“King Demitri fed from all the prisoners. He drained us as he executed us, consuming the core of our essence, and it destroyed everyone…but me.” He let out a slow, deliberate breath, waiting for her to fully comprehend his words.
Comprehension didn’t come.
Mina looked quizzically at Thomas, and then she cocked her eyebrows, feeling more than just a little sense of dread. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, still trying to process the cryptic words. “Why didn’t it destroy you?”
Thomas the squire cleared his throat and dove into the conversation with blunt objectivity. “Because Matthias is the king’s own son.”
Mina swayed backward, catching herself on the bed with both arms anchored like tent spikes behind her. She pushed forward again and cocked her head to the other side. “Come again?”
This time, Matthias spoke plainly. “King Demitri is my father.”
She wet her lips with her tongue and furrowed her brow. “You’re…Demitri’s son?” she echoed, nodding her head dumbly as if she were willing to play along for a time. “But…how can that be? I mean, I’ve known you all my life. You’re the child of Penelope Fairfax and Callum Gentry—I know your father, and the two of you walk…and talk…alike.”
Matthias sighed, understanding. “That may be true. After all, he raised me, but my mother was already pregnant when my father married her.” He began to share the story about the lost Sklavos Ahavi, explaining how the beautiful young maiden became a subject of controversy between the high priest, the witch, and the king. He went on to describe Penelope’s time at Castle Dragon, the scrutiny she was under for three days and nights, and why they suspected King Demitri of taking her as a lover, how she had ultimately escaped…or the king had let her go.
And then he waited quietly for Mina’s reply.
Mina let out a nervous chortle, feeling like a fool. She was still having trouble making sense of the truth. “I’m sorry,” she explained, “but it’s just…I’ve known you all my life. You are a gifted hunter and a skilled fighter, to be sure, but a dragon? Matthias, I’ve never seen you say or do anything that might imply—”
Just then, the boy she had known all of her life stepped back from the edge of the bed, held out his hands, turned them palms up, and began to extend his claws, ten perfectly serrated talons. He sniffed in defiance, and a faint hint of smoke filled the room, even as his deep blue eyes began to glow a dark, fiery red. And then he retracted his claws, released a cavernous breath, and watched as a small orange flame trailed in the wake of his exhalation.
Mina gasped. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it, completely at a loss for words.
And that’s when Thomas the squire stepped in. “Mistress Ahavi, we need your help.” He glanced at Matthias and inclined his head. “We need your protection. If the king finds out…if he notices Matthias’s body missing, he might put two and two together. At the least, he’ll hunt him down and kill him.”
Mina practically recoiled—at both the danger and the request. “My protection?” she scoffed, not meaning any disrespect. “You want some kind of protection from me?” Her heart sank as she reached out to take Matthias by the hand. “I have no power in Dragons Realm. None, whatsoever. In fact, I am hardly safe myself.” She turned to regard the squire directly. “And you of all people should know this. I belong to Damian now—do you remember what happened to Tatiana?”
The boy nodded. “I do. Of course, I do. But I also have eyes, and I know that someone healed her.” He began to fidget with his hands, for the first time showing his youth. “I know that the eldest prince favors you, Prince Dante. And I also know that Mistress Cassidy cannot be trusted, but perhaps if you appealed directly—”
Mina held out her hand to silence him.
This was a dangerous game they were playing.
All of them.
And the stakes had just grown higher.
How would she get to Dante…again? When? Where? And what would she tell him?
What could she tell him?
And why would he be inclined to help a half-brother—a bastard son of the king—whom his father would likely detest?
Dante also had a precarious role to play in the Realm, more so now than ever, and all of them were balancing on a razor’s edge.
She unwittingly placed her hand on her stomach and sighed. “I don’t understand what you think I can do…or say,” she argued, feeling her heart constrict at the untrue words, “but even if I did, why would Dante get involved?”
The squire lowered his lashes and averted his eyes, glancing at the floor. “Because…because he is my friend.”
Mina leaned forward with expectation, even as Matthias regarded Thomas sideways.
