Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

And it was all for him.

Yes, Audrey happened to be born on the exact same day, of the exact same parents. But it was for Kimber, ever Kimber, that the tribe met to celebrate.

She'd not yet been able to Turn; that Gift hadn't come for another quarter year. So when she'd slunk from Chasen Manor she'd done it the human way, by foot, wearing black. She'd made it as far as the circulating library in the village before Rue smoked down to catch her.

The circulating library, at four in the morning. She'd been leaning with her back against the bowfront window, staring down sullenly at her feet. Nearly everyone was asleep at that hour. There were people still in the tavern, but they were drunk and it was at the opposite end of the village, and, as usual, no one noticed her.

One of the ribbons was torn free of its mooring; it made a very fine snake against the paving stones. She stood there, watching it flip back and forth with the breeze near the hem of her skirts. She was thirsty already, and she'd forgotten to bring anything to drink.

"It's late," announced her mother's voice, tranquil and just beside her.

And because she was thirsty, and because her little moment of rebellion had been quashed just that quickly, Audrey had sneered, "So?"

"So, nothing, actually." Rue kept back in the shelter of the awning above the library door. "I've always enjoyed the night myself. Quite useful for stealing about. What an interesting gown. It looks very much like one of the maids' uniforms. What did you do with the apron?"

"Nothing," she muttered. After a moment: "I'll sew it back on."

"Better you than I," said Rue, cheerful, because everyone knew how she hated to sew.

Audrey lifted her chin. "Well? Aren't you going to punish me?"

"I?" replied her mother. "Good heavens. What have you done?"

"This." She made a curt gesture to the village, the shuttered windows. "Running away."

"Ah. Do you consider this running away?"

And there was something there, some careful compassion in her voice that made Audrey's temper snap. "Yes, I do. Certainly it's nothing compared with you, the glorious Smoke Thief, but I daresay this isn't allowed—I pulled that banner down, yes, and I fully plan to pull down all the others, as many as I can—and I guarantee you that if I had an ounce of your Gifts I would have left this place in the dust."

Rue said nothing. Audrey was breathing hard through her nose, humiliatingly close to tears. The darkened street before her wavered and the music from the tavern became heavy with French horn.

Audrey had already extinguished the candle lantern in front of the library by the simple expedient of one well-aimed rock. When Rue stepped forward, it was into shadows.

"Do you imagine it will be easy for him?" she asked softly, placing a hand on her daughter's arm.

Audrey twitched free. "I don't care to discuss it."

"It won't be, you know. He's strong, and that's a very good thing, because being the leader of our kind is a burden that devastates the weak."

"Oh, yes indeed. Poor Kimber!"

"No. Poor Audrey, to have to watch and realize that she's as smart and as strong as her brother, but she'll never be allowed to live his life. She will grow into a beautiful young woman. She will fall in love and wed. She'll learn to fly—yes, my dear, you will; we're very alike, and I've given you that much, I don't doubt. But you will always be female." Rue lifted her hand to the night, examining the tips of her fingers, the turn of her wrist. "And perhaps—someday—Audrey will become more than the rest of us.

Perhaps she will convince her clan that the womenfolk deserve a firmer place than they have now. Perhaps she will succeed where her mother has not." Her arm dropped. "Kim's world is both less and more than yours. He'll never struggle as you do. He'll never learn as you. When your father was his age he'd already been forced to publicly kill two of our kind because they were threats to the tribe. To our survival. Is that the role you want?"

It was true; Audrey knew it was true. She glared down at the ribbon twisting over and over itself and shook her head.

"Your brother doesn't want it either," said Rue simply. "But he will do it. Violence, assassination. Lying, cheating, death. Whatever he must. Much like his twin, he was born with a tender heart, and the path ahead of him will do naught but darken it. I don't think you should envy him that. I don't."

All these years later, her mother's words echoed in her ears, Rue's matter-of-fact tone, her fleeting touch. Audrey looked at her twin standing now in the grand black-and-cream ballroom of Chasen Manor, bright with the fretwork of amber inlay and leafed gold and the faces of their kin, as many as could cram into the chamber, and that was a great many.

One-half a whole. He stood atop the musician's dais—the very dais where a quadrille had once been played, fourteen years before—and spoke words to the tribe, words that Audrey did not really hear because she was concentrating on the man himself instead.

This man wasn't Kimber. He didn't look like Kimber, and from this distance, he didn't feel like him. He was ice and marble and someone new, someone she'd glimpsed once or twice before in the most fell of extremities, but that was all.

A darkened heart.

