing hers. “And in re­turn, I will give you my fealty, as both your prince and your lover. I will be yours and yours, alone.”

Mina al­most gasped. She nearly staggered where she stood. “W-w-why?” she mur­mured re­flex­ively, stam­mer­ing the word. “For what pur­pose? I mean, what would com­pel you to of­fer so much? Im­mor­tal­ity, just to be your lover? Es­pe­cially when you could just com­mand it at any time?” She shook her head, know­ing there had to be more to the story. After all, she had poured out her heart to him just minutes ago, and the prince had glossed right over it.

He hadn’t even re­spon­ded.

He didn’t want her love. He didn’t want her heart. But he still wanted her body.

Why?

“What else would you ask of me, my prince? What else do you want in re­turn?”

Dante cupped her face in his hands and stared into her eyes un­til it seemed like he might just drown in their depths, and then he bur­ied his face in her hair and whispered husk­ily in her ear. “The gods know, un­til this very mo­ment, I was pre­pared to ask you to be the mother of
all
my sons, to agree to ful­fill the Omen. Yes, Mina, you are meant to be the mother of this realm, the one who helps me ful­fill the proph­ecy, and I was pre­pared to ask you to do it for your people, to do it for justice, to do it for Dragons Realm,
but
…” He drew back, turned to glance at Des­mond’s grave, and slowly ex­haled. “But in truth, there is so much more that I want.
Teach me to love
, sweet Mina. Bring me back to life. Show me once again how to dream. Wait for me, my Ahavi, for thirty-one years. Live as you must, sur­vive as you will, and one day, rule this realm be­side me as my queen.”

Mina felt the air rush out of her body, and she was cer­tain her heart would jump out of her chest. She drew back, wrest­ing her body away from his, and struggled to catch her breath. “Dante, I…I…” She felt like she was hy­per­vent­il­at­ing. “I hardly know what to say.”

He stepped for­ward, brushed the pad of his thumb along her quiv­er­ing bot­tom lip, and bent low to taste it. “Tell me you don’t love me,” he breathed into her mouth, “and I will never ask this of you again.”

She savored the hot, wild fla­vor of his kiss, rev­el­ing in the smoke that tinged his breath. After sev­eral heart­beats had passed, she mur­mured, “I can­not.”

“Can­not agree?” he asked.

“Can­not tell you I don’t love you.”

He nod­ded, and his smile il­lu­min­ated his eyes. “A long time ago, I told you that I wanted you be­cause your hair is like mine, as dark as the mid­night sky.” He ran his thumb along the side of her jaw, just as he had done that first day in the court­yard. “Your eyes are the color of em­er­alds, as rare as they are ex­quis­ite.” He clasped his hands be­hind his back and stud­ied her from head to toe, without apo­logy; once again, re­peat­ing the fa­mil­iar ac­tions. “You are beau­ti­ful,” he whispered, “and our sons will be strong.” Only this time, he didn’t stop there. “What I didn’t say that day—
what I couldn’t say that day
—was here is a wo­man who could cap­ture my
heart
. Here is a wo­man who is worthy of the same.” He took both of her hands in his and squeezed them, care­ful not to press too hard. “You un­der­stand duty and sac­ri­fice, Mina—you are as brave as you are in­tel­li­gent. You have the cour­age to lead, the strength to fol­low, and the wis­dom to know the dif­fer­ence. You just need to live for a pur­pose. You have already proven that you can sur­vive in a world full of war­locks,
shades
, and shifters; a world built by com­mon­ers, yet ruled by kings; and you have the tenacity to change it. You are a true daugh­ter of this realm, just as I am its true son.” He drew her into his arms and held her close to his heart. “I will al­ways live for my duty and my people. I will al­ways put the wel­fare of the Realm first. And I will
never
be­tray my royal blood, the
core
of my father’s tra­di­tions, or the lin­eage that makes me a dragon. But I don’t be­lieve I have to…not with you.” He re­garded her sheep­ishly then, crook­ing his neck at an un­nat­ural angle so he could clearly see her eyes, and the ges­ture was un­char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally boy­ish. “I will never be soft-hearted, sweet Mina, or gentle, or even tame. But I will be just and hon­est. I will be true and faith­ful. And I will be yours, my Ahavi, as much as I be­long to the Realm.” His voice dropped into a deep, lan­guor­ous ca­dence and prac­tic­ally hummed with con­vic­tion. “A dragon re­quires fire to re­an­im­ate, and a king re­quires a queen, not a slave, to tem­per his cal­loused heart. You have never been the lat­ter, so choose now to be the former, even if it’s thirty years away. Teach me to love, sweet Mina. Raise my son—
our sons
—to be brave, to be strong,
to defy what isn’t worthy of obeis­ance
. Let me be your Keep, and come to me be­cause you wish to learn, to live…and to love.”

