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To my boys and husband, who are my life and who have seen me through untold heartaches. For my readers, who are family, and to my friends for keeping me sane. Thank you all for being part of my life.
And as always, to Monique, Alex, Robert, John, Eric, Ervin, Mark, Nancy, Angie, Jen, and everyone at St. Martin's and Trident who work so incredibly hard on the books to make them a reality. And The MB Staff: Kim, Paco, Lisa, and Carl, and all the volunteers who keep things running smoothly! You guys are the best!
PROLOGUE
Samothraki, Greece
9501 BCE
"The bastards cut his throat. Severed his vocal cords entirely."
Materializing from the frigid depths of his lair, Falcyn cursed as he saw his brother, Maxis, dragging Illarion into his dark den behind him. For years they'd been searching for their youngest dragon-brother, who'd been captured by humans for who knew what nightmarish horrors. But no trace had ever been found of the young dragonet.
Until now.
So large that he barely fit through the cave opening, Maxis released his hold on their baby brother and allowed Illarion to sprawl across the floor. Blood seeped over his yellowish-orange scales. Both of his wings lay broken and useless against the cold earthen floor.
His breathing shallow as he struggled desperately to stay conscious, Illarion blinked his serpentine yellow eyes slowly. Painfully.
So much needless misery--it radiated from the child to the core of Falcyn's being. And it made his own eyes turn vibrant red as bloodlust rose within him. Knowing he couldn't tend his brother in his native dragon body, Falcyn shifted into the hated form of a human.
The moment he did so, Illarion let out a gurgling hiss and rolled into an attack position even though it had to be agony for him to move.
"Easy, little brother." Falcyn spoke in their native drakyn--the true language all dragons spoke. One that sounded feral and unintelligible to humans.
He held his hand out toward Illarion as a peace offering. While he might temporarily wear the skin of a man, Falcyn was and would always be a dragon in his heart and soul. "You know me. I need this form to heal you. Now calm yourself before you do more harm."
A single crystalline tear fell from the corner of Illarion's serpentine eye.
In that moment, Falcyn hated humanity more than he ever had--something he wouldn't have thought possible. He reached to stroke Illarion's gray-scaled snout. "Shh..."
Illarion backed up, then collapsed.
Maxis gasped as he gently nuzzled the much smaller dragon and tucked his own wings against his body.
Ignoring the fact that Max was a giant beast of a dragon who could swallow him whole in his current incarnation, Falcyn shoved Max's head away. "He's passed out from the pain, Yaya. Now move your hulking arse so I can help him."
Max shuffled back to make more room. "Will he live?"
"I don't know. Where did you find him?"
"I didn't. He found me." Guilt and agony haunted Max's eyes. "He can no longer Bane-Cry. The bastards took his ability to call us when they slit his throat."
Falcyn ground his teeth as even more unmitigated rage tore through him. "Then we will teach him a new way to call for us. One they won't be able to stop."
Max nodded and looked away. "This is my fault."
"Don't!"
"It is and you know it. My mother gave him to the humans to get back at me for what I said to her. Had I cooperated ... given her what she--"
"She would have screwed over the world, and he still would have paid for her cruelty. The lilitu are without the ability to care for their young. You know this. My own mother watched as they sacrificed me on my birth. All it did was teach me that we're in this life alone, cradle to grave, and make me bitter and disgusted."
Max swallowed before he spoke again. "Is that why you can take human form when no other dragon can?"
Falcyn didn't answer his question. It was the one thing he would never speak of.
To anyone.
No one needed to know anything about him. Not even those he considered his brothers.
Nor was he the only dragon who could shift ...
But there were many things his brothers and sisters didn't need to know about this world.
"His physical injuries are not so bad," he said, changing the subject. "We should be able to heal him."
"But?"
"He's only a child. I fear for the mental damage they've wrought."
"As do I. They were using him to fight in their wars. Riding him like he was a thoughtless beast."
Falcyn winced. Too bad Illarion hadn't been a full-grown drakomas. That was the fury the humans deserved.
Not the small child who lay helpless at his feet. One who'd been unable to fully fight them and give them the fyrebreath and dragon's fury they deserved.
In that moment, he felt the demon within him rising. It wanted to set fire to the world and watch it burn to cinders. If mankind had any idea how often they tempted him toward destruction they'd never sleep again.
Times like this, it took everything he had not to give in to that darkness that burned inside him, calling for the hearts and souls of all sentient beings.
Even the gods.
That was what made it so hard to relate to Maxis.
Part Arel, he was the direct opposite. He saw only good inside even the most corrupt.
It was sickening, really. The way his brother wanted to help others. That innate need Max had to protect and to serve. It was ever revolting.
Now Illarion had been given his first taste of humanity. And like Falcyn's, it had been a most bitter meal. If the dragonet did survive this, he wouldn't have Max's blood in him that would want to protect the human vermin who'd tortured him.
