The Queen's Dance (Emerging Queens) (2 page)

Chapter Two

The healing burn of the sun pinned Margery to the ground. Her eyes wouldn’t open, but she could see the blazing orange from under her lids. She’d been saved. Pressing her cheek against the sun-warmed grass, she took a deep breath of fresh air for the first time in a week. Coughs racked her body. She was still so weak. A tear leaked out of her eye.

“Please don’t cry,
chérie
. You’re safe here.”

That was the lake dragon. The one who’d helped rescue her. Margery’s hands clutched the ground. She was no longer on the water, trapped in a smuggler’s hold hidden under the deck of a yacht. No longer lying in her own waste, dying a slow and painful death.

“Where am I?” she asked, her words coming out as a strangled whisper.

“You’re at my home in North Hero, Vermont. It’s very private here.”

He had a sexy way of talking. French Canadian accent, if she wasn’t mistaken. It was comforting, nonthreatening. Margery stretched as the healing sunbeams sank into her core.

“Your kidnappers have been brought to justice.”

They were more than kidnappers. In return for pimping Margery out to Champ, they had wanted him to turn a blind eye to their smuggling operation on his lake.

The doll!

Margery bolted upright and regretted it immediately. “Where is it?” she cried. The sun blinded her, but she didn’t care. She groped around with her hands.

“What?” he said, panic in his voice.

“The Smooshie.”

“What the hell is a—” Champ cut himself off and continued in a more polite tone. “I don’t understand, my Queen.”

Queen? Oh, right.

“The red dragon doll. I had it in my hand when you rescued me. It’s very important.”

“Uh, hold on. Let me check my truck.”

She heard him run.

Great.
He probably thought she was an idiot looking for her little dolly.

Rubbing her eyes, Margery tried to stand up. But her legs refused to obey her, muscles trembling as she strained to rise.

The pirates had grabbed her when her camera’s flash malfunctioned and went off while she was taking pictures of their illicit activity—stuffing the dolls with drugs. When they saw her, they tried to kill her. If she’d been human, they would have. But when the bullets tore into her, she had instinctively shifted into her sky dragon form.

She’d only been a dragon for three weeks. Actually, she had always been a dragon, but an ancient curse had stopped her shift at puberty and blocked her dragon magic. When that curse was shattered, all the suppressed Queens shifted into their true forms. It took a lot of getting used to. The first week, all she did was cry and break things. The second week she flew around the world over and over again until sheer exhaustion claimed her. By the time the third week rolled around, Margery figured she’d better get over herself and return to her career as an investigative reporter.

She had no desire to keep a dragon stud harem and lie around all day being waited on hand and foot. It sounded good on paper, but there was no such thing as a free meal. Those studs wanted babies, and she wasn’t ready to settle down just yet.

Shifting to a dragon made things weird; all the studs would want to mate with her if they caught scent of her. Luckily, she knew all about them—she had dated one before she realized that a dragon would never love a human. So when she shifted, Margery kept it to herself. She tried to go about her life as if she couldn’t turn into a mythological creature.

About the size of a VW bug, Margery didn’t have the sheer bulk to bully her way out of fights. Her dragon powers gave her exquisite vision, excellent flying skills, and the ability to camouflage herself in the sky—which was how she’d stayed out of sight, until she’d been reeling from the pain at having three clips from automatic rifles fired into her. Dragon or not, those bullets had hurt.

“Stay with me,
chérie
,” Champ called. “It’s going to be all right. I promise you.”

Margery managed to get up on her knees and then realized she was still very weak. When she tried to shift back to dragon form to hide in the clouds, the world went dark.

…

Remy saw the Queen fall and sprinted back to her. He picked her up in his arms and was at a complete loss over what to do next. If she’d been a human girl, he’d have tucked her into his bed and gone fishing. He’d come back in time to fix her supper, have a go-around in the sheets with her, and then return to the lake until she went home. It was a crappy thing to do, but it was the only way to manage the women who sought him out and keep them from becoming dragonstruck. He got lonely from time to time, so it didn’t bother him to take what they were offering. Most of them were only looking for bragging rights, and the ones that thought being a dragon’s mistress was glamorous and exciting got sorely disappointed after a few days of wilderness and fresh game.

