by Tessa Dawn
The king shoved the carcass away.
What did it matter if the youth had died a gruesome death?
So had the three sacrificial Blood Ahavi, who had presented themselves with pride, and they had been beautiful as well. He grimaced, remembering the fiasco. Each girl had ultimately writhed in agony, groaned in delirium, and cursed the very king they served as the dragon had drained every last ounce of their essence and blood.
Still…
So be it.
They were all pawns, each and every one of them, just like the king and his sons, born to serve the greater good of the kingdom. And this day—this fateful May afternoon—would go down in antiquity, along with Demitri’s voracious sacrifice, as one of the most pivotal moments in the Realm’s glorious history. The defense of the Realm was no small matter. It required a great ransom and a terrible sacrifice. And the courage to see it through required a great and indomitable king, a ruthless servant of the people.
Hell’s fire, it was a very simple equation: It required a dragon that could shift.
As King Demitri ran his thinning, elongating tongue along the tips of his still-protruding fangs, he struggled to relax his body and welcome the beast that was buried within him, to let the change come naturally. It wasn’t as if breaking every bone, transforming every cell, and growing scales, wings, and a massive jagged spine was going to be a walk in the park for him, either.
He groaned with pleasure as the serpent inside him stirred, luxuriating in all the fresh essence, heat, and blood, snarling in anticipation of the upcoming transformation.
Soon.
The change would start soon, any moment now…
And as it transpired, the king would do his best to simply let it happen, to sleep the night away if he could, and arise at dawn as a fearsome, primordial beast. He would take to the skies as a dragon of old, nearly 270 years old, and then he would lay waste to the Lycanian fleet in grand, Dragona fashion. He could only hope that his formidable sons could hold back the shifters until then, fight like the monsters he had made them.
As his eyes rolled back in his head and his skin began to boil, he shrieked to release the pain and welcome the vitality. And then, in the whisper of a moment, just a fleeting breath of time, he thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, something—no, someone—stirring before him.
But no; that was impossible.
The king had drained them all.
He had fed very, very well.
Falling to the floor and sprawling on his back, he extended both arms outward, like the wings of an eagle, arched into the pain, and bent his neck until his chin pointed skyward so the vertebrae could stretch. The first spasm hit him, and he began to writhe in pain.
“Come, my beloved dragon…come.”
*
Matthias Gentry came awake with a shout.
He punched wildly with his arms, kicked violently with his feet, and roared like a lion, an angry, cornered beast, protesting his agony from the very depths of his soul. Oh, dark lords of the underworld, he thought. Make it stop!
The king had trapped him like an animal, locked his upper torso in what had to be iron-clad arms, and tossed Matthias to the floor as if he were nothing, weightless and unsubstantial, climbing atop him like a scoundrel seeking to deflower a maiden before gnashing his teeth in warning and baring his lethal fangs.
Matthias had taken one hard look into those dark, primordial eyes and panicked. He had bucked like a wild horse; twisted this way and that; and struggled pointlessly to get to his knees—to somehow crawl away—before he had slid on the soppy floor and collapsed into a pile of fresh blood and gore, succumbing to the king’s superior strength. He had screamed like a child. He had begged for his life. He had argued the merits of his existence, espousing his value to the Realm, and, finally, when all of that had failed, he had prayed to the Giver of Life for a quick and painless death.
The Giver had not answered.
The king had torn into Matthias’s throat like it was a succulent piece of meat, slurping on the blood, gnawing on the flesh, worrying the bone—drinking, swallowing, gulping—devouring its very essence…inhaling Matthias’s soul.
And the pain—was there no mercy left in the universe?—the pain had been unrelenting…unimaginable…impossible to bear. And then, just like that, the throne room had disappeared. The world had gone dark. And Matthias had welcomed peace.
Until now…
Until he came awake with a shout and started punching furiously.
Matthias raked a wild hand, festooned with coiled claws, at the visage of those two demonic orbs, the king’s dragon eyes. He slammed his head forward, hoping to strike the king’s skull with his own bony brow, and jolted in surprise when he only struck air.
