The Dragons' Chosen (17 page)

Next to me, Chris breathed out what sounded like a prayer. “Oh! My! God!” I could feel her body shaking as she reached for my equally trembling hand. Her breath caught as she whispered in my ear. “This is too weird.”

Chapter 23

The smell of cooked food and the hot, smudgy odor of burning oil from tapers hit my nose. The men sat clustered around a rough-hewn table, their voices raised in argument. In the quiet of the cave, my name carried clearly up to me, echoing off the stone walls. Below, one man paced and three others stood in a toe-to-toe discussion, red-faced with anger or frustration. One sat with his head bowed in his hands. Before him was what looked to be a meat stew. My stomach growled.

I watched them; those men who were and were not men. Strange creatures for whom I had been brought all this way—across forest, fen and mountains, believing that my death was the end. I fingered the golden lace under my hands, a bridal dress. Oh yes, I was prepared to face them.

I picked up a hefty rock, turning it in my hands as I looked down at these creatures. These vile beasts that had deceived my father, my land and me. I levered myself up, took aim and heaved the stone down onto these…these…whatever they were. It clattered and thumped down into the lower cavern, bouncing along until it rolled to a stop in front of one of them.

Chris handed me another large stone. “You missed.” Her voice echoed. Below was sudden silence.

The men looked up then, scanning the rocks where Chris and I hid.

The enormity of what I had done hit me. I could hide no longer.

I rose, and as my feet found the stairs, Chris carefully followed in my wake like the perfect lady-in-waiting.

Never had I made an entrance like this, bruises on my arms, my hair in a single braid, grime beneath my nails, and my dress stained and wrinkled. I raised my chin high, taking each step as if a room full of admirers awaited me, and not the monsters below. They were clearly unsettled. I had to assume I wasn’t supposed to know they were men who could turn into dragons. Or perhaps they weren’t accustomed to having rocks thrown at them.

One of them cleared his throat and the noise echoed. My breath caught. Too many of them, all large, hair the shades of fallen leaves, sleeked neatly back, looking like court nobles and not the beasts I had just seen. Five sets of eyes followed my descent more intently than at any arrival to a formal ball. Chris clung close behind, whispering something I couldn’t make out.

I took another step. We were cold and famished. They had a fire. The scent of roasted food emboldened me, and the trickery, the months of infuriating trickery, enraged me.

My eyes locked onto each man. Standing forward was a tall, well-muscled man with dark intense eyes; alongside him was a bull of a man, with broad shoulders and a determined chin. A slender youth sat at a crude wooden table, his leg jiggling nervously. Another man, with a thin mustache, perhaps twelve years my senior, leaned whispering in his ear.

There would be one more. I knew that
he
was there, the man who’d rescued me from the wolves, the bard who wrote and sang a ballad to my name before I’d left my home.

Trill.

As we stood high above them, I could hear them speaking softly among themselves. Still I questioned, what was this, a ruse, some further deception? But underneath my questions, I knew why I was brought here.

Our echoing steps announced our arrival. I refused to drop my calm, my facade of control. No longer did I believe that I would be fed to the dragons. I would live. All my tears, my nights of terror were for naught. I’d been played for a fool. With my every footfall I grew angrier, my fears pushed to the background in the face of this hoax. I scanned the men; yes, there were five of them. Five men with tawny skin, loitered about the cave floor, replacing five jewel-colored dragons.

Four more steps to the bottom of the stairs, and then four more to stand facing them. Surrounding them, decorating the caves like silent sentinels, were columns of stone, several rising up from the ground, and others hanging like icicles from the ceiling.

There, standing somewhat back, I saw him, the same man who
found
me in the wood not but a week ago. The bard, Trill, the man who gave me the knife and the ever-so-cryptic sendoff. They were one and the same. Two of the others I recognized also, the youth and large bull-shouldered man. The clever minstrels who had performed that night so many months ago, a lifetime it seemed, singing and playing, while I prepared for my death. Now they stood here looking as if there had been some slight misunderstanding, a mere oversight about my true fate. Trill, at least, had the decency to appear anguished and on edge. My eyes narrowed as I looked them over. Whatever they were planning, I wanted these men, if such they were, to end up sorry they had played it at my expense.

One of them, the tall imposing man with dark eyes, stepped forward, offering me his hand. “Welcome, Princess Genevieve, and—” he glanced around to Trill as if to confirm something “—of course, the Lady Chris.”

Yes, Trill knew Chris’s name, remembered her from our
tete-a-tete
among the wolves.

I slapped his hand down. They all jumped.

“How dare you think to touch me.”

Next to me, Chris whispered, “Oh shit.”

Though his eyebrows drew down in anger, he raised his hands in sublimation. “You have much to be…confused about, but—”

“But naught. Only a knave would bring me here. I’m a Princess and you are but a—”

The tall man regained his composure, putting on an impressive facade. “King,” he finished for me.

