The curl of fog alerted me to Cheshire’s presence long before I finally saw him.
“The man was innocent, you know.”
I hissed, jerking in the direction of the bodiless voice. “You don’t know that!”
The cat often arrived unannounced into my castle, vexing me in every possible way. But I did not hate him.
He and I had developed a strange sort of symbiosis, shared memories of a dragon boy we’d once known. I’d never admit it aloud, but his presence normally brought me some measure of peace.
Not today however.
“My queen, you know it is so. They lied. They all lied. Now ask yourself why.”
I shook my head, desperately trying to cling to the charade.
“Eight fawnlings. Did you know?” He asked it softly.
Feeling sick to the very core of me, I could hardly breathe now. Swallowing forcefully, I forced down the heat threatening to overwhelm me. The man did not have children. The man had been a thief; I’d done right. I’d done right...right?
I would never have condemned innocent children to the type of life I’d grown up in.
But my words smacked of a lie to me, and I clutched at my stomach as it heaved.
“Why would they lie to me? I am their queen.”
The shadowy image of the cat wavered before me as he said, “Why does anybody, my queen? Why does anybody?”
The ghostly echo of his words haunted me throughout the rest of the night.
Four days later my worst fears were confirmed when Sysapheus returned alone and, with head hanging, admitted to Astira’s conspiracy. She’d threatened to reveal their sins to one and all if the group hadn’t backed up her lies.
The truth, he’d said, was that she’d forced Alerid to write the note, she’d been the one to give Sysapheus the pearl, she’d been tired of her husband, and had used me to rid herself of him once and for all. But, being the duplicitous, conniving liar that she was, she’d managed to also use me to gain not only her pearl back, but Sysapheus’ prized Holstein as well.
When I’d asked him how he could have stood there and condemned an innocent to death, he’d shaken his head and whispered, “I regret it all. My crime will haunt me for the rest of my days.”
The next day I’d sent my guards out to snatch up the prevaricator, condemning her to death in the same manner I’d been forced to condemn her husband. She’d screamed at me, told me I would rot in Tartarus for the rest of eternity for what I did.
But her words didn’t bother me. No, it wasn’t her words that’d caused my eyes to gather with pools of heat when her head had rolled, but rather the eight children who were now alone in the world without the love of a father (a good man) to tend to them.
That day marked me, changed me forever. In a way I had not expected. I could not forget my part in what’d happened to him, and no matter how many people told me it was no longer a concern of mine, I felt keenly the depth of my depravity in a way I’d never felt it before.
Charles did as Charles always did, ignoring me as he lived a life of frivolity and ease, but I could not seem to move on from that day. Stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame, the worst of it was, I had no one to blame for this but myself.
Chapter 7
Ragoth
1 year later
I snatched at the shapely body of a hamadryad—a tree nymph with skin the color of bark and hair the green of budding leaves—who attempted to race past me. “Come here, wench!” I growled, laughing when I wrapped my arms around her naked waist and hauled her tight to my body and my jutting erection. She straddled my thighs.
The nymph sighed, wiggling on me happily. “Oh, dragonborne.”
Her titters irritated me, but I was drunk on dragon wine and in need of servicing. I’d found ways to get around the “you can only mate with nobility” ban. I simply never reciprocated any affection back.
I couldn’t kiss a commoner. Or stick my prick inside them. But they could do whatever they wanted to me, and there were ways of making a woman sing without actually doing the horizontal snog.
I was virile, handsome, and a prince. There was no end of women ready to throw themselves at me. Women—like this nymph—who enjoyed string-free sex. I had no intention of ever mate bonding. As a young male, I’d been a fool. As a man in my prime, I saw the world very differently.
She was just about to drop to her knees, when the door to my room was slammed open so violently it cracked around the iron hinges. A boy, no older than four or five but already tall and muscular, as all dragonborne were, was panting and huffing heavily. His big blue eyes wide, and the whites of them bold in his pale face. Sweaty strands of silvery blond hair clung to his forehead.
