by N M Zoltack
Keepers of the Flames
In the Eye of the Dragon Book Three
N. M. Zoltack
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Epilogue
Author’s note
Other Books By N. M. Zoltack
About the Author
Copyright © 2019 by N. M. Zoltack
ISBN:
Cover Artist: Joewie Aderes
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Typography: Covers by Julie
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All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781087057620
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For all those who believe in the fantastical.
1
Garsea
A single day has passed since the girl Cateline Locke had departed from the monastery. Garsea had known she would not be there long. Had she learned enough? He had certainly learned enough from her. She was not who she claimed to be, but then, most persons often put on facades to hide behind, masks to keep their true selves at bay.
Truly, Garsea had not done the same to her, or, rather, he had attempted not to. She kept to herself, and so she did not ask him many personal questions for fear that he would do the same to her.
Although she had not spoken much, her mannerisms, her hesitations, her word choices, the way she conducted herself all suggested that she was a noble. Her pattern of speech suggested her to be from Atlan, and he knew exactly who she had been.
The missing princess. Vivian Rivera.
Although Garsea did not leave the monastery often, he had read the stars. He had known a girl would come. The stars had not lied. He had found her easily and returned her to the monastery. Time would tell if her knowledge was sufficient. If not, he had failed. The stars could not be read easily and at times were misread and misinterpreted than not. As such, he could not risk giving too many details and certainly no secrets.
Where she would go and what role she would have to play he did not know. For the moment, he would not care either. She was no longer his charge, and besides, the others were due to return on this very day.
Slowly, reverently, Garsea wiped his brow and returned to his work. Far beneath the monastery, well below the ground level, he was bringing out the dragon bones and aligning them in their proper places. Ever since the three dragons had died in such a short enough period of time that they could not be reborn, his people have done their best to find and preserve the bones.
One day, the dragons would return.
He had just aligned the skull into its proper place and stepped back to admire his handiwork when soft thuds sounded on the winding stairs. Garsea clasped his hands behind his back and waited for the others to join him.
Velasco appeared first. With sharp features, strong lines, and light brown coloring, the man always scowled. He carried a lit torch, and the smoke encircled his body.
A moment later, Ximeno approached. He, too, carried a torch. A single thick strand of his black hair was braided and beaded. The rest of his locks flowed freely, reaching down past his shoulders.
Neither held dragon bones, much to Garsea’s dismay.
“Did you fail?” Garsea asked critically.
Velasco’s scowl deepened. “We did.”
“We did not,” Ximeno countered. He stepped forward and handed a small pouch to Garsea.
The bald man grimaced. They were missing bones far too large to fit within this pouch. Still, the claws were the hardest ones to find. Carefully, he dumped the claws into his hands. Three of them. Did they match this dragon or one of the other two?
On his hands and knees in the large room, Garsea placed the claws in their proper place. Yes. Now, they had all of the claws, but some of the legs and a part of the one arm remained missing.
“Do not worry,” Ximeno said. “We are close. We will find the last.”
“Nearly one completed dragon is not enough,” Velasco snapped.
“Keepers, please,” Garsea said mildly.
Velasco grimaced and stomped over toward the dragon’s skull. He crouched down and gently touched the large bone. “We have failed.”
“We are succeeding,” Ximeno protested.
“We are nearly as extinct as they are!” Velasco jerked to his feet. Even the fire from his torch seemed angry. “We three are the last. Once we are gone…”
Garsea grimaced. He was in his sixties, Velasco and Ximeno both in their forties. Not one of them were wed. At one time, Garsea had been, but the Fates had not seen fit to grant him a son or daughter. The other two had been too busy with their duties to even bother to find a woman to marry, let alone be with one long enough to bear a child.
Yes, they were nearly extinct. Even Ximeno could not deny that. The three were the last of the Keepers of the Flames. Throughout history, their people would groom the dragons.
It had been Garsea’s hope that if they were to recover all of the dragon bones, perhaps then they would be able to fulfill their purpose and resurrect the dragons.
“This one is nearly complete,” Garsea said. “Perhaps we only need one fully completed dragon skeleton for the ritual to work.”
“This is no ritual,” Velasco said. “This has never be done before.”