Mina felt like she had fallen into a li­quid pool of ma­gic, of dark mid­night-blue eyes, like she had been swept away by the cur­rent of a mys­tical fire, and she was softly, sweetly drown­ing be­neath the swift, grace­ful un­der­tow of the dragon’s heart­felt words—and she wanted to just let go. She was ut­terly and com­pletely lost in Dante’s sav­age soul. Everything she had ever wanted was stand­ing right in front of her, and she couldn’t help but won­der at the sac­ri­fice it would take to pull it off, the cun­ning it would re­quire to be
this
dragon’s queen, the obed­i­ence and the danger that would come with his pos­sess­ive arms.

But it didn’t mat­ter.

Not at all
.

If any­one could do it, she could.

She was a Sk­la­vos Ahavi, after all, a wo­man born to serve the Realm.

“Yes, my prince,” she whispered sweetly, her tears fall­ing freely. “Oh, yes, Prince Dante…
yes
.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

The throne room

I
t was late
when Prince Dante and Mina re­turned to Castle Dragon, and the king, the other Ahavi, and Dante’s broth­ers were wait­ing for them in the throne room. Since Dante had bor­rowed Mina un­der the guise of giv­ing her sev­eral an­ti­quated scrolls to up­date and tran­scribe into War­lo­chian for him, and since the ma­jor­ity of the scrolls were kept in a se­cure, hid­den out­build­ing, a mile or two away from the main castle lib­rary, no one seemed too con­cerned about where they’d been, ex­cept…
per­haps
…for Cas­sidy. In truth, the king could not have cared less if his eld­est son had taken Mina Louvet out to the pas­ture to feed her to the wolves, just so long as he kept her alive long enough to birth Damian’s child, and if there had been some sort of im­proper dal­li­ance between them—
so what?
—just as long as it did not cre­ate fric­tion between the broth­ers or polit­ical un­rest in the Realm.

Slaves were slaves, after all.

King De­mitri scooted eagerly to the edge of his throne, the mo­ment they entered the hall, and bel­lowed, “Well, it’s about time! Are the two of you done ex­plor­ing the grounds?” He nar­rowed his eyes in bore­dom and im­pa­tience.

“For­give me, Father,” Dante offered humbly, of­fer­ing no fur­ther ex­plan­a­tion.

The king turned his at­ten­tion to Damian Dragona, who seemed ut­terly un­fazed as Mina hur­ried to his side and curt­sied apo­lo­get­ic­ally. De­mitri quickly har­rumphed. “Very well.” He ges­tured with his hand to in­dic­ate the other mem­bers who were present. “We were just con­clud­ing our busi­ness for the even­ing, dis­cuss­ing the im­port­ance of go­ing for­ward with the Au­tumn Mat­ing, if only for the king­dom’s mor­ale. I think it’s im­port­ant that we main­tain our sense of tra­di­tion and provide a formal present­a­tion of the mat­ri­mo­nial se­lec­tions and dis­trict ap­point­ments, give the people some­thing to cel­eb­rate.” He sat back in his throne and shrugged. “The battle of Dra­cos Cove was so…anxi­ety-pro­du­cing for some. They could use a pleas­ant dis­trac­tion.” He said it with such emo­tion­less tri­vi­al­ity that it gave Dante chills—
good lords,
the male had slain thou­sands of en­emies, yet he spoke of that day like it had merely been a walk in the gar­dens.

