Reign Check

by Michelle Rowen

  More apprehension. “You know about me?”

  “Yes, of course.” She touched her necklace, which held a large amber pendant. “King Rhys called ahead to let me know you might be joining him today. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  She stood and extended her hand and I shook it, about to ask where the dragon was and what I should expect to happen next. But then I suddenly noticed that her eyes were the same vibrant shade of amber as her pendant. Like, the exact same shade. When she blinked, I could have sworn her pupils elongated.

  It reminded me of something. Of a … lizard.

  My own eyes widened at the thought, and I pulled my hand away from her.

  “Hold on,” I said. “You’re a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not only a psychiatrist.”

  She smiled. “That’s correct.”

  I’d expected the dragon oracle to be large and green and scaly. Not well dressed and well coiffed.

  I forced myself not to cower away from her and launch myself to the safer side of the leather couch. “You’re the … the …”

  “The one you’re here to see,” she finished for me. “Yes, I am.”

  “Sorry,” I managed. “I’m just surprised. You look so … uh …”

  “Human?” Irena glanced at Rhys, who regarded my flabbergasted reaction with more than a little amusement. “It helps to look as human as possible when one wishes to fit in with other humans. I’ve maintained this form for so long that I barely remember my other one.” She ran her finger along the spine of one of the small gold dragons. “But I do keep reminders around so I don’t forget completely.”

  Rhys sat down on the leather couch. “Irena’s lived in the human world for nearly twenty years. She even has a family here.”

  “A family of dragons?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around the fact that an actual fire-breathing mythical creature had a doctor’s office thirty minutes from where I lived.

  She shook her head. “I have a human husband and together we have a son.”

  “And they know who you really are?” I couldn’t seem to stop myself from asking questions.

  “My husband does. My son will be told when I feel he’s mature enough to deal with it. Dragons and humans rarely produce offspring that is anything other than one hundred percent human, so it’s not an immediate issue.”

  I was talking to a fortune-telling, future-seeing dragon in human form with a human family, and she made her living as a shrink. Well, something had to pay the bills, didn’t it?

  When I continued to stare at her in shock, she smiled. “But enough about me. Unfortunately, I only have a few minutes to spare today for you both before I must get back to my regular patients. I hope that will be enough time.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Rhys said quickly.

  Irena looked so totally and completely human. Then again, so did my father when he chose to have a human form. I’d seen him in demon form—coal black skin, expansive black leathery wings, large curved horns, and glowing red eyes. Same father on the inside, way different on the outside.

  “Let’s start with you, Princess.” She pulled out the top drawer on her desk and withdrew a crystal sphere about the size of a baseball. “News of the prophecy has already reached me. It’s a very serious one.” She sounded surprisingly calm about it.

  “Yes, it is,” I said tightly. “So I’m here for a second opinion. It can’t be true. But I’m worried what might happen next if I can’t prove it’s false.”

  She closed her eyes. “Let me see what I can find. I should be able to tell if the prophecy is clear or covered in a web of darkness and lies.”

  “Uh, that would be good. Thank you.”

  She held the crystal ball in the palm of her hand, and after a moment I saw a pulse of white light right in the very center of it.

  “I have located the prophecy about the first Darkling in a thousand years,” she said with a nod, but she didn’t open her eyes yet.

  The white light flickered to other colors—pink, green, orange. It was beautiful, really. But then it began to darken.

  Irena shook her head, her forehead creasing. Her chest hitched. “It’s … it’s harder to see than I expected. I need to go deeper to gain clarity.”

  Shade by shade it grew darker until it appeared as if the crystal contained a solid, dark purple core.

  Suddenly the center flashed from the darkness to a light so bright I had to shield my eyes. Irena’s face grew strained and pale and a small gasp escaped her lips.

  “Irena, is everything okay?” Rhys asked, concern in his voice.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “It shouldn’t be this difficult. She should already know the truth one way or the other.”

  “Something’s blocking my vision. There’s a thick wall around the Darkling prophecy. I can’t see past it.” Irena’s eyelids fluttered and she cried out in pain. The crystal ball slipped from her grasp and I jumped as it shattered on the floor.

  I didn’t need Rhys to tell me that this wasn’t normal. He’d moved from the couch and placed a hand on Irena’s shoulder to steady her as her eyes snapped open.

  “What happened?” Rhys asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I could see something, but not clearly enough to confirm or deny the prophecy. I’m so sorry.”

  Concern mixed with disappointment. While I wanted to know the truth, I didn’t want it to cause anyone pain, and it was obvious that searching out my prophecy in the metaphysical ether—or whatever she had just tried to do—had not been big fun for her. To say the very least.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’ll be fine.” She reached out to grab my wrist and drew me closer. She looked weary, and there was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead. “However, I did see something else—another prophecy. Princess, you are in danger. A darkness surrounds you and it is growing stronger.”

  “A darkness?” I asked. My mouth felt dry.

  “It watches you closely now and in the future. One day, unless you’re very careful, it will consume you entirely.”

