by Cara Bristol
Some things are the same everywhere. He choked off a wry laugh. To reach any government leader or politician on Earth, including First Daughter Helena, one had had to go through an intermediary often referred to as “the dragon at the gate.” Same situation now, except the assistants were real dragons.
Lastly, J’leen pointed to a richly decorated passage leading away from his suite of rooms. “That is how you get to the palace proper.”
“Am I allowed to go there? Is it safe?” Helena had said he’d be free to roam, but J’leen’s warnings of the resentments still rang in his ears.
“Yes. No one within the palace will accost you, but remember, many areas will be open air, so be sure to have your inhaler. If you attempt to venture into forbidden areas, you’ll be stopped.”
“Got it.” Casually he asked, “How far are we from the Temple of the Eternal Fyre?” He would hold to his promise; he was just curious.
She looked surprised. “You wish to pay homage to the sacred flame?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Just wondered.”
“If you wish to go there, I will take you. It’s about the same distance from the landing pad as to here, but it’s in the other direction.”
Far away, then.
J’leen left, and, after peeking at the pool again, he went in search of a bedroom. His duffel had been placed in the largest one, so he opted to remain there. He unpacked his bag to check if anything had been taken or touched—it hadn’t—and placed his clothing in a massive armoire and his toiletries in the attached bathing chamber.
He looked for a secure but accessible hiding spot for his weapons but discovered no nooks, no crannies, vents, or ducts. He yanked the covers off the massive bed, hefted up the sleeping pad, and slit the underside with his knife—only to have the cut sew itself together. He tried again, slicing longer and deeper, and the bed repaired itself again.
J’leen had said he’d be safe here, but there was no telling who had access to this wing. Someone had delivered his duffel. There had to be palace staff. Did guards patrol the halls? Henry assumed people couldn’t waltz in from the outside, but he didn’t have confirmation. J’leen had emphasized the human area had been designed to keep out shifted dragons, so did that mean demiformas were allowed in?
A knife and blaster had been confiscated on his original trip to Elementa; he couldn’t risk losing more weapons as he had no way of replacing them.
With no good hiding places, he settled for tucking a blaster in a pair of boots, setting a knife atop the wardrobe, and slipping another beneath the mattress. If somebody searched his room, those would be the first places he’d look, but at least the weapons weren’t lying out in the open.
He hoped Helena could get him off Elementa soon. It was fortunate O’ne was far away and getting to her required an intermediary or he might very well have broken his promise. It was hard to believe how quickly and strongly he’d fallen for her. His stubborn heart refused to accept he had no options, and the longer he remained on Elementa, the greater the chance he would surrender to the temptation to see her. He had to put as much distance between them as he could if he had any chance of getting over her.
Sitting on the bed, he removed the pendant from around his neck. The diamond glowed, seeming to draw and amplify the light, shooting radiant tendrils into the room. The stone was as extraordinary as O’ne. That she’d given it to him had to mean she cared deeply for him. Didn’t it?
He squeezed the stone in his fist, closed his eyes, and prayed Helena could send him home before he did something stupid.
Chapter Twelve
The dragoness flapped her wings hard, impatient to reach the temple. A devout priestess should have been filled with similar determination, but every advancing mile magnified O’ne’s dread and heartache. The sacred flame burned hot, while her fyre flickered anemically. Was this to be her life’s purpose? To be a vessel?
Flying in around her were the acolytes, and, surrounding them all, the guardians.
Under a rosy sky they thundered over a paradise of pungent bubbling sulfur springs, glowing rivers of molten rock, and puffing fumaroles. Elementa was Draco reborn. Dragons would be very, very happy here.
She wished she could appreciate the scenery because upon entering the temple, she would again cloister herself. Solitude had never bothered her before. She’d preferred it until the arrival of Rhianna and Helena when she’d awakened to dissatisfaction with the limits on her freedom and pleasures. And H’ry? He’d magnified her feelings tenfold.
Would he hold to his vow never to see her again?
Her assessment of his character told her he would. She was the unworthy one.
The dragoness tossed her head and bugled, a joyful herald repeated by the acolytes. O’ne’s fyre contracted as she raced toward a desolate destiny. They soared over an extrusive tower of rock, and her fate manifested in the eternal circle of white stone surrounded by a dozen smooth pillars representing the twelve dragons who’d birthed an entire civilization.
The wind shifted, and she was blasted with a vile stench.
The dragoness faltered, the updraft of the thermals keeping her aloft.
They drew nearer to the temple, and the acolytes and the normally silent guards bugled in dismay. They smelled it now, too.
Carried by the wind, animosity and loathing tainted the air.
What is that? the dragoness said. It’s not coming from the temple?
I fear it is, she replied and then waited for the rebuke she should fear nothing, but the dragoness was too distraught to scold. Don’t go any farther. Set down here, O’ne said.
She complied, and as soon as her talons touched rock, she ceded control to O’ne who shifted into woman form and pulled on her gown. The guards remained as dragons, but the acolytes assumed demiforma.
“The stench can’t be coming from the temple?” R’nay asked.
“It is,” she replied. She could feel the damping of their fyres, the horror.
