Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

"Who was that?"

"A man who knew you."

Kim dropped his hand from the door. "'Once' is a very tricky word, Your Grace. It implies things shouldn't change, but they always do. I will let you out again."

"Shall I believe you?" she murmured. "Shall I trust you that far?"

"I'll stay with you, then. I'll sleep in the chair."

Her lips curved, just a fraction. Her lashes lowered. "It looks very uncomfortable." "I admit, the bed would be nicer."

"I don't require quite that much sacrifice. Find your own bed. Come open this door again in the morning."

"As you wish," he said.

But now that he had her here, exactly here where he needed her to be, Kim found himself perversely reluctant to let her go. He meant to release her in the morning. He did mean to. But the thought that she would be trapped down here, in that bed, alone, when he had already held her at night and warmed her body with his and kissed her shoulder in her sleep.

"Good night," Maricara said, and passed the threshold into the cell.

He didn't move. The train of her gown made a wide, blue circle upon the stone. She paused at the foot of the bed, her face angled back toward him, her head slightly bowed. She did not speak again, but only lifted a hand to unlace the stomacher to her bodice, using her finger and thumb to slowly draw the ribbon free.

Kim closed the door. He heaved the iron bar into its braces across it, then turned the iron key in its single-sided lock.

"Good night," he said.

It was foolish of them to put all these pretty things in here with her. It was foolish to try to make a prison into anything but what it was.

She sat at the end of the bed and eyed the ornate woodwork of the chair.

It would snap into splinters.

The candelabra—mashed flat. Wax smeared upon the walls. The tapestries shredded. The desk torn apart.

Only the safe looked like it belonged. It was ugly, the largest, most sturdy block of metal she'd been able to find. It might survive the night.

Her back ached. Her feet hurt. The candlelight burned her eyes.

She crossed to the flames and blew out all but one. Then she Turned to shed the gown, too weary to bother with the corset and tapes, and left it all in a heap where it fell. The valise contained her nightgown. It sifted like a white cloud down her body.

Barefoot, unthinking, she pinched out the final candle and realized at once that the English had not been so foolish after all. Without the candles, the Dead Room plunged into flawless black.

She might walk in her sleep, she might rage. But she would not be able to Turn.

Mari began to laugh. It was small and painful, a bubble in her chest that somehow turned into a smothered sob. She held it in by pressing her hands over her face.

In time, with her arms stretched out before her, she fumbled her way to the bed. It was not as soft as it first appeared; the sheets were cotton instead of satin, and the pillows gave off an aroma of long-deceased fowl.

None of it mattered. She closed her eyes and let the blessed darkness sink into her skin.

She slept without moving. He could feel her stillness, the solemn night wrapped around her, her absolute quiescence. The Dead Room was three floors below his own and half a wing over, sequestered from any other useful part of Chasen. It had been constructed near the heart of the house but sunk into the earth; the closest public space was the wine cellar. The hallway that led to it also led to the back gate of the manor, to a certain path that wound through the woods. Following that path for nigh an hour would lead to a field of bones at the end of it, bones charred and buried, the final remnants of the drakon outcasts strewn far from the tribe.

The princess took her rest in a cell brimming with ghosts, gone to her dreams with a peace that eluded him. He imagined her there on the bed he'd helped set up, between the sheets he'd smoothed flat with his own hands.

Rhys shifted beneath his covers, too hot, too aware. The down mattress felt suffocating. Her endless silence drove him mad.

He stared up at the ceiling of his room and wished for the same oblivion that had taken Maricara, or the outcasts.

His body would stop burning either way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We do not have any legends of brothers at war. Perhaps in our history there have never been any.

Perhaps if there were, the results were too dreadful to give voice. Our magic is in words and song and flight. Our savagery could rend the very fabric of the sky, sending the sun and all the bright galaxies spilling away like pirate's treasure poured into a white-frothed sea.

We were not meant to fight each other. We were not meant to use our Gifts in such a way.

But what better way for the Others to use us, to force us to work against ourselves? Without the drakon, all the precious stones and thick veins of gold, all the glories of the land and the blue promise of heaven would become theirs.

Such small, bitter beings. I don't know why we call them delicious.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The first child went missing that night.

Save the farms, most of the homes of the tribe were clustered in or at least near the village, which was the core of their commerce and community. It was large enough now almost to be called a town, but it had been known as the village since the beginning of their time, and no doubt would continue to be so, even if it ever rivaled London in size.

The girl's name was Honor Carlisle. Her father managed the silver mines that brought so much of the wealth to the shire. His name was Gervase; Kim had known him all his life. The Carlisles lived in a large, Elizabethan brick structure that used to be the gamekeeper's quarters, farther from the village than most. Honor was their only child.

