This wasn’t that different.
The stakes were just much higher.
When it seemed as if the maid would never answer, Mina cleared her throat and tapped her foot on the floor—gods help her, she felt like she had turned into Pralina. “Well, Jacine? I’m waiting. What will it be?”
Chapter Eighteen
“Where is Drake?” Dante barked, coming face-to-face with Damian for the first time since the fiasco in the throne room. He adjusted his preternatural vision to see his brother’s features more clearly in the moonlight.
“So nice of you to show up,” Damian grunted. He met Dante’s seeking stare with a scowl of his own before whirling around to stand back-to-back with the prince, all the while raising his sword and shield.
“Drake?” Dante repeated, falling easily into step with his brother.
“He hasn’t made it to the beach yet,” Damian clipped. Since Drake had to travel to and from the southernmost district in Dragons Realm, he had a lot further to go.
“So it’s just you, me, and our soldiers?” Dante asked.
Damian angled his chin toward the various soldiers who were amassing nearby, adjusting their armor, drawing their swords, and nocking deadly arrows into tautly drawn bows. “Indeed. Two dragons and their faithful minions.” Damian turned his attention to the ocean.
The first of five encroaching Lycanian ships had anchored about fifty yards from shore, and the wild, supernatural easterners were not waiting for their companion vessels or the bulk of the remaining fleet, which was still at sea, to attack. At least ten Lycanians leaped from the deck, vaulted into the air, and shapeshifted as they dove, transforming into every manner of predatory fowl: giant hawks, enormous eagles, and huge prehistoric raptors with razor-fine talons and sharply edged beaks. At the same time, another twelve warriors dove into the sea, shifted into sharks, stingrays, and sea snakes, and darted toward the beach. Yet another eight or so males, with caches full of weapons strapped to their backs, remained in human form and jumped into the water before hitching a ride on a fin or a tail, shouting mortal war cries as they rapidly advanced.
Dante squared his shoulders, dropped down into a crouch, and rocked gracefully onto his toes, ready to pounce. Only the gods knew what the pagans would shift into once their bellies, feet, or talons made contact with the sands. If there were thirty males on the first vessel, which could easily carry ten to twenty more, then they needed to be ready to ward off up to 230 enemies in this first brazen attack. As it was, Dante could only pray to Nuri, the lord of fire, that the bulk of the fleet would not reach harbor before dawn, and the other four encroaching vessels would take their time anchoring in the bay. While Dante and his brother could see clearly in the dark, the same could not be said for their brave and loyal soldiers.
He could hear the heartbeats of the humans, shadows, and warlocks thundering all around him: swelling, pounding, and beating furiously in their chests. He could smell the acrid tang of the commoners’ fear and the Umbrasians’ hunger, as well as the sulfuric taint of the Warlochians’ magic. All were as smoke, rising from a sodden fire, billowing into the air.
“Air, water, or both?” Dante shouted to Damian, knowing that the soldiers would wisely wait to see what appeared on the beach: The archers would step forward with a frontal assault on the invaders, while the others would form semicircular clusters in defense of their princes, aligning their shields as a wall. The warlocks would cast spells and wield magic, targeting their enemies, one by one, even as the shadows would follow on the warlocks’ heels, waiting to devour the weak and absorb their dying souls.
“Both!” Damian snarled, releasing an ear-shattering roar.
It was all Dante needed to hear.
In the breadth of a second, he sprang to his feet and hurled twin bolts of lightning from his fingertips at two massive birds of prey, charring them in the air. He then focused his attention on a gigantic raptor and an enormous eagle, which were coming in low and fast, and seized their wings with telekinesis, crushing the hollow bones. As the wounded creatures plummeted toward the sea, he called his inner dragon and heaved a sweltering breath of fire, incinerating them both as they plunged.
Damian arched his back and stiffened, sending a blazing arc of flames into a narrow channel of the sea in an attempt to boil the water. Dante joined his cause, and together, they burned another seven shifters before the males could reach the shore.