What the hell!?
He tried to land a solid punch.
He tried to knee the monarch in the groin.
He tried to bite him back, as if such a thing were possible, and once again, he came up short. Nothing landed. And nothing connected. Because there was nothing—and no one—there.
The room was spinning.
“Are you…still alive?” The youngster’s voice came from behind a heavy column, sounding distant, hesitant, and utterly wrought with terror as the nine-year-old scribe seemed to rise from the ashes of the carnage and tiptoe toward Matthias, still holding his quill in his trembling right hand.
What had the king called the boy earlier?
Oh, yes, Thomas…Thomas something or other.
And he had forced the child to remain in the hall so he could record the names of the dying for posterity’s sake. He had forced the young scribe to enumerate the wretched sacrificed souls as they fed the dragon, believing their names would one day become folklore, epic legends, intimately associated with a great historic battle, immortalized in the annals of war.
Matthias reeled from the immorality of it all and the desecration before him.
Was he dreaming?
Reliving his death?
He couldn’t make sense of anything.
And the pain!
Dear Giver of Life, he just wanted to make it stop!
It had stopped.
The king was no longer before him. The pain was no longer material. And other than the trembling utterances of the young lad with the quill, the throne room was eerily quiet.
Matthias rose to his knees and patted his chest, stunned to find his bare sternum completely unblemished beneath the dried, crusted blood. He reached for his throat to feel for the gashes, and then he stared at the inside of his palms. Everything was normal—beyond normal, really—Matthias felt invincible.
Was he truly…still…alive?
The young squire blinked rapidly, swallowed convulsively, and started to pant. “That’s, that’s, that’s just not possible. I saw it. I saw him, the king, he…he ate you.”
Matthias rocked back on his heels, and for the first time since he’d—awakened?—he scanned the entirety of the macabre hall and began to retch. There were tortured, mangled bodies everywhere, blood as far as the eye could see, and at the bottom of the dais, lying on the floor and writhing in brutal agony, was the king of Castle Dragon undergoing some morbid state of transformation.
Matthias sprang to his feet. “We’ve gotta get out of here!”
The scribe shook his head furiously and scampered away, ducking behind another column. “You’re supposed to be dead,” he called from behind the pillar. His voice was hoarse with fear.
Matthias dropped down into a crouch and stared at the youngster. He snorted, snarled, and then swayed to the left. The boy dropped his quill and took off running like a bat out of hell, trying to reach the throne-room doors. At this, Matthias chuckled, deep in his unfamiliar throat. What in all the worlds was happening? Was this some kind of supernatural game? Was he caught between dimensions, neither dead, nor alive? Or was he at the gates of the Eternal Realm of Peace—or the Eternal Realm of Suffering—no longer a sentient being?
&nb
sp; Matthias had no idea who he was or where he was, if anything around him was real. He only knew that he felt all at once glorious, formidable, powerful beyond reason, and as something foreign inside of him stirred—something deep, primordial, and clawing to get out—he began to see the child as prey.
The boy moved so slowly, like a mouse trying to elude a cat.
Matthias could track his every movement, predict the fluctuation of each and every muscle before it flexed or relaxed. Hell, he could hear the boy’s frantic heartbeat, measure his every breath. A sudden surge of energy pulsed through Matthias’s veins, and he snarled again, much louder this time, preparing to give chase.
In an instant, he was at the throne-room doors and on top of the mouse, pinning him to the floor by the throat…with his fangs.
The boy squealed in horror, and Matthias let go.
What was happening!
“Sweet Nuri, you’re a dragon,” the scribe gasped. “How can that be?”
Matthias shook his head. What? He lumbered backward into a squat, trying to create distance between himself and the scribe, trying to calm his inner…beast?
And then the boy sat upright, an awestruck look in his eyes, and regarded Matthias with reverence. His quivering mouth dropped open, and he stared beyond Matthias’s shoulders, toward the dais, and watched the writhing king. “How old are you?” he whispered, barely able to form the words.
