Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2

by Anderson, Evangeline

  “That sounds good to me,” I said quickly, looking at Ari.

  He frowned uncertainly.

  “I don’t like leaving you alone, L’lorna.”

  “She won’t be alone—I’ll be with her every minute,” Jalli promised. “We’ll get all cleaned up in no time, really Ari.”

  “Well…” He paused, as though considering it.

  “I don’t mind,” I told him. “I’d like to get to know your little sister.” I sensed that Jalli could be an ally here in the huge, cold Drake palace and right now, I could use all the allies I could get.

  “All right. I’m glad that you’ve taken to each other so quickly. Though I think it’s mostly that Jalli has taken to your Mr. Seahorse.” He nodded at the chimeling who chimed back at him, as though he recognized his name.

  “That’s not true!” Jalli said indignantly, putting a hand on one slim hip. “I think your L’lorna seems like a lovely person. Kaitlyn and I are going to be great friends.”

  “Go on then.” Ari smiled at us. “Have fun and I’ll come to get Kaitlyn and escort her to Mother’s Chambers in an hour.”

  “Okay! See you soon!” Jalli called. She grabbed me by the hand, and—since Mr. Seahorse didn’t protest this time—started pulling me down the hall with that odd, hobbling gait of hers.

  Smiling, I followed her. I hadn’t expected that anyone in Ari’s family would like me—it was nice to find out I had been wrong.

  76

  Ari

  I watched them go, my heart swelling with love and protectiveness as the two females I loved most in the world laughed and talked together. I was glad that Jalli had taken to Kaitlyn so quickly. After the way that cabron Sanchez had talked about her, I had been afraid she would be sorry she had come with me in the first place.

  “Of course she’s not sorry,” my Drake informed me. “She is only wary—as well she should be. Keeping her will not be easy.”

  “I know that,” I said, frowning as I turned to head to my mother’s royal chambers. I wanted to speak to her alone before I presented Kaitlyn. By now, with the way the servants gossiped, she would already know what to expect.

  “If they refuse to accept her, we will leave,” my Drake said, stating a fact we both knew.

  “Yes,” I agreed. There was no need of any other words between us. We both agreed without question that Kaitlyn was the one for us—our L’lorna—and nothing but death would part us from her.

  But making my parents understand that was a different matter altogether. I had known they wouldn’t want to accept Kaitlyn but they had to be made to see that they could either accept her or lose me. That was why I had been so forceful and public in my announcement of her as my future queen. I wanted them to know immediately where I stood on this issue. There was no room to bend—no way I was giving her up.

  She was mine and I and my Drake were hers. Now and forever.

  77

  Kaitlyn

  “So the private bath isn’t super fancy with gold and marble and precious gems in the walls like the main palace cleansing pools,” Jalli told me as she opened the door to a small wooden chamber with a round stone tub in the middle. “But it’s private and Papa said it’s just for me so nobody else can come in.” She shot me a curious glance. “I thought you might like that no one else could see you. I know that’s how I feel.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled at her. “You thought right. I’m, um, kind of self-conscious about people seeing me, um, undressed.”

  “Me too,” Jalli said. Closing the door, she lifted her long skirts and nodded down. “Because of this.”

  Looking down, I saw that her right foot was twisted—bent up at an ankle so that instead of walking on the sole of her foot, she was forced to walk on the outside edge. Her right calf also looked withered and was much thinner than the healthy left one. I understood her hobbling gait now—it was a wonder she could walk at all

  I tried to think of the name for what I was seeing. I remembered my parents donating to a medical charity that operated in Africa, healing kids who had this kind of problem.

  “Oh, a club foot!” I said, before I thought. I looked at her quickly, hoping I hadn’t hurt her feelings. But Jalli looked no more than curious.

  “Is that what you call it in your world?” she asked, frowning. “I mean, you’ve seen something like it before?”

  “Well, sure.” I nodded. “Kids are born with it sometimes. Is it really, um, unusual here?”

