by Meg Xuemei X
“It’s a popular bar,” I murmured.
Under the ceiling of a glowing chart of constellations, all the tables were taken, except for the half-mooned one with a vintage sofa at the far corner.
Elvey strode directly toward the table.
Spotting the Fae, the three bartenders froze for a second before pretending that he wasn’t there and drawing the patrons’ attention back to them with professional flirting.
Suddenly, I was thankful that as powerful as Elvey was, he was my ally and not my enemy. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if he turned on me.
We settled around the curved sofa, our backs to the wall. The amber light was too weak to reveal our faces.
While humans couldn’t see us clearly, the three of us had no problem seeing in the dark.
I sat between Elvey and Iokul, with Elvey near the open space.
“We’re hiding in plain sight,” Elvey said.
The ear-pounding music stopped bombarding us as soon as Elvey put a sound barrier around our table. No one could eavesdrop on our conversation unless they were invited.
“Better?” he asked me with a grin. I bet the music hurt his Fae ears as well.
“So, you know the owner,” I said. “Or are you the owner?”
“He could dream,” a bright female voice purred as a gorgeous woman appeared at our table. From how fast she moved, I’d bet she wasn’t human.
The blonde had high cheekbones and forest green eyes. Her hair was tied in a sleek ponytail. She was tall, her high-heeled boots hugging her stretch leather pants. Her dark, red blouse added edge to her chic style.
I drew in a breath to distinguish her scent. She was more Fae than Elvey and I. She was the first full-blooded Fae I’d met.
My gaze sharpened as her elegant hand landed on Elvey’s shoulder as if she owned him. I balled my fists under the table, controlling an urge to shove her off him.
Mine! He’s mine! A furious voice echoed in me, shocking me for a second.
Elvey wasn’t mine. I already had three mates. Why did I have such possessiveness toward him? Must I have every man? I scolded my greed.
And didn’t Elvey deserve someone to care for him?
Despite my stone-cold logic, my face turned icy.
Elvey watched me, but he didn’t seem to feel the need to brush off the woman’s possessive hand on his shoulder. The female Fae gave Iokul a glance and complimented, “Nice mask,” before fixing her scrutinizing gaze on me again. Then she winked at me and bent down to kiss Elvey on the cheek.
All I wanted was to pry her away from him and punch her in the face.
Elvey pushed her away gently and firmly. “I might be half-Fae, but I was done playing games a long time ago. You should have known better, Rosa. Despite being a full Fae, you still enjoy playing. What you regard as fun isn’t always fun for others.”
She laughed. “A girl has to try.”
“This is Rosalinda, the owner of the Howling At Your Peril,” Elvey said. “Rosa, meet Daisy and Iokul, my friends.”
Rosalinda sniffed, her nostrils flaring.
“Can you not be so obvious, Rosa?” Elvey sighed.
“Princess Daisy Danaenyth?” Rosalinda said, tears suddenly moistening her eyes. “It’s truly you! We’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”
Elvey had told me that he and others had been looking for me. When I’d demanded to know who they were, he hadn’t given me any names but had only said, “The ones who will be loyal to you to death.”
Rosalinda’s burst of emotion hinted that she was one of them. She knew who I was without Elvey telling her.
“Are you Fae, Rosalinda?” I asked just to confirm.
“She’s a pure-blooded Fae,” Iokul said in a low voice.
“And far less powerful than the two half-bred Fae here,” Rosalinda said.
She meant Elvey and me.
I’d gleaned a conversation between the demon captain and Elvey. Full-blooded Fae often looked down at half-bred, just as old, pure-blooded dragons often sneered at half-breeds or humans who had less dragon blood in their veins.
“I’ve been stationed in the human world for ages,” she continued. Her voice sounded forlorn, as if she missed a home that she couldn’t return to.
“We have Fae blending into the human society in every nation,” Elvey said, glancing at Iokul, who still looked paler than usual, before returning his gaze to Rosalinda. “Will you be a dear and bring us what you have today, Rosa? Iokul needs meat, and our Daisy needs a drink for what I’m going to tell her.”
