Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

Others come? Would it have been too bloody much trouble for them to be more specific? It was unlike them to be so cryptic—well, unlike his father, at least. Kimber rolled to his side and pushed away his pillows, irritated. Except for the initials scrawled across the bottom of the page, there wasn't even a hint of who had sent it.

He fell asleep as the moonlight shortened into a slit along the raw silk curtains, dreaming of fire and boiling water, of the sun reflecting off the sea.

And when he woke a few hours later, something had changed.

The air felt different, charged somehow, a heaviness eating down through his bones, crackling the hair on his arms and legs. He lay very still a moment, breathing slowly, the sheets at his waist, smelling and tasting and measuring that subtle, smoking sting like gunpowder lingering at the back of his throat.

The doors were still open, the night was still sweltering, but that wasn't it.

Someone was here in the mansion. Someone new, someone with power. Someone he had never felt before.

A drakon.

He rose, folding back the sheets, his toes pressing the warm maple floor. He wouldn't Turn—too obvious—but he could hunt without Turning. In the quiet, in the heat, in storm or total blindness, Kimber knew he could hunt.

In his drawers and bare feet, his hair a heated weight down his neck, he padded to the door of his chamber, pushed it ajar. A breath of more temperate air washed along the length of his body, cooling the moisture on his skin. The beast within him stretched into sinew and blood, eager to surface.

Downstairs, it whispered.

Chasen Manor had been built with an eye for grace and updated for luxury, another cunning ruse in his family's presentation of itself to the world. The main hallway of the upper level yawned wide and open, floored with checkered stone tiles; skylights of clean, polished glass illumed the corridor and allowed in the night. Kim avoided the brighter patches. He stole through shadows to the grand staircase, pausing to listen, but heard nothing beyond the usual background of distant snores, and the creaks and groans of timber beams cooling with the dark.

But he was not mistaken. Despite his guards, despite his vigilance, Chasen had been breached.

Yes, murmured the dragon, flexing, growing. Danger. Destroy it.

He moved utterly without noise. His foot found the first step down the white marble stairs, and then the next. He reached the base swiftly and fell again into shadow.

The scent, the rippling of fresh power, was coming from the music room.

He wondered briefly where Rhys was, why he hadn't sensed the threat as well, but there was no time to wake him. The stinging charge was nearly electric at this point, the friction of thunder-heads against ether, remarkably strong. He approached the open doors and, his back to the wood, glanced in.

Faint moonlight still rinsed through these windows, tracing black and blue and charcoal across the furnishings. Frozen elegance, the drapes and rug and cream agate mantel framing the hearth, the pianoforte—the chamber appeared empty. The fire was feathered ash; there weren't even any dust motes to settle with a draft. The only sound to be heard was the bracket clock ticking, very loudly, atop the cabinet in the corner, its grinning cherubs just visible in a gleam of dull metallic blue.

The air was oppressive. The heat, the living friction, the sting against his skin. He was burning inside, expanding: The dragon writhed to be free, to taste blood.

Kimber stood motionless. He waited.

And in the blackest of the corners he saw at last the something he had sensed, a slight, languorous movement that seemed almost joined with the night, just as sultry and silky slow. It resolved to become a shoulder, a bare pale arm. The curve of a neck and cheekbones and lips; a wash of moonlit hair; dark-lashed, amazing clear eyes—eyes like water, like the light—watching him without blinking.

A woman.

And now the dragon became an exhalation, hissed hard between his teeth. Great God, what the hell—

"I know who you are," said the woman in French. Her voice was soft, melodious; it sent fresh shivers across his skin. She hesitated, then walked closer. Against the rigidly polished lines of the pianoforte, he realized she wore no clothing at all. "Do you know me, Lord Kimber of Chasen?"

He took an involuntary step forward. A thousand stories raced through his mind, explanations, excuses. There could be only one answer here, only one female in the world who could steal into his home undetected—

She lifted one hand, her fist closed. Without looking away from him, her fingers opened, and she inverted her palm. Twin flashes of metal fell to the rug, bounced against the woven flowers with a muffled tattoo before rolling flat.

She'd dropped rings, a pair of them. Signet rings.

Tribal rings. Exactly like the ones worn by Jeffrey and Luke and Hayden.

Kim raked his eyes back to hers.

"I've brought you a gift, as you can see." The Princess Maricara gave a small, chilly smile. "But perhaps we might make this an exchange instead. Is there something you wish to tell me?"

Mari's experience with Others was limited. She knew the peasants of her land—knew them well, in fact, as she had once been among them, although the manifestation of her dragon Gifts had set her undeniably apart.

She knew the visiting clerics who would on occasion attempt to ascend her mountain and preach to her people; after a few weeks of the feral alpine nights these men would nearly always retreat back into their safely walled chapels.