According to everyone he spoke with, the girl was quiet, she was studious, she was obedient. She had few friends, but those she had swore they had not seen her. They also swore she had no special beaux, drakon or otherwise.

There had been a time when the notion of a maid of the shire linked in any romantic sense to a human male would have been almost unthinkable. But the way their traditions had been crumbling lately... he had to be certain.

Darkfrith had had no rain, but the dawn had come clouded, and the ground was dewed. The girl's footprints revealed she had left by the front door of her home, had crossed alone the long slope of the yard that ended at the road. The grass had grown brittle at its tips, slightly too long. It was easy to follow her trail that far.

The road led in one direction back to the village, and Chasen Manor beyond. The other direction led to the banks of the great River Fier, wide and flat and feeding fish and silt and swirling leaves all the way to the North Sea, miles distant.

Her scent said she walked to the river. And from there, she was gone.

She wasn't a child, really. She was almost fifteen, at the brink of the Turn, should the fates so choose to grace her. By the time Kimber had tracked her as far as he could, had convened and reconvened with the council and the elders and her panic-stricken parents, the sound of Maricara's relentless pounding against the door to the Dead Room hammered like a cold, hard knell throughout the mansion.

No one else had a key. There was but one, and Kim had put it on a ring, on a chain at his waist.

As he passed through the doors of his home, the longcase clock in the vestibule began its noontime chimes; it remained four seconds fast, no matter how it was wound. It was followed at once by all the other clocks in all the other chambers, forty at least, one after another. He'd wanted for years to put away at least some of them, but his sisters had protested. The servants were used to them; Chasen was the seat of a proud and noble family; all the best people had clocks. Better to keep up appearances, especially with the marquess and marchioness gone.

Their combined, jolly melodies going off every three hours made a mess of sound, rebounding off the marble floors and walls.

Maricara's fists striking her door nearly managed to drown them all out.

The majordomo hurried over to him across the black and white tiles, inclining his head.

"My lord, we attempted to contact you—"

"No doubt. I've been outside the shire."

"So we were told. I beg your pardon, Lord Chasen, no one was certain what to do about her. You did convey orders to leave her strictly alone, and without the means to open the door—"

"Yes, it's fine. Thank you."

Kimber did not rush to her. There were more servants watching, pale and observant, and he was Alpha, and so Kim did not rush. But he did make his way straight there, smoothing a hand over his hair as he walked, brushing an errant leaf from his coat.

He'd been dragged from his bed at daybreak. He'd thrown on clothes in the dark without waking his valet, and had been searching for the girl ever since. He was half-surprised to see he even wore boots of a matching color.

Closer to the Dead Room the noise evolved into something more like a muffled boom. There were no bulges in the door from her fists. It was four feet of iron, and even the strongest of drakon would have a hard time punching his way through that. But he could only imagine what the other side looked like.

Or, he didn't have to imagine. Kim hoisted the bar free, found the key on his chain, inserted it into its socket—the last boom echoed away—and pulled open the door.

She stood with her hair disheveled, two spots of pink high on her cheeks. Her eyes were glittering, her feet were braced apart—she wore a nightgown of sheer muslin; he could clearly see her figure beneath it, the colors of her dusky nipples, the dark triangle between her thighs, tantalizing curves—and in her hand was what had once been the smartly shaped cabriole leg of the chair, snapped clean at its base.

Maricara drew straight, her arm still cocked.

"Good morning," Kimber said. "Won't you join me for breakfast?"

She took a deep breath and spat something in that language he didn't understand, clipped and fluid, her chin rising.

"Kippers, I believe," he said. "And eggs, if you like. I'm sure there's some poached salmon as well." "Bastard!" That was in English. "I trusted you!" "It does seem to be a few minutes past morning—" "A few! I've been trying to get out of here for hours!"

He lifted his hands to her, palms out. "I apologize. Deeply. If you wish to Turn into a dragon and bite me, I won't stop you. I only request that you don't maim me first with the chair leg. It's been—a difficult morning."

He stepped back from the doorway. He made certain she could see she wasn't trapped, that the corridor was empty behind him, the faint tinge of daylight from the main hallway beyond lighting the minute cuts and grooves of the stone.

A shade of the hostility faded from her posture. Slowly her arm lowered, until the curved wood of the leg brushed the side of her calf.

The daylight didn't reach far into the Dead Room. Everything behind her was charcoal dark, the bed, the tapestries, the floor. In her gown of floating white, her tumbled hair, her porcelain skin, she gathered the light, became nearly incandescent.