  “The darkness,” Rhys repeated. “Is that what might take her over so she will fulfill the Darkling prophecy?”

  I gave him a look, thinking he was being sarcastic, but by his expression I could tell he wasn’t. It was a legitimate question. After all, he’d taken me along with him today so he could learn the truth as well.

  “No,” Irena replied. “This has nothing to do with the first prophecy—it’s a separate thing altogether. And the darkness comes from a source apart from the princess. I’m sorry, but my vision was unclear, so I can’t give more specifics. There is very little about you that is clear, Princess Nikki. Perhaps your human side is what blocks my magic. That may explain why the first prophecy was shielded from me.”

  So this darkness thing was a second prophecy. I’d come here today to have the first one debunked, not to cash in on a two-for-one deal.

  I just nodded, trying to take it all in and make some kind of sense of it. Being consumed by an outer darkness struck me as something straight out of a horror movie. Something that had the potential to keep me up at night worried about what was lurking under my bed or behind my closet doors.

  “Did you see anything else?” I asked shakily. “Anything good?”

  Irena squeezed my wrist. “I did see that there is a possibility the princess’s light may, with effort, be enough to quell this darkness.”

  “Her light?” Rhys asked, confused. “But she’s half demon. How is that even possible?”

  “It’s possible because her soul is pure.” Irena’s voice had gotten steadily stronger as she spoke. “I saw no evil here you should be concerned with, King Rhys.”

  “Really?” Rhys sounded skeptical.

  “Yes, really.” Irena glanced at him. “You’re surprised?”

  “I … don’t know. Maybe a little.” His eyes flicked to me before he lo
oked away, his expression still clouded with confusion.

  I almost smiled. Out of everything horrible that had just happened—not being able to prove or disprove the first prophecy, almost making Irena’s head explode, finding out that darkness stalks me in a shiny new second prophecy—the fact that she’d just confirmed to Rhys that I wasn’t completely demonically evil almost made it worthwhile.

  “This is all I can do for you today, Princess,” Irena said. “I apologize for not having been more helpful.”

  I nodded, twisting my bracelet nervously as I went over everything in my head. “Thank you. It’s a start.”

  Her pleasant, caring expression faded, and I realized she was now staring down at my wrist. She suddenly grabbed hold of my arm so hard, I couldn’t pull away.

  “You have a dragon’s tear.” The way she said it, her shock at noticing my piece of jewelry for the first time, made my blood run cold.

  “It … it was a gift,” I said quietly.

  Irena raised her eyes to mine and hers were now pure gold with those long black slits. Any friendliness that had been there previously had vanished as if it never existed. Right then I knew I’d been wrong when I’d mistaken her for completely human. She wasn’t. The magic poured off her now, making my skin tingle. I could practically see the green scales, the sharp spikes running along her spine, the long heavy tail whipping back and forth angrily, the wisps of smoke from her nostrils.

  “The magic of one of my brothers or sisters dangles from your wrist. You wear the evidence of murder as if it means nothing to you. I didn’t even sense it when you walked in here, which means you rarely, if ever, have used it. You take such an ultimate sacrifice for granted?”

  “No, I … of course I don’t.” I flinched as her nails dug into my skin.

  “Irena,” Rhys said sharply. “Let go of her. Now.”

  Irena clenched her straight white teeth, and I felt I could almost see the long, sharp incisors there, waiting for her to shift to her true form and take a big bite out of me. She let go of me so abruptly that I staggered back a few feet.

  “Leave now, Princess,” she said evenly. “King Rhys’s reading is to be given in private.”

  I looked at Rhys. He nodded. “Wait in the hall. It’s okay. I won’t be long.”

  He looked disturbed by what had just happened. About what Irena had said? Or because he now knew a dragon had died to give me my pretty wrist accessory? After all, I’d already seen him get upset about a dead frog. This was … well, a bit bigger than that. To say the least.

  Ten minutes passed, but it felt more like ten weeks before Rhys finally emerged from Irena’s office. While I waited, I tried my best to process what I’d heard, but I didn’t know where to begin. None of it made any sense to me. And none of it was particularly helpful.

  “Here,” Rhys said as he thrust something small and rectangular at me. “Thought you might want one.”

  It was Irena’s business card with her phone number on it. Not that it was likely she’d ever want to talk to me again.

  “Thanks.” I shoved it into my wallet inside my backpack and scurried to keep up with Rhys as he quickly walked toward the waiting car outside. “So how did it go?”

  “Fine.”

  “You got the answers you were looking for?”

  He didn’t look directly at me. “I did.”

  If nothing else, I was grateful to be with Rhys right now. No one else in the human world knew what I was going through, but he did. He might be able to help me make sense of everything. Plus, Irena had all but confirmed I was no threat to faery life. Maybe Rhys and I could be friends, after all. The thought gave me a weird sense of hope in the middle of a bizarre situation.

  “Do you think I should find another dragon oracle and try again?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The flippant, disinterested way he said it was anything but reassuring. Snow blew past me as we reached the car and I felt the cold bite into me. “Is there something wrong?”