His lips moved. He wore clothing she'd seen countless times: a starched shirt missing its waistcoat, buckskin breeches and tall brown boots. The sun angled in from the west and lit his plain country attire to gilt and fire. His hair was undone. In the natural light it shone every rich shade of blond. It was the only aspect of him that still appeared—human. Every atom in the chamber seemed drawn to him, charged and bright and dangerous, and only a dragon could do that.

His face was drawn in planes, harsh and bleak; his figure fixed as if he grew upright from the dais, from the manor house itself, and the wild sky and the trees and the blood of the earth. His gaze raked the crowd with an intensity that had more than a few of the younger maidens enthralled with wide-eyed dread.

Rue was gone, no longer beside her second-born child; Joan was with her now instead, and together the sisters clasped hands and watched as what was left of their eldest flaked away, an imaginary skin that frosted and cracked until only the Alpha stood before them, an animal that never raised his voice, never shifted his stance. He held the tribe rapt with just a few soft-spoken sentences.

"Our time is come. Assume any strangers in the shire are sanf, no matter what they say. Slay them if you must or save them for me."

A pair of starlings winged across the vista behind him, blackened and swift, falling from sight against the backdrop of verdant woods.

The Alpha said, "Do not hold back."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It has been a matter of some debate among the drakon today as to whether the stone Draumr ever truly existed.

It is debated with the utmost civility, of course. Dragon-ladies in lace and corsets sip their tea in fashionable parlors and keep their voices to a throaty murmur. They sit with their ankles crossed and smile at each other and occasionally show teeth that gleam very white.

Our men do very nearly the same, standing about in magnificent card rooms, rapiers of Spanish gold and gemstones affixed at their hips, their elegant hands weighted with rings of carnelian and topaz that burn with subtle song.

They reach no cohesive conclusions.

How could they? These dragons never heard the lure of the diamond, not truly. Every now and again perhaps someone will lift her head from the details of her day, her attention snared as a few languorous notes seemingly appear from nowhere to wrap around her, to twist into her bones with devastating bliss. Born from echoes, dissipating into echoes, they're gone nearly as soon as her lips form that first, delighted gasp.

She'll retire to her bed that night and ache as she remembers how it felt. She'll wonder if she's feverish, if it had been naught but a dream.

It was the dreaming diamond, after all.

And yes, it was real. So many of us no longer believe, but I was there. I fell prey to its malevolence more times than nearly any other of our kind, and by the very last time Draumr and I clashed, I had mastered it enough to wield its power myself.

Had I that diamond today—even a portion of it—who knows what I might do.

Ultimate pleasure is an eloquent motivator.

Pain, of course, is as well.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

This was London. She was sure it had to be although she never had a glimpse of it. She had been taken there in a carriage, pulled by horses that groaned and huffed every time she shifted against the squabs.

Her mouth had been gagged, her hands fixed at the small of her back with actual chains. Men had sat with her in the carriage, four men, their heartbeats fast and uneven. Three of them smelled like peasants, like raw onions and the fetor of unwashed bodies; they needed to bathe, and that was before the carriage even breached the outskirts of the city, when an entirely new layer of stink filled the air.

In all the hours of travel, those three never uttered a word. It was the fourth man who spoke to her, a whisper in her ear after they'd snatched her in the hut and jammed the hood over her head, and they'd pressed the blade of a knife into her throat until she'd felt the warmth of her own blood.

The man had knelt to where she lay in the dirt, put his lips to the hood, and murmured in French, "Do not resist. Do not speak."

And she had not. He was the one with the terrible music; he was the reason she lay here now in some unknown location—not a hut or even a cottage, because the scents were far more sophisticated than that. A place of narrow halls and many rooms.. .coals gone to ash and lukewarm brandy, faded opium and whale oil and cleaning chemicals laden with cologne. She had no shoes; as she'd walked to this chamber her feet met a series of carpets laid over a cool stone floor. She sensed no change in heat or light through the dyed hood, no resonance of glass against any slight sound; if this place had windows, they were probably bricked over.

London. Beyond the walls and corridors lifted the cries of street vendors hawking fish and sweet cherries and tea. More carriages rattled past, more than she could count, with dogs yelping and children begging, and the nearest clear conversation she could make out was between two men discussing trade winds and ivory and hemp. By slowing her breath and relaxing her hands she was able to focus enough to even hear the tiny, continuous slap of water striking rock walls and a shore, a great deal of water, and that had to be the Thames. She'd read of it in books, the mighty river of commerce, the merchant heart of England. Never, never once had she thought to be so desperate—

Never once had she thought to venture this close herself.

Her own heart was pumping far too fast. She obeyed the fourth man's commands; she could not speak if she wanted, and resistance truly seemed out of the question. At least right now.

Sanf inimicus. Fear and wrath settled into a queasy, cold knot in her stomach. If she had the chance to eat any of their hearts, she would.