“Explain,” Mina prompted. She didn’t mean to sound so abrupt, but the three of them were literally playing with fire, and if there were any unknown or pertinent details, then she needed to know them all.
The squire raised his chin and drew back his shoulders, as if donning a cloak made of manufactured pride; he swallowed something akin to fear—or maybe shame?—and then he began to speak in a soft, rote manner, almost as if he were reciting from a scroll. “Many years ago, when I was only six summers old, the king asked me to accompany him and his sons on a pheasant-hunting trip—they were to practice their archery, and I was to carry their bows, their arrows, and his ale.” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it: the king enjoys his petty tortures, mocking those he thinks are weak.”
Mina started to squirm, and she had to force herself to sit still.
At six years old?
Thomas clenched and relaxed his fists in a barely noticeable effort to control his emotions and pressed on. “Anyhow, we walked many miles into the woods, and needless to say, I grew tired, too tired. The weight of all that gear was just…too much.” He gulped several times, and Mina wanted to say something to comfort him, but she restrained the impulse, held her tongue, and remained deathly quiet, instead. “We came to a fairly deep stream, and the king commanded me to get the princes a drink of water and him some ale, but he wouldn’t let me set the hunting gear down.” He bit his lower lip, and his eyes clouded with moisture, but other than that, he showed little emotion. “I dropped Prince Damian’s bow, and it broke—so the king told Damian to teach me a lesson.” The squire could no longer look Mina or Matthias in the eyes, and he slowly turned away. “I thought he would beat me with the bow, but he found a piece of wood, like a club, and he just…he wouldn’t stop until I was nearly unconscious.” He smiled then, and it was the most incongruent, paradoxical grin Mina had ever seen. “But he didn’t stop there. He tossed me in the river, and I was too badly injured to swim. I would’ve drowned, but Prince Dante dove in and saved me.” A single tear escaped his eye, and he brushed it away with an angry swipe, clearly upset that he had let it fall. “I don’t remember anything else that happened that day; except, I learned later on that the king was so enraged that he broke both of Dante’s arms, and then he made him carry me—and all the equipment—back to the castle. And apparently, Dante did it without a single whimper.”
Mina brought both hands to her face and cupped them over her mouth, trying to choke back a sob—that was the last thing this brave little squire wanted or deserved—and she wasn’t about to diminish his courage with pity. Still, she knew there was something else churning in her gut, something she could no longer deny: She was both grateful for and proud of the new life she was carrying inside her. And she would cherish this child with all of her heart, almost as much as she would delight in defying the king and Damian. Thomas had been an innocent, helpless little boy, and Dante, well, he had been a lion. A brave and defiant dragon.
He still was…
He still was.
“So, you see…” Thomas’s words snapped her out of her musings. “Prince Dante has always been more than my lord. To me, he is a friend, and he knows that he has my undying loyalty…even unto death.”
Mina sat taller. She stiffened her spine
and nodded her head, even as her heart still wept from the story. “I see,” she mumbled softly. She was just about to add that she would do whatever she could to help both Thomas and Matthias, even if it meant trying to talk to Dante, when a gale-force wind swept through the barracks, battered the posts beneath the high arches, and sent the heavy armoire sliding three feet back. A sound, so furious and ferocious that it pierced the ears, rocked the ground beneath them, and she jumped up from the bed. “What was that!” she cried as a chorus of voices began to rise outside on the beach: The king! The king! The dragon is coming!
Thomas instinctively ducked. “The battle!” He turned to Matthias. “Quickly! Put on your hood and cloak.” And then he turned toward Mina, his eyes wide with fright and more than just a little bit of wonder. “It’s the beating of the dragon’s wings!” he exclaimed. “The king is finally here!”
*
Mina, Matthias, and Thomas bounded outside the tent and began to run along the beach in the direction of the cove, in the direction of the crowd, toward the apex of the battle. The Umbrasian soldiers either didn’t notice or they didn’t care—such was the commotion and the obsession with glimpsing the primordial creature in the sky. Every soul on or near the beach, every subject present from the Realm—man, woman, or child; slave, servant, or free—had only one objective in that moment: to catch a glimpse, no matter how distant, of the mighty primordial dragon as he slayed the Lycanian fleet.
