by Lauren Smith
An hour after the bells had stopped ringing, a man had come into the dungeons and set him free, handing him a handkerchief with the queen’s emblem embroidered in red and gold. Mikhail had taken the small bit of cloth and unfolded it. There tucked safely at the handkerchief’s center was his serpent ring.
“It was her last wish to give you this and your freedom. She also had a message she wished to pass on to you.”
Mikhail put the ring on his finger and folded the cloth back up. “What did she say?”
“She said she knows she will see you soon and hopes you can forgive her when you do.” The man left. Mikhail wandered from the prison, which had almost felt like a home at times, feeling even weaker than before.
So Elizabeth had known about the mate-grief. That was why she had released him. She believed he would soon die, but she’d wished for him to die with his freedom. It was her last gift. The only gift left she had the power to give.
He had watched from the shore as Elizabeth’s coffin was carried downriver to Whitehall. The barge was lit by torches, the fiery glow the only source of light on such a black night.
Even then, broken and defeated as he was, his heart grieved the loss of his once-intended mate. For a dragon’s heart is the strongest thing about him. His love and his loyalty could last centuries, even beyond death. Only the fact that they had not fully bonded saved him now, though in the centuries to come he would question whether or not that was a blessing.
He watched the barge vanish out of sight and twisted the ouroboros ring on his finger, then turned his back on his once-beloved Gloriana.
I can forgive you, my love, but I will not join you.
Mikhail buried the memories, now bitter in his heart. The past was the past, and he should not dwell on those dark days and forget to live. He looked out to the sea. Beneath the mist-covered cliffs, the white froth of the ocean churned against the rocky beaches, forming tiny inlets that had once hosted a place for the men and women of Cornwall to catch fish or raid the shoreline for the flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecks, provided by unfortunate captains who’d underestimated the dangers of the coast.
His dragon paced in the prison of his mind, demanding to be set free, even for a few hours. The weight of his sorrow at Elizabeth and now Piper left Mikhail weak. With a sigh, he allowed the dragon to come soaring to the surface.
Mikhail stripped out of his clothes and leapt off the cliff. He flung his arms wide, and for a moment he dove like an Olympic athlete. Then the transformation roared through him like a riptide. His muscles stretched, his skin hardened into dark moss-green scales, and his fingers became clawed tips on his webbed wings. Fire burned through his blood and he exhaled, causing flames to hiss from his jaws, turning the mist to steam, warming him as he flew higher and higher. He climbed the clouds, scaling the air with a series of strong flaps.
At last he broke through the stormy cloud bank and rose toward the sun. The bright rays hit his scales, brightened them to an emerald-like sheen. The beast was in control now. The human side of him faded to the background. The pain of spending half a century trapped in a dungeon had vanished, and he was free to fly and forget. But the dragon couldn’t shake the image of Piper from its mind. The way her eyes had filled with tears, or how she’d locked him out and wouldn’t let him comfort her.
A roar escaped the dragon, and more fire escaped from his jaws. He allowed his frustration and depression to rule him. He dove back down through the clouds, letting the storm surge around him as he plummeted into the raging seas. The cold water would have tested even the strongest of dragons, but he was used to the punishing feel of the icy waves. He used his powerful back legs to swim to shore, the movement difficult, then almost impossible as his muscles seized and he struggled to breathe.
He embraced this torture, part of him wishing he could sink beneath the surface and never come up. A dragon’s grief could be overpowering. What little part of Mikhail that still had power inside the beast urged him onward until he was clawing onto the rock-strewn shore. Jagged stones and tide-softened pebbles stirred beneath him as he writhed on the beach. Minutes later, his body shook violently as he shrank and transformed back into a man.
Teeth chattering, he struggled toward the small cave by the shore where he kept extra clothing in a waterproof gym bag, and he jerkily dressed. The jeans and shirt clung to his damp skin, and the sand still felt gritty against his palms, but he didn’t care. His bones almost cracked against one another as shivers began to rack him.
