by Ashley Frost
He smiled. “I have assigned Fraser to another run today, and Marzia as a seamstress. And as for you, I’ve assigned you to something I think you might like. You’re not excused from work even though you’re my mate.”
“And you think you know me this well, because?” She surprised herself with her rebellious tone. One did not speak so indignantly to something she feared. But she had to stop cowering before him, not like she did last night. Maybe Rayse was right. Sleeping in the same bed with him did manage to foster trust. He didn’t try to eat her, after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Contrary to popular belief, the name ‘the Black Menace’ was not coined from humans, but dragons. The dragon clans in the High Mountains had no clear ruler for centuries before Rayse’s arrival. He subdued them with sheer power. He is greatly known to be unbeatable amongst the winged beast. Recounts name him a prodigy, and also one of the most diligent dragons.
Constance was excited, much to her distaste. Rayse had been right about her liking the job she’d be assigned to.
“How did you know about my profession?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. Did he know her before he met her at the Offering? How much did he know about her, if that were the case?
He shrugged. “Your book. You left it lying on the table. I’ve never met an herbalist who isn’t interested in curing people. Unless, of course, you’re more of a poison kind of herbalist? Then I have something else in mind.”
“What if I were reading it out of interest?” Her suspicions had mostly subsided, but she found herself joking. Joking? With Rayse?
“Nobody reads those books out of interest. You might as well read the dictionary.”
She smiled. Arriving at the infirmary made her feel better. It was a familiar scene, although the patients had scales and were more of the fire-breathing type.
Rayse raised a brow. “You’re the first person I’ve seen who smiles at the sight of injured people.”
“Changed your mind about the whole ‘mate’ thing?”
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t want my woman to be normal. Goddess forbid.”
Goddess? She wondered what deity dragons worshiped. Humans believed dragons themselves were gods. But entering the village, she concluded that they were anything but. They were simply healthier, more muscular beings with a scaly side. Looking upon the infirmary, she knew they bled, whined, and cried just as humans did.
She peered at him, noting his comment. Rayse had a sense of humor, but it sounded stiff. He said his jokes with almost the same stern tone he barked his orders, and there wasn’t a crack in his expression, with barely a slight upturn of his lip. Who made jokes without even a tiny hint of a grin?
By the gods, he might have even been serious about not wanting her to be normal. It didn’t sound far-fetched.
“Lord Everstone.” A well-endowed, aged woman with the rosiest complexion she’d ever seen scurried up to Rayse. A smile split her cheeks, revealing bright, white teeth. “Are you all right? To what may I owe this visit?” Despite her obvious age, the woman looked glorious, with bright, white hair cropped to shoulder length. The wrinkles on the woman showed, but did nothing to take away her beauty.
“I’m well, Greta,” Rayse said. “This here, is Constance. She is my chosen.”
Greta’s brows shot up. The old woman squinted. “Your chosen?” Greta pulled up Constance’s sleeves and inspected her arm. “I don’t see a mark.”
“The process isn’t complete yet.”
“That’s not good,” Greta said. “It’s dangerous to leave a mating uncompleted. You should see to finish this as soon as you can.”
Dangerous? Constance thought.
“Speak nothing of that,” Rayse said firmly.
The woman pursed her lips, then nodded. “Right, m’lord.”
Constance bit her lip and crossed her arms. Secrets? Why should she trust Rayse if he wanted to keep secrets about dangers from her? She’d press him about it later.
Rayse waved his hand. “I’m not here to discuss my mating, Greta. I have a new recruit for you. My mate is interested in herbs, so I’m thinking this would be a good place for her to start working.”
“You’re putting her to work so quickly?” Greta asked, eyes widening.
“Is that a problem? Every newcomer to our clan has to work starting the next day. I won’t make exceptions. Not even for my mate.”
