“I always thought he had a screw loose up there,” Frieda replied. She remembered the way Rayse, the Black Menace, had threatened to kill her. He had locked up her oldest child, Ranwynn, prior to that, after beating him in a duel. Ranwynn didn’t deserve such a fate. She wouldn’t forget the way Rayse’s warriors dragged him off, still bruised and unconscious, after Rayse passed the sentence. Greta wasn’t even allowed to tend to the boy’s wounds.
Frieda hated the Black Menace wholeheartedly. Ordinary clan members weren’t allowed to visit Dragon Keep’s dungeons. She wasn’t going to see her dear Ranwynn for twenty years. The months of not knowing her boy’s condition gnawed at her like rats at her chest.
“He’s been sending his warriors to check the houses of all the clan members every day,” Estella said. “Rayse has gotten all the dragons riled up. Has he gone through yours?”
“Multiple times. They weren’t exactly gentle about their messes, either.” Frieda sighed. “He’s not going to stay like this for long. I can’t wait for him to be replaced.” Talking about Rayse made her soup turn sour.
Estella leaned her chin on her palm. “I don’t think I can blame him. The femriahl was poisoned, or so the rumors say. You know how irrational our dragons get when it comes to their wives.”
Empathy was not in Frieda’s vocabulary when it came to Rayse. “So how was work today?” she asked, hoping to redirect Estella from the topic. She didn’t want to think about Rayse and how he’d hurt her son. It made her sick. She’d been trying her very best to ignore the constant gossip about him, with very little success. Estella’s chatter wasn’t helping.
“Busy, I suppose. Rayse has been working everyone harder recently. He really needs to calm down. I used to like that man as our leader. Many people here did. But sentiments are changing. Have you seen those eyes? They burn with the madness of a crazed beast.”
“Estella, if I hear another word about Rayse… I’ll… Well, can we not talk about him. Please?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I always forget.” Estella looked at Frieda sheepishly.
An impatient knocking at the door interrupted their conversation. Frieda answered it.
“You’re going to want to see this, Frieda,” the woman outside said.
“Peony?”
“I was coming back from work,” Peony said, “when I saw Ranwynn out in the square, in front of the castle.”
Frieda pushed past the woman as soon as she heard her son’s name. She pulled her coat over her shoulders and slipped on her boots. Within moments, she was scampering up the street through the thick inches of snow that had gathered in the snowstorm the night before.
“You truly saw him?” she asked Peony, who trailed behind. Peony tried hard to catch up to Frieda’s frantic pace but was falling behind.
“There’s a crowd gathered there.”
“Watching him like some spectacle,” Frieda said.
Had Rayse finally decided to free him? She made a beeline toward Dragon Keep.
Anticipation mixed with uncertainty pounded in her chest. Cold wind battered the streets. Winter had passed, but the mountains were always chilly. The signs of the houses flapped and thudded against each other. The afternoon sun shone dimly overhead. Clouds covered it, showering the mountains with a dreary gray. It was going to snow again tonight.
She stormed her way onward. Ranwynn, my son, please be all right.
A crowd had congregated in front of the proceeding. They reminded her of flies buzzing around a dead carcass. “Let me through,” she begged. “I’m his mother.” Some people parted for her, but a lot of her pleas fell on deaf ears. She pushed past with the best of her ability, and soon was almost at the front.
She gasped and blood drained from her face. Ranwynn looked nothing like himself. Chains made from dragon stone held him down by his neck and arms, preventing him from shifting into a dragon. Being trapped in the dungeons hadn’t allowed much light to reach him, causing his skin to go dry and pale. She recognized him, but barely. He reminded her so little of the confident young man he was before being thrown into his cell.
Watching her boy made her want to cry. She could hear her chest thumping in her ears, and a foul taste soured her tongue. The chattering of the crowd bustled around her.
“They’re executing him,” a dragon male said.
At the square, two guards held down her dragon mate. They were clamping dragon stone over him as well. “No,” she said. Were they going to take him away from her too? She couldn’t stomach that. She was whimpering like a worried mouse, gasping for some semblance of safety. She found it hard to breathe. It felt like the chill in the air had dipped down, and her feet went cold with what was going to happen. Her anxious mind stirred, and her fingers turned numb from fear.
“Ranwynn deserved to die in the first place,” the dragon male continued. “He made an attempt on the femriahl’s life and challenged our leader. Rayse had the right to kill him after their duel. In fact, he was being lenient by letting Ranwynn live this long.”
“That’s a solid point, but I find it hard to not look at Rayse as a bully,” the woman next to him said. She was a wiry woman, with a nose resembling a tree branch. Bastardly ugly, she was. How such a woman managed to get chosen as a mate, Frieda didn’t understand.
How dare these people talk about her son’s fate as if it meant nothing? Ranwynn didn’t deserve any punishment, much less death. “Shut up,” she spat, then forced her way past them.
She sprinted toward her son, fueled by fear for his life. Rayse’s warriors were upon her within seconds.