“Of course, Father,” he said, step­ping for­ward to the base of the dais, just be­low the throne, and tak­ing his right­ful place at the head of his broth­ers. “As al­ways, I will do whatever the Realm re­quires.”

King De­mitri nod­ded, seem­ingly ap­peased. “Good.” He waved his hand to dis­miss the en­tire sub­ject, clearly done with it, and turned his at­ten­tion to Prince Drake. “Your brother can fill you in on the de­tails later.” Prince Drake in­clined his head, and the king stood up to stretch his legs, his long purple-and-gold robe brush­ing against the floor at his feet. “If that is all, then you are all dis­missed.”

All three Dragona sons bowed their heads, even as Mina and Ta­tiana curt­sied, and then Cas­sidy Bondev­ille cleared her throat and took a brazen step to­ward the throne. “Ex­cuse me, Your Majesty, but I have some­thing I would like to an­nounce.”

There was a soft col­lect­ive gasp at her unadul­ter­ated gall, and Dante placed his out­stretched hand between his Ahavi and the king in a mock ges­ture of con­cern in or­der to usher her back. The king raised his eye­brows, and Dante waited, un­able to dis­cern whether the dragon was amused or in­censed, whether he would laugh at the prima donna’s antics or scorch her where she stood.

“What is it, wench?” King De­mitri said with a sneer, pub­licly re­mind­ing her of her place.

Cas­sidy blanched. “For­give me, Your Majesty: I know it is im­proper for a slave to speak in the pres­ence of her king, but”—she turned to gaze at Dante, and her eyes were filled with such false wor­ship and con­trived af­fec­tion that it al­most made him retch—“since Prince Dante is your eld­est son, I thought you would be pleased with my news.” She raised her chin and drew back her shoulders, vir­tu­ally beam­ing with pride. “I am with child,” she said smugly.

Mina’s eyes grew wide, and Dante bit his tongue, not know­ing whether to growl or chuckle. He stared at his all-power­ful father, still hov­er­ing be­side his throne, and swal­lowed his an­ger. He knew it was a pos­sib­il­ity. He knew things were head­ing in that dir­ec­tion. And he had even helped them along.
But
, it was still jar­ring to know that the king held him in such little re­gard, that after all these years, Dante had failed to earn even a modicum of his father’s re­spect.

So King De­mitri had bed his con­sort.

Un­be­liev­able.

The king turned a pale shade of green, and his eyes dar­ted nervously around the room like a guilty man’s: So, he wasn’t a fool, after all. The last time he had in­quired about Cas­sidy’s con­di­tion, Dante had said she wasn’t preg­nant, and the king had com­manded him to take care of the mat­ter as soon as they re­turned to War­lo­chia. Since a Sk­la­vos Ahavi can re­cog­nize her preg­nancy within a mat­ter of hours—
there was some deep in­tu­ition in their makeup
—some­thing had to have happened within the last thirty-six hours,
some­thing named King De­mitri
, and the mon­arch was just now real­iz­ing that if both he and Dante had bed her, then he might just be the father. Dante was at least ap­peased that the male looked sick.

Cas­sidy hur­ried to Dante’s side, ig­nor­ing his out­stretched hand, and curt­sied low be­fore him. “My prince.” She offered him her cheek, os­tens­ibly for a kiss, and he snarled.

“Are you sure?” he asked in a surly tone.

“Oh yes,” she whispered, look­ing curi­ously con­fused by his re­ac­tion.