Illarion's father was the Greek god Ares. A war god. The humans had no idea what they'd been toying with. With the blood Illarion carried, he would become one of the strongest of their kind once he reached his majority.
A dragon of fierce, unmatched powers.
Falcyn's hand lingered at the brand on his brother's back where the humans had marked Illarion like cattle. It festered and bled.
Sadly, it would leave as bad a scar on his body as this entire ordeal had left on his brother's psyche.
May the gods have mercy on them all....
For Illarion would not.
1
St. George's Day, 619
"If you could piss away stupid, I daresay the majority of the candidates today might actually stand a chance against you."
Edilyn ferch Iago bit back a squeak of laughter at Virag's unexpected words. "Shh ... you get me into enough trouble as it is."
Barely the size of her index finger, he looked up at her with a cocked, innocent brow. "Can't help it if the rest of those wankers are too dim-witted to see your ebullience right before them." Walking along the edge of the shoddy, worn sill, he mocked the village voices they could overhear passing by her open window, making faces and rude gestures to go along with their innocuous conversations. It
was all she could do to not burst into laughter.
"Stop it, or I shall force you back into your bottle."
He snorted dismissively. "As if that's a threat. I like my bottle. Much better than being out here with all these--" He glanced out the window to the street and wrinkled his nose. "--people." With a fierce shudder, he sat down on the edge to eye her with an expression of even greater distaste. A light breeze fluttered his golden, gossamer wings. "Why are you dressed like that again?"
"St. George's Day."
"Ah." Virag released a long, tired sigh. "This year went fast. So what are your plans for being unacceptable to the dragons this time?"
Biting her lip, she stepped forward and revealed the small vial she'd purchased from the old witch woman who lived on the edge of the forest. She held it out toward him. "'Tis the scent of rotted bear guts."
He let out a fierce sound of protest before he fell back and kerplunked on the sill. "That would do it," he choked between gasps for air. "Yeah. Please ... bathe that off your skin before tonight. My eyes are watering. Burning, too." Crossing his eyes, he stuck his tongue out and feigned a dying pose that left one arm and leg dangling off the edge as he continued to sputter and gasp.
Edilyn laughed at her half brother and his antics. It was hard to take him seriously in his natural state of a gold-skinned, golden-haired and -eyed, winged sprite. Like this, he was ethereally beautiful and a far cry from the terrifying dark-shadow beast she knew he could transform into. "What kind of pixie are you?"
"Not a pixie," he snarled indignantly as he kicked his fur-covered legs at her. "Kikimora! Sheez! Inhaling those fumes has already addled your noggin. Any more and you'll be as daft as those lackwits outside."
She snorted at him. "Like you don't smell worse than that on a regular basis."
He laughed. "Only when I'm drunk on elderberries or mulberries ... or..." He paused to consider the truth of her accusation. "Well, you might have a point." Sitting up, he bent his knee and propped his whiskered chin on it to watch her while she finished belting on her mismatched costume. He was devilishly handsome with his short, spiked hair and angular features. But it was his personality and the way he always looked after her that made her love him best.
Since the day he'd magically appeared in her room three days after the death of her father, she'd been hopelessly devoted to her older brother. There was nothing she wouldn't do for him.
Not that he needed her help, given the depths of his godlike powers. Honestly, she had no idea why he'd come to her or why he stayed. She liked to think that he loved her, but the tales said that his kind were incapable of feeling such things. Immortal nightmare spirits were supposed to be devoid of any tender emotions whatsoever.
Rather, they were self-serving, vain creatures who used human weaknesses to prey on others. To manipulate humans for the gods and higher powers they were enslaved to or had bartered with.
Yet in spite of his random, surly threats, he remained by her side. Ever loyal. Ever caring, and even kind to her.
He was just like their mother, who'd been as full-blooded a kikimora as he was. Only her mother had made a pact and given up her immortal life to become human so that she could marry Edilyn's father.
It was something they never spoke of, as it angered Virag to an unholy level.
"How do I look?" Edilyn turned around and held her arms out to show him her outfit for the day.
He burst into raucous laughter that would have offended her had it not been the reaction she wanted. "Ridiculous."
She grinned as she reached for her horned helm. "Good. That's what I was going for."
He made a sound of utter pain-filled disgust. "What in the name of all Samhain is that on your head?"
"My battle helm."
He screwed his face into a mask of horror. "What are you? A bull?"
"What?" She feigned innocence. "Dragons have horns. I'm trying to blend."
"You're not a dragon." His tone was flat and dry.
"True."
He let out another pain-filled groan. "Thank the gods your parents are dead. I shudder at what they'd say if they could see you looking like this."
She stuck her tongue out. "Don't you have an old lady to frighten or torment?"
Virag scratched at his chin and lowered his legs to swing them over the sill's edge. "Not really. Rather harass you. It's far more entertaining."
"Great." She sighed wearily.
