by C. I. Black
Sudden hope flooded him. “You were hit with the surge’s magic.” Oh, Mother, please. “Ease your hand away.”
But I—
“If the surge is powerful enough, your soul magic could still be heightened.” It was too much to hope that the effects were permanent. It might have been hours, but the surge’s aura had been blindingly bright.
She peeled her fingers back. Blood didn’t gush over her neck, and the wound had sealed up into an angry red slash across her throat.
“Oh, Mother.” Thank you. Thank you. His kids were safe, and so was Becca.
He bent to kiss her, but she put a hand on his chest and held him back. Her gaze jumped to Stanbury’s body and the growing pool of blood on the floor then back to him. “You just ate a woman’s heart. That’s disgusting.”
“It was the only sure way to get my magic back.” If the Handmaiden didn’t bestow the job, a dragon with a strong enough soul and within the first hour of the magic being transferred to someone could still take it — and he’d taken it all those years ago to protect those innocent kids the Asar Nergal’s directive said he needed to murder. “And it wasn’t the whole heart. Just a few bites.”
“Still disgusting.”
“We are predators.”
“Yeah, and I’m not kissing you until you’ve polished off a bottle of mouthwash.” Except she was surprised at how much she’d just accepted it.
The thought sent mixed emotions churning him. Her acceptance had to be in part because of the influence of the dragon souls who’d invaded her when she’d been Zenobia’s prisoner. A part of her was forever changed. She’d never be the same.
And I’m okay with that. “I’m still not kissing you until you’ve thoroughly cleaned your mouth.”
“Jeez, can’t you be happy with not being dead?”
“I’m raising my expectations. Alive, sane, and with a boyfriend who doesn’t have bloody-heart breath.”
“Boyfriend, hunh?” He liked the sound of that. It meant she was thinking of staying.
“You’re going to have to work hard to convince me,” she said, but he could hear the flirtation in her voice and felt her yearning to have a family again. We never did make it into your whirlpool tub.
“That’s our first stop.”
“After mouthwash.”
He flashed his teeth at her in a dragon’s sexual invitation, unable to help himself. “After mouthwash.”
41
A black miasma pressed around Constantine, filled with agony and screaming voices. He was on fire and frozen at the same time. The Mother of All…? the Handmaiden…? He didn’t know who had said this wasn’t his punishment, but it had to be. He’d failed dragonkind… except he couldn’t remember how. He’d been sick— yes, his soul hadn’t been strong enough to survive changing between so many vessels, and pieces of himself had started to break away. He hadn’t known what was real. Demons, human-monsters, with the power to wipe every last dragon from existence, had haunted him, asleep or awake. And then—
Then there’d been pain and—
The cold… no. Frozen ground digging into his side. A dragon had appeared, his aura writhing darkness, crackling with anger and fear and… the potential for all emotions, separately and together at the same time.
There’d been screaming.
But he didn’t know if that had been the black drake, or him, or his soul.
Then, for a moment, there’d been nothing. A dark emptiness that had been soothing and terrifying. No light, no pain, and no Mother.
Except there hadn’t been the Mother before. Not since the Great Scourge. The spell had been cast, they’d fallen from the sky, and She had sacrificed everything to save what few of them She could. And even then it had just been their souls, the core of their essence, forever changed, trapped in fragile human vessels.
The emptiness didn’t last, shocked out of existence with blazing agony and blinding light. It roared through Constantine, burning and slicing, filled with the screams of his soul for not being able to protect dragonkind. Who would have thought he’d need to protect them from himself?
Everyone did, his soul hissed. Everyone knew, and they stopped you.
And now this was his deserved punishment.
Except the Mother…? Handmaiden…? a part of his soul he still thought was good…? had said it wasn’t. But that meant this suffering had no reason. It was just suffering, and he couldn’t live with that. He didn’t want to live at all. He didn’t deserve life. He’d mistreated fellow drakes, imprisoned them, tortured them, all in an attempt to control their wild souls and keep them hidden from humanity. If the humans knew about dragons, they’d finish what they’d started. But he also saw drakes accepting life in the human realm, making human friends, taking human lovers, slowly letting the nature of their human vessels transform their souls and erase their feral dragon natures. All the humans needed to do was wait until the influence of their bodies transformed all dragon souls, and dragonkind would be gone.
Or if that wasn’t enough, just wait for proper extinction. Without their original physical forms, dragons couldn’t beget new dragons. Accidents always happened. Every decade a few souls were forever lost to the universal ether. Eventually dragons would just cease to exist and that which had terrified those humans all those centuries ago would be gone.
Someone screamed, a piercing howl in his head, and he heaved against the darkness.
The someone screamed again—
No, not a someone, the woman from before, who’d somehow gotten into his head and knew he was a dragon. She was in trouble and pain and—
And he didn’t want to know. He was probably responsible for that, as well, and he couldn’t carry the burden. Mother, he wasn’t strong enough. There wasn’t any room left in his crumbling essence. The guilt was crushing him, and all he wanted was for the darkness to consume his soul and be done with it.
“You’re almost through,” a soft feminine voice said.
The Mother? Handmaiden?