Dante’s dragon reared its sav­age head, and for a mo­ment, he felt the urge to scorch her right there, to burn her flesh from her bones, melt her car­til­age to ash, and watch as she dis­in­teg­rated into so much re­fuse…as a pile of waste on the floor. It had noth­ing to do with her as a per­son—or a wo­man—truly, he could not have cared less. As far as he was con­cerned, she would bear an in­cred­ibly power­ful dragon, one he could now rear as a loy­al­ist. How­ever, his beast was not that cereb­ral or ra­tional. It only knew that the fe­male had dis­obeyed him, that she had strayed from her sub­missive role, and that she needed to be cor­rec­ted. He re­strained the im­pulse and ges­tured to­ward the throne-room doors. “Then I sug­gest you go to bed and get your rest.” He nar­rowed his eyes in com­mand, and she quickly scur­ried away, dart­ing out of the throne room.

Drake gave Dante a ques­tion­ing glance, and Damian pierced the si­lence with de­ris­ive laughter. “Noth­ing bet­ter than a way­ward bitch in heat,” he drawled rudely.

Dante spun around and glared at him, stunned by the un­ex­pec­ted out­burst as well as the un­canny re­semb­lance to the dragon he had known all his life. Prince Damian was in­deed King De­mitri’s son—even Mina looked taken aback. Be­fore Dante could spit out a re­tort, the throne-room doors swung open once more, and the tem­per­at­ure in the room dropped twenty de­grees. For a mo­ment, Dante thought it might be Cas­sidy re­turn­ing to stage a scene, in which case he was go­ing to have her head, but it wasn’t Cas­sidy Bondev­ille.

Oh great lords of fire
, it was not his Sk­la­vos Ahavi, but Wavani the witch, in­stead. And Ra­fael Bishop, the high mage of War­lo­chia, was close on her heels.

The couple looked in­censed.

*

The witch was dressed from head to toe in deep raven black. Her stiff, five-inch-high col­lar was turned brusquely up­ward; the tails of her pet­ti­coat flapped be­hind her like wings; and her harsh leather boots clicked nois­ily across the marble floor as she strode an­grily to­ward the throne. “Your Majesty!” she called in a shrill, witchy voice, ex­tend­ing a long, gnarled fin­ger to point at his guests. “This en­tire vis­it­a­tion is a trav­esty, and these mat­ings are a hoax.” She glared at Mina Louvet, and the Ahavi winced with fear.

The king looked ab­so­lutely stunned by her brazen en­trance as well as her cryptic words, and in true Dragona fash­ion, his first and only re­ac­tion was an­ger. “What is the mean­ing of this!” He threw up his hand in an of­fens­ive ges­ture and sent Ra­fael Bishop spiral­ing through the air, slam­ming into a column, and dangling above the floor, pinned by in­vis­ible stakes. There was no way he was go­ing to tol­er­ate such a bold ad­vance from an in­ferior male. Then he turned his at­ten­tion back to Wavani. “Have you lost your mind,
my coun­selor
?” re­mind­ing her of her place.

The witch shook her head
and smiled
as she con­tin­ued to ap­proach the throne, and Dante’s heart con­stric­ted in his chest. “No, Your High­ness,” she said with ar­rog­ant as­sur­ance, “but per­haps you have lost yours if you trust what you see.”

Dante’s dragon roared in­side as his fight-or-flight in­stincts kicked in.

Son of a Jackal!

The sor­ceress knew, and she was go­ing to tell the king!

In the space of a heart­beat, he sur­veyed the great hall and took in­vent­ory of all the play­ers: Drake was stand­ing be­side Ta­tiana, about thirty paces from the throne, and they were in the king’s dir­ect line of vis­ion, but they were far enough from the dais to es­cape if they had to. The prince would not un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing, and he would not have time to re­act as an ally. Hope­fully, he could save his un­born child.

Damian and Mina, on the other hand, were stand­ing to the mon­arch’s far right. They were at the bot­tom of the dais, maybe twenty paces away from the king, and he could reach them in the span of an in­stant. Bey­ond their prox­im­ity to the lethal dragon, they were three seconds too far from the doors, and two seconds too far from the nearest win­dow, as­sum­ing that Damian could re­act
in­stantly
and use his preter­nat­ural strength and speed to get Mina out of the hall.