Garsea was not a violent man. He tended to be the most peaceful of the trio with Ximeno the most energetic and eager one. Velasco, of course, was the angriest, the most bitter, the one who could not be more negative.
But Velasco was agitating Garsea more than ever before. He stomped over to the younger man and seized his clothes in tight fists.
“Just because it hasn’t be
en done before does not mean it cannot or that it will not. The stars have said—”
“You put too much faith in the stars,” Velasco said. “Our ancestors read the stars, and they did not know that the Lord of Light and Darkness would come to kill them all.”
“Through fire and blood, ashes and bone, the dragons will rise again,” Garsea said.
“The Fates rule the world now, not the dragons,” Velasco said.
Garsea released him and turned to Ximeno. “What say you?” he asked bitterly.
Ximeno shrugged, the smoke from his torch obscuring his features. “The world is at a crossroads. Change will happen, whether it is because of the Fates or the people.”
“The people are the reason why the dragons are dead. We need the dragons.”
“We are like all the others,” Ximeno said, uncharacteristically sadly. “We fight, and we fail. The dragons are no more and have not been in an age. We have no children. We will die as they had.”
“The people will not be better for it,” Garsea said angrily, fuming.
Velasco, scowling deeper than ever, stalked away. After a moment and a sympathetic nod, Ximeno departed as well, leaving Garsea in isolation save for the nearly completed dragon skeleton.
He knelt down and touched along the dragon’s spine. “Will one be enough to bring you and your brothers back?” he murmured.
Had he misjudged the girl? Had he lost his chance for one of them to marry her and have a child with her? He hadn’t thought that a good idea previously as the dragons would surely have been disgraced by the way her father had gained the throne.
But they needed heirs just as the dragons did. Without the Keepers, who would tend to the Flames?
2
Prince Marcellus Gallus
Rage. Anger. Fury. When one’s best friend had been murdered, one did not feel sorrow or grief. Only a burning sense of wrath filled Marcellus Gallus.
One moment, Rufus Vitus had been dancing with the queen without power Rosalynne Rivera. The next, he was slumped over in her arms.
Supposedly, the queen saw nothing. Now, even Marcellus had to agree that Rufus commanded attention wherever he went. He was loud and boisterous, fun and entertaining. However, the queen’s brother had been murdered. Should she not be keeping an eye on her surroundings at all times? She should never have allowed Rufus to distract her.
Rufus. So full of life. Wishing to claim either queen as his. Perhaps just at least to bed them. He loved anyone and everyone, most of all himself. Marcellus had rolled his eyes a Rufus’s insistence that there was one queen for each of them. Now, he wished his friend could repeat his jest, although his friend might have been serious. With Rufus, it had been difficult to tell at times. He had so rarely been solemn.
In truth, Rufus was not like the other Vincanans at all. The others, Marcellus included, were rather stoic. At the moment, however, Marcellus was anything but indifferent or passive.
The ball had been reduced to chaos. The other dancers had all fled the room, and a guard had just told Marcellus and Queen Rosalynne that the lords and ladies were being directed to another room to be questioned. Marcellus had his friend in his lap. He was loathe to leave Rufus’s side, but he had no choice. There would not be another opportunity like this.
Still, he hesitated. The guard bowed and began to walk away.
“Halt,” Marcellus commanded.
Rosalynne blinked her wide dark eyes, clearly shocked at his tone. Even Marcellus was.
With the will of their people, his father, Antonius, had declared himself king of Vincana. They wished to claim the throne of all the lands, to burn down Tenoch Proper and forge a new country with the land and islands combined. Vincana Proper. This made Marcellus a prince. Until now, Marcellus had not truly acted as one. The time was not proper to declare war with Tenoch Proper yet, but Marcellus knew that time was at hand. The murder ensured that to be the case.
“Please,” he said, his tone not softening any. “Rosalynne, won’t you stand?”
The queen did as he bid, only her eyebrows lifting slightly. Because he was demanding her to do as he said? Or because he was not showing her the supposed respect she earned by being a Rivera?