Matthias frowned.
“How old?” the boy repeated.
“Twenty summers,” Matthias growled.
The boy’s face turned ashen and he nodded. “What is your mother’s name?”
Matthias had no idea where this was headed, but he didn’t have time to play two dozen questions. He had to get out of that throne room, away from that crazy king, and hopefully back to the commonlands, before the dragon arose.
“Her name!” The boy’s voice cracked with insistence.
Matthias turned back to stare at the scribe. “Why are you asking me this?”
The child licked his lips and tried to stop his teeth from chattering. “The king taught me to transpose all the Realm’s dialects into the common tongue, using the formal script, and I’ve been transcribing the historical rolls for two years now. This one time, I came across something I was never meant to see—like a missing page from a scroll or something—it was hidden in the wall of the archives, stuffed between two loose stones.”
Matthias frowned, more confused than ever.
The boy shook his head and pressed on. “You don’t understand. It was a missing leaf from the record of the Ahavi, the girls taken to the Keep, those who were accepted and those who were rejected. In the original scroll, there was a short entry about a dismissal, not that unusual, except…the witch rarely gets it wrong. Never, really.”
Matthias was losing his patience as the child rambled on. What the heck did any of this have to do with him—and his urgent need to get away from the king? “What witch? What are you talking about? And what does she never get wrong?” He peered over his shoulder and shuddered. The king was growing scales.
Thomas labored to catch his breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“No,” Matthias answered bluntly.
“Please…just don’t eat me.”
Matthias shrank back. What the hell? For lack of anything more appropriate to say, he murmured, “I won’t.”
The boy leaned forward then, taking Matthias’s measure from head to toe, staring deep into his troubled eyes. He held his gaze for an extended period of time before coming to a decision, apparently, to trust him. “Let me try again. There was a very beautiful girl from the commonlands, from the lower district of Arns, who was taken to the Keep because the king’s witch, Wavani, believed she was Ahavi, one who would serve the Realm. At first, Wavani swore she was Sklavos as well, capable of bearing sons with the help of the fertility elixir, but the gate keeper disagreed. So she was brought before the high priest, and ultimately, she was culled from the ranks of the sacred. The priest said she was nothing special.” He sighed. “But…she spent three days and nights in the castle under the analysis of the king before she was allowed to go home, and the rumors and conflicting accounts abound: Some say the king fed from her just to be sure, to see if he could taste something special in her essence. Others say he took her to his bed to use her because she was so incredibly beautiful. But the missing page from the scroll says the king put the fertility elixir in her tea to see if her scent would change, that he waited three days and nights to be sure, and then he let her go. The truth is: No one really knows for sure if she was truly his mistress or not, but I do know this: There was a special Ahavi—she was real—and she would’ve been here, at Castle Dragon, twenty-one years ago.” He stared at Matthias with a shrewd, insinuating gaze. “Like I said before, Wavani the witch has never…ever…been wrong. What if the girl was Sklavos, after all? And the king did use her as his mistress before he let her go?”
Matthias crossed his arms over his chest, trying to make sense of the whole sordid tale. Despite the boy’s obvious conviction, none of it rang true. “And what does that have to do with me?”
The scribe huffed in exasperation, and then he steadied his resolve. “What was your mother’s name before she married your father?”
Matthias frowned. “Penelope.”
“Penelope Fairfax,” the child supplied.
Matthias jerked in surprise, growing intensely uneasy. “How did you know that?”
The boy ignored the question. “Is she still alive?”
Matthias shook his head. “No, she died in childbirth.”
The boy sighed. “Of course. They can’t birth a dragon without the help of a priest.”
