by Ivy Clyde
“Better?” asked Norvin, looking deep into my lust-hazed eyes.
“Yes.” My head fell against Cain’s chest.
“She needs to sleep,” said Cain, lowering me among the pillows and covering my body with a thick quilt. “We’ll bring you some food. After that, you can sleep.”
I nodded, lying down completely. The nausea and sickness I’d been feeling earlier left me completely. For the first time, I was becoming aware of the energy my mates could suffuse within me. The pleasure I derived from them was more healing than any medicine.
“We’ll watch over her until you get back,” said Adal.
Cain walked out of the room and Norvin followed him with the basin of water. Adal lay down next to me and gently caressed my hair.
“I have never been so pampered before,” I whispered, looking up into his vivid blue eyes.
“This is nothing. You deserve much more.” He left soft kisses on my forehead.
“Did anything happen while I was away this morning?” I asked after a while.
The anxiety settling into his eyes gave me the answer to my question.
“What happened?” I asked when Adal wouldn’t speak.
“Ivan killed my brothers,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I don’t know if the children are safe. Mother and Kora might be in danger too.”
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“On the night we were in the dragon temple. The following day, Ivan burnt an entire province in Redfall because the people failed to pay taxes after years of drought.”
Anger and frustration rose within me. The old feeling of being helpless against the emperor was coming back to me. When I achieved my true dragon, my confidence rose. I’d vowed to never let such atrocities happen again. While I was basking in the achievement of my personal powers, Ivan was back to being a ruthless emperor.
Covering a sheet to my chest, I climbed out of bed.
“Where are you going?” asked Adal.
“I am putting on some clothes.” Opening the cabinet in the corner, I took out a loose woolen gown. Donning it, I went back to pour myself another glass of wine.
“We think it’s time to stand up against Ivan,” said Adal in a low, grim voice.
I nodded, taking large sips of the sweet wine. “I am going to be ready soon. Ren can get me information on Ivan’s schedule in the palace. Once I find an opportunity, I will attack him.”
“No, Daria.”
Adal stood before me now. “We are canceling the mission we gave you.”
“What?”
“Let her at least eat something before springing it on her,” said Norvin, entering the room. Both he and Cain carried massive trays full of food. “We brought up our meals too,” he added, noticing me staring at the mountain of roast meat on the platters.”
They arranged the trays on the small table in my room.
Pilling up a plate with roast meat and vegetables, Cain handed it to me.
I wanted Adal to explain himself but the sight and smell of the food made my stomach groan with hunger. Picking up a rib, I tore into the meat, savoring the taste of fresh venison.
My princes settled around me with their food.
For a while, we were silent. We ate, each lost to their own thoughts.
When my plate was wiped clean, I poured myself another goblet of wine. Settling down on a plush chair, I looked at the princes. They all looked grim with resolve.
“Tell me what you meant, Adal,” I said.
“We don’t want you going against Ivan,” he said. “The three of us should be able to defeat him. We want you safe. So, we’ve decided to cancel the contract between us that bound you to kill Ivan.”
“But why? I can fight against him too. I am a true dragon now.”
“We don’t want to put you in any more danger,” said Cain. “Back when we went to ask for assistance from Lady Elga, we had no choice but to employ an assassin who could do the task quietly. Of course, it was a far-fetched mission in the first place. We didn’t think it would be possible until we met you.”
“I can still carry out the task quietly,” I said. “I am still an assassin.”
“No, Daria. It’s too dangerous,” said Norvin. “We’d rather handle him ourselves. Between us, we agree it must be done immediately. We can’t wait any longer and have him crush more of our people and family.”
“We need more time to prepare,” I said, my voice rising. “What if Ivan has more of the poison made from the weeds I saw this morning? He might have the antidote to it but you will die if you’re affected by it. Just breathing in the same air as those plants was enough to make me bleed and scratch the skin off my hands. Can you imagine what the distilled essence of the herb will do to you?”
“Ivan won’t have the time to poison us,” said Cain. “We’ll draw him to battle in the mountains on the outskirts of Fuvaros. The citizens should be safe from the dragons.”
I shook my head. “I don’t agree with this plan.” My heart squeezed with fear as I saw the determined look on each of their faces. Even Adal was adamant. None of them wanted to involve me in the fight against Ivan.
Frustration rose within me. Why were they suddenly treating me like a fragile woman?
Cain rose to his feet. “Rest for now. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Stay with me,” I insisted. “We haven’t even had a proper discussion on the matter yet.”
“We are heading to the mountains,” said Norvin, going to stand next to Cain. “We’ll practice flying around in our true forms and build up some defensive moves between us.”
“If you wait another day or two, I could join you in your exercises,” I said, grabbing at whatever excuse I could to stop them from making up their minds about going up against Ivan by themselves.
As far as I knew, the emperor was far too conniving to be defeated by the sheer strengths of three dragons. He’d murdered an entire group of dragons without even achieving his true form. We had to take the time to be fully prepared against him.