The blasted Riveras. Her father had slaughtered the Li king and queen to steal the throne for himself. To conquer Vincana, he had sent ships to burn the Vincanan fleet. Perhaps he had done the same with the other islands. Her blood was as royal as his.
Careful not to jar the body although his friend could feel no pain, Marcellus stood, lifting his friend to be on his feet as well.
“Hold him straight up,” Marcellus instructed the guard. “Now, tell me, Queen, was he twirling you? Dipping you? Upright?”
Rosalynne hesitated and closed her eyes. A shudder ran through her, but when she opened her eyes, she appeared somewhat calm. Good. If she would have been hysterical, he would not have been able to handle this.
“Upright,” she said, nodding slowly. “Yes. We had just finished a dip. He straightened and then slumped.”
Marcellus moved to eye his friend’s backside. The guard shifted slightly to give him a better view and nearly dropped Rufus. The prince snarled and helped to readjust Rufus.
The dagger remained imbedded in his friend’s backside. The hilt of the blade was strangely ornate. The weapon had been shoved forward, without any hint of an angle at all.
“The person just jabbed forward with the dagger,” Marcellus murmured. He held out his hand as if gripping the blade and jabbed forward. “To get the momentum for such a forceful thrust, the person must have been walking quickly. Perhaps…”
He bent down slightly and tried different heights for the angle to shove in the blade to be at that precise location.
“Maybe shorter than I am. Yes, most likely. I do not know how tall but… What is it?” he asked Rosalynne, who had started to purse her lips.
“You are so tall,” she murmured. “Perhaps the tallest one here. It is only natural that the killer would be shorter than you.”
He snarled, ready to bite her head off, but she was right. Certainly he could have assumed that from the start.
With a jerk, he removed the dagger. To be knifed in the back… How very terrible.
Once Father hears about this, war will commence at once.
“See to it that he is taken care of,” Marcellus said to Rosalynne.
“Of course.” She worried her lower lip. “You trust me?”
“You are the only person I am certain did not kill him. You couldn’t have reached behind him to kill him.”
“Ah. Yes. I suppose that is so.” She shifted forward slightly, standing closer to Rufus, her gaze fixed on Marcellus. “I am—”
“I do not wish to hear it.” He glowered at the guard. “Lead me to the others.”
The guard blinked several times, his jaw hanging open. “Ah…”
“Go,” Rosalynne urged. She nodded to her shadows, the two guards who followed her everywhere.
The guard waited until the others gripped Rufus and then he brought Marcellus to another room. It was nearly as large as the ballroom, and the people were crowded toward the back.
Queen Sabine was here, failing to establish order. Not one person was being questioned, and a renewed sense of fury washed over Marcellus. Without warning, he stomped forward and gripped a man by the forearm.
“I have some questions for you,” he said.
The man gaped at him, eyes wide, mouth slack. “Ah…”
“Where were you when Rufus was killed?”
“I-I don’t even know a Rufus!” the man said, his upraised hands shaking.
The fear in his eyes told Marcellus that the man hadn’t the nerve to kill another, so he shoved him aside and located another. Again and again, he questioned the people. The lords and ladies shrank away from him, eyes wide or gazes averted, hunched together, shoulders raised as if they were trying to make themselves smaller. No longer were they the joyful, proud dancers they had been long minutes ag
o. Now, they were terrified, not only because of the murder but because of him.
Marcellus did not care about their fear. It was far more important that he gain information. Surely someone had seen the killer, and the killer must be in this room. He would find the person responsible, whether that person be lord or lady or queen.
He glowered at Sabine. While she stood off to the side, leaving him be as he interrogated her people, she was not moving to help. She was not also speaking to the others. No wonder she could not locate the prince’s murderer. Her incompetence irked him, and he could not feel badly about wanting to strip her crown from her.
But his father would sit on the throne first, not Marcellus, and his father would not want this. His father would want the murderer found, no doubting that fact, but his father would not act like this.
Mid-question, Marcellus closed his eyes. He shoved his burning anger aside. Unfortunately, that brought out more of his grief, but he could be far more stoic now, or so he hoped.
Marcellus nodded to the lord who was trembling like a leaf caught up in a tornado. Then, the prince stepped and spread out his hands to command the attention of those assembly.