I’d been told as long as I could remember the ceremony was an honor. My mother should have been the one to prepare me, teach me, but her untimely death had stolen that opportunity.
Now, I was to face it alone.
“Take the chalice and drink,” the priest in front of me said as he retrieved it from the priestess.
I wanted to glance at Gideon for reassurance, but I could only stare at the concoction I was supposed to imbibe. It looked awful and smelled worse. As I brought it to my lips, my knees wanted to buckle beneath me and my stomach gave a great heave, but I locked my legs and swallowed. I’d made enough mistakes. Showing myself to be a fool in front of the most respected members of the court would not be one of them.
Resolved, I tossed back the rancid-smelling liquid and forced myself to drink down every drop. When I finished, someone took the chalice from my hand and the surrounding chanting grew louder.
For a moment, I wondered why no one in the castle could hear it, and then a horrible, searing pain overtook me. No amount of willpower could keep me from falling to my knees or silence the scream that tore from my throat. It felt like someone was rearranging my bones from the inside out. I heard a scuffling sound and then harsh whispers, and then I couldn’t focus on anything but trying to keep my bones in their correct places.
I didn’t know how long it went on, but it felt like an eternity. The thick incense and the pressing darkness consumed me along with the unrelenting pain. Minutes, then hours, passed, and I knew something was wrong.
I wasn’t shifting.
“Gideon,” I whispered, though to the knives of pain in my head, it felt like a scream. “Gideon, something’s wrong.”
Liquid fire burst through my chest and I swallowed back another scream. I didn’t want to seem weak, didn’t want them to think their queen couldn’t handle shifting like every other person in the realm, even though I was certain I was being torn in two.
“Elena,” came Gideon’s voice. “Elena, all you have to do is let go. Let go and the pain will go away.”
I tried. Goddess above, I tried. No matter how much I tried to relax, how hard I breathed through the agony, there was no relief, no shift to take it away. “I can’t,” I moaned, after an eternity. “Something’s wrong, Gideon. I can’t shift.”
His silence was answer enough. Even the chanting seemed to hush at my words.
“Come, now,” the priest said, at last. “You must do this for Acasia.”
In that moment, had I access to a weapon, I would have gladly sunk it in his smug face. Such a violent outburst wasn’t befitting of a woman, so I dropped my gaze. Sweat dripped from my brow onto the wooden floor beneath me. It coated my new dress and made it cling to my skin. “I’m trying,” I seethed. “Something is wrong. It’s not working.”
A fracture furrowed its way through the very center of me and I knew if I let it go on much longer it would break me completely. “Make it stop. Make it stop,” I shouted.
Gideon barked at the priest who nodded to the priestess. An acrid scent filled the air and then someone grabbed my arm and cut another slice through my palm. The metallic odor mixed with the brew, and then someone shoved it under my nose. It smelled even worse the second time around, but I didn’t care. I’d drink whatever they wanted if it would take the pain away.
It went down my throat like rivulets of ice, cooling and numbing everything in its wake. The pain subsided in gradual waves until it left me exhausted and cold on the floor, surrounded by concerned and mistrustful faces.
Gideon shouldered his way through them and fell to his knees. He gathered me up in his arms like he used to when we were kids, but the look on his face was anything but affectionate.
“What does this mean?” I asked him.
“It means we must get you out of the castle,” was his grim reply.
“My lady?” A tentative hand on my shoulder ripped me from the foggy reverie. “We’re here.”
An icy sweat dampened my brow and the meager contents of my stomach threatened to reappear. Leisha offered a cloth soaked in lavender mist to wash my face. Appearing at court for the first time in years with a sour sweat streaming from my pores would be a fatal mistake—one I couldn’t afford. The restorative soothed my nerves and left a refreshing, pleasant floral note on my skin to mask any apprehension. Living amongst the humans at the temple had given me more of a reprieve than I’d thought.
The shifter race, gifted with enhanced senses and keen eyesight in addition to their inherited familial powers, wouldn’t hesitate to go for my proverbial—and literal—throat at the first sign of weakness. I had no illusions about meeting the Dragon. Revered as the fiercest of all our kind, he would be no different than all the rest. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he were worse. The rumors I’d heard—
“Is something wrong?” Leisha inquired.
I gathered my furs around my throat and accepted the hand of the waiting steward. Lord Blaque was the least of my worries. First, I wanted to face the court and see my father. The Dragon couldn’t be worse than that.
Could he?
“All is well,” I told her, pleased my voice didn’t waver.
Maybe saying it aloud would make it true.
“Should I walk with you to your rooms to get freshened up?” she asked. Her eyes were tight with concern.
I shook my head. “I’d like to visit my father straightaway.”
“But isn’t Lord Blaque going to be waiting for you?”
“I will visit my father first,” I reiterated.
Leisha bowed her head, but it wasn’t fast enough to hide the look of reprimand on her face. “Yes, my lady.”
Gideon disappeared, no doubt to announce our arrival, and I would take advantage of the opportunity to slip away, despite the disapproval I’d receive as a result. I would not shirk my duties, but my priority was seeing my father before it was too late.
