“I guess that just leaves Líann,” I replied. “Do you know what she wants?”
“She was most displeased to learn that you went out searching for the people who’d killed the patrol, Empress,” Talína explained to me.
Interesting, but that really wasn’t any of her concern. Apparently, I would have to make it clear to her that she needed to mind her own business. This shouldn’t be too difficult, I thought as I walked into the room where she was waiting.
My entrance interrupted her as she was wringing her hands and nervously pacing the room. Then, as soon as she saw me, Líann rushed at me and wrapped me in a tight embrace.
“Don’t ever do that again!” She scolded as she hugged me firmly. “I was so frightened for you.”
“What are you talking about?” I said as I pried her off of me.
“Going out on some errand with your troops, that’s what I’m talking about!” She chided me. “You’re the Empress—you cannot take those kinds of risks anymore!”
“I’ll go wherever I please, Líann,” I replied with growing irritation. “And deciding what risks I take is up to me, not you.”
“That’s simply unacceptable,” she shot back. “Marching off with your army to war is one thing, but this is different. You—”
I cut her off right there as my eyes flashed with green light once again. I had enough of people criticizing and complaining about my actions, and if I wasn’t going to take it from Tási anymore, I sure as hell wasn’t about to let Líann lecture me. She backed off just a step as I advanced on her but offered no resistance when I grabbed her firmly by her arms and glared as her.
“I am much stronger than you realize, Líann,” I growled in her face. “I’m Deathless, Sintári, and even more. My enemies have far more to fear from me than I do from them. I will go where I choose, and I’m not going to let you or anyone else to tell me what I can or cannot do. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered as she stared back at me intently.
As she continued to look into my eyes, I suddenly realized that her expression was not one of fear or respect, like I’d been trying to instill in her. Líann’s eyes shone back at me with a fire all their own, and with the light of something even more ominous than what I’d conjured: desire. Her gaze threw me off completely, and I let go of her as I stepped away.
“Do it again,” she purred at me when the light faded from my eyes.
“What?” I responded, completely baffled by her request.
“Your strength, your power,” she replied, following me as I backed away. “Show them to me again.”
“You’re not afraid of me?” I almost pleaded with her.
“I am,” she admitted as she paced after me. “But no one has ever dared assert themselves over me so strongly before. You took me by surprise when you did it the other night. But now I find it… stimulating.”
Her voice dropped an octave with that final word and the way she looked at me sent a shiver down my spine. Líann was clearly ‘stimulated’ as she’d said, and the fact that it was the display of my darkness that had brought it on gave me chills.
“Sit down, Líann,” I coaxed her. “Let’s talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk,” she countered as she continued her pursuit. “Can’t we do something else?”
“Talk or leave,” I demanded.
She didn’t take her eyes from me as she took a seat at the small side table, and I took the one opposite, and farthest away from her. I was reluctant to address what had just happened, so I tried to delay by beginning with her initial objection.
“Besides the risks,” I started, as if nothing had happened. “Is there any other reason why you think I shouldn’t go out on a mission with my soldiers?”
“Many,” Líann replied confidently. “Although the risk to your life is, of course, foremost in my mind. But going on some patrols and not others can be perceived as favoritism or placing importance on certain things over others. This leads to dissention and can cause problems with morale.”
“We lost people,” I responded. “I had to help find who’d killed them.”
“You will lose more people,” she countered immediately. “Will you join every mission that goes out in search of their killers?”
Dammit, she had a good point. No, I wouldn’t be on every team that responded to an attack against us. I simply couldn’t. Would that be perceived the way Líann described? I hoped not, but I couldn’t be sure. I just didn’t have a good enough answer to the question she posed.
“I can tell from your hesitation that you’ve seen my point,” Líann noted, surprisingly without any trace of her typical superiority. “Now can we move on?”
“No, I don’t think that we should,” I replied uneasily. “That was just a little too weird.”
“What do you find so unusual about it?” Líann responded innocently.
“Seriously?” I asked incredulously. “You don’t find anything strange about getting ‘stimulated’ by what I just did?”
“I’ve been a Queen for longer than I can remember, Empress,” Líann sighed as she began to explain. “In all that time, I’ve never had a superior and only a handful of equals. No one ever dared to speak back to me for fear of my reprisal, and I’ve never met anyone who was willing to stand up to me and even intimidate me like you do.”
“It’s absolutely… intoxicating,” she purred again.
I’d set out to put a little fear into her, yet for the second time in two days, she’d turned the tables on me, and now I was the one who was a little bit scared. As Líann stared at me over the table, I realized that she’d gained the upper hand on me. I needed to get out of there immediately before she managed to maneuver me somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.
“Well, now that you’ve seen that I’m fine, I need to get back to work,” I uttered hastily as I got up to leave. “I look forward to Thelmé’s next report. We’ll talk again after I’ve read it.”
“Yes, Empress,” she called after me playfully as I rushed away from her. “I’ll see you then.”