My eyes narrowed at this new information. “In my realm, no noble would behave so ignobly, but then my father set a high standard of chivalry.” Chris, standing behind me, grabbed my bodice sleeve. Over and over, she whispered, “This is a test, this is only a test. If this had been a real emergency…”

Though his face grew hard, he ignored my outburst, as if dealing with a child. “This has not been the best reception for you, I fear, but we are eager to make it up to you.” He smiled, though it was a meager thing. “Please, sit, eat. We will explain.”

I stood where I was, unsmiling. Chris fidgeted at my side.

One of them grabbed two trenchers laden with what smelled like venison stew and offered them to us.

Trill spoke low. “Please.”

Chris and I walked past our dark-eyed host. I pulled my skirts to the side as I passed Trill and sat on a stone seat. It was hard not to wolf the food down. I was well aware how I looked, donned in a now-crinkled gown of gold and white, my hair bedraggled. I mentally dared anyone to speak of it. I took my knife out to eat, the knife Trill had given me a lifetime ago. It was all I could do not to stick it in his arm.

Once I gathered control over my voice, I spoke. “Very well, feel free to clarify this situation. I have journeyed long to hear this. No one could be more fervent to understand than I.” I brought the wooden spoon up to my mouth and began to eat. They relaxed, and two of them even had the effrontery to make as if to sit also.

“I did not give you permission to sit in my presence.”

After a moment’s quiet, I reconsidered. I must deal with these…men. “You have the advantage of me,” I started. “Perhaps we should begin with introductions. You know my name and why I am here.” My voice held an edge.

The dark-eyed man glued his smile back on, pointing to each man in turn. “Let us remedy that immediately. I am Hugh Buchan, King of Pritorous, and these are my brothers, Tristan and Piers.” Tristan avoided my eyes, and Piers, the youngest, went back to jiggling his leg. “And,” Hugh continued as if nothing had happened, “my cousins, Dukes Rauf and James.”

As he introduced them, the large shouldered man bowed, as did the mustachioed man.

Tristan, not Trill. He had even lied about his name.

Hugh spoke, breaking through the tension in the air. “We wish to apologize for the inconvenience to you. I know this has been very trying and…” Here he hesitated. My eyebrows rose in disbelief. Apparently, he thought he could just brazen through this with some pat speech.

At my look, he started again. “We regret any distress you might have experienced.” Beside me, Chris almost snorted her food through her nose. I ignored her. She would never make a lady-in-waiting—not enough personal restraint.

“Certainly, we wish to make clear that we offer you no harm, and will take every effort to make you comfortable from here on in our journey.”

“I beg your pardon?” I curved my lips into a smile, but I’m sure it looked as if I were baring my teeth. “What did you say?”

“You are in no danger,” he said, as if thinking to reassure me.

“No,” I said, slowing my speech to make sure he would understand. “It is the second part of your statement that I am questioning.” Every fiber of my body hung in stillness, a bell waiting for the clapper to strike.

“That we need to leave soon? The weather can be tricky if we get early winter storms.”

My hand hovered over my trencher, frozen as I listened for the answer. “And what is that to me, might I ask?”

He glanced over at his kinsmen. I could see them shifting nervously in the torch light.

In the silence that followed, I waited, biting my cheek to remain quiet, forcing them to answer.

He looked less than pleased to have to tell me this. “You are the chosen bride.”

Chapter 24

I stabbed my knife into my plate, where it stuck fast. All the men jumped. Chris’s trencher clattered onto the cave floor. The echo went on forever.

The youngest, Piers, I believe, whispered, “I told you we should have listened to Grandmother.”

It was some moments until I was finally able to speak civilly. “So this was all a ruse, a plot to snare a royal princess.” My throat ached with the urge to scream at him.

“No, no,” he said, “not a plot. Part of a negotiated agreement, a compact we have with your people.”

My jaw hardened. “Are you saying that my father lied to me? Let me believe I was to die?”

Tristan finally spoke. “None of the monarchs were…privy to the minutiae of this agreement. We only spoke with the church leaders—in your kingdom, her name was Mother Morigan.”

I allowed myself a quick look at the bard, Trill—no, Tristan—and the two other musicians from months ago. Tristan stared intently at the ground while Piers and Rauf, their eyes wide and mouths gaping, seemed quite captivated by the discussion. So this was a hidden agreement tightly controlled by the priestesses, circumventing the kings entirely?

“And how do yon musical merrymakers fit into this?” I jerked my chin toward the three men.

“Someone had to find the perfect princess, someone to deliver the bride-price to the church.” Hugh smiled now, nodding. “Otherwise, how would we know whom to choose?”

I stared at him in disbelief. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would be in the least diplomatic.

He shuffled his feet unobtrusively. “Perhaps we should start at the beginning.” He looked as if he was treading carefully. “We are from far away, across these mountains.

“Your presence here is the fruition of a compact, one between your people and ours for the last eight hundred years. The treaty allows us to choose a princess, a bride, to become queen.” Hugh smiled at me.