The dragon had gone too far this time. Tonight it had truly tried to hurt itself. The flight and the swim had left him spent, and he had no doubt his dragon had hoped it would kill him. He’d always had a knack for punishing himself, no matter what form it took. But it had been too much this time. Too much.
Shuddering, he left the cave, his body slowly shutting down as he tried to reach the cliff-side path that would take him home. He never made it. Collapsing to his knees, he squinted at the shrinking tunnel of his vision and the woman who cried out as though from a vast distance, a lifetime ago.
PIPER COULDN’T BELIEVE what she had just seen.
It wasn’t possible. One minute she’d been running toward Mikhail when he stood at the edge of the cliffs, and then he’d stripped naked and jumped. She’d been too far away for him to hear her scream his name. The sea and approaching storm had drowned out any warning she could give him.
Now it was too late. He was gone. No one could survive that jump, and if the fall didn’t kill him, the icy water and rocks below would. Piper fell to her knees by the cliff’s edge, shivering and staring at the tumultuous water surrounded in mist below her.
And then she heard it. A deep, echoing sound that vibrated the air and shook her to her bones, like a noisy fighter plane taking flight overhead. But she didn’t see any plane. She looked up, squinted, and then her heart stopped. Something dark rose up through the clouds.
It was a beast with massive wings and a long whipping tail. There was another sound, much like the one before. Flames burst from the creature’s mouth. Piper stared at it, and only one word came to mind.
Dragon.
It was impossible. It was…impossible. She was dreaming. This could not be real.
The bank of clouds above swallowed the creature. It had to be a trick of the eyes, or perhaps she had snapped under the stress of everything that was happening to her.
There are no such things as dragons.
She continued to tell herself this until the creature suddenly dropped from the sky and plunged into the sea. She screamed again. When it resurfaced and swam toward the shore, she saw it being struck again and again by the waves, battering it as it clawed its way through the water, its long green serpentine body huffing and fighting for breath. She stared at it, frozen in place until it reached the shore, and she saw it begin to shrink and change, becoming more and more human. She ran toward a small path cut into the cliff side. She had to see it…no, him.
The dragon had become Mikhail. She lost sight of him as he entered a cave, but she kept running until she caught sight of him again. He was dressed now, but he looked hurt. There was lethargy to his movements, and without warning he fell to his knees.
“Mikhail!” she screamed and ran toward him, just as he fell face-first on the icy wet sand. He didn’t move, didn’t stir. When she reached him, she touched his skin with her hands. It was ice-cold.
“What happened?” a voice bellowed from somewhere behind her, bouncing off the rocks. She turned to see Randolph Belishaw racing across the beach toward them.
“He’s—He’s a—”
“A dragon, yes. But what happened to him?” Belishaw knelt by Mikhail and rolled him onto his side. Mikhail coughed, and some water escaped his lips.
“He…he leapt off the cliff and then into the water. I saw him climb out of the water and go into a cave, but when he came out he collapsed.”
“We need to get him close to a fire,” Belishaw growled. He started to lift Mik
hail up from the ground. “Come.”
Mikhail blinked, his green eyes cloudy. “Beli…shaw…”
“Mikhail, what the bloody hell did you think you were doing?”
Piper put one of Mikhail’s arms around her shoulders. Belishaw did the same. They walked him along the steep, rocky path back up the cliffs. No one spoke as the three of them struggled. Piper slipped twice; her knees banged against the rocks which cut open her jeans. She knew she was bleeding, but they couldn’t afford to stop.
She didn’t know how long it took for them to make it back to Mikhail’s house, but once they did, Belishaw dragged Mikhail to a couch in the living room that was near the fire. Piper collected as many blankets as she could and covered him up. Mikhail closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the couch, letting out a deep, shaky breath.
“Do we need to do anything else to help him?” she asked.
“No, he just needs to warm up by the fire.” Belishaw sighed. “Ms. Linwood, I need to speak with you.” He waved her to come closer the fire place. He held out his hand, and a small burst of flames shot out at the fresh set of logs. They caught fire in an instant.