  Jalli shrugged. “Don’t know. Most babies with deformities are judged unfit to live and put out on the rocks for the branthas to eat.”

  “What?” I looked at her, aghast. “You’re not serious, are you? Please tell me you’re joking!”

  Jalli’s dark, lovely eyes opened wide.

  “Of course I’m serious. Because deformed babies might grow up to make other deformed babies or even worse, deformed Drakes. That’s why the Council of Perfection was created—to judge if a baby is fit to live or not.”

  As she spoke, she went casually over to the big stone tub and tapped a bronze faucet that hung over its edge. Steaming water began to gush out at once.

  “But…I don’t understand.” I shook my head, still unable to take in this barbaric practice of the Drake people. I knew that some human societies had done the same kind of thing—the Spartans leapt to mind from my World History class. But how could anybody still do such a thing in this day and age? And if they really did kill all the deformed babies that were born, how had Jalli herself been spared?

  “You’re probably wondering how I’m still here instead of just a pile of dry bones out on the rocks, right?” she asked causally, as though it was no big deal. “Well, that’s due to Ari, of course.” She grinned. “My protective big brother.”

  “How so?” I asked, fascinated. “I mean, how could he have protected you? He couldn’t have been more than four or five when you were born, right?”

  “About that.” Jalli nodded. “The way my mother tells the tale, my father was away at the time of my birth. He was quelling an uprising in the North, you know, and so he couldn’t stay to see me born.”

  As she spoke, she added some red powder from a jar to the steaming water filling the stone tub. At once the powder started to froth up and big pink bubbles began to form all over the surface of the water. Jalli stirred the tub meditatively and kept talking.

  “Anyway, they could tell right away there was something wrong with my foot,” she went on. “The Council of Perfection came right after I was born and said I must be gotten rid of. They gave my mother an hour to say goodbye and then they said they would be back to put me out on the rocks.”

  “But…but how can you just get rid of a baby?” I demanded. “That’s horrible.”

  “Oh…” Jalli shrugged. “I hadn’t yet reached my seventh day yet, you see, so I was still a non-person. Well, to everyone but Ari.” She smiled. “Would you like to get in the tub? I’ll turn my back so you can undress if you like.”

  She suited actions to words and I began to strip off my crumpled uniform while Mr. Seahorse flew to sit on the side of the tub and peck at the bubbles. I was out of my clothes quickly and laid them in a more-or-less neat bundle on a small chair by the tub.

  “Tell me,” I said as I slid into the steaming, fragrant water. It felt wonderful on my tired muscles. “How did Ari save you?”

  “Oh, well, as my mother tells it, she was lying in the bed weeping and holding me. She didn’t want to give me up, even though I wasn’t fit to live, you see,” Jalli said.

  She peeked over one shoulder, saw that I was completely immersed in the bubbles, and turned around so she could perch on the edge of the tub while we talked.

  “So Ari came in the room and asked why she was sad,” she went on. “And Mother told him because they had to take away his little sister and showed me to him—showed him my twisted foot, you know.”

  “What did he do?” I asked, fascinated by this peek into Ari’s past.

  “Well, wh
en the Council of Perfection came back to take me to the rocks, his Drake came out!” Jalli’s eyes shone with excitement. “The youngest manifestation of a Drake in all our recorded history—they usually come out when a boy is ten or eleven,” she added. “Of course, his Drake was smaller than he is now but Mother says he still filled up nearly the entire room. So when the Council of Wisdom tried to get to me, they couldn’t.”

  “But…don’t they have Drakes too?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, but there’s were much too big to fit in the human part of the palace,” Jalli explained. “And besides, nobody wanted to take a chance on harming the Alpha-to-be. Ari and his Drake guarded me that way for the entire seven days until I had to be declared a person and then, well, they couldn’t get rid of me.” She shrugged and grinned. “So here I am.”