The first steward I found dressed in simple breeches and a clean linen shirt gaped at me as I asked him where the King was resting. He pointed toward a section of the castle used for treating the ill and injured, and I hastened toward it before he could ask what the disgraced princess was doing back in the castle.
A wave of sour air greeted me upon entrance to my father’s chambers. I pasted a smile on my face that I hoped didn’t look as brittle as it felt, even though there was no one to see it. His room was empty save for his wheezing form, a shadow of the man he’d once been. I turned from the thought and the wave of sadness that crested in my chest and strode to the enormous windows across from his bed. The ancient shutters creaked in protest as I shoved them open. The healer would no doubt have my hide, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have it in me to let my father, the greatest man I’d ever known, waste away in his own filth. It couldn’t be healthy to stew in the scent of sickness.
I crossed to his bed, resting a hip on the chair arm next to him as I studied his recumbent form. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. A rogue tear streaked down my cheek, and I wiped it away with a violent movement.
My father, much as shifter-kind would like to disagree, was a great man. Despite the temper so looked down upon amongst our kind, he had been a caring person and he absolutely doted on my mother. According to the best healer the lands could provide, his illness resulted from heartbreak after my mother died giving birth to me. As I smoothed his chestnut hair away from his brow, I chided myself for talking of him in the past tense. Gideon may think he would die, but I wasn’t so certain. Or maybe I was deluded. Even so, I’d rather be delusional for a while longer than give up on him forever. I’d already lost one parent…I couldn’t bear to lose another.
“He was asking for you,” Gideon said, entering from Father’s adjoining study. He didn’t join me by his bedside. Instead, he hovered in the doorway. “I knew I’d find you here. The pain became too much, so I instructed the healer to supply him with a sleeping draught.”
I turned away from him, my throat closing around the bitter words tha
t threatened to spew forth. I knew there wouldn’t be a joyous conversation to be had at our parting, but I, at the very least, wanted to tell him goodbye. To have him call me La-lena one last time like he did when Gideon and I were children. The sickness caused by losing a mate, when the match was said to be blessed by the Goddess, was enough to cause one of the greatest men I’d ever known to whither away to nothing.
“I’m sorry, sister,” Gideon offered, but the words sounded hollow.
“No, don’t be silly,” I said, though I didn’t know if I was talking to Gideon...or myself. “He needs his rest.” I shifted enough to brush back a lock of hair from Father’s brow, frowning when I caught sight of all the silver strands. He’d been so vital once, so solid. “Do the healers bring any news about his condition? Have there been any improvements?” I looked back knowing I was grasping at nothing, but trying anyway. I would always keep trying.
To lose hope was to give up, and I would be damned if I was going to do either.
Gideon winced and I took that like a stake to the heart. I forced a smile anyway. “No matter. I’m sure by the time I’m able to visit next, he’ll be up and about ordering everyone around again.” But I’d been saying that for years. The illness had given us only a brief time with him. I’d been but a young girl when he took to bed and never got up… unless it was to babble.
“Elena,” Gideon began, a spiel I’d heard more times than I could count, “I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
His fierce expression, so different from the composed mask I’d grown used to him wearing during our travels, reminded me so much of Father that I almost gasped aloud. They had always resembled one another. Both had broad angular jaws and deep-set eyes the color of a mountain bear’s pelt.
“Then don’t disappoint me,” I interrupted. “There has to be something we can do to save him. Anything.”
“I find it difficult to believe any magick would bring Father back from this. It would only work if Father wanted to live. Which I don’t think you’ve ever really understood. He could have found another mate, continued on, but he chose not to. An Immortal without a mate is as good as having a death sentence.”
Gideon’s own union with a crow-shifter, from what I could recall, had been little more than a business transaction. Their binding was cold, calculated. They were together long enough to tumble in the sheets, then kept to separate parts of the castle. I shuddered, chilled to the bone thinking about it. They’d never had children, but he’d never expressed any desire to be a father.
“We can’t just let him die like this, Gideon.”
But Gideon had enough; he waved a dismissive hand like I was one of the servants he ordered around. And maybe I was. For most of my life he’d been the one who raised me, gave me guidance. In some ways, he had been more a father figure than the man lying unconscious in the bed. “You’re acting like a child. You cannot expect to ignore the facts in front of us. He’s not getting any better. This illness has even the most skilled healers stumped. Ever since Mother died—”
I found myself on my feet, teeth bared like a lioness protecting her cub. “You act like he’s already dead.”
The pitying expression on Gideon’s face made me wish I had tooth or claw to rip him to shreds. Shifting into a griffin would have been beneficial, or even a loon with its pointed bill would come in handy to spear Gideon until he could talk sense. “Maybe it’s a good thing the Dragon is taking you to the Northlands,” he said. “Evidently, the time at the temple wasn’t enough to get you thinking clearly.”
“Won’t you consider letting him come with us?” It was an argument we’d had years before when I’d left for Caerleon, but his responding sigh of impatience still birthed the first thread of dismay in my heart.