“I hope you fed well, dear brother,” Damian snarled, using the full power of his mind to sling a charging shifter backward, spiraling through the air, before impaling him on the mast of the anchored ship. “Father is still eight and a half hours away.”
Dante formed an imaginary circle around the skull of a distant invader, and then he began to rotate the palms of his hands in slow, deliberate circles. He continued to twist, turn, and tighten his fist until, at last, the enemy’s head imploded, and the Lycanian’s corpse slumped to the ground. “Worry about yourself, Prince,” he scolded.
And then all hell broke loose.
Predators dipped down from the sky and attacked the soldiers en masse: They gouged out eyes with their talons and severed arteries with their beaks, even as the archers released wild, panicked arrows in a frenzied attempt to drive them back.
The bulk of the arrows missed their targets.
Sharks leaped out of the water, shifting into giant wolves and marauding cats, even as snakes rose up on their tails and began to stalk forward as beasts. Dante and Damian donned their armor, but it wasn’t a manmade shield. Rather, they withdrew into their inner dragons and coated their flesh with scales.
“Behind you!” Dante shouted, as a serpent the size of a small windmill coiled behind Damian and drew back to strike.
Dante didn’t have time to watch: A raptor swooped down from the sky, slashed him across the cheek with a talon, and then instantly shifted into a primitive beast, some sort of hybrid between a lion and a bear.
Dante released his solid form and lunged at his opponent, passing right through the shifter’s torso as if stepping through a wall. He spun around behind him, solidified his hand, and plunged a clawed fist through the creature’s back, deftly extracting its heart. He tossed the bloody organ to the side and turned to check on the others’ progress.
The prince was still wrestling with the giant serpent, one hand anchored about its upper fangs, another clasped to its lower jaw, and he was about to tear the mouth in two. A pair of warlocks had turned a werewolf into a dog, and they were ripping the snarling creature to shreds. The archers had littered several Lycanians with arrows—three, who had remained in human form—and the shadow-walkers were devouring their souls as they cried out in horror from the pain. Still another soldier had impaled a man-sized cat with his sword; the injury had only managed to anger the beast, and the feline was this close to shredding the soldier’s throat with its wicked canines.
Dante covered the distance between himself and the soldier in a flash.
He pounced on the werecat’s back and sank his own lethal fangs into its haunches. The cat spun around with a snarl, swiped at the unwanted weight, and thrashed wildly, trying to toss the two-legged rider from its nape. The two clashed like a pair of otherworldly demons, each one vying for supremacy, each one trying to serrate the other’s throat. Sand shot into the air; spittle dotted the sands; and blood soaked both fur and flesh, until at last, Dante released his feral bite and scorched the beast with fire, melting away its enormous teeth just moments before they sank home.
Dante tossed the creature to the side and scrambled back to his feet just in the nick of time. The Lycanians had regrouped. Sensing the futility of the battle, they had withdrawn from their individual attacks against the soldiers and were pursuing Prince Damian as one cohesive unit, all ten of the remaining shifters joining forces, ascending from land and descending from air.
The humans, warlocks, and shades rushed to Prince Damian’s defense. They surrounded the prince and the Lycanians with lances, sword
s, and clubs, striking and spearing the enemy as best they could, but the battle was moving so swiftly—the supernatural shifters were changing shape and position so rapidly—that it was hard to track the fury of their movement with a naked, mortal eye, let alone in the dark of night.
Damian fell onto his back, and Dante knew it was up to him to intervene.
And quickly.
Not that Damian couldn’t hold his own in any position; but hell, no one could ward off ten Lycanians at once—save, perhaps, their father Demitri, in his full primordial form.
Just as Dante began to rush forward, to dive into the fray, the strangest thing began to happen: For reasons he could scarcely explain, he began to see everything in double images. Distant memories flashed before his eyes, exposing painful glimpses of the past, just as current events continued to unfold, revealing the perilous battle before him.