That damn woman knew she’d made me uncomfortable, and she was enjoying every minute of it. But what the hell was I going to do about it? I wondered as I made my way back to the privacy of my residence. I couldn’t physically fend her off—that would only urge her on even more it seemed, and no matter how high-minded I might think I was, if she pushed me too far, I knew that I’d eventually crumble. The link I’d foolishly established between us and the undeniable attraction I already felt towards Líann made that fact unescapable.
But despite all of that, I wasn’t ready to deal with the complications that would inevitably ensue if, alright, when my relationship with the Queen became something more. I had to come up with something, anything that would hold her off, even if it was only for a little while. There was already too much on my plate, and I simply wasn’t prepared to handle the added stress that dealing with even more entanglements would bring about.
I could try to merely avoid her, but that would only work for a very short time. Inevitably, I would need to deal with her again, and I needed a plan. With simply dominating the woman out of the question, I was left with only one choice; I had to out-negotiate her. I would have to pit my meager debating skills against over a century of her experience and somehow convince her to back off, something she’d made clear that she didn’t want to do. I had no idea how I was going to do that, but unless I came up with something before our next meeting, I would be in a great deal of trouble.
Fortunately, I never saw Líann over the next few days. I was able to conduct the remaining interviews and fill out my staff in relative peace, and my four new secretaries handled most of the burdens I’d dealt with before. All Talína allowed to get through to me were the most urgent items and brief summaries of the events that occurred around the Imperial District. Even the potentially tricky negotiations over my Charter were going well. In fact, they were nearing their conclusion, and a diplomatic cel
ebration was already being planned, both in honor of their adoption and as a sendoff for the visiting royalty.
While I was delighted to have my Charter close to completion, I was absolutely overjoyed by the prospect of Líann’s departure. The elven queen’s ability to out-maneuver me had given me fits, and hopefully the public reception, where she could do little harm, would be the last time I’d have to deal with her for some time.
The only troubling note during that time was Bane’s continued absence. He’d never returned after our battle with Gilfri’s soldiers, and although the bond we shared let me know that nothing bad had happened to him, I was growing concerned. Fortunately, after a few days, I found him in his room again one evening.
‘Bane, you’re back!’ I sent to him in a mixture of joy and relief as I rushed to embrace him.
Yes, I have returned Sintári.
‘Why did you stay away from me for so long? Is everything alright?’
I am well. I stayed away to make sure that was the case.
I understood what he meant without him having to offer any uncomfortable explanations. The last time I’d seen him was when he dragged the body of an elf into the woods, intent on eating the man he’d killed. While I didn’t want to make his return any more difficult than was necessary, I needed to know what had compelled him to act as he had.
‘You have to explain what happened, Bane.’
I cannot. All I can tell you is that I had to do it. I do not know why that was the case. The urge has passed, but I believe that it will return when I kill again.
‘This urge you felt, your compulsion to feed; do you have the sense that it will be limited to those you kill in battle, or do we need to take precautions to keep my people safe?’
Your people are safe from me, Sintári. It seems to be some sort of battle-rage, at least that is how I can best describe the feeling.
‘Is that all you’re able to tell me?’ I sent back, letting my sense of concern flow to him freely.
There was a bit of… discomfort afterwards, Sintári. That is why it took me so long to return. I felt a sense of itchiness and irritation inside. I waited until it passed, and I was certain that there were no ill-effects before I would allow myself to return to you.
‘What kind of discomfort? Were you ill?’
No, it was not quite that bad. Just an odd sensation in my mouth and throat, and a strange feeling inside me. But it has gone now, and I feel better.
Bane’s description of his discomfort reminded me of Nentai’s curious inspection of him, when she had carefully examined his mouth and teeth. She had seemed oddly satisfied with what she’d found, and declared that it would not be long before the nature of the transformation I’d brought on in him would finally become obvious to me. I couldn’t help but wonder if devouring his kill had been some necessary step in his metamorphosis.
‘As long as you’re fine and are sure that it is safe for you to be here, then I don’t care.’ I sent to him as I got up to retrieve some of the blankets we kept in his room. ‘Let’s just get some rest now. We’ll deal with whatever happens when we have to.’
I bundled up next to him and lay my head in the crook of his foreleg as he curled himself around me in an almost protective circle. The thrumming of his loud purr was like music to my ears, and for the first time in a while, I sent a thread of my love to him.
He jolted just slightly as I slipped the thin tendril past his scales, but settled down immediately as the emotion gently filtered into him. Together, we soothed each other to sleep, him with his purr and me with my loving thread, and we both slept far better that night than we had since before Bane’s self-imposed exile.
My blissful sleep came to a rather abrupt and violent end the next morning when Bane broke out in a harsh fit of coughing. He jerked his head up, and I was unceremoniously dumped onto the pile of his pillows as his hacking became more and more intense. Finally, as I was trying to free myself from the tangle of blankets I found myself in after I’d been dislodged from my comfortable sleeping spot, I heard him blast out a tremendous sneeze, which brought the entire episode to an end.