  “Here you are,” I echoed, smiling back at her. I felt like I had a new insight into Ari’s personality now. Could it be that he didn’t see me as deformed or scarred because he was used to protecting and defending his little sister who had a disability? Whether that was the case or not, it made me love him when I thought of how he had protected Jalli when she was a helpless baby.

  “So…you say they have lots of people like me in the human world?” Jalli asked, swirling one hand through the bubbles. She was looking at me from the corner of her eye, as though she wasn’t sure what I might say.

  “We do but mostly in countries where they can’t get good medical care,” I told her. “We have doctors in my world who can cure club foot—I mean, they do an operation to straighten the foot out.”

  “Really?” Jalli’s large dark eyes went big and round. “They can really do that?”

  “Absolutely.” I nodded. “But I’m surprised your people don’t know about that—you have a connection to the human world, after all. To my world, I mean.”

  “You mean the rift?” she asked. “It’s mostly only the hidalgos—or noblemen—who fly through the rift into the human world. And not that many of them go—just the kids from the upper and royal families and then only for a few years before they come back here to settle down.” She sighed. “I wish I could go.”

  “Why can’t you?” I asked. “You’d probably like Nocturne Academy. There’s a place for everybody there,” I added, thinking of my wonderful Coven-mates.

  “I wish I could.” Jalli sighed again. “But I’m not supposed to be too visible. I’m living proof that the Alpha Drake didn’t keep the law of the land. And besides, a deformed female isn’t supposed to show her face in public.”

  This was exactly what I had been afraid of and hearing it said aloud didn’t make me feel any better.

  “That’s probably going to be a problem in my case,” I said, looking down at my scarred arms and hands.

  “Probably,” she admitted. “But I’m glad Ari chose you for his queen—I like you.”

  “I like you, too,” I said, smiling. Though honestly, the whole “queen” thing was starting to freak me out a little. I had never imagined when Ari asked me to come to the Sky Lands with him that he would be introducing me as his bride-to-be and the future queen of the entire place. No wonder people were upset—I was the wrong kind of Other and I was visibly scarred. I just didn’t understand why he had picked me.

  “I just don’t understand why Ari picked me to be his queen,” I murmured to myself, voicing my thought aloud.

  “Well, he didn’t, silly!” Jalli exclaimed. “His Drake did—that’s how these things work.”

  “His Drake?” I asked. I remembered Ari saying that his Drake had chosen me and that his heart had followed his Drake’s, but it hadn’t really sunk in before now. “So…his Drake fell in love with me first?” I asked, frowning.

  “It might be better to say his Drake claimed you,” Jalli corrected me. “That’s the way it goes sometimes. When a Drake decides you’re his treasure—his L’lorna—he almost never changes his mind. That’s what happened with my parents, you know.”

  “Really?” I looked at her in surprise.

  “Uh-huh. My father was supposed to choose from among the daughters of the hidalgo but his Drake was flying a patrol over a lonely mountain village and he saw my mother hanging the washing out to dry.” Jalli smiled. “My father always says that the minute he and his Drake laid eyes on her, they were both smitten. He carried her back to the palace and told my grandfather point blank that she was his L’lorna and he would have no other.” She shrugged. “So they were bonded, of course.”

  “Of course,” I murmured, thinking of how Ari had been so forceful in declaring me as his L’lorna in the Audience Chamber in front of his father and the other Drakes as witnesses. Maybe such bull-headedness ran in the family. I wondered if it would make his mother feel any more kindly towards me…and guessed it probably wouldn’t. After all, even if she didn’t come from noble blood, at least she was still of the Drake people. And I was betting she didn’t have really visible scars all over her body either.

  “Anyway, you can soak for a while,” Jalli said, standing. “I’m going to go find you a robe to wear—and maybe some insects for Mr. Seahorse.” She grinned. “Will you be okay here alone?”

  “Oh, sure.” I nodded. “I’ll be fine. I like this, uh, bubble bath you put in,” I added, nodding at the pink bubbles. “It’s very soothing to the skin.”