But Margery was a Queen—the only Queen he’d ever touched, aside from his mother, who was the Loch Ness monster, although he hadn’t seen her in nearly a thousand years. No dragons had. The more vicious dragon politics became, the more he retreated into his peaceful solitude. Maybe his mother had done the same.

Lake Champlain had been his for almost two thousand years. When the Queens started to die out and no more females were hatched or shifted, Remy started taking a deeper interest in the people who lived on his shores and traveled on his lake. He thought the dragons’ end had finally come. For all that his brethren strutted and posed on the global stage as moguls and rock stars, their species would become as extinct as the dodo.

So he embraced the humans as his family.

They called him Champ and held parties in his honor. He was a fun tourist attraction, and for a while it was enough. Then it got a little boring, being idolized all the time. So he spent more and more time in the lake. Maybe he’d spent too long alone.

Margery made a frightened sound, and he tightened his hold and told her she was safe. She was incredibly compelling, this Queen in his arms. Light as a feather. Remy was afraid she was too delicate for this world. He swallowed hard and eased his grip. Part of him wanted to carry her off and wake her with deep, passionate kisses. Another part wanted to lock her away from anyone who would ever harm her again. Remy shook his head to clear it. It was her scent that was driving him crazy. He’d never been this close to a Queen. That was why she affected him like a lovesick virgin. Still, he couldn’t deny how lovely Margery was. She had tiny freckles across the creamy perfection of her skin. Long, ginger lashes rested on her cheeks, a lighter shade than the silky, red curtain of her hair that was draped over his arm. He could look at her for hours. When she’d crawled out of the yacht broken and half dead, he’d considered destroying all the humans in his sight. They had almost killed her by keeping her out of the light.

Remy looked up at the sky. He didn’t dare bring her in the house. She needed to be under the sun to heal. But he could at least make her more comfortable out here.

…

The world was still dark. But this time Margery’s eyes were open, and she could see pinpoints of lights in the sky. The stars. She took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of freedom. At some point Champ must have put a quilt over her. Tucked into her arm was the Smooshie.

“Are you hungry? You’ve slept for an entire day and night.”

She turned her head. He was sitting by a fire and cleaning a bucket of fish. In his human form, Champ was a solemn figure, handsome but not dazzling like the dragons she’d been lucky enough to score interviews with when she was a mere human.

“I lost a whole day? What day is it?” She could barely move, she felt so weak. “What month is it?” Margery had lost so much time in that ship’s hold.

“It’s Sunday night. You were rescued Friday morning. It’s June fourteenth.”

“June?” She sat up, steadying herself as her head spun. “It was the middle of May when I was captured.” Margery rubbed her eyes. “I was belowdecks for almost a month.”

Champ’s knuckles went white on the handle of the frying pan. “They will not ever trap you again. You have my word on it.”

Had anyone missed her? Her editor, definitely. Her sister, probably not. Certainly not her mother, not for another five to ten years anyway. Her friends would’ve just assumed she was hot on the trail of a story. It was actually a little depressing. She’d gone missing and no one really cared.

“You’ll feel better once you get some food and water in you.” He smiled at her, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe. Then he winked, and she felt her face flush. “I’d eat ’em still wiggling, but I figured you’d prefer them cooked,” he said, flipping the fish fillets.

Her stomach growled in answer.

“There’s a jug of fresh water by you. You should drink some, but go slow. You don’t want to be sick.”

Margery tucked the blanket under her arms and sat up. She took a long swallow of the sweet, clean water. “I want to thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

He winced. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner. I’ve been distracted, otherwise I would have sensed you on the lake. I just got back from Scotland. There was a credible sighting of my mother in Loch Ness and I went to investigate.”

“Your mother is…”
Nah, it can’t be.

Champ blushed. “Yeah, Nessie. It might have something to do with the curse being broken. Maybe she had been trapped.”