“Wh-what is it?”
“Urine. Human. The temple has been desecrated.” The Eternal Fire could not be rebirthed into a temple defiled. Anger and dismay roiled into a combustible mass in her chest. If not for the need for an investigation first, she would have ordered the guardians to burn the rotunda to the ground. She turned to R’nay. “Go to the palace. Tell Prince T’mar I wish to speak to him immediately.”
* * * *
“What is the meaning of this?” O’ne demanded as soon as the prince set down and shifted into demiforma. There was no need to explain. The stench was horrifically obvious.
Snout curled with revulsion, he replied, “I don’t know, priestess, but I promise I’ll find out.”
“Not good enough.” Her problems forgotten, she shook with rage. The desecration of the temple equated to an assault against them all. How had this been allowed to happen?
The king had tasked Prince T’mar to oversee construction of the temple and the First City, and thus he bore responsibility for anything that happened on Elementa. That he’d been operating from Draco and had arrived only a short time ago didn’t matter. Under no circumstances should anyone have had an opportunity to defile the temple.
If he wasn’t her daughter’s mate, she would have toasted him to a crisp.
“No construction started until the last human had departed. The Earth president said he’d withdrawn them all,” T’mar offered as an explanation.
“You didn’t verify?”
“He is my mate’s sire.”
“I am aware of that.”
“The updates I received stated the shelters and mining facilities had been dismantled and removed. Earth ships came and retrieved the humans.”
“Not all of them.” She’d needed the temple to be ready. Needed to immerse herself in her duties so she could begin to forget.
“No,” he agreed grimly and turned to an aide. “Dispatch a scout team. Scour the entire planet. Find the human who did this. There may be others, too. I doubt he or she is h
ere alone.”
“At once, your Highness.” The aide shifted and flew away.
T’mar turned to another member of his entourage. “Inform the construction minister to drop everything and begin the new temple. Put every single worker on it. I want a team of guardians at the site day and night until the new temple is finished and consecrated and the Eternal Fyre burns inside.”
The aide flew off to do his bidding.
She couldn’t fault T’mar’s decisiveness and didn’t doubt scouts would locate the perpetrator. Humans couldn’t hide from a dragon’s superior olfaction, vision, and hearing. However, the fact remained the incident should not have happened at all.
“And when you locate the perpetrator, what then?” The sacred flame had no temple. Returning to Draco wasn’t an option because the old temple had been de-consecrated and burned. The defilement was the worst possible act anyone could have committed, tantamount to an attempt to extinguish the Eternal Fyre, which struck at every Draconian.
“He will be executed,” T’mar said. “The penalty for attempting to douse the Eternal Fyre is death.”
“Bring the perpetrator to me.” She would look the defiler in the eye before she torched him. “If you find other humans, you may deal with them. This one, I wish to deal with personally.”
“Yes, priestess. I love my mate, but I do not love her people.” T’mar’s golden eyes burned with fury. “They have double-crossed us on multiple occasions and cannot be trusted. The desecration is a personal act of aggression against Draco and a violation of the recent treaty. The king will be furious. He will retaliate.”
T’mar was correct. The mercurial, fiery king would obliterate the problem once and for all. He would not be wrong to do so, and, although repulsed and enraged by the temple defilement herself, she couldn’t allow her daughters’ home world, H’ry’s planet—to which he would soon return—to be decimated. “Relay to K’rah, he may seek whatever political redress he desires, but it is the wish of the priestess that Earth be spared destruction.”
“I will,” he replied. “And I promise a new temple will be erected with the greatest haste.”
She expected nothing less. “After you get the information you need, burn this…site,” she ordered. It was no longer a temple, but a cesspool of human urine and malice. Torching was the only way to purify the ground.
“It will be done. In the meantime, I will arrange shelter for you.”
She nodded, picked up her hair to keep it from catching on the rocks, and strode toward her distraught acolytes. An odorous cloud of dismay and trepidation hovered over them. They had been dealt a terrible blow. Certainty and safety had been ripped away, and they would look to her for guidance. She wished she had some to give.
Chapter Thirteen
Henry crawled through the pool with smooth, steady strokes, appreciating the buoyancy of water yet weighted by concern.
Something significant, possibly catastrophic, had gone down since his arrival two days ago. J’leen had told him he would be treated well within the palace environs, but when he ventured out beyond his wing, he could almost smell the animosity. The dragons he encountered seemed to exude a bitter, caustic odor as soon as they spotted him.
Whereas she’d once been amenable to the idea of a tour of Elementa, J’leen had nixed the idea when he’d requested one.
Nor had he heard anything from Helena. Knowing she was busy, he’d avoided bothering her, but he needed to find out when he could return home. He’d begun to feel like a cross between a prisoner and a pariah. Fortunately, he did have the swimming pool. He would have gone stir-crazy if not for the outlet.
He touched the pool wall, noting the smoothness of the polished jewels, flipped, and swam for the opposite end. As he lifted his head to take a breath, he spotted Helena standing on the pool’s edge.
Finally!