“Holy shit!” Piper lunged backward. “You’re a dragon too?” This couldn’t be happening. She was definitely dreaming.
“Yes,” Belishaw said. “A dragon shifter, to be more precise.”
“And what is that exactly?” Her body swayed as a wave of dizziness swept through her. Belishaw took hold of her wrist until she steadied herself.
“We are a race of beings who have existed for thousands of years. Our ancestors in the distant past were humans who learned to use magic to bring dragon spirits from another realm to this one. They bound the dragons to them, and the two beings coexisted in one body. We are essentially half-human, half-dragon, or depending on how you look at it, fully human and fully dragon. Either form can take over at our choosing. The ability to bond like that, the ritual of it is lost, but when we mate with others of our kind, we can reproduce more dragon shifters. We live most of our lives as humans, but sometimes the dragon takes over when the human side is weakened.” He paused, his honey-brown eyes searching her face—for what, she didn’t know.
“Okay…” Dragons came from another realm and bonded with humans to form one shared being? She was going to have to process all of this later. Much later.
“For some reason, Mikhail’s dragon attempted to harm itself. Do you know why?”
“The dragon? He can’t control it?”
Belishaw’s face darkened. “Most of the time the man and the beast have the same desires, the same needs, but sometimes a trauma can occur, and the dragon’s will becomes too strong.” He struggled forward. “Like when a dragon shifter loses his mate, the dragon’s grief is too strong to survive. The dragon dies, and the human dies with it. It’s why dragon shifters rarely mate mortals. When a dragon’s human mate dies within eighty or so years, the dragon perishes within days of their mate’s death.”
“Is Mikhail…mated?” Piper asked. The thought of him belonging to another woman while he’d been kissing her…
“Almost, but no. She turned her back on him and broke his heart. After she died, he was overcome with grief. I believe part of him still mourns her as though he’d mated her. There have been other times I’ve seen an unmated dragon mourn the loss of a potential mate. The dragon, unable to die from its grief, attempts to harm itself.”
“You mean like suicide?”
The grim expression in Belishaw’s eyes made Piper uneasy. She glanced at Mikhail, who was still on the couch, eyes closed.
“But what would make him like that?” she asked.
“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.” Belishaw frowned as he looked at Mikhail. “It’s been many centuries since I’ve seen him like this. The last time was when…” He sighed. “When he was released from Elizabeth’s dungeons and watched her funeral procession down the Thames.”
Piper’s lips parted in shock. “Centuries?” He couldn’t mean that Elizabeth. That…no…
“We have lived a very long time, he and I. He hasn’t told you, of course, but…” The man paused again, suddenly looking sheepish. “I should say no more. It’s not my story to tell. We need to keep him warm. A dragon can withstand much, but cold water gets under the scales, chilling even the human half. And it seems he was battered badly against the rocks.” Belishaw gestured to the bruises on Mikhail’s ribs.
“Are they broken? Should we call for a doctor? Would they be able to tell that he’s not human?” she asked. The bruised patterns on his beautiful chest made her heart ache. Had he really tried to kill himself? Or rather, had the dragon tried to kill him?
“We cannot be taken to hospitals or seen by human doctors. At least, those who don’t know what we are. Our blood possesses certain qualities that would be noticed immediately by mortal physicians and raise too many questions. He will heal. He has suffered much worse before this. But I fear the dragon is regaining control. I was going to return to London after I checked on you both, but now I think it’s best if I stay for a while longer.” He headed for the door. “Keep him warm. I need to make a few calls.”
Piper hesitated for a minute before she settled on the couch beside Mikhail. He used to radiate with heat, but now she could practically feel the icy chill within him. She came closer and laid a hand on his cheek. Her fingers were bloody around the knuckles where she’d cut herself, but she ignored the sting. Mikhail shivered and leaned his cheek into her palm.