Matthias snorted, his anger rising in a virulent, ascending wave. “That’s impossible!” he insisted, wholly unconcerned that the child was shuffling away. “I am not a dragon. As you have already pointed out, I am twenty summers old. I think I would know if I grew scales and breathed fire.” He instinctively glanced over his shoulder to check on the king and the looming beast he was becoming. The dragon’s scales were now fully formed, and the king’s spine had morphed into a tail—but for all intents and purposes, King Demitri seemed to be lost in a trance, cocooned in slumber, suspended in an unconscious state, although he still writhed in unspeakable pain.
As if emboldened by the visage of King Demetri, firmly ensconced in a preternatural shell, the squire found his courage. He raised his chin and puffed out his chest, commanding Matthias’s attention. “Ancient Lords of the Sky, Volume Five, Scroll Three: And the dragons could only beget sons from the wombs of the sacred, and those sons could only become fully animated beasts over time, as the fire cured and ripened through the ages. But the sacred powers that made them immortal; these were gifted from father to son at birth, passed down through the dragon’s saliva through the taking of blood and heat. The kiss of a dragon father awakens an immortal son.”
Matthias shifted uneasily, bracing his palms against the ground. The powers were passed down through saliva, from father to son, through the taking of blood and heat. He twisted back around in order to survey the horrendous, bloody throne room—yet again—and nearly recoiled at what he saw beneath the obvious, outer carnage: King Demitri has shared his saliva with each and every victim. He had taken their essence, their blood, and their heat. Yet Matthias was the only one who had survived…who had somehow arisen from the dead.
He shook his head like a rabid dog, enraged by the very implication.
No!
It simply wasn’t true.
Penelope Fairfax was not a Sklavos Ahavi whom his father had mistaken for a common maiden. She had not been the mistress—or the victim—of the king.
His father would have known.
Penelope would have told him.
Matthias’s mother—bless her eternal soul—was a mere mortal, a commoner, a fragile, unfortunate woman who had died in the prime of her life, unable to bring Matthias into the wo
rld because…because…
Because why?
As an inexplicable panic swelled inside him, Matthias spun around to face the squire with barely concealed rage. “Don’t you ever speak those words again, not to anyone, and especially not to me! Rumors belong in taverns, sung by minstrels, or in the company of five-year-old girls as they play with their little dolls, not in the serious discussions that take place among men.” His voice grew in proportion to his angst. “I am Matthias Gentry, son of Callum Gentry, a blacksmith and a farmer, and Penelope Fairfax was my father’s first and only love. My human mother.” He stood up abruptly, sidestepped around the squire to reach for the door, and snatched the handle with a trembling fist. “I do not know why or how I survived this bloody massacre, but for whatever reason, I did. And now? I am free.” He wrenched at the large ornate handle, and the whole of the iron broke loose from the door before crumbling inside his palm. “Bloody hell!” he cursed, slamming his fist into the panel. As the thick, sturdy oak exploded upon impact, splintering into a dozen fractured pieces, a conical orange flame shot from Matthias’s mouth and singed the remaining layers of fortification, leaving a charred hole in the center of the door.
Thomas stood slowly, cowering beside Matthias. He stared up into the male’s angry eyes and pointed at the scorched, missing circle. Taking a cautious step forward, he gently shoved at what remained of the door and pushed it open. “I agree: You need to get out of here. But first, I think you need to see the hidden page for yourself, and then maybe, just maybe, you should read a little bit more about dragons…and find a Blood Ahavi. There are a couple we can trust.”
Matthias frowned, still reeling from what had just happened. “Wh…why…a Blood Ahavi?”
Thomas squared his shoulders and planted his feet, regarding Matthias gravely. “Because you need to feed before you hurt someone.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dracos Cove
Mina leaned against a thick sectional tent-post at the rear of the large provisional shelter and burrowed her bare feet deep into the sands of the beach, offering a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the goddess of mercy: The tent of Umbras was about one mile east of Dracos Cove, and Mina was more grateful than words could express that Damian had chosen to meet with his soldiers immediately upon arriving at the barracks. In fact, she could have fallen to her knees and wept with gratitude at the mere fact that she was finally—well, mostly—alone.