It didn’t sound like either. And it didn’t sound like the woman who’d been in his head.
“It’s almost over.”
And then? Would he get what he deserved? Dragons were paying for his mistakes, and he deserved to suffer. They didn’t.
The scream came again and agony sliced through him. She needed help. He had to do something. He couldn’t explain it. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a dragon, or that he didn’t know her. This new agony and fear seared through his previous guilt and wrenched him from the darkness.
He jerked up— half up, unable to rise more than midway with his wrists bound to the sides of his bed. A dragon with a blazing black aura sitting in a lounge chair beside him jumped, her eyes wide with surprise.
“You’re awake.” The surprise in her dark eyes softened to kindness with a hint of worry. She dropped her book and pulled the chair closer to him. A hint of wind whispered around her and made the locks of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail flutter around her face.
The power of her aura suggested she was an ancient drake, but he didn’t recognize her essence, and he’d known every remaining ancient dragon. He squinted without trying to look like he was squinting, except he couldn’t see the minute differences in her aura he used to be able to see. Something was wrong with his aura sight, but he was soul sick and had only just managed to pull his consciousness from the darkness. Not being able to read slight differences in a dragon’s aura didn’t mean anything, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. The woman in his head was in trouble.
“You’re okay. You’re safe,” she said.
“I—” The woman’s essence vanished. He strained to sense her, but she was gone. Yet another one he couldn’t save. Perhaps this was the real torture, knowing he’d failed, knowing he needed to do better, and not being able to do anything. Losing the connection with her was probably for the best. She’d be safer without him. Everyone would be safer without him.
“Can I get you any
thing?” The woman unhooked the restraint around his wrist. Now he got the sense that she was young, but that would mean her aura wasn’t indicating age but an enormous earth magic power, stronger than any he’d seen before save for the Handmaiden — who was the exception to everything. “You were having seizures. We were afraid you’d hurt yourself.”
“Or others,” he said, his voice gruff, different from what he remembered.
The woman flashed a hint of teeth— no, that wasn’t right. She smiled. A gentle, sad smile, more human than dragon, proving his fear that dragons were slowly becoming human. Except he didn’t sense that from her. The smile felt more like she was fighting her dragon nature, softening her expression for him.
“But you didn’t,” she said. “Everyone is okay, and so are you.”
Mother, he wanted to believe her, wanted to forget who he was and the things he’d done.
She leaned over him to unhook the restraint of the far side of the bed, and her body brushed over the blanket. The movement slid his clothes against his skin, suddenly too sensitive, making his pulse leap.
His breath hitched as she drew back, and he hugged his arms against his chest to resist reaching for her. It had been too long since anyone had been close. He’d had centuries of confinement in his chambers, his thoughts broken and whirling, no one daring to approach.
Because he deserved it.
He didn’t deserve her kindness now.
Why couldn’t he just forget?
“I’m Raven.” She picked up a glass of water from the bedside table. “Can you sit up? Do you know your name?”
He frowned. That seemed a weird question. “Would I not know my name?” Except she didn’t recognize him. Maybe this was his chance. He could become someone different. Start over. Atone for his mistakes.
“You’ve been through a trauma. Your memory might be a little shaky.”
But his memory hadn’t been clearer. Not for centuries. He knew and felt every mistake he’d made, and his soul ached with all the things he’d done for fear dragonkind would be destroyed.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was—” Screaming? Shattering? Crushed by darkness? There’d been a voice, the Mother of All who wasn’t the Mother but the Handmaiden… or was that the woman who had thought he was a human but discovered he was really a dragon? Why would she have thought he was human?
Because you are now. The Mother’s voice swept through him. They’d had this conversation before, when the darkness had first devoured him.
But I’m a dragon. I’m king. His pulse leapt again, this time in fear. They need me. They don’t understand how dangerous humans are. No. That wasn’t right. Everyone he was responsible for had gotten hurt. Because of him.
They do understand and they don’t. The miasma shuddered within him, threatening to consume him. Nothing of the king, the elder of the last two gold dragons, remains.
What does that mean? Could he really start over? Could he become an insignificant nothing, with only the responsibility to do and be better?
The darkness flooded his vision. He gasped, fighting to keep Raven in sight and hear the Mother’s answer, but all he could hear was the roar of his pulse.
What does that mean?
Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
Answer me. Please. His pulse raced faster, the beats pounding through him, rattling into his essence. What does that mean? “What does that mean?”
A hand settled on his, lightning snapped across his skin, and Raven jumped back into focus.
She clenched her jaw, her body tight, and more wind rushed through the room. “Stay with me.”
The lightning, a crackling gold energy, danced over his skin and up her arm.
“Just stay with me this time,” she said again, her expression tightening even more with pain.
He jerked his hand away, taking the lightning with him, and her body sagged with relief for just a second in an unguarded moment. She’d felt the pain, too, and it had come from him — it always came from him — but somehow she’d kept the darkness from consuming him again.
“I know this is confusing, but I also know you’re aware that you’re different.” She held out the glass of water, a hint of the pain still in her eyes confirming she wasn’t an ancient dragon and not even close to an elder drake. “You might not know how or understand why, but you feel it deep within you that you are.”