They pinned her arms behind her back and pushed her to the ground. “We can’t let you pass.” Their fingers dug into her skin, sending an ache to her bones.
“He is my son! Release me, you filthy animals.” She struggled against their grips, but their strength was like that of a giant boulder. Their hands were hot against her chilled skin, sending frustration through her.
A guillotine sat in the center of the square. It was four feet tall. The afternoon sun silhouetted the sharp, menacing blade. Rayse edged Ranwynn toward the chopping block.
“Please, please spare him,” she begged. She was wailing at this point. Hate for Rayse bubbled inside her and was building into a storm. She could only kneel on the ground. The imminent horror of the situation squeezed around her, constricting like a merciless python. “Let me talk to him. I’ll do anything.”
The warrior allowed her a look of pity. “I’m sorry.”
She screamed as her son’s head was thrown onto the wood of the guillotine.
No… No!
Her words had twisted into garbled nonsense. A frenzy of torment swelled in her as she watched her son being treated as nothing more than livestock.
He had been a beautiful boy whom she raised for eighteen long, tender years.
All her love, for naught.
“Please!” she croaked, tugging herself forward despite the warriors holding her back. Anguish buzzed in her ears as her heart thrashed in her ribcage.
The blade of the killing instrument fell. It severed Ranwynn’s head cleanly. A loud thump followed the slice, and the square burst into judgmental whispers.
The world seemed to move around her in slow motion. Numbness took control of her body. His head rolled and slipped onto the ground. Blood gushed from his neck, tainting the cobblestone pavements with its horrid color. The crowd continued to gawk at the scene.
A spectacle. Her son had died as a spectacle for bystanders to spread rumors about.
“No… My…my boy…”
Ranwynn’s final expression was cemented on his face—terror. Those green eyes stared at her, pleading for mercy. The guards released her after Rayse had finished the deed, but her body wouldn’t move.
A sudden retching sensation streamed through her stomach. She threw up, and the contents of her lunch poured to the ground. The gruesome sight was too much for her to take.
The guards let go of her mate and unshackled the dra
gon stone from his wrists. He stumbled toward his son and fell beside him.
Rayse walked away with a stoic, nonchalant demeanor. Did this man know that he’d just crushed her world? He didn’t act like he knew. His uncaring front made her blood pulse with the need for revenge.
She rushed toward him with rage, not caring that she was covered in her own filth. She’d kill him. She would rip the windpipe from his throat. How could he do this to her? Before Constance arrived, her family was happy and whole, and now it had lost a crucial part. Her son had been torn from her and her heart felt like it was missing a piece. She was promised twenty years. That, she could take. But Rayse’s promise had been stripped away as easily as it came.
Rayse caught her hands with ease and looked at her with his black, monstrous eyes. “Frieda, I don’t suppose you’d like to be put on trial too?”
“Trial?” She laughed. The word tasted bitter on her tongue.
Without hesitation, she spat in his face.
Rayse sat in Constance’s study. He let the sound of Constance’s critters drown out his sorrow and breathed in the scent of herbs and dusty books. This study was the place in all of Gaia where Constance had spent most of her time. In here, he felt close to her.
Greta entered the room, fuming. “Rayse, you can’t be going around beheading innocent dragons. Release Frieda from the dungeons this very minute. You know that poor pumpkin doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.”
“She spat at me.”
Greta waved her hand. “After what you did? You deserved it, you piece of rotten fruit.”
“I can’t release her so easily. She’s a suspect. She might know something about Constance’s location. Remember how she tried to poison her? Maybe she thought she was helping her son by threatening Constance. She has the motive. She wanted revenge.” He slumped back into his chair and allowed the leather to rub against the skin of his arms. Knowing that his mate had once felt the same sensation of the leather brought him closer to her, somehow. It was a silly notion—superficial and nothing compared to the real thing.
Greta sighed. “Everyone is a suspect to you.”
“I had good reason to execute Ranwynn.” He picked up some letters from the table and passed them to Greta. They were bundled up and tied with brown string. Just like the dungeons, they had the grimy stench of piss.
The old woman frowned as she gingerly flipped through the documents. “This is hardly probable cause.”
“How did he even get the letters in the first place? They talk of power and reforms. If treason isn’t a cause for beheading, then I don’t know what is.”
“There’s not a single strongly worded statement in these letters to prove anything. Rayse, you’ve been interrogating your subjects, imprisoning people who show the slightest hint of suspicious activity. And most of that suspicion is fueled by your own paranoia.”
“I needed to send a message.”
“What message?” Greta placed her hands on her hips. “That you’re a big bully?”
“That I will not tolerate anything or anyone who has or will threaten my mate. I need them to be scared.”
“Yes, so the culprit will come out with his hands up. Because he knows he’ll be put to death right after. Do you think you’re making any sense? Because I don’t think you are.”
He sank deeper into his chair. He cast his gaze away from her and scowled. “I don’t want to hear any more from you.”
“What about your duty to your people? You’re being tyrannical. The dragons don’t want a tyrant. They need the old you back.”