Margery shuddered. “I hope not.”

“Me, too,” he said. “The new Queens that have shifted have some unique powers the old Queens don’t have. Viola can track female dragons in the weave. When things die down, I’m going to ask her to locate my mom.”

“Is Viola here?” She had used her power to see into the weave, had sensed Margery’s suffering and rescued her. It was like dragon telepathy. She owed her life to Viola, too.

Champ shook his head. “She had other things to take care of, but she wanted to let you know they got all the men who kidnapped you. They’ll be in jail until their trial.”

“Good,” she said.

“How did they catch you, anyway?” He put the fish fillets in a cast-iron pan with a handful of onions. The smell had Margery swooning.

“Equipment malfunction.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that anything like a wardrobe malfunction?”

“No, but speaking of which, do you have any clothes I could put on?”

“None that would fit you, but I can give you one of my old shirts.” He frowned. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything that a Queen would wear.”

Margery waved her hand, dismissively. “I don’t care about that. Do you have a cell phone? I need to call my editor.”

“Nope. Not much cell reception around here. But I’ve got a BGAN laptop for emergencies. It’s in the house. I’ll get it for you when I get the shirt.”

“What’s that?”

“It connects to a satellite instead of a cell tower.”

“Can I use it?”

“I guess.” He shrugged. “Why do you need to call your editor?”

“I’ve been missing for a long time. I need to check in.”

“Don’t you want to call your family?”

Hell, no.
“We’re not close,” Margery said. There was the understatement of the year.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.” Margery tested her legs. The world tilted as vertigo hit her like a two-by-four between the eyes. “I’m all right,” she said when he stood up. She hobbled over to the log he was sitting on and lowered herself gingerly onto it. “Maybe I need a minute,” she said.

She took the opportunity to look him over while he was busy cooking the fish. He had eyes the color of the lake, slate blue and a little stormy. In his lake dragon form, he was all neck and head. In human form, he was all lean muscle wrapped up in flannel and jeans. Cinnamon-colored hair curled up slightly at his nape, and his profile was strong enough that he could have been a model for a hundred sculptors. He wasn’t dazzling, but he was interesting. In a world where dragon magic could transform his appearance to whatever he desired, she found she liked that he chose to look like a normal human. Margery’s face heated when he caught her admiring him. “Thanks again, Champ.”

“My friends call me Remy. I’d be honored if you would also.”

She smiled at the old-fashioned way he offered his name to her. “I’d like to be your friend.”

“I’d offer to shake, but I probably have fish guts on my hand.”

Margery put her hand on his shoulder and leaned in to kiss his cheek. He tensed under her hand and gave the barest of flinches when her lips brushed him.

“I’m sorry again,” she said, mortification flooding her. She moved away from him. “I didn’t mean to invade your space. I just am very grateful to be alive and under your protection.”

He gave a tight nod. “I’m not used to having company. I’ll have your dinner ready pronto.”

“Thanks.”

“Please stop thanking me. It’s my duty.”

Margery watched him toss the fish fillets over the heat, and in a few minutes he handed her a plate of blackened trout and a fork. He got up and went inside. She wasn’t sure if she should start eating without him, but the smell was too delicious for her to wait. She devoured it and washed it down with the rest of the water. Her stomach gurgled happily.

“Do you want some more?” Remy asked, returning with the laptop and a thick cotton T-shirt. He handed her the T-shirt and sat down next to her with the laptop, turning his body so his back was to her.

With a quick look to see if he was peeking at her in the monitor, she shook out the T-shirt. It would cover her like a tent, but it was something at least. She dropped the quilt and slipped the shirt over her head.

“No, dinner was delicious.” She pulled the hem down. It came to midthigh, and it smelled like the sky and Remy—a hint of pine and musk. Margery breathed deep, and it settled something inside her. “But I think I’d be more comfortable inside.”

Remy shook his head. “You need to be outside until you can shift into your dragon form. The sky heals you. I can get you an air mattress and some pillows.” He logged on to the computer, typing in a long password that she wouldn’t even attempt to try and remember.