The air bristled with power and crackled with fear as Mina and her companions finally rounded the corner and caught their first real glimpse of the primary cove. There were Lycanian ships filling the harbor as far as the eye could see, dozens upon dozens of massive vessels unloading their deadly cargo, and even as the hand-to-hand combat continued on the sands, the air began to crackle with thunder.
And then the entire cove grew as dark as midnight.
It was as if the sky, the emerging sun, and the stars from the previous night had suddenly been snuffed out. The pitch-black shadow descended like a vulture, a living nightmare, gathering, intensifying, and spreading out with a sudden, ominous flair, the dragon’s enormous wings appearing as the absence of light.
And then, out of the cryptic darkness came an utter explosion of fire. Blistering columns of flame abruptly illuminated the beach, hurtling in all four directions at once, ascending and dipping, above and below. The massive beast struck with such amazing precision—he flung dazzling spirals of heat with such remarkable accuracy—that it appeared as if the Master of Vengeance, the lord of fire himself, had unleashed ten thousand flaming arrows upon the sands.
Shifters of all shapes and sizes dropped to the ground, melting into steaming piles of ash, even as their opponents remained untouched, standing upright beside them; and ships the size of grand, multilevel houses erupted into flames, their terrified, panicked cargo leaping into the boiling, turbulent waters, screaming in agonizing pain.
The dragon didn’t stop there.
He circled like a buzzard, soaring, sweeping, dipping one leathery wing down in order to bat the other, the force of the ensuing wind sending each adjacent ship crashing into nearby rocks. Those who tried to escape were seized in the creature’s talons, all four legs working in perfect accord to annihilate, crush, and tear the dragon’s prey to shreds.
Mina shrieked as the pale green dragon spun his head to the side in a wild, serpentine motion, opened his mighty jaws, and tossed half a dozen Lycanians into his mouth with his hind claws, catching them in his venomous, serrated teeth.
The monster snarled as he ripped them into slivers, his jagged, uneven fangs gleaming in the preternatural light; his terrible arced horn pointing downward toward a waterlogged ship; his flared ears, like the armored horns of a devil, creating a triangular compass pointing true north toward his next Lycanian meal.
When the dragon struck the target, the carnage was too horrible to behold, and Mina finally turned away, but not before the image of severed limbs, detached heads, and flaming torsos was seared into her memory forever.
Blessed Nuri, Creator of Fire and Life; was this what she carried in her belly?
Was this what Dante would one day become?
And if and when he challenged his father, what would such a battle look like?
Dearest goddess of mercy, King Demitri was truly a deity on Earth, and this was indeed the Dragons Realm. It had been this way since time immemorial, and so it would always be…
Always.
Suddenly, Mina felt so insignificant, as if seeing herself for the first time as a single, fragile thread in a much, much larger web. Dante had been right all along: She understood “nothing of the politics, dangers, or dynamics” that motivated the monarchy, the concerns that superseded the value of any one life.
She scanned the sands all around her, hoping to check on her friends, and her heart nearly seized in her chest: Matthias was bent over in agony, rocking on all fours, his spine twisting this way and that as if it had a mind of its own. He was panting loudly, and his features were contorted with both menace and pain.
He hardly looked human.
“Matthias,” she whispered, falling to the ground and reaching for his shoulders.
He snarled like a wild beast. “Too close,” he rasped. “Too close to my father.”
Mina slowly backed away. Turning to Thomas, she held up both hands in confusion and concern. “What do we do?”
The squire frowned. He pointed westward and raised his brows. “He’s too new to his beast, too unfamiliar with the energy. We need to get him out of here, quickly. We need to head inland before the battle is over, before anyone sees him, before they know he’s still alive.”