When I got loose from the covers, I saw Bane staring mesmerized at the draperies that were used to cover the glass doors when we wanted their light to be dimmed. His episode had apparently knocked over a table or something where a lamp or candle must have been left burning, and the fabric of the draperies had caught fire. Bane should have been able to tear them down and stomp out the small flames easily but was totally useless as he stood there transfixed by the accident he’d caused. So, I moved towards the fire with one of the covers in my hand to try and bat down the flames, but before I could, Tási rushed in from our bedroom and doused the small inferno with a well-placed gush of water.
“New Spell?” I commented as I looked over the charred mess of wet cloth.
“Not terribly useful, I’m afraid, except for putting out small fires,” she replied. “What happened?”
“Bane sneezed,” I smiled in amusement. “It must have turned over a candle or something and caught the drapes on fire.”
That is not what happened, Sintári. Bane’s voice came to me in an almost disturbing tone.
‘Somethings not right. What is it, Bane?’ I couldn’t hide the anxiety in my response.
This was no accident. I did that. There was no candle, Sintári. The flames came from me.
Nentai’s cryptic words and odd inspection of him all came flooding back to me. I rushed to him, and without any preamble, pried open his mouth. Inside were the rows of his sharp teeth, and the long, deadly canines that were once his venomous fangs. Nothing seemed unusual, until his tongue moved, and I saw the two deep pits that were hidden beneath it.
As soon as my eyes saw those dark holes, a flood of information surged into my mind unlike anything I’d experienced before. This was not the subtle tickle that Nentai used to nudge me gently towards some conclusion, but a torrent of knowledge that flowed into me through the bond I shared with Bane.
I instantly knew that the pits I’d seen were indeed the source of the flames that had ignited the draperies. I was also shown the entire path of the transformation he’d gone through. From the strengthening of his muscles and bones, to the slow process of converting his venom glands into the fire-producing organs that they had become. I caught a bare glimpse of the ancient Sintári ritual that my predecessors had used to induce these same changes on their own Rhastoren familiars—changes that had once filled the skies with creatures just like Bane. Powerful beings that had not been seen since the last Sintári had vanished millennia ago—beings that had been rightfully known as Dragons.
Consuming the elf had given Bane the final thing he needed to complete his transformation: the Aura of a sentient being. It hadn’t really been the flesh he’d felt driven to devour, it was the man’s energy. The energy that Bane required for the last step in the process that I’d initiated—the fuel for his fires.
“What’s going on?” Tási asked, breaking Bane and I from our shared dream.
Before I could answer her, Bane draped his neck over my shoulder, nuzzled his head against my back, and pulled me into him by coiling his long neck around me. He’d never embraced me this way before, but it felt strangely familiar, and I wrapped my arms around him in return. As we stood together, I felt his bond more strongly that I ever had before, and I knew that it was the completion of his transformation that was responsible for the increased intensity of our shared link.
“It done, Tási. It’s done,” I whispered to her in answer.
“Alright,” she responded even more puzzled. “What’s done?”
“You were right all along, Tási,” I smiled as I turned my head just enough to catch one of Bane’s golden eyes. “Bane really was a baby dragon after all.”
His eye narrowed just a bit as he remembered the comment he’d originally taken as an insult, but with the reality of the situation, he realized that he no longer had any grounds to object, and he responded
without any irritation.
The baby ogre girl was apparently correct about me, he replied with amusement.
It took some time for me to calm Tási down and relay the story of what I’d seen in the vision that Bane and I had shared. After I finally convinced her of the truth, we held a somewhat awkward three-way conversation as we tried to determine just what to do with this new-found information.
Bane would need to learn how to use his new weapon, and that was clearly what it was—there was simply no other way to think about it, but we eventually decided that it was best kept as a secret for the time being. He would find a place to practice far away from prying eyes and learn to use his new-found ability. Our enemies would learn about it for the first time on the battle field, without the opportunity to prepare for his fiery onslaught in advance.
Once we finally understood what had happened, Bane was eager to begin, and flew off immediately to start training with his new ability. Even though I made him promise to return each night, I still felt a slight pang of separation as I watched him fly off into the distance.
Although I couldn’t tell anyone else about Bane’s amazing transformation, it still brightened up my entire morning. Things only got better when a messenger delivered a reply from Gilfri, graciously letting me know that he would be arriving in a little over a week. After all his underhanded attacks, I actually looked forward to meeting the treacherous elven royal, and immediately began scheming over just how roughly I would be putting him in his place. Then, when Talína informed me that the Imperial Charter had actually been completed during a final round of negotiation late the night before, my mood could not have been better. The draft copy she provided me had everything I’d insisted on and gave the vassal states within The First Sintári Empire virtual free rein to conduct their affairs as they saw fit, so long as they abided by the general outlines of the Charter.
With the Charter complete, the celebratory diplomatic gathering was already scheduled for later that evening. The leaders had been away from their Realms for longer than most were comfortable with, and were anxious to return home. Perhaps almost as anxious as I was to see one of them in particular be on her way.
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