More bad news? I chinned up, though my heart sank.
“I’ll be a dear.” Rosalinda chuckled. “Lord Elvey’s . . . friends are always mine as well. What kind of drink do you prefer, Daisy?”
I had no idea why, all of a sudden, she dropped our titles and acted like she’d never known who we were. But my icy demeanor had melted toward her. “Uh, what do you have?”
I couldn’t even name a drink. How much life and fun had I missed out on?
“Cocktails are most popular here. The house special is Sinful Breeze,” Rosalinda said, still studying me. “Humans also like the local beer.”
“I’m not a human,” I said. “And dragons don’t favor booze too much.”
“We have fairy brew,” she said, a spark in her eyes. “No human can take it, but you’re half-Fae.”
“No fairy brew,” Iokul said firmly. “I don’t want my mate getting drunk, though I don’t mind carrying her home.”
Rosalinda laughed. “I doubt Daisy has ever tried her original homeland wine. She can handle it. Don’t underestimate her. She’s returned, and my money is on that she’ll take back what’s hers.”
There was a pun intended.
“If you have any information that can help us,” Iokul said coolly, “we’d appreciate it if you share with us. We’ll also purchase any useful intel. However, we dragons are straight shooters. We don’t fancy playing any games.”
“You’re having too much fun, Rosa,” Elvey said. “Daisy had a rough day. And now all of us are poor refugees.”
“Sorry, I’m beside myself,” Rosalinda said fiercely. “For the first time in centuries, I see hope. I see that I’ll go home one day. As for you, Elvey, my dear old friend, there’s more hope for you.” She glanced between the three of us, squeezed Elvey’s shoulder, bowed at me, and exited.
When she returned shortly after, she carried a large tray of honeyed wings, onion rings, scrambled eggs with bread, cheese, fruits, and three mugs of beers. She was Fae, so we didn’t thank her. We wouldn’t want to be indebted to her. But we all nodded our appreciation.
The only Fae I would ever thank was Elvey.
I pushed the basket of wings in front of Iokul. While my mate dug in eagerly, I took a swig of the beer.
It cooled my parched throat.
Elvey waited until Iokul was halfway through his food and said, “You should have known better than parade her around, Iokul.”
“We might not have thought it through,” Iokul said. “But what Daisy wants Daisy gets. You know that as well as I do.”
“We can’t just let her get what she wants. We’ll let her have what’s best for her,” Elvey said.
“Like you know what’s best for me?” I snorted. “Stop treating me like a little girl. I’m not that careless and spoiled brat I was before I got whisked away to the jungle. I know exactly what’s at stake, and I’ll do what I must do. I have duties and responsibilities, not just to my mates, but to the realm and my people.”
Elvey raised an eyebrow. “Feisty much?”
“Try not to get on her nerves, if you can help it,” Iokul suggested.
I glared at Iokul before turning to Elvey. I had so many questions for him that I didn’t even know where to begin. “When we invited you to come home with us, you turned the offer down. How did you get here sooner than us?”
“I wasn’t free, as I told you,” he said, sending a glance at Iokul and deciding to be m
ore transparent. “I was bound to the dark Fae Queen—let’s not say her name to bring her attention to us. If I’d come aboard Mistress and returned with it, she would have received my magical signature tied to that ship. She would have demanded I return and bring her your heads. She’d have found you before you’re ready.”
Iokul stopped eating, looking a bit shocked at knowing the depth of the relationship between Elvey and his queen. Then cold rage emitted from him like an icy stream.
“The dark Fae Queen sent the demons to come after my mate? I thought it was the consort witch who wanted Daisy’s throne and sent a smoke-possessed dragon to waylay her.”
“That too,” Elvey said, leaning back, not bothering to conceal his exhaustion. “Lysandra is the Fae Queen’s tool.” He picked up his beer and took a swig to compose himself. When he put the mug down, his gaze landed on me. “I wanted you to have a few good weeks when you returned home. You parted with it for centuries.” Cold rage and fear clouded his star-blue eyes. “I didn’t expect her to deploy a dangerous, manic puppet. Arianrhod, your ancestors’ goddess, banned the Fae from entering the Dragon Realm, ever since your father was killed. So, the Fae Queen used a black witch to take the realm from you, after she learned you broke the curse.”