As a husky Lycanian shifted into a wolf and pounced on Damian’s chest, Dante saw a flashback of Thomas the squire being bludgeoned with a club—he saw Damian toss the bloody stump into the river, along with the innocent boy, leaving a six-year-old Thomas to drown…
Forcing Dante to dive in and save him.
One of the commonlands’ soldiers speared the wolf with his lance, even as another two Lycanians, still in human form, retrieved sharp, jagged daggers from wet leather sheaths and lunged in the prince’s direction, but Dante couldn’t follow the trajectory of the blades. He could only see Tatiana Ward—broken, beaten, and terrified—lying on Mina’s bed, following Damian’s rape.
Right before Drake had healed her.
Prince Damian flung the daggers away using basic telekinesis, and then he flattened his back to the ground and tucked his knees to his chest in an effort to keep the invaders from advancing. A cruel smile distorted the features of one of the two Lycanians, and then it quickly morphed into another insidious grin, far more familiar, yet no less toxic—only, Dante saw Damian Dragona standing in the throne room, choosing Mina’s lash. He saw the delight in Damian’s eyes at the prospect of Mina’s whipping, and he saw the immense pleasure the prince had taken in choosing the most lethal implement he could find.
Damian cried out in surprise.
Someone had just landed a blow, and Dante blinked several times, trying to bring the present scene into focus. Yet all he could see was another place and time, an image of Damian seared into Dante’s memory: The merciless prince was standing on Desmond’s grave, spitting into the dirt and proclaiming for all the world to hear that Desmond had been “too weak to survive.” If Dante hadn’t known better, he would have sworn Damian had celebrated Desmond’s suicide.
Why hadn’t he noticed all of this before?
Or had he?
Perhaps he had just buried it, tucked it away like the myriad of shells beneath his feet, hidden in the moonlit sands.
The sands.
Dracos Cove!
The beach!
The battle…
Dante sprang into action, determined to make his way to Damian’s side. What difference did it make if his brother was cruel, weak of spirit, or dead of heart?
He was still a dragon prince.
He was still King Demitri’s son.
A child conceived in violence, carried in madness, and born of rape—a soulless creature, to be sure, but one whose knowledge, skill, and lineage were very much needed in defense of the Realm.
The grinning Lycanian managed to land another blow, and Damian grunted.
Only Dante heard Mina scream…
He heard her plaintive wail in the throne room, just moments after the king had pronounced her fate: “From this day forth, until death shall part them, I bestow upon my second son, Damian Dragona, the Sklavos Ahavi he has requested, known as Mina Louvet.”
Why the hell had Damian requested Mina?
As the Lycanians continued to land blow after blow, overwhelming the beleaguered prince, Dante shook it off.
Why didn’t matter!
What was done was done.
He was just about to come to his brother’s aid when Damian regained his advantage. He drew back both fists, plunged them forward with preternatural speed, and broke through the breastplates of the two attacking Lycanians, seizing their still-beating hearts from their chests and tossing them onto the sands.
Dante didn’t wait for the rest to advance.
There were still seven Lycanians left.
He lunged forward, dove into the fray, and in a wild clash of fangs, fire, and claws, he fought like a demon possessed on behalf of his wicked, unredeemable brother. He fought on behalf of the Realm and all its innocent, helpless inhabitants, and he refused to come up for air until Damian was no longer in danger, until together they had dispatched the remaining seven barbarians.
Silence settled over the scene like dew on the morning grass as Dante and Damian finally rose—as one—to survey the ensuing carnage and enumerate the dead. A trumpet blasted, interrupting their count, and Dante turned to see the third point of the dragons’ triangle, his brother, Drake Dragona, riding toward them with his army behind them and his flag before him.
He was just about to step forward and greet him, make some sort of snide remark about being late to the party and riding in like a girl, but there wasn’t any time: The remaining four ships had just anchored in the harbor, beating the bulk of the fleet by at least eight hours, and just like before, the Lycanians rushed to attack.