As she started to smear the gut scent on her skin, Virag stopped her. "Really, precious ... overkill. Given the heinousness of your ridiculous outfit, you don't need to smell on top of it. No dragon is going to choose anyone wearing that scytel. You'll be lucky if they don't all flee at your approach. Probably vacate the hall like it's afire. They might even leave the whole of the Ynys Prydein."
She capped the vial and smiled again. "Good." Last thing she wanted was a forced mating with some hybrid creature who'd eaten her father. And probably his own as well. "I don't understand why we need them for our army, anyway. What's wrong with riding horses?"
"For one? They can't fly." He fluttered his wings at her. "Something I'm rather fond of doing myself, and I highly recommend. Poor you, to be so deprived."
"So? There's much to be said for having two feet planted firmly on the ground. I can't break a wing and fall three hundred feet, where I shatter all my bones and land as a big bloody stain to be spooned up later."
"The second reason?" he continued, ignoring her interruption. "Horses tend to burst into flames when dragons attack them and spew their fire all over them. Other dragons don't do that. They fight back."
He had a point. Still, she wasn't willing to give it to him. "Horses take up a lot less room and they don't eat you out of house and home."
"I wouldn't go that far. Horses eat quite a lot, including your shoes."
"Humph." She wrinkled her nose as she belted on her sword. "This is a stupid tradition to hold on the day that celebrates a saint known for slaying dragons, don't you think?"
"Perhaps. But it's more a taming celebration. Man over beast, and all that rot."
"Do you really believe that?"
"You're asking a nightmare demon if I think a dragon can be tamed by a mere mortal? Sure. Why not? I'll go with it. I've seen much stranger things in my day--like a kikimora who gives up her immortality to be a dirt farmer in some backwoods village kingdom no one's ever heard of. Penllyn ... really?"
She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm over their mother's decision that he still held against her. Meanwhile, the dreamer in Edilyn thought it was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard of.
If not the most practical, given what it had ultimately cost her mother.
And father, too.
Sadly, she'd never met a man as honorable as her father. Nor as loving or fierce. If one existed, he definitely didn't live in Penllyn. It was little wonder that her mother had been so reluctant to let go of so rare an individual as her father. Such a unicorn needed to be cherished and kept.
Edilyn cast a wistful smile at Virag. "I just want to be a warrior on my own. Like my father was."
"Then I wish it for you."
"Thank you."
"You're very welcome. May you never live to regret the decisions you make." And with that, he pushed himself to his feet and flew from the sill to the small, dark green bottle that made up his home. In a flash of white light, he vanished inside it.
Edilyn carefully picked the bottle up and secured it to her neck by the thick black leather cord, then settled it in the pocket of her tunic.
"Can't see. Let me out!"
"You sure?"
"Absolutely. I want to witness this coming travesty firsthand."
Laughing at his dry tone, she obliged him and placed the bottle to hang outside her orange tunic so that he'd be able to see as it swung loose about her neck. Then, she grabbed the handcrafted bow her father had made for her so that she could leave for the Great Hall, where the day's celebration should be in full swing.
But as always, her heart wasn't in the coming festivities, and it definitely wasn't light. "Why is it ever the curse of humanity that the most cherished dreams of our lives are oft the hardest to achieve?" Edilyn sighed at the rhetorical question that had haunted her for years. A sane woman would give it up and let go this useless pursuit of her heart.
If only she were sane....
With a deep breath, she glanced about the sparse, unwelcoming room that had served as her dormer since the day her father had died in battle. How she prayed that after today she'd look at it no more. Nor would she be forced to work in the dreadful fields with the other impoverished orphans the church had taken in.
That this year, she'd finally succeed in making Brenin Cynfryn realize that she could stand as a warrior without a dragon lord to partner with.
Determined to be steadfast in her goal, she took her weathered war bow into her gloved hand. Yet as she did so, an unbidden memory of the previous eight years of failure and heartache brought a most bitter lump to her throat. Don't think about it. The past didn't matter.
Only today did.
Today would be different. She could feel it deep in her bones. Destiny would finally take note of her and reward her diligent persistence.
It would.
Hoping desperately that she wasn't lying to herself--again--Edilyn lifted her chin. She slung her brown leather quiver over her shoulder before making her way from the small hut toward the Great Hall where everyone in her village had gone for the day's celebration and test of arms.
For the last eight years on this very day, she'd won every game she'd participated in. Everyone knew that, like her father before her, she was the best archer among them. Her sword skills were at the top of their clan--while she could be overpowered, she could never be out-skilled. She'd even won the obstacle footrace.
Eight years straight.
And still Brenin Cynfryn refused to grant her freedom.
Stop it! Life's not fair, you know that. It's not supposed to be.
If it were, her parents would still be with her.
She categorically refused to let her negative thoughts impugn her courage or undermine her confidence as she neared the massive building that dominated their small town.
Nothing and no one would get in her way. Not this time. One way or another, she was going to prove to them all that she was worthy of being one of the brenin's marchawgion.