He sat up and took the offered glass.
And yet, there was also a maturity to her, an understanding of loss and responsibility that he usually saw in drakes who remembered the Scourge.
“I’m here to help you understand what happened and what your magic is.”
I’m getting a second chance, a chance to just be me, not King Constantine. He wasn’t even sure he knew who that was. He couldn’t even pronounce the name he’d had before he’d killed the Zhongguo empress and joined all the dragon clans.
“Let’s start with hopefully something simple. Your name?”
Except it wasn’t simple. He was Constantine… had been Constantine. Who was he now? Who did he want to be?
You’re still Constantine. You’ll always be Constantine.
But what if he didn’t want to be him anymore?
You think you can run from who you are? You were hiding from yourself as king. The king is dead. You’re Constantine again. You can’t run from that.
He was damned well going to try. And that started with a new name. John, or Henry, or Sam?
“I’m S—” The name stuck in his throat. Maybe he was Charles… Chuck?… Cole?… Coleridge? “I’m Co—”
“It’s okay if you don’t know. It might take some time for things to come back to you.” Except her hint of a frown indicated she was worried about him not knowing his name.
And Mother of All, he just had to pick a name. Coleridge. Perfectly good name. Say it fast, and it’ll come out. “I’m Con—”
Wait. What? That wasn’t what he meant to say, and he could feel the press of the miasma billowing and tugging within him.
“Con?”
Shit. “Yeah. Con.” Nothing more. Nothing again.
“Pleased to meet you.” Raven gave him her human smile again with a little more teeth.
He flashed his teeth back, realized what he was doing, and pressed his lips closed. If what the memory of the Handmaiden — or whoever it was in his head — was right, Raven thought he was a human—
His stomach bottomed out as horrified realization flashed through him. This black drake thought he was a human with magic, and she was trying to help him. Now he knew how to save dragonkind. Find out why this dragon was helping human mages and bring the wrath of the Asar Nergal down on her and her mages.
Except—
The miasma billowed again.
She thought he was human. The only one who knew he was a dragon was that woman, that human woman, and he’d said he wasn’t one anymore… and she hadn’t been afraid of him. Not like any of the other humans he’d encountered.
His heart skipped a beat. She was in trouble and pain, and there was nothing he could do to help her—
Which didn’t make sense, either. He was supposed to be terrified of her, and a part of him was. She was a human with earth magic. It had only taken a handful of them to rip dragons from their physical forms and sentence them to eternity in a parasitic spirit state. That was the root of the law banning body hopping into human vessels with a human soul. It was the birth of the Asar Nergal with its only directive to kill all human mages.
The gold lightning snapped across his skin and fear tightened in his gut. His own dragons were sworn to kill him. They were sworn to kill this drake, with her human smile and kind eyes, who was defying royal decree. The Asar Nergal would come after her. They wouldn’t ask questions, that wasn’t their job, and they’d kill her.
42
Tobias shifted on the bench at the mouth of the royal archives. He’d thought about leaving many times — and not just the archives
, but his position at Court and dragon society altogether. A small part of him hoped it would be easier if he just left, but the rest of him knew — having intimate knowledge of what happened to drakes who abandoned their coterie, especially the Royal coterie — that his tough problems would just change to other tough problems. A drake didn’t just leave his coterie without the protection of another doyen. And a drake of Tobias’s position didn’t leave. Period.
The only drake who’d managed to escape was Hunter, and Regis was still demanding his head. Tobias was certain that was what Regis had pulled Nero aside to talk about after the Counseling Coteries meeting.
It had been eighteen days since Hunter and his sorcerer inamorata had left Court and Nero had yet to report anything about their location. Of course, given how magically powerful that woman had been, it wouldn’t surprise Tobias if Nero knew where they were and was trying to figure out the best way to deal with her and Hunter without losing any members of the Asar Nergal.
“Or maybe he’s decided Hunter and his inamorata aren’t a threat,” Ophelia said, easing from the shadows just like she’d done earlier that day… or late last night? He’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting there.
“He’s the dugga.” Tobias bit back a growl. Ophelia wasn’t the source of his frustration and didn’t deserve his short temper. “His job is to eliminate all human sorcerers.”
“Technically, if Grey’s thoughts are correct, the wording is ‘all human sorcerer threats’.” She leaned against the wall and raised a dark sculpted eyebrow. “If that human sorcerer is inamorated back to Hunter, then she’s only a threat to those who would hurt Hunter.”
“I’m not sure Regis would agree with an argument of semantics.” Tobias rubbed his temples. He’d been sitting there for hours, his mind whirling from one problem to the next, determined to have solved at least one issue before returning to his office.
He didn’t want to organize a retrieval squad, but he had to. Which meant he needed to pick the squad leader carefully. He wanted to replace Regis on the throne with someone sane, but the divide between coteries as well as Traditionalists and non-Traditionalist made finding a candidate impossible. And Mother of All! Where the hell was the Handmaiden? She could solve all of this by proclaiming someone king, and most of the factions would bow to her revered status and accept her choice.