“Well, aren’t you just darling,” Constance said. She sounded sarcastic, but she actually liked Rayse’s firmness when he came to decisions like this. Firm decisions made a good leader. She wouldn’t want to be given special treatment either; it’d diminish her usefulness. Being important to a group to was a necessity. She understood that being a liability would cause her to be tossed aside, whether out of her home, or killed. What would the dragons think if they saw her lazing about, while they had to carry tons of goods for hours on end?
Rayse wasn’t sugar-coating her treatment of her. Surprisingly, that made her like him more. She remembered Eduard doing the same thing when he first took her in.
Greta hummed softly. “Very well, then. So, Constance, you’re here to be our new nurse?”
“Nurse?” she said. “I was considered a healer in my homeland.”
“Right. But we work differently here. Skills that make you a healer in human villages may not apply the same way in these mountains. For example, do you know what to do when a dragon is spiked?”
She cringed. She remembered reading something of the like in her book yesterday, but she couldn’t remember the exact details. She was smart, at least in the medical field, and understood herbology terms quicker than most folks, but she wasn’t a genius. She didn’t have the ability to memorize information at first glance. She needed time to re-read, study, and process what she learned.
“Ummm,” she said, “sparroweed and crescent leaf?” They were the most commonly used herbs for injuries.
Greta didn’t look impressed. “In what ratio?”
She turned her attention to Rayse, as if the answers would be written on his face. He shot her an amused raise of a brow. He seemed to enjoy watching her fumble. “One… to Four?”
“You’re just guessing, child. Three sparroweed stems to one crescent leaf. The bright souls of the stems must be extracted, then the stems crushed and brewed, letting the dull souls simmer. You’ll, of course, need to know the right phrases to speak when performing these actions. Then the bright souls must be added back into the brew. We only want the bright soul from the crescent leaf, so we extract it with the right phrase, and throw it into our mixture before saving the shell of the leaf containing the dull soul for use in something else.”
She guessed that Greta was going in such detail to confuse her, but she wasn’t confused. She had studied the subject the night before and had gotten a decent grasp of the basics of soul magic.
There were two kinds of souls used in magic, bright and dull. Bright souls held characteristics of their hosts, while dull souls were the same for every living creature.
To put it simply, if the souls were the components of flavored bread, the bright souls would be the flavoring, while the dull souls would be the flour. Bright souls held the special characteristics of the living creatures they came from, while dull souls were the filler and merely served to amplify a spell or a brew.
She had been extracting only bright souls all her life, which made her concoctions weaker than they should be. She knew about the both now. It made her twice as effective as an herbalist.
“You look puzzled,” Greta said, cockiness lacing her voice. “Maybe you should stick to wrapping wounds with bandages and applying the mixtures I brew? I wouldn’t like you to mess these concoctions up. They are very crucial to the healing process.”
“Can I try?” Constance asked.
“Sorry?” Greta said, sounding surprised. “No, child. Soul magic is dangerous. And humans like you do not have experience with it.”
“Humans like me? You speak as if
you’re not human yourself.” She assumed the females here were all humans.
Greta shot her a proud expression.
“You’re a dragon.”
“The only female of my generation, child. I have lived over nine hundred years. You are a fool compared to what knowledge I’ve stored in here.” Greta tapped her temple.
She hoped Rayse would say something about the old lady’s brashness, but he merely shrugged.
“Well, dragon or not, I’d like to try mixing the cure. My mother taught me soul magic. I know some of it.”
“Please do,” Rayse said. “I’d like to see what my mate is capable of. We are still getting to know each other.”
Greta hesitated. “Interesting,” the old lady said. “The herbs are at the back. Try not to make yourself look bad, dear? Your colleagues are watching.”
As Greta shuffled away, Constance turned to Rayse and said, “Why do you let her talk to you like this?”
Rayse flashed her a quizzical glance. “Like?”
“Well, rude. Is she allowed to talk around the clan leader with so little respect?” Back down the mountains, she kept her rude comments about the village chief to herself most of the time, as much as she didn’t agree with his decisions.