“Boy!” I raged, sitting up. I’d paid the barkeep a hefty sum for the upper room in this tavern, with explicit orders not to be disturbed at any cost. I was ready to tear the hatchling in half for daring to do so, but something about his manner gave me pause.
He was grabbing onto his chest, heaving with an effort for breath, and opening and shutting his mouth as though fighting to speak.
Knocking the nymph off me so that she landed in a heap on the floor with an indignant gasp, I strutted over to the child and clamped a hand to his shoulder. “Speak, youth.”
Dragonborne had stamina for days; why was this child so out of sorts?
Trembling from head to toe, the boy uttered five words that pierced my heart like black ice.
“Wonderland. The. King. Is. Dead.”
~*~
Zelena
I sat cold, aloof, and looked neither left nor right as my carriage rolled across the cobbled streets of the village.
The procession of carriages for the king’s funeral was gaudy, garish, and unbelievably extravagant. With elephants painted from massive head to wrinkled feet in the royal colors of my house. Professional mourners, dressed in jewels and peacock feathers, walked steadily before me in a long line at least a thousand strong, wailing, crying, and beating their chests.
Royal jesters and musicians performed for the crowds who’d gathered to watch. Not, I was sure, out of any true sense of loyalty to their king. But more so for the spectacle and the show.
Painted ladies wearing crinolines and corsets and tutting men in elegantly tailored suits tossed rose petals at Charles’ casket. I looked at none of them, keeping my head tilted high and my eyes on the sky.
Somehow I’d been stuffed into a gown of deepest red, the fabric of which was stiff and thick. The corset my dresser had placed me in had narrowed my waist down so far that it was making me feel slightly dizzy and lightheaded.
I wanted nothing more than to rip the royal crown from off my head, toss it to the ground, and scream at the people to go back home. I wanted to cut this procession short, wanted to demand the gravediggers dig a hole here and now and dump Charles into it. So that I could forget him and all of this. Bury him in the past, where he belonged. I just wanted to breathe again.
My throat swelled, and my eyes grew suspiciously warm. I’d not cried in thirteen years; I wouldn’t start now.
I did not care that Charles had suddenly keeled over in the dining hall. That the King of Hearts had died of a heart attack, the circumstances of which were quite suspicious.
I did not care that the people whispered amongst themselves that I’d done it. Nor did I care to offer them any pointless platitudes, give them driveling speeches about how wonderland would grow stronger from this tragedy, blah, blah, blah.
It was all nonsense, just words that meant nothing; they’d know it and I knew it. So I sat in my carriage, and I looked at none of them. I shed not one tear.
I was cold. I was aloof. I was the Passionless Queen—as I knew they called me.
“You know, it would go a long way with the skin suits if you would just smile every so often, toss them even a measure of kindness.” Cheshire’s deep drawl snagged my attention.
Lifting a brow, I didn’t turn toward the now materialized cat sitting beside me. The b
east loved to catch me up on the gossip of wonderland. I rather think he thought of me as his pet.
I almost smiled at that. But I’d not smiled in over a decade; after so long, it was like my body no longer knew how to do it.
“Cat,” I snapped. “Go away.”
“You know they hate you, my lady.”
“I don’t care.” I sniffed, curling my fingers tightly together on my lap.
He chuckled, the sound of it deep and resonating through me. “Oh, but I rather think you do. You see, I’ve studied you, my queen. You’re not as heartless as the tittle-tattle has made you out to be. I see the acts of kindness you commit when you think none are looking, especially this past year. Would it hurt you to let them see you grieve?”
At that, I hissed and twirled on him. “I grieve nothing. There is nothing to grieve. I rejoice at the loss of the king, and if I could, I would kill him all over again.”
His whiskers twitched. “So you confess to killing him. How very interesting. And here I thought his was the one death you’d had no hand in.”