In all real­ity, the king’s an­ger and his grief might be so great that he would strike at Damian first,
strike at Mat­thias Gentry
, and if he did, Mina would be caught in the cross­fire.

But Dante didn’t be­lieve that was how things would play out.

From where he stood, he be­lieved the mon­arch would elim­in­ate any po­ten­tial vul­ner­ab­il­ity, first. He would strike to his left in­stinct­ively, be­cause that was his weak side, his blind spot, and Dante was his greatest threat. If Prince Dante wanted to de­rail the haz­ard­ous situ­ation, he would have to strike at King De­mitri first.

The mo­ment he thought it, he dis­missed it.

The idea was ut­terly
ludicrous
.

It was crazy and sui­cidal.

King De­mitri was damn near a deity: all-power­ful, nearly om­ni­scient, and prac­tic­ally in­des­truct­ible. Dante would never stand a chance. The king would shred his throat, dis­em­bowel his innards, and wrench out his heart in an in­stant, be­fore Dante could even re­act. Not to men­tion, there would be a high mage and an angry witch at his back.

No
; the only way to dif­fuse this situ­ation was to go after Wavani and Ra­fael, to take them out be­fore they could ex­pose his treason. He sought Prince Damian’s eyes, know­ing his brother could eas­ily read his mind, and tried to alert him with a nod—but the witch was already speak­ing.

“My lord.” She bowed her head deeply, and then she snarled like a fiend. “Do not at­tack the mes­sen­ger. The child isn’t his!” In her frenzy, her eyes dar­ted around the room haphaz­ardly, and she screeched, “Hell,
he
isn’t
him
! The soul!
The soul is all
wrong
!”

Some­where in the back­ground, Mina let out a pet­ri­fied whim­per, even as Dante tried to lunge in Wavani’s dir­ec­tion, but his feet never left the ground.
So that’s why she had brought the high mage with her.
The witch and the war­lock were com­bin­ing their powers in or­der to cast a spell about the room—the air had con­gealed into mys­tical quick­sand, and the only be­ing un­af­fected was the king, who was much too power­ful to suc­cumb.

Dante could still move, but it would re­quire an enorm­ous ef­fort.

“What the hell are you say­ing, Wavani!” the king shouted, leap­ing down from the dais in one fell swoop. He glared at the hag with fe­ver­ish eyes, his dragon rid­ing per­il­ously close to the sur­face.

The witch threw back her head in frus­tra­tion and howled: “The boy is a bas­tard—”

“Shut your mouth!” the king shouted over her, and in the blink of an eye, he had the witch by her throat. Fum­ing, he hois­ted her off the floor, and his enorm­ous sculp­ted muscles bulged with un­res­trained fury.

What the devil?
Dante wondered, try­ing to make sense of the scene.

And then it sud­denly dawned on him:
Blessed god­dess of mercy
, the king thought Wavani was about to re­veal
his
secret, the fact that he had im­preg­nated Cas­sidy. After all, she was in charge of the Sk­la­vos Ahavi, the mat­ing, and the as­sur­ance of sac­red off­spring—and she took her role quite ser­i­ously.
The
mat­ings are a hoax.
The child isn’t his. The soul is all
wrong…

The boy is a bas­tard.

At this junc­ture, her words could still mean any­thing.

They still had a nar­row win­dow of
time.

For a split second, Prince Dante wondered if he should let the scene play out, stand back and watch things un­fold, see if his father would kill Wavani on his own, but it was far too much to hope for…

Ra­fael Bishop was already clear­ing his throat.

“My king…” the high mage drawled, us­ing his con­sid­er­able power as a war­lock to des­cend from the post, in spite of the tele­pathic re­straints. His eyes glowed de­monic red, and his cloak fluttered be­hind him as he floated to the ground like a specter.
“You need to listen.”
His eth­er­eal, malevol­ent voice re­ver­ber­ated through­out the hall like a chorus of moan­ing ghouls. “There is an enorm­ous de­cep­tion tak­ing place in this room.”