Chapter Nineteen
Five hours later
Mina Louvet slipped into the shadows beneath the cover of a thick maple tree, careful to remain concealed from the radiant moonlight above her. It had to be at least two or two thirty in the morning; she was weak and exhausted, in desperate need of sleep; and every muscle in her body ached to give up and go home.
But she had come too far to turn back now.
Having switched clothes with her maidservant, Jacine; having waited patiently to meet Jacine’s sister, Anna, and to hold her desperate hand; having watched the vulgar guards consume enough spirits to become sufficiently inebriated, Mina had finally donned a hooded cloak, presented the maid’s traveling papers to the main sentry, and strolled right out of the tent under the guise of fetching water for her mistress.
None had been the wiser.
Now, after walking westward for an hour beneath the benevolent cover of darkness; turning inland for another hour, traversing much rockier and slower terrain; and finally coming to the narrow, dry ravine that marked the entrance to the traders’ camp, she was utterly and completely exhausted as she surveyed the site from the shadows and tried not to collapse.
She pressed her hand to her lower belly and took a deep, fortifying breath—she couldn’t give up that easily. Raylea’s life might depend upon her perseverance. Fortunately, she had managed to avoid all manner of hazards, pitfalls, and dangerous encounters thus far—perhaps the gods were with her—and by the distant, echoing sounds of the battle taking place on the beach, feral roars and snarls, clashing steel and iron, the cries of predators—birds of prey?—screeching overhead, and the unmistakable glow of bright orange fire flickering like distant candles in an ominous night sky, she knew the Realm’s soldiers would remain busy for some time. No one would be looking for a wayward, wandering maid.
She also knew that the princes were leading the fateful battle: Damian, whom she hated and feared with all her heart; Drake, whom she prayed would keep the commoners safe; and Dante, whom she simply refused to think about, at all.
Until now…
Reaching beneath her cloak to fetch a small piece of dried venison, she chewed it slowly and forced herself to swallow in spite of her queasy stomach. She needed the sustenance. She needed to maintain her strength. Chasing it with a hearty drink of water from a deerskin canteen, she leaned back against the trunk of the tree and finally allowed the forbidden thoughts to creep into her mind:
Dante Dragona, the king’s eldest son…
The one who had claimed her the first day she had ar
rived at Castle Dragon.
The one who had let her go without so much as a serious protest.
As she shuffled to the side to avoid a knobby outgrowth in the bark, she absently placed her foot in an uneven divot and nearly twisted her ankle. “Damnit,” she grumbled beneath her breath, looking down at the ground to secure her footing. She was angrier with Dante than she had let on.
Not that it was Dante’s fault.
Not that it was anyone’s fault, the way things had turned out.
But still…
Mina’s future was doomed.
Damian would surely break her—body, mind, and soul—if he didn’t outright kill her before the month was through; and if knowing that wasn’t enough to unsettle her stomach, there was something else disturbing her, too.
Something that tore at her heart.
Something that made her feel uneasy.
She could still see Dante standing in her bedchamber, presenting her with a lopsided doll. She could still envision those haunting eyes, the firm set of his jaw, and the way his broad shoulders enhanced his dominant, implacable frame. She could still hear his deep, throaty drawl echoing in her ears, that first day in the courtyard when she had asked him why—why had he requested her company. “Because you are the Sklavos Ahavi I have chosen for my mate…your hair is like mine, as dark as the midnight sky.” He had swept his thumb along the side of her jaw. “Your eyes are the color of emeralds, as rare as they are exquisite.” He had clasped his hands behind his back and studied her from head to toe, without apology. “You are beautiful,” he had whispered, “and our sons will be strong.”
Mina shivered at the memory.
She had been so very afraid; yet now, looking back, there was a deep, aching chasm in the center of her chest. Blessed Nuri, lord of fire, what had she been so afraid of? Dante was the epitome of justice and benevolence when compared to his brother Damian, who had brutalized and tortured Tatiana without a moment’s hesitation. The male didn’t have a conscience—he didn’t have a soul.