He stood and waded toward her. “Hey! I hope you have good news for me.” He forced a cheery tone. He didn’t want to be an annoyance, a burden. As princess, she had bigger priorities than him. It was unreasonable to expect her to drop everything to deal with his request.
“That’s what I came to talk to you about,” she said with an odd catch in her voice.
Crap.
“There’s been a delay, hasn’t there?” He hopped out of the pool and snagged his towel from the lounger. He patted his face, swiped his chest, and then wound the towel around his waist.
“An incident occurred at the temple.”
His pulse skyrocketed. “O’ne! Is she all right? What happened?”
“She’s fine. Everyone is fine, but somebody defiled the temple.”
“Defiled it how?”
“By urinating in the sanctuary. A human.”
“I can see where they would find that offensive.”
“It’s more than offensive. They can’t occupy the temple now. A new one has to be constructed.”
“Can’t they clean it?”
Helena shook her head. “No. Nothing is more sacred than the Eternal Fyre. The space around it must be pure. For someone to urinate in the sanctuary is to defile the entire temple and the ground beneath it. The structure has been burned, and the ground scorched.”
He exhaled. “The priestess must be very upset.”
“She is. So is T’mar, King K’rah, everyone who came to Elementa, and all of those still on Draco. The Eternal Fyre isn’t a religious symbol, it is the physical collective of the fyres. The sacred flame is literally their life. If something were to happen to it, all the dragons would die.”
“And one lone priestess protects it?” More than ever, Henry was astounded. O’ne had said as much, but he hadn’t understood the significance. Or the reasoning. Draco had an indomitable military. “Shouldn’t there have been an army assigned to it?”
“The priestess is no ordinary dragoness. The Eternal Fyre transformed her, elevated her. She employs and radiates immense power. We humans can’t see it or feel it, but they do. That’s why they fear her, even the king.
He chuckled nervously. “You make her sound godlike.”
“That’s not wrong,” Helena said.
“Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re kidding, right? She’s not really a god.”
She shrugged. “Depends on the definition. She is a supernatural being. Her powers can’t be explained by nature or science.”
And he’d kissed her. Held her. Talked with her like she was a…a woman, a date. What had he been to her, he wondered now? A way to pass the time on an otherwise boring journey through space? Had she been toying with the human who’d so obviously been smitten by her? He wanted to believe she wouldn’t do that, and what they’d shared had been genuine and mutual, but the doubts crept in. Didn’t the gods come down from Mt. Olympus to mess with the mortals?
While he’d been aware she’d held an exalted position in Draconian society, he’d been ignorant of her true nature—by her design. When they’d met, she’d even omitted mention she was the priestess. She’d never exhibited any special powers or even told him about any.
Or was this a case of eyes wide shut? He’d sensed a…radiance about her, and he couldn’t help but notice the effect she had on other dragons. It had been blatantly, painfully obvious. They were scared to death of her. He puffed his cheeks out and exhaled. Unbelievable.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, unwilling to reveal his stupidity. “So, what happens to the Eternal Fyre now? Will it stay on the ship until the new temple is built?”
“I don’t think it’s there.”
“Not there? What do you mean? Where is it?”
Helena cleared her throat. “Um…I have a crazy, wild theory.” Her voice dropped. “I think the priestess is the vessel. She’s carrying it.”
“Carrying it, how?”
“I think it’s inside her,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?”
“No, but what other explanation could there be? Did you ever see the sacred flame on the ship? I di
dn’t. It just vanished from the temple on Draco. If it had been on the ship somewhere, I’m pretty sure passengers and crew would know it and would have been paying homage.”
If O’ne did carry the sacred flame, then she most certainly was a deity. “Ho…ly shit.”
Helena twisted her mouth. “Hold that thought because I have bad news.”
Worse than this—that he’d been mooning over a shapeshifting dragoness who might be a god or at least a demigod? His gut tightened. “What is it?”
“You can’t return to Earth.”
He expelled his breath in a heavy sigh. Not this week? This month? “You mean no time soon?”
“I mean ever.” She hunched her shoulders apologetically. “After what happened to the temple, relations between Earth and Draco have been severed again. We’ve been in this situation before, but this time I think it’s permanent. Attacking the temple was the absolute worst thing anybody could have done. There are no ships going to or from Earth. If one from Earth did happen to come—if my father tried to send one for you, it would not be allowed to land. I’m sorry. I tried to get you on a ship before the shit hit the fan, but it hit way too fast. The temple was desecrated after my father had supposedly recalled all the colonists, which means there are still humans here—or, one human anyway.
“King K’rah is enraged. According to Rhianna and K’ev, he’s spitting fireballs. He ordered the immediate severance of any and all contact with Earth.” She twisted her hands. “T’mar is angrier than I’ve ever seen him. They both believe Earth has doubled-crossed them again and that my father planted saboteurs.”
“Did he?”
Helena pursued her lips. “He denies it, and I believe him—although no one else does. I was with T’mar when he vid-commed my father. Dad seemed genuinely shocked by the news.” Her shoulders sagged a little. “I used to admire him so much. He was a wonderful, caring man and public servant. Then Biggs wormed his way into the picture and used threats against me to coerce him into doing terrible things.”