  “I thought it might help your scars,” she said honestly. “It always makes my foot feel better when it aches.” She looked down at the appendage in question wistfully. “Sure wish I could go to the human world and get it healed, like you talked about. But I would never be allowed.”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, indignant on her behalf. Why shouldn’t she go to my world and have the operation to heal her foot? Looking around at the huge, richly decorated marble palace it was clear her parents could afford it. “I think you should! Like I said, you’d fit into Nocturne Academy just fine.”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t leave the palace halls. I’ll be here all my life and die an old maid—like the Blind Crone seer who’s always croaking around here.”

  “The who?” I asked. But at that moment there was a light rapping at the door and I heard Ari’s voice outside.

  “Jalli? Is everything all right?”

  “All fine,” Jalli called back. “Kaitlyn’s in the bath, but she’s all covered with bubbles.” She looked at me. “Do you mind if I let him in?”

  I looked down at myself. As Kaitlyn had said, I was submerged in pink bubbles up to my neck—it was a really deep tub. So I didn’t think it would be a problem for Ari to come in.

  “Let him in,” I told her.

  “Okay.” She opened the door and smiled at her big brother as he came in.

  I sank a little lower in the bubbles, feeling self-conscious. But at least the pink, sweet-smelling foam covered me and I was decent. Taking a deep breath, I looked up at him and smiled.

  “Hi, Ari—come in.”

  78

  Kaitlyn

  Ari smiled back at me.

  “Looks like you’re enjoying your bath,” he said.

  “And the company,” I said, smiling at Jalli who gave me a little wave before she hobbled swiftly out, closing the door behind her.

  “I thought you two might like each other,” Ari said.

  “Well, Jalli’s a very likable person,” I said.

  “Yes, she gets into your heart almost the minute you see her.” He grinned.

  “She certainly got into yours right away,” I said carefully. “Jalli was telling me how you saved her from being killed when she was a baby.”

  He nodded gravely. “Though I was so young, I remember it well. I took one look at her and my Drake and I knew we couldn’t let her go.”

  “It’s a wonderful story,” I said. “But, Ari…do your people really leave babies with birth defects out on the rocks to die?”

  “Not now,” he said quickly. “Jalli is the light of my father’s life—her presence helped him understand how wro
ng the practice was. So we don’t do it anymore.”

  “But Jalli talked like it was still going on,” I protested. “She said you have a ‘Council of Perfection’ that inspects every baby when it’s born.”

  “We do still have the Council of Perfection,” he admitted. “But they don’t demand that imperfect infants be abandoned anymore.”

  “Just locked away where no one can see them?” I asked dryly. “Like Jalli?”

  Ari ran a hand through his hair.

  “I tried to get my Sire to let me take her with me to the human world, but he wouldn’t hear of it. My father loves Jalli but he thinks she must be hidden away for her own good.”

  Or maybe because he’s ashamed of her, I thought. Because Jalli would be a reminder to everyone who saw her that the Alpha Drake of the Sky Lands had fathered a less-than-perfect child.

  “You know, there are operations in my world that could help her,” I told him. “Surgeons who could fix her foot.”

  “I know.” He looked more unhappy than ever. “But my Sire doesn’t trust the human world—I could barely get him to let me go attend Nocturne Academy for a single year myself.”

  “And you repaid him by bringing back the most unsuitable girl possible,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t say that, Kaitlyn.” He sat on the edge of the tub and took my hand in his. “You’re perfectly suitable,” he said, looking into my eyes. “And I’m going to make my father and everyone else in the Sky Lands see it.”

  “Because you’re going to make me your ‘queen?’” I asked, keeping my voice low in case anyone was listening outside. The idea of being the queen of anywhere—let alone a country that would hate me just for being who and what I was—still felt foreign and wrong. Also, I was only sixteen—I wasn’t exactly thinking about marriage—let alone ruling a country I hadn’t even been in twenty-four hours yet.