“Greta is the oldest amongst all dragons here. The first thing dragons place importance in is strength. Second, seniority. Many of my subjects respect Greta as much as they respect me. Some even more, perhaps. She is well liked by my people.”
The old dragon spun around. “Are you coming, child? And don’t forget, dragons have good hearing. I heard every bit of that, you little brat.”
Constance scrunched up her nose in annoyance and sauntered to the back of the infirmary. “Sparroweed and crescent leaf,” she muttered to herself as she picked the herbs out from the heap on the table. “Honestly, you should organize this place.”
Was that smoke coming out of Greta’s nostrils? “Get on with it, little human. I’m not living much longer, so don’t waste my time. And don’t tell me what to do. I like my organized messes.”
“Right, right.” She did as Greta instructed, removing the stems and crushing them before throwing them into a small pot over the fire. The old dragon was tsk-ing the whole time, which was awfully unnerving.
“Kisla Misreagou,” she said. Those were the words to remove dull souls from the host. She swallowed, uncertain if it’d work. She could have mispronounced the phrase, since she hadn’t said it aloud before. A dark fog lifted from the sparroweed. She sighed in relief and willed it to throw itself into the pot. The sparroweed shriveled as soon as the dull soul left, leaving behind a brownish residue.
Finally, she extracted the bright soul from the crescent leaf and placed it into the mixture. For the first time, she didn’t crush the host before harvesting its magic. The herb didn’t shrivel further, as expected, she noted duly. She gave her brew one final stir, then scooped a serving up with a ladle and poured it into a glass, grinning with confidence.
Greta took it from her, sniffed it, then scrunched her face up. “Bad, bad,” the old lady said. The dragon shoved past her, grabbed the pot, and threw its contents into a nearby drain.
“What in dragon’s breath ,” Constance cursed. “I worked hard on that.” It felt like she had just brewed the best concoction in her life. And the woman threw it down the drain?
“You’re too sloppy.” She pointed to the measuring scale. “The ratio was three to one, but you went past that. That measuring scale is there for a reason. And you didn’t even take the temperature of the brew before adding the crescent leaf. You’re not taking full advantage of the herbs.”
“It’ll heal all the same.”
Greta smacked her hand. Ouch. That woman packed the punch of a big lizard. “We are herbalists, dear Constance. We need take our craft seriously, and make sure our medicines have maximum efficacy. If we’re not precise about it, anyone could throw random herbs into pots and call themselves doctors.” The elderly woman wiped the pot as she continued, “No, you’re not doctor material yet. But you’re not a nurse either, I’ve decided. You show potential. I’ll take you on as my apprentice.”
“Your apprentice?” She shot an incredulous look at Rayse, then turned back to Greta. “I never said anything about wanting to be your apprentice.”
Greta chuckled. “It’s either that, or you’ll have to be a nurse. I can’t let you scurry about, making poisons for my patients.”
“I was the best doctor in my village, mind you.”
“Yes, yes, and quite likely the only one.” Greta waved her hand.
Feeling condescended upon, she fumed. “Not quite.” Eduard, her adoptive father, was the other physician, and Karsi sometimes took over, although she didn’t have the same amount of knowledge. The three physicians weren’t really in competition. She’d best keep that fact to herself.
“I’ll give you five minutes to decide. If you’re not happy about it, you can beg your dragon there to give you another job.”
“No.” She couldn’t imagine a better job. She was born to take care of the sick. And the magics she would learn. By gosh, the magics. “I’ll be your apprentice.” She sighed softly. How bad could it be? Greta had a sharp tongue, but a nine-hundred-year-old dragon was bound to know a lot. She’d have a learning experience at the very least.
“Greta!” a dragon shouted. Constance flitted her gaze to his direction. The dragon didn’t look that injured. He sported a mere sprained ankle, judging from the light bandages around his foot and his awkward limp. She had treated worse. “Come help me,” he said. “This pain is unbearable.” He didn’t appear to be in that much pain. This one was a dramatic patient.