Mina swallowed her initial protest. Of course Matthias would need to flee, but where would he go? How would he live—especially now that he knew he was truly a Dragona? She nodded, acknowledging his words. “By we, you mean—”
“Matthias and I,” Thomas replied. “I need to get him home to the lower district where he can calm down, settle in, and begin to learn more about who and what he is. Where he can start to make the adjustment, whatever that ends up being.” He glanced around the beach nervously, eyeing the devastation. “The cleanup may take weeks, and the organization will be chaotic. In a few days’ time, when things have settled down, I’ll return to Warlochia and try to speak with Prince Dante. No one will miss me before then.” He sighed. “If you get a chance to speak to him before me, try… Otherwise, unless you hear from one of us, you need to return to your tent, and we need to get away.”
The dragon king roared an ear-piercing bellow, shaking the land below as he shot into the sky like a comet spiraling backward, twisted his nimble body in midair, flipping his spiked tail like a whip, and dove toward another cluster of vessels in order to make another lethal pass.
Mina shivered. “Go.” She stared at Matthias, and her heart nearly broke for him. “Matt, will you be all right?”
Her childhood friend shook from head to toe, trying to control the unfamiliar convulsions that were wracking his body with relentless frequency. He opened his mouth to speak, and a dollop of sweltering drool ran down from the corner of his lips. He had no idea how to control his inner beast. She could only pray that Dante’s friendship with Thomas was as solid, deep, and binding as the squire had said—that the dragon prince would listen to the story, take mercy on his afflicted half-brother, and somehow agree to help.
Either way, she would not be party to the outcome.
She would be in Umbras with Damian.
As Thomas helped Matthias to his feet, Mina offered a silent prayer to the gods, begging them for her friend’s protection: Blessed deity of light, bringer of rain, lord of rebirth, I beseech you for protection and mercy. Go with the squire and Matthias. May their travels be swift; may their hearts be strong; may their path be illuminated by your wisdom. Keep and protect their innocent souls even as you grant me the courage to endure the path I must travel. Protect me from Damian…
She paus
ed and bit her lip.
At least long enough for Dante’s child to be born.
She glanced up at the sky and took one last look at the fearsome, murderous dragon.
Somehow, some way, restore justice to this realm.
With that, Mina turned on her heel, headed in the direction of the Umbrasian tent, and refused to look back.
It was all in the hands of the gods now: what happened to Matthias, what happened to the squire, what became of Mina and her unborn child. The web was truly too intricate to unravel; the stakes for each and every soul too high to calculate or conceive; the depth of intervention needed on the Realm’s behalf beyond the power of mere mortals.
Chapter Twenty-three
Dante Dragona did not join his brothers and his soldiers on the beach in order to watch his father annihilate their enemy. He knew all too well what was taking place—exactly what was transpiring—the death and destruction; the fire and the fury; the enormous loss of life.
And somehow, he simply had no desire to see it firsthand.
Now, as he stood alone in the tent of Warlochia, his heart was heavy with awareness, thick with the gravity of the situation, burdened with the knowledge of what he had just done with Mina Louvet…
What he had just done to his brother…
What he had just done to the Realm.
Betrayal was betrayal after all, even if he had no regrets.
He splashed a handful of cool water from a tin basin over his face and stared into the looking glass, a flat piece of polished bronze, hung circuitous at an angle above a rough wooden pedestal, and then he jolted, overturning the basin, as he hastily jumped back.
Great lords of fire!
For the briefest moment, the reflection cast back at him from the mirror did not contain the midnight-blue irises he had come to expect, nor the strong, polished features that branded him as his father’s son, but a huge leathery dragon with pointed horns, jagged teeth, and three fiery glowing eyes: Dante’s eyes. The beast was positively enormous, surrounded by a radiant purple light, and behind the dragon’s crest, just above and beyond the top of its head, was a shimmering image, a profile in silhouette, the likeness of Dante’s brother Desmond. And it hovered within the bronze, staring out at Dante like a ghost from the past, seeking his attention; searing daggers into his soul; commanding his immediate consideration.