“You said you were bound. Are you no longer bound to the dark Fae Queen?” I asked hopefully.
He smiled ruefully. “For now. I did something to my blood to block her. That’s why I decided it was safe to return.”
“How?” I asked. “Why don’t you duplicate what you did and cleave your bond to her permanently?”
“There’s no duplication of what I did,” he said. “I injected vampire venom into my bloodstream.”
I blinked. “What? Are you insane? Vampire venom is pure poison!”
“He’s always the wild, fearless one,” Rosalinda said with affection as she brought us another round of drinks.
“Join us, Rosa,” Elvey said.
Rosalinda looked at me.
“Please,” I said. If Elvey could trust her, then I would, too.
She perched beside Elvey, and I didn’t like that she squeezed too close to him.
“I tried everything in order to break the blood bond to her, but failed for centuries,” Elvey said. “I could never reject her. I could never disobey her.”
“That’s not true,” Rosalinda said, sending a quick, cautious glance my way, as if she believed that there was a connection between Elvey and me.
Was it so palpable that even an outsider could tell? I constantly felt the strong pull between us. And when Elvey wasn’t around, I often felt like something was missing, yet I could still feel the thread between us pulsing intermittently.
I didn’t know what it was exactly, or why I acted this way toward Elvey, but I knew I didn’t want to hurt my mates’ feelings.
“You turned her down, Elvey,” Rosalinda said proudly. “You refused to warm her bed.”
“That was two centuries after I vowed I’d be no one’s whore,” Elvey said emotionlessly, as if something had died inside him.
Icy rage sliced at my heart and it filled with white-hot hatred. This was the first time I learned that the Fae bitch had tried to make Elvey her sex slave. She would pay for it.
I would never let her touch him again.
“I’ll have to follow her orders in her presence,” Elvey warned. “Her will is my command and my wish, as the blood bond goes.”
“Then you’ll never return to her,” I said fiercely. “If the vampire venom can thin the bond, we can use it as a temporary solution before we handle her. We’ll go back to Pandemonium to capture a few more vampires and bring them here for you.”
Elvey smiled at me, and that smile nearly broke my heart. He’d do anything for me but asked nothing in return.
“It’s only a one-time thing,” he said. “The venom is contagious. It nearly turned me. If my blood weren’t stronger, it would never purge the vampire venom.”
“We’ll figure out a way,” I said. “We will. We broke our curses, and we’ll break yours.” I glanced at Iokul’s mask. We hadn’t completely broken my mates’ curse.
Iokul reached over, grabbed my hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “How did you beat us and return earlier, Elvey?” he asked. “We traveled at warp speed.”
“I found a portal in the jungle,” Elvey said.
“Fiammetta the Wickedest Witch’s portal?” I asked.
“It didn’t completely close,” Elvey said. “I tweaked it. Phantom, who could shift the landscape, helped me stabilize it before it crashed. He liked you, Daisy, which is why he did me this one favor. I came through the portal and came back three days before you did.”
“Welcome back,” Rosalinda whispered.
She didn’t say welcome home. Elvey had no home and wouldn’t have one until the day he was free. And I’d make sure it happened.
Elvey grinned at her.
I didn’t like him smiling at other women, but there was no heat, no tease, and no flirt in that smile, unlike how he smiled at me.
“You can’t live in the palace yet, Daisy,” Elvey said, his smile gone. “I know you want to go home more than anything, but it’s not safe. The Dragon Realm will never be yours, nor will all six human cities, not until you can prove you actually own the Danaenyth dynasty.”
Elvey was always brutally honest with me, except for the things he couldn’t reveal, or if something involved himself.
“She doesn’t need to prove a thing,” Iokul snapped. “She’s the rightful heir to the throne. The witch consort is a fraud and a usurper.”