“So warm,” he whispered and gave another full-body shiver. Piper bit her lip and crawled beneath the blankets on top of him, pressing her body against his. His shirt was still wet from his fall on the shore. He needed to get out of those clothes. They weren’t helping him keep warm. She should have thought of that when they first brought him in. She reached for the buttons on his shirt and slipped them open. Then she peeled his shirt from his shoulders.
“Sit up for me,” she said and leaned forward so she could remove his shirt completely.
He chuckled, but the sound was slightly ragged. “Trying to undress me? You need only ask.” When she looked up at his face, she saw that his green eyes weren’t as glassy now, but his gaze was still distant and unfocused, and that bothered her.
“Come on, Mikhail. Stay with me, okay?”
Every moment of this was completely surreal. But when she touched him, those wounded, haunted eyes grounded her in the reality of the moment. Maybe that’s why she’d not been able to resist him. Something about him had drawn her in like a moth to a flame. Dragons, Queen Elizabeth—all of it she could decipher later. Right now, this beautiful, mysterious man was on the verge of being lost, and everything inside her begged to rescue him.
“Jeans next…” She reached for the front of his pants, but he shook his head.
“I just need to lie down.” He shifted beneath her, and she gasped as he stretched out on the couch and she fell on top of him. “Feels nice.” He curled his arms around her and his head fell back, his breath softening in sleep. Piper moved to get more comfortable and adjusted the blankets to make sure they could keep the heat inside.
She rested her chin on his chest and counted his long dark lashes that spread out on his cheeks, envious of them. Only a woman should have lashes like that. Rather than take away from Mikhail’s masculinity, they added to his devastating appeal.
Piper soon found she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and she let herself catch a few minutes of sleep. When she awoke, Belishaw had returned. He sat in a chair by the fire. His elbows rested on his knees, and he stared unseeing at the flames. He, like Mikhail, had haunted eyes. She hadn’t noticed them before when she’d first met him. She’d been so focused on Mikhail at the reception. But now she could see it, the weight of centuries as a dragon, living a thousand lives while others died around you, while the world changed. No wonder she could see such sorrow there.
“Belishaw?” She was relieved he was here, but she was unsure of what she n
eeded to say.
He replied without looking at her. “I’ve managed to find his brothers. They were hard to track down.”
“His brothers?” It was another mystery to add to the growing list of things she didn’t know about this Russian dragon shifter.
“Yes. Grigori and Rurik. He has not seen either of them in two hundred years.”
Pieces of the things Mikhail had said about his family and himself started to fit together. “It was never his ancestor who lost the jewels. It was him.” She stared at Mikhail’s face in stunned silence.
Belishaw’s brows rose in surprise. “So he told you some of the story?”
“He said the jewels belonged to his family but that Elizabeth believed they were rightfully the Crown’s. He said his ancestor was robbed of them, and he showed me a letter between his family and yours stating that the jewels were part of a treaty between you.”
Belishaw steepled his fingers. “Yes, that was all true. He and I were the two mediators between our families, and it was I who gave him the jewels. And they did indeed once belong to the royal family. You see, when Henry VIII was a young king, he came to my clan and offered many rare jewels to us in exchange for our aid. We agreed, happy to support him in exchange for such a hoard. But what you saw in the auction house was only a portion of what we were given. Some of the rarer pieces we gave to the Barinovs in our treaty. And some we regret having given up.”
“Which ones?” she asked. She knew the entire Cheapside collection by heart.
“The most important one was a fist-sized ruby called the Dragon Heart. It’s a very rare and dangerous stone.”
“Dangerous? I examined it thoroughly. It’s only a ruby.”
Belishaw smiled a little. “It is far more than that. The stone has been passed down in my family for generations.” He paused, staring into the fire again. “Sometimes, when I was in the presence of the stone, I could hear it whisper. Objects that house magic have a voice. It doesn’t speak in words but more in flashes of images. It’s hard to explain. Only those who can sense magic would feel it. Thankfully most humans have long since lost their sixth sense when it comes to magic.”