I looked towards Cain. “You are being too hasty about this.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a nod. “But I am determined about one thing. We won’t put you in any more danger. You’re our mate and we’ll protect you with our lives.” He pushed open the door before another retort could leave my mouth. Adal and Norvin swiftly left after him, leaving me to fume alone.
6
Daria
That night, sleep eluded me.
My mind refused to calm down ever since my princes told me they didn’t want my help to defeat Ivan anymore. While their dragon forms gave them absolute power over ordinary mortals, it would barely give them equal footing with an experienced beast like Ivan. The emperor was older and more aware of our strengths and weaknesses than us. His cold cruelty made him a lethal enemy.
Ren didn’t come to my quarters last night. The princes must have prevented him from seeing me while I was trying to get the poison out of my body. I wanted to get my hands on the weeds that seemed to be lethal to dragonborns alone. Combined with the tomes we’d stolen from the dragon temple, I might just be able to concoct an antidote to it.
As far as I could read into the mind of the dragon emperor, he would definitely use the poison as a weapon against the princes. All these years, he never expected another dragon to rise up against him. He’d made sure to be the last one in the realm. Fate decided differently and here we were. However, with the little time he had to prepare against us, he was sure to use the last weapon he used on the other dragons.
I climbed out of bed as soon as the first rays of the rising sun entered through the shafts of the window.
My energy seemed restored despite my sleepless night.
Wrapping myself in a plain woolen dress, I walked out of my quarters to look for Ren. On the way to his bedchambers, I took a quick look at the place the princes were staying.
It was a modest room with three cots and a single cabinet to hold their possessions. The place
was empty and from the looks of the beds, they hadn’t been slept in. My gut squeezed with worry as I shut the door behind me and hurried towards Ren’s chambers. I had to know what those weeds were and find a possible antidote to them before my princes got too impatient and attacked Ivan.
I pushed open the door to Ren’s chambers without knocking.
He was sprawled on the bed, snoring lightly. Shafts of sun rays fell on his vivid ginger hair, lighting the strands like fire. He looked so peaceful I almost didn’t want to wake him up. Almost.
Marching forward, I called out his name loudly.
“What’ssamatter!” He moaned, sitting up, his eyes too heavy with sleep to open them fully.
“Wake up!” I said loudly, moving around his room and opening every curtain to let in the morning light. “It’s morning already.”
“I could have been naked,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and frowning at me. “There could’ve been naked women in here.”
I chuckled. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“How roguish of you, princess,” he said with a pout. Running a hand through his hair, he stared at me. “How are you feeling now? Yesterday, the three brutes wouldn’t let me come near your chambers.”
“I am better now.” Taking a seat at the edge of the bed, I said, “I needed to meditate to re-vitalize my life energy and force the venom out of my body. It’s an intense process that requires my utmost concentration. A break in focus could’ve led to a greater injury.”
Ren’s frustration with being woken early disappeared. He looked anxious now. “Is the poison gone now?” he asked, glancing at my hands. Smooth skin stretched between my fingers now. I’d healed all the rashes there.
“It is gone.”
He exhaled a long breath. “That’s good. I got so worried when you passed out a second time in the carriage.”
“Did you get the weeds?”
“Yeah. They’re over there.” He pointed to a desk in the corner. “I’ve wrapped them in cloth. Wear gloves when you touch them.”
I nodded. “I definitely won’t be touching them with naked skin.” Getting to my feet, I walked to the desk and found a long package wrapped in red silk. “I will start studying them today. Will the servants mind if I set up a small stove area in my chambers? I am hoping to concoct an antidote for it.”
“You can do whatever you like here,” said Ren. “Although, your humble servant begs that you don’t burn his house down. It would attract a lot of attention. The bad kind.”
I chuckled. “Thank you.” I let the humor pass away before turning to more serious matters. “Do you know what Ivan did in Baledonia and Redfall?”
His face paled at my question immediately. “You heard?”
“They told me. You kept it from me so you could get me to cure Helena.”
He averted his gaze. “You caught me.”
“So, is she any better?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. I told her about a miraculous healer I’d come across who claimed to be able to heal deep burns. His only condition was that he would do it by keeping his identity a secret.” He let out an exhausted breath. “Helena wants to meet this mysterious doctor now. She wants to know if he can heal a severed dick as well.”
A cold, amused chuckle escaped my lips.
“There’s the spoiled princess I recognize so well,” I said scathingly.
“I see it differently,” he argued. “She got healed fully and now wants the same for her brother. Yes, she is demanding more than she’s supposed to get but at least, she is thinking of her brother.”
I shook my head. Ren would never see her as a villain. In his mind, she was a poor orphan who got twisted into a cruel, heartless woman because of the influences of Ivan and his sons. I wondered how much he would pity me if he knew I was raised among assassins and what I had to go through to become one.
“Keep the servants away from my quarters,” I said, moving to the door. “That’s all I need for the time being.”
He gave me a mock salute from where he sat on the bed before slumping back among the pillows.
Taking the herbs, I went back to my quarters.