The thought of leaving Father was one that had kept me up at night while I was traveling back. It had been hard enough leaving him to live at the temple. Doing so now would be more permanent than I could handle. I was certain a man such as the Dragon would never entertain the thought of bringing a sickly old man all the way to the North. The cost of magick alone would be exorbitant. Our family was rich in power…but little else. The crown we wore was superficial at best, and now in my case, nonexistent.
The Dragon, however, was rumored to keep a vast horde of treasures deep within his mountains. Enough gold and riches to finance the whole of Acasia. If he had any interest in ruling our kind, he could buy and sell us out ten times over.
But no one in the capital wanted a murderer for a king. Sure, we’d bartered for his wrath to protect our borders for a time, but the ladies on the Council would rather die than have a monster like him on the throne. I bet they were certain he would be even worse than me.
“You know he isn’t well enough to travel,” Gideon said, interrupting my desperate thoughts. “Don’t fret, sister, we have the best healers in Acasia at our disposal. They will take good care of him until it is his time.” Finally, he came to my side, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Don’t dawdle here. The Dragon is due to arrive any moment and he’ll be wanting to meet you.”
I managed to keep my knees locked until the door to the study clicked behind him; then I collapsed on the chair beside the bed with my face in my hands. I didn’t want to leave his side, but if I didn’t Gideon would be disappointed. The grief was overwhelming, but I would steal away what few moments I had left with him, Gideon—and the damned Dragon I was to mate—notwithstanding.
I swallowed down my own feelings like a bitter spoonful of medicine and leaned over my father’s weakened form and whispered, “I love you,” into his ear. I kissed his brow, lingering for a second to inhale his familiar scent beneath the stench of death. “I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to heal you. Even mate the wretched Dragon.”
4
Rhysander
We buried the bodies…or what remained of them.
There was nothing left of Braedon but cinders, smoke, and the ghosts of its inhabitants. It wasn’t the first shifter village to be attacked of late, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be the last.
My mouth tasted like ash and copper for days afterward. Death clung to my skin like an oily shadow, no matter how many times I bathed in the river that ran along the main road to Aurelia. I considered finding a caster to magick away the remains, but dismissed the idea. Like the Fae, casters were a tricky folk. Part human, part Immortal, they drew upon the magic from the land to impart simple enchantments.
But they almost always had a price.
That I knew all too well.
I tossed and turned inside my tent in an attempt to blot out the memories with sleep. But the scent of death was too strong, and my mind too weary from the days of travel. In the twilight of half-sleep, they taunted me with miseries long since gone.
Miseries that made me reconsider if mating this princess was wise after all.
I pushed up from my pallet on the frozen ground and stalked into the forest, the snow crunching underfoot. The sharp, icy bite filled my nose, erasing the scent of burnt flesh, at least momentarily. Following the sound of water trickling over rocks, I wound my way back to the river. Part of me hoped the sound could drown out my thoughts.
The conversation with Alaric had been on my mind since we left the Northlands. I didn’t want another mate. If it weren’t for the bargain I’d made with King Baron to protect the southern borders of Aurelia, I’d still be in my mountains, far away from these new threats against my people. Threats that were growing too close to the Northlands for my peace of mind.
I reached the river and knelt down to splash my face with the frigid water. If I couldn’t sleep, then I’d keep watch over my men. The refreshing icy stream washed away the last vestiges of grogginess.
It wasn’t until I was halfway through the forest to our camp when I caught the sound over the splashing water. Feet connecting with earth. Hushed voices. The whisper of metal being drawn from a sheath.
I lifted my nose to the air and scented blood.
H
uman blood.
With a snarl, I shifted into my half-Dragon form and sprinted through the trees, my Immortal legs carrying me there in mere seconds.
But it was too late.
I was too late.
The humans surrounded Adriel with a knife to his throat. A slash of blood married the otherwise wholesome skin. The man at his side wielding the knife jerked his chin in my direction. Without a word, he slit Adriel’s throat and a blood red smile bloomed in its wake.
An inhuman roar ripped from my throat, and wings erupted from the skin at my back. A blood-red haze covered my vision and blotted out everything but my foe.
When I was done, it was as though I’d bathed in their blood. The carnage I’d wrought surrounded me and those of my men who survived the attack watched with cautious eyes.
“Do a headcount,” I ordered, my breath coming in rapid puffs as I shifted back to my human form. I didn’t bother to fix my clothes or change. “Gather the dead. We bury the humans and I’ll build a pyre for the others.”
Without a word, they did as I bade and I carried Adriel’s body myself to the pyre like we’d done with all the shifters’ remains from Braedon. I shouldn’t have let my thoughts consume me. I could have prevented this.
We made quick work of burying the attackers and assembling Adriel and two others onto a pyre of young pines I’d broken into tinder. With a belch of flame, the pyre caught fire. We watched until there was nothing left but ash.
The scent of charred flesh lingered on the air once more.
The moment we crossed into capital land two days later, I began counting down the seconds until we could leave again. I preferred the solace of my mountain to the hustle of the village. There were too many people. It was winter, but temperatures were sweltering compared to the Northlands.
Deal with the Dragon (Immortals Ever After Book 1) Page 3