He hissed. “I don’t care what they want. They don’t care about me or Constance anyway. The minute I show weakness, they fight for my position. I don’t give a rat’s ass about those bastards.”
“Rayse, that’s not how you talked about them before—”
“Fuck before!”
Greta startled. Her glasses fell to the ground, making a loud clatter. She cleared her throat and loosened the scarf around her neck, before reaching down to pick up her glasses.
He sucked in a deep breath, then released it. “If Constance isn’t here, then nothing else matters.”
“You have to look past that.” She cleaned the lenses of her glasses with the fabric of her shawl, then tucked the spectacles away.
His eyes turned to slits. “If you want me to, then do your job. Find her.”
“I miss that pumpkin too, you big oaf. Stop acting like you’re the only one hurting around here.”
“You don’t understand how it’s like to…” His eyes reached Greta’s blue ones. Pain shone in them. She studied him with a crease between her brows, and a troubling look of disappointment. He waved his hand. “Go find her. Please.”
“Rayse, there’s a possibility that she might never come back.”
The idea made him sick. He took in the sight of her study. Candles were everywhere, their wicks unlit. Constance used to read not only at her desk, but on the ground, against the wall, anywhere and everywhere she could possibly be in this small room. When he came home, he often visited this place first, and his eyes would meet her tiny frame. She usually clutched a quill in her hand and would mutter spells to herself, committing them to memory. And then he would greet her. Finally, she would rest, and they would spend the rest of the night together.
He missed that. He had discarded that peace when he left her and flew away on his cowardly wings. He should have embraced those last moments and not cut their time short.
“What if she doesn’t return?” Greta asked. “You can’t continue living like this.”
“How do you do it?”
“In pain.” The old woman brushed her messy fringe aside and combed stray strands of her hair back. “I do the bare minimum to keep myself functioning, to be part of this clan. But every day I think of him. I don’t believe I’ve given up. I still dream he’ll be here someday.”
“It’s been hundreds of years.” He closed his eyes and breathed out softly. He didn’t want to go on another few centuries without Constance.
Greta gazed upon him with pity. “It is the only way I can drag myself out of bed every day. There’s still a chance I can see him once more. Just one more day is enough. One more, and I can pass on happily.”
But Rayse wasn’t that far gone yet. He was greedy, and still wanted a few more centuries and thousands more wonderful moments with his mate.
“Find her,” he said again.
“We’ll do our best. But you should be prepared in the event we never do.”
“That’s not an option.”
“I know.”
She turned around and walked out, avoiding a few scattered papers and books lying on the ground. He hadn’t asked Nanili to clear them yet. He wanted them where they had been when Constance left.
Or maybe that didn’t matter. Suddenly he was angry at Constance, for having the nerve to disappear on him like that. She should have given him time… time to say goodbye, at the very least.
When Greta was out of sight, Rayse stood up and let out a pained yell. He ran his arm across the table and threw Constance’s findings into the air. The papers fluttered to the ground, and the books thumped loudly on the wooden floors. He spun around and banged his fist onto the wall, cracking it. He stared out into the foggy skies of the mountains, his insides raging.
Constance had to return soon. He couldn’t stand one more moment of not knowing.
He needed her.
“Where are you, little fire?” he whispered.
Chapter 14
Marzia fiddled with her quill, waiting for Fraser’s reply.
It was freezing. The winds had been getting stronger the last few days. She couldn’t leave her cave now, and it wasn’t simply because of the cold. Rayse’s warriors were everywhere, searching for her. She missed the comfy confines of her thatched home. Fraser always made the place warmer. She wanted to see him in person again, and not just an image of him from the Mother.
Soon, she told herself
. If she continued doing as the Mother commanded, she would get her prize soon.
A campfire flickered in front of her. It cast her long shadow over the cavern walls. The dragons wouldn’t find her here. It was protected by her barrier—a spell taught to her by her goddess. She didn’t know many spells, only the handful that the Mother had instructed her to use.
She glanced down at her sparrow-vellum.
<
Her heart skipped. She smiled. He always responded quickly. <
<
<
<
Her quill made a scratching sound on the sparrow-vellum. <
<
<>
<
A whirring sounded in her ears. Her stomach fell.
<> she scribbled quickly. She rolled the sheet up and tucked it into her rucksack as carefully as she could.
She tried to ignore the voices in her head. They were always there in a constant whisper. Sometimes they became too loud for her to bear.
She still remembered the man’s face when she took his soul from him. She hadn’t bothered to ask for his name. The Dragon Mother assured her he had deserved to die, and was a criminal.
But those couples whom she killed…
Those, she still had nightmares about.
She had done it to keep Fraser safe. Would he forgive her if he ever found out? Their souls were inside her rucksack, in a pouch of soul beads that the Mother had given her. The goddess had told her exactly how to go about taking those souls, even though the goddess didn’t seem to need them. Marzia’s harvesting of those couples felt more like a test of loyalty.
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