I winced involuntarily at those words. I was not without my flaws, to be sure. It was awful developing a conscience. Annoyed that he should make me do so, I turned my nose up at him.
Turning back to the front, I kept my eyes firmly locked on the sky. “How you could possibly believe such nonsense after the countless heads that have rolled is beyond me.”
Even I heard the telltale quiver of my words. For the past year, this abominable conscience had been waking me up from my slumber, haunting me with visions of the blood now staining my hands.
And all because of that damned farmer and his wife. I could feel the cold anger stirring, but now, instead of going outward, it spread within me. Like a poison, it was slowly consuming me. My throat grew tight.
The flicker of fur softly scraped across my knuckles as the ghostly voice of Cheshire said, “Smoke and mirrors, my queen. Smoke and mirrors.”
“Stupid cat,” I mumbled and then huffed a breath of air at my eyes, drying the tears before they could fall and betray me.
Using a bit of my magic, I called a silk handkerchief to me and delicately dabbed at my eyes; I did not wish to ruin my face paint. I’d look like a fool if I let my emotions betray me yet again.
It’d been weeks since I’d left my chamber last. I did not enjoy the company of others. I never really had. But I’d had my uses for them. Now though, it was all different. All so very different.
It was a terrible thing to come to terms with the ugliness of one’s own soul.
Off with his head, I’d screeched, even as I’d sensed in my heart I did not know the full story. Only once I’d learned it, I could no longer take it back, and none suffered more than the children.
Growling, I broke away from those torturous thoughts. “Damn you, Charles, I hope you rot for all eternity in Tartarus, you foul bastard.”
I mumbled the words quietly to myself and tried desperately hard to tune out the pretentious wailing and melancholy of the professional mourners.
The crown on my head had never felt heavier.
Because I stared up and not at the circus spread out before me, I saw a spec in the distance that grew from just a small shape into something massive that breathed fire and was quickly bearing down on me.
Heart stuttering, I jumped to my feet, knowing deep in my soul who this was. Shocked and astonished, I couldn’t move.
“That can’t be.”
Hordes of people screamed around me as they too suddenly grew aware of the majestic dragon’s presence.
Pearl white with threads of aquamarine veins running through the webbing of his massive wings, the dragon certainly knew how to make an entrance.
I should have run. I should have used the pitiful dregs of magic left to me to vanish. But I did neither. I stood as still as a statue as he unfurled his clawed foot and snatched me up.
And before I knew it I was hundreds of feet up in the sky and panicking as I clung to him for all I was worth. Praying the foolish devil would not drop me.
I’d not seen him in ages. In fact, the last time I had, the situation had been less than ideal. Times had changed and so had we.
Unsure of this situation, myself, or him, I felt...not fear, but anger. And a prickling of something deeper, something that if I let the emotion in, I knew I would drown in it.
So I shut it all off, the emotions that could sometimes paralyze me, and thought not on our past, but on this moment only.
“What are you doing!” I snapped at him, knowing full well he could hear me even above the din of the wind rushing through his ears.
But he only continued to fly, not answering me. After a minute, the sensation that I would smack to the forest floor below began to ease, and I was able to slowly peek between his claws, gasping in awe at how beautiful everything was up here and remembering the one and only fateful trip I’d taken once before. Everything had been so different then.
Wonderland spread out before me like a bejeweled feast for the eyes. Up here, the colors of the leaves were richer, the haunted and twisted forests seemed not quite so macabre, and the creatures inhabiting it little more than tiny moving dots.
Once I realized he clearly had no intention of letting me die, I slowly eased my hold on his claw and sat, dangling my legs between the cracks and kicking them back and forth in the balmy breeze.
It should feel much colder up here, but I was sure his heat was shielding me from the effects of being so high. Soon we were out of wonderland and soaring along the seren seas coastline.