Before opening the cloth package, I collected leather gloves from the wardrobe in my room. Remembering how even the fragrance of the flowers affected me, I cast an air spell around my head. It supplied me with a steady supply of fresh air that wasn’t tainted by any odor or dust surrounding me.
Thus armed, I placed the package on a table and unfolded the length of fabric concealing the herb.
The plant that Ren dug out was wilted by now but the purple hue of its blossoms remained intact. It looked like any wildflower plant that grew in a forest or the valleys. There was nothing distinguishable about it except for the tiny flowers and the licorice aroma that wafted from it.
I wracked my brains to remember about such a poison but nothing came up in my memory.
Of course, the books on poison available in Linmoor Valley were all about killing human adversaries. No one ever thought to confront a dragon. However, if I could find something about this particular weed I knew assassinating a dragon wouldn’t be much of a problem. Perhaps, this was the bit of knowledge that helped Ivan kill the other dragons of his time.
Leaving the weed, I went to the corner where the tomes from the dragon temple were stacked up together. Adal and I had decided to go through them together. A sliver of annoyance snaked through me. My mates were away honing their skills while the secret to defeat Ivan lay in the books.
Muttering a curse under my breath, I picked up a tome on poisons. When I’d cast a spell on the books, this was the one that held the least amount of dust on its surface, meaning this was the book Ivan used the most.
It was a thick volume.
I heaved it to the table and sat down in a chair to read.
The morning sunshine grew brighter as the day progressed, illuminating the thick yellowed parchments of the tome. To my surprise, the book was full of illustrations and notes on various plants and poisons available in the mountains and valleys of Drakhaven. If I wasn’t in a race to search about the particular purple-blossomed weeds, I would have leisurely read through it and added the herbs to my arsenal of poisons.
It was close to sundown when I reached the middle of the book. Eyes feeling heavy with exhaustion, I was about to turn a heavy page when a full-sized illustration of the mysterious weed jumped out at me. The writer had done a wonderful job of adding every detail to the tiny blossoms, slightly upturned leaves, and thick stem and roots.
Scraping my chair closer to the desk, I began reading about the plant.
Dračí kosť, more commonly known as Dragon’s bane, is a common weed growing in the foothills of the mountains of Drakhaven. They have no effect on ordinary mortals but are a potent toxin to dragonborns. For this reason, dragon royalties actively sought the destruction of this commonly growing plant. Other than deep woods where no one ventures, it is extremely hard to come by.
The chapter went on to discuss how every part of the plant was toxic to dragonborns.
Ivan had built an entire garden to house these toxic weeds. He’d kept them concealed, saying it was his private sanctuary and even got my father to keep me away from it. If only the late King Helmut knew what his brother was concocting in there.
Closing the tome, I walked to the window. The last rays of the sun were disappearing below the horizon, leaving behind a crimson sunset. I was certain what caused the deaths of all the royalties fifteen years ago. What I needed to know now was how Ivan stayed protected from the effects. If he brewed a potion to concentrate the toxin, he had to be affected too.
I went back to the corner where the tomes from the dragon temple were stacked up. Part of me missed Adal terribly. He would have been so helpful in finding answers to the riddles. Instead, he was still away with Cain and Norvin, practicing his newfound powers.
I wanted to join them too. The underground chambers in the dragon temple had barely been
able to contain me. I wanted to spread my wings to their fullest span and experiment with flying too.
But that won’t help defeat Ivan, I told myself. I have to get to the bottom of his tricks to overpower him.
Among the tomes gathered in the corner, I found one on dark magic. One look at the blood-stained leather-bound book and I knew what it was meant for. Knowing someone like Ivan would be instantly drawn to it, I picked up the tome and carried it to the table.
A low headache throbbed dully in the back of my head.
Deciding to take a break, I went into the kitchens to look for something to eat.
Ren’s maids were busy at the moment, working to make bread and stir a pot of stew. They stared at me with open curiosity. Ignoring them, I looked around and found a basket of ripe pears nearby.
Taking the whole thing, I walked out of there.
I released a breath of relief when no one stopped me.
Going back to my quarters, I munched on the fruit. The sweet juices ran down the corner of my chin as I thought of my princes. They hadn’t come back yet.
Anxiety swirled in my stomach but I decided to ignore it. If people had seen them anywhere close to the city, there would have been a hue and cry about it already. Even the streets surrounding the house seemed quiet as night fell.
I went back to the book on dark magic. Sure enough, the pages were filled with gruesome illustrations of cut-up animals and humans, all chopped in a way to aid in rituals that would bind dark spirits to you. One could command these spirits to carry out your orders or ask for a boon in exchange for release.
I was able to turn the pages of this tome quickly as I was aware of most of the rituals. Elga taught us most of them in theory, always cautioning not to use them unless we were desperate. Capturing a dark spirit always brought calamity to the one who used them. Only when one had nothing to lose, would they go about conducting dark magic.
Towards the end of the book, I came across a marked portion. There were several handwritten notes in the corners of the yellowed pages. Looking closely, I found it was a ritual for binding a spirit to you that could protect you from the effects of poisoning.