“The humans don’t think so,” Elvey said. “And they have great numbers. They’ve become the majority.”
I rubbed my temples. “I heard what they want. They want to put a human like them on the throne. They don’t want me, especially a half-dragon, half-Fae who has been absent for centuries. And I know so little about this era and its people.”
“You’ll pick it up,” Rosalinda said. “You’ll learn. You’ll adapt.”
“If I hadn’t seen for myself what the consort is,” I said, “and if she was indeed as good as the humans believe and was suitable to rule, I might have just let go of all the human cities.”
“It doesn’t matter what the humans want,” Iokul said. “The Danaenyth dynasty is yours.”
I sighed. “We’ve seen how the Humans Superior and First movement spread like a virus. If I take the realm back by force, there’ll be war.”
“Then war it is,” Iokul said. “My father will send an army.”
“The humans’ movement might have spread to your kingdom as well,” I said. “Even if we win the war, it might not be worth it. And I have no intention to be a dictator and rule over a people who don’t want me.”
“Don’t you love your home, Daisy Danaenyth?” Elvey asked.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “With all my heart,” I said.
I’d prevailed over nine centuries of misery and overcome my insanity, only because I’d held the hope that one day I could go home. Though some of my friends had Faded and my grandfather had abandoned the realm and Adrian had gone away, the Dragon Realm would always be my home. I would rebuild it for myself, my mates, and all who wanted peace.
Adrian would come home one day, as would the other dragons.
I didn’t say it, but my eyes spelled it all out.
“The human cities—Amethyst, Turquoise, Jasper, Heliotrope, Sodalite, and Chrysocolla—have been part of the Danaenyth dynasty since ancient times,” Elvey said. “The land has always been tied to your bloodline by the sacred blood vow sealed by Goddess Arianrhod. If you abandon them, the magic in the land will catch up and leave the cities as a barren wasteland, and no technology can save it.”
I blinked. I’d never heard of the link between the realm and my bloodline.
“I thought it was a legend that Goddess Arianrhod appointed Danaenyth royal house as the guardian of the Dragon Realm and the six cities.” Iokul said.
&n
bsp; “You thought Daisy’s ancestors fabricated the tale?” Rosalinda said with amusement.
“Arianrhod hasn’t spoken to any dragon or Fae for an eon,” Iokul said. “The immortal races on Inanna are declining.”
“Arianrhod always watches.” Elvey gazed at me and asked, “When you first stepped on the Dragon Realm again, did you feel a magical tug, like the land was calling to you?”
I nodded, tears stinging my eyes. “I felt home immediately. I felt a familiar magic reaching toward me and brushing me with its warmth as if welcoming me home. I felt a new bond that’s different from my bond to my mates.”
“What do you think that is?” Elvey asked.
“I haven’t had a chance to think about it. I was distracted by the burning of the realm and the damage my grandfather caused.” I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know about the link between the Dragon Realm and me? You are not even a dragon.”
Iokul also narrowed his eyes. “Yes, Elvey, how the heck do you know all about this? This is the dragons’ secret and affair.”
Elvey ignored Iokul but smirked at me. “You know what I am.”
Iokul glanced between Elvey and me suspiciously, and I flushed.
I knew what Elvey was. I’d sampled him through a kiss.
“The realm knows that you’ve returned, Daisy,” Elvey said. “It now awaits you. You need to officially be its Keeper. Will you watch, guard, and protect the land that’s yours and the people on it who don’t know you?”
“It’s my duty and honor,” I said. I’d known that in my bones even as a child, even though my grandfather hadn’t taken the time to prepare me for my future responsibilities as the crown princess. Had he simply waited for the curse to take me away and finally kill me? “But I’m also trying to be reasonable. I want to give the people what they want.”
“The problem is the majority of humans don’t know what’s best for them or what they really want,” Elvey said. “For eons, I’ve been watching how they destroy each other in games and bloody wars. Kingdoms rose and fell, and many civilizations were wiped out before new ones formed above their ash and bones. Lives were lost and weren’t valued. Now they choose a witch who reeks of black magic and evil. She’s polluting the land.”