“Coming, you dumb baby.” Greta threw her hand over her forehead. “And they call him Braek the Terror in the far east of Yvrdeen. Terrified, more like. He’s been moaning about that sprained ankle since he arrived yesterday. I think he’s almost healed. He just likes the attention. Poor boy hasn’t found a mate yet. Anyway, come find me when you’re ready. I have some things planned for you.”
The old woman scurried away.
“She’s quite… something,” Constance said.
“Don’t take what she says to heart,” Rayse said. “She’s seen a lot in her years. Greta likes to treat people a bit harder than she should. She thinks most people don’t have enough sense and she needs to kick some into them. You’ll learn to like her after a while.”
“They like having sense kicked into them?”
“Yes, it’s something dragons need more often. Well, she doesn’t do it with just words. Don’t underestimate that old woman. She can still beat up some of the younger lads. And as I’ve mentioned before, dragons like seeing strength. She has seniority and strength. That makes her really important, I suppose.”
She shot him a look of challenge. “And you? She’d beat you up too?”
“She wouldn’t lay a finger on me, love, even if she tried.” His midnight eyes smoldered. He placed a finger on her chin and titled her head up. “You’re with the most powerful dragon across the whole of Gaia.”
And it shot through her again. The ache. The need.
Go away, go away, she willed. It felt like every time it came, it hit her stronger than before. She noticed every minute movement Rayse made. He became the only thing she paid any attention to. She stared upon his face, sucking in every detail. The slight crook to his nose, the light wrinkles around his eyes, the faint stubble around his jaw. Every bit of him should belong just to her.
She trailed her gaze across his body. She wanted to run her hands along his skin too. To feel the coarseness of it. To taste him.
She knew she wouldn’t feel like this normally. “Did you put something into my breakfast?” she breathed. Her thoughts were that of a foreign nature. They belonged to someone else, not her.
“No, love.”
“Then why… this? The heat when I’m around you.” A part of her felt embarrassed. She was acting like a harlot in front of a whole cr
owd of injured dragons. “I’ve never sensed anything like this prior to the mating,” she whispered, knowing her softened voice did little to stop the dragons from hearing her.
“It’s part of the process. Your body or soul understands that it has found its mate, so it sends… reminders. Don’t worry, love. I won’t take you until you’re no longer afraid.”
“Make it stop,” she begged. Touch me, was what she wanted to say. She believed the only way he could stop it was to embrace her. But a deeper, more rational part of her feared his touch.
A dark room, her mother, a threatening man.
The lust fell away. She blinked, panting. Her mind forced her to see Rayse as the man he could be. A forceful man? A danger? She didn’t want to believe her insecurities, not when he seemed so perfect.
Sometimes, however, the things which seemed too good to be true were what you had to run from.
“It’s gone,” she said.
He nodded. “The closer we are, the more often these instances will happen. I will stand further away for now, but within sight. I might not be able to stay the whole day. Duty calls. Nanili will arrive after taking care of chores. She and Greta will take care of you. There is another reason why I wanted to send you here, other than to give you work. Greta is trustworthy and loyal. She will make sure none of my enemies get to you.”
She flashed him a wry smile. “You’re letting a nine-hundred-year-old woman protect me from a village of dragons?”
She thought she heard a chuckle. “Greta can handle herself, and she has supporters. And something tells me you wouldn’t let yourself get taken down so easily, even by a dragon. You have spunk, love. Maybe too much.”
He kissed her on the forehead, taking her by surprise, then pointed to a corner. “Prepare to be bullied, love. I hate to see you mad, but what Greta does is good for you.”
She glanced away, then rubbed her forehead. She was taken aback by how soft his lips were. There was nothing sexual about that kiss. It was just… tender. She didn’t know what to think about that.