And she knew Zane, the thief, the husband of the drakon Lady Amalia.

She had not known him well, granted. Nearly all of their time together had been spent with Lia there too, the pair of them thick with secret looks and a language Mari hadn't mastered. But she had liked Lia well enough and was disposed to like Zane, who—for an Other—was handsome and quick-witted, and had eyes of golden amber.

It was possible that Mari had developed the very slightest infatuation for Zane during his months of stay at her castle.

But he was in love, and Lia was in love, and eleven-year-old Maricara had seen for herself what their love meant: blood and sacrifice and a great deal of noble, unspoken suffering. It had all been a little tedious.

Yet she remembered the man Zane for something more significant than his looks, or even his devotion to one of her kind. Maricara remembered Zane most for the very last words he spoke to her, just before climbing into his carriage and disappearing from her life.

He had turned to scan the small crowd in the castle courtyard waiting to see them both off, then limped slowly back to Maricara. She'd been standing farther away than most. The horses spooked when she ventured too near.

He'd taken her hand. He'd swept her a bow, even though he'd already bid her adieu. "They're going to come for you," he'd murmured in French, very low.

Mari tipped her head, puzzled. There had been some discontent in the hold since the death of Imre, but surely even this human understood she could manage it.

"The serfs?" she'd inquired.

"No, Princess." Zane lifted his eyes and sent her that clever, crooked smile that had, just perhaps, made her heart beat somewhat faster. "The drakon. The English ones. They know about you now, and you'll be far more dear to them than any mere diamond. They will come." He released her hand with a final squeeze of her fingers. "A bit of unsolicited advice, my pet: They'll court you and flatter you and offer any sweet vow they'll think you want to hear. But you'd be a fool to trust them."

And he had walked back to the carriage and was gone.

So when she'd finally found her way to the outskirts of Darkfrith—a land as lush and distant as Lady Amalia had once dreamily described—Maricara was already on her guard, flying low, her senses prickling. Yet she was still taken by surprise at the sheer number of drakon patrolling the skies of this dark English place.

From miles away she had first begun to perceive them, initially just one, then three more, and then, suddenly—as the half-moon glowed across her back and she caught the fresh, warm scent of a river below—over two dozen. And they were a patrol, she could see that. They followed a set pattern, not deviating. Some were smoke; some were dragons.

Mari had banked instantly, wheeling back a few miles to conceal her trail, darting through a cover of hills and trees. It seemed to work; no one followed. Perhaps she had escaped before any of them felt her.

She landed beneath a shadowed outcropping of granite crumbling with lichen and remained there a good while, considering, observing.

She could not Turn to smoke to slip past them, not carrying her valise. It held all her garments and bread and cheese and some of her most favorite gemstones. Damned if she was going to leave it behind just to avoid a troop of sentries, and she suspected it was still much too far to Darkfrith to walk. Everything around here was either forest or field; she hadn't seen anything like a village in nearly an hour.

And if they were patrolling the skies, they were likely patrolling the ground as well, so she needed to be closer, already hidden in their center, if she was successfully going to avoid them.

She had crossed a sparkling channel of ocean that very morning. Mari didn't know what these English dragons were looking for, and at the moment, she didn't care. Her body ached, every joint and tendon. As a species the drakon were exceptionally strong, but she'd been approaching her limits for weeks now just to reach this place. It didn't seem fair that she'd have to surrender so near to her goal.

Maricara did not consider herself a fool. The English had sent envoys to her home despite her repeated directives they stay away. They'd been pushing to enter her realm for years and had apparently decided to no longer wait for an invitation. She would not simply promenade into their midst and request an audience with their Alpha, this Kimber earl. She needed surprise on her side. She needed every advantage.

Mari dug a single talon into the granite, thoughtful, pressing deep enough to crack the stone as she weighed her options.

She would have to be fleet. She would have to be silent. And she would have to fly very, very high above them, high enough so she would blend with the infinity of heaven should anyone glance up. At least there she had an advantage: By fate or chance Maricara was the only dragon she had ever seen without color. Even the creatures scoring the sky ahead of her shone bright like May ribbons in the light.

But she.. .she was formed of space and stars, her scales gleaming jet, her eyes and mane and the bare tips of her wings burning silver.

From the safety of her rock she Turned human to devour the last of the bread, the final, thin slices of the Camembert melting against her fingers. She licked her fingertips clean and settled back naked against the lichen, examining the patrol's distant flight.

After a full hour of surveillance she was able to predict their patterns, where they would loop and dip, how the wind would steer them. They were organized and tightly knit, but there was no real sense of urgency threading through the group. If they were hunting, they had not yet spotted their prey, and by all appearances the search was focused below them. Very well. With any luck at all, they'd keep their heads down and their sights fixed to the earth.