  He looked at me. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you upset about the dragon’s tear?” I covered it with my hand. “I feel terrible. I never would have worn it if I had known it would upset her.”

  “I don’t care about your bracelet.”

  “You don’t? But a dragon died.”

  “Did you kill it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then I don’t care.”

  He looked away as he got into the backseat of the car before I did.

  I sensed a major chilliness between us. What happened? Had I said something to upset him?

  I got in the car and tried to catch his eye. He was looking anywhere but at me.

  Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. I felt utterly alone at that moment.

  There was a long pause after the chauffeur shut the door behind me. I sat as far away from Rhys as I could and put my seat belt on.

  The car began to move, starting on the half-hour drive back to Erin Heights. I pressed my lips together, my arms crossed tightly in front of me.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Rhys finally said after several minutes passed. “I know that was rough for you. You wanted a clean answer—to hear that the prophecy’s a complete and total lie. I thought that’s what you’d get, but it doesn’t always work that way. Dragon oracles are never completely cut-and-dried when it comes to seeing the future. Even with the best readings there’s always a great deal of interpretation that needs to happen. My advisers usually spend ages trying to decipher a dragon’s visions. But … she didn’t tell you it was absolutely the truth, either. There’s still a spark of hope, isn’t there?”

  “A spark,” I agreed. “A teeny, tiny, pathetic little spark.”

  His jaw tightened. “And yeah, I got answers. Mostly vague, and mostly not what I wanted to hear, either.”

  Despite his breaking the uncomfortable silence between us, I couldn’t help but feel a major amount of tension in the car. Rhys wasn’t happy right now, to say the least. Even less happy than I was, if that was humanly—faerily?—possible.

  I struggled to find something else to say.

  “Did she help you figure out who you’re supposed to marry?” I asked.

  He snorted. “You could say that. But she’s wrong.”

  “You think she was lying?”

  “No … not lying. Just …” He shook his head and sighed. “I figure she’s unclear. She couldn’t see your prophecy clearly, so I bet the same applies to mine.”

  Wow. Majorly unhappy reaction. Was this what had put him into cranky-faery mode? He obviously didn’t approve of his intended. Maybe it would make him realize that getting married at sixteen was stupid and unnecessary, even for otherworldly royalty.

  “So, what?” I asked, latching onto this as a good subject for us to discuss. “Is your future faery bride too ugly for you?”

  Rhys leaned back against the head rest and studied the seat back in front of him. “That’s not it.”

  “Too old or too young?”

  “No.”

  I rolled my eyes, but smiled. This was why he was upset. He hadn’t landed the perfect bride-to-be. “Her pretty faery wings aren’t the right shade of sparkly lavender and pink?”

  His eyes flashed with anger. “Actually, she doesn’t have faery wings.”

  “She doesn’t?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, the dragon oracle tells me the girl I’m supposed to marry, the one destined to someday become the queen of the faery realm, isn’t a faery at all.”

  Okay, that was surprising. Not a faery?

  “She isn’t?” I said. “Then who is she?”

  His expression was severe as he turned to look me right in the eye.

  “You,” he said.

  11

  I stared blankly at Rhys for what felt like about three days.

  “Me?” I finally sputtered.

  He nodded.

  “You�
��re kidding, right?”

  “Not kidding.”

  I laughed then, and it sounded slightly hysterical. “I’m not going to marry you.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Good.”

  He eyed me. “And you can wipe that horrified look off your face because it’s obviously not true.”

  “Do I look horrified?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I grimaced. “Nothing personal, Rhys, but—”

  He held up a hand. “Say nothing else. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it to you. I’ll find another dragon to help me.”

  “Second opinions are really important,” I said.

  He just glowered at that.

  We rode the rest of the way back to Erin Heights in silence. Now I had even more information crowding my already full brain. Maybe that Irena chick should go see a shrink, herself. She was one crazy dragon lady.

  Marry Rhys? That was completely ridiculous. Sure, over the last couple of days I’d started warming up to him a little. He knew I was a demon princess when no one else in the human world did—not including Chris, of course—and that was both reassuring and a bit scary, depending on the hour of the day. But that didn’t mean I wanted to date him, let alone marry him and magically become the queen of the faeries.

  Some of the books I’d studied in history class talked about arranged marriages. A few years ago, before my mom wrote about vampires and other monsters in love, she wrote historical romances, and a major plot point usually involved the heroine having to marry somebody she didn’t want to in order for her family to survive and prosper.

  But this wasn’t two hundred years ago. It was now. And nobody, at least not in Erin Heights, got married because it had been arranged—especially not by a dragon in human form who saw fuzzy and indistinct images of the future.

  Once we got back to town, I leaned forward so I could tell the chauffeur my address. He approached my street and pulled up at the curb. The sight was a relief after such a stressful, emotional day.

  “Do you go back to the faery realm every day after school?” I asked Rhys, feeling strange at breaking the heavy silence between us but wanting to say something before I left.

  “No.”