Here the world looked far more mundane and “normal” than in wonderland. But there was beauty in this part of Kingdom too. The waters shimmered a pearlescent green, and multiple rainbows arched across the sparkling sea.
Calypso was clearly still a happy woman. The thought brought a pang to my chest, it was an emotion I quickly squelched.
Finally, after who knew how long, I felt us descending, heading toward the highest peak of Goblin Mountain. Normally, I’d never venture this far north into Kingdom, even with my powers. Goblins were terrifying and territorial creatures, but I was with a brawny dragonborne. No one would dare to bother us.
And for just a moment, I remembered what it felt like to feel safe and protected from the wilds of this world. For so long I’d been alone, with only my wiles, charms, and magic to protect me.
His claws opened, and I was freed from my cave. Only then did it dawn on me that he’d taken me out of wonderland. A place he’d known before I could never dare to leave without threat of serious harm to my person. I did not know Ragoth well anymore, but I had to wonder if he’d been checking in on me the same way I’d been checking in on him.
Once, he’d have died at the thought of bringing me harm. Surely, somewhere deep inside that caring dragon still existed?
My pulse sped.
Stepping out, I dusted at my now very wrinkled dress and waited for his transformation.
I knew he had things to say and would not wish to say them in dragon form. But before he turned, I soaked him in. I’d forgotten how beautiful his true form was. The pearly white of his scales, the veiny blue phosphorescence of veins that cut through his wings. And the slitted blue-green eyes that reminded me of the waters to the right of us.
A moment later he was cast in white flame. I had to toss an arm across my eyes to shield them from the intense light. But I knew the moment he’d changed when I heard his inhalation.
That’s when the fury took me.
Stepping up to him, I opened my eyes, and without so much as a hint of warning, I slapped him so hard across his cheek the mountain range echoed with the sound of it.
His jeweled eyes widened in shock as a scarlet bloom blossomed upon his dark-skinned cheek. And for just a minute I froze, because Ragoth was more beautiful than I could ever have imagined him being.
His hair had grown long and shaggy, hanging down to his shoulders. His jaw was covered in bristles, hinting at the beginnings of
a beard. But his skin gleamed like rich mahogany. He’d also grown well into his body. He was tall, muscular, and made my skin tingle with a sensation I’d only ever experienced once before.
True desire.
I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly and stiflingly hot. Angered by my reaction to him, I snapped.
“How...how dare you steal me! I should flay you for your—”
“Shut up,” he growled in a voice twice as deep as I remembered it being, and with a hungry sounding groan, he grabbed me by my shoulders and dragged me into his chest, claiming my lips for his own.
Terrified that I would feel them light in flame as they had last time, I beat at his chest, but that lasted less than a second when it soon dawned on me that all I felt was hunger for more.
Desperate for more and yet still very angry at him, I clawed at his head as I swiped my tongue along the seam of his lips.
“Bloody hell, woman,” he snarled, nipping at my bottom lip and making me whimper in response.
Our tongues mated. Slipping and sliding along each other’s, the kiss wet and demanding and brutally unyielding as his sharp teeth would pierce through my tongue, making me taste blood that I wasn’t entirely certain was just my own.
There was a violence to this kiss that wasn’t natural, I was sure of it. But I also knew I could not be the first one to end this. I needed this. Needed the taste of him. The feel of him. I’d been dead. For so long devoid of any and all emotion, shutting myself off to the world.
But now... Now I felt alive.
I gasped when his hands shoved my bodice down, ripping the fabric and corset, exposing my breasts and nipples to the breeze. I keened when his thumbs rubbed frantically across the tight buds. Lightning whipped through my veins, stirred in my blood, made my skin feel like it sparked and snapped like dancing flame.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I tried to remind myself that I should not be doing this. I was a queen, I had responsibilities, I needed to—
“Lena.” His voice cracked when he finally pulled away. His face flushed, his chest heaving, looking as dazed and disheveled as I felt.