Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

Country folk notice strangers."

"Especially those who don't speak English," said Kim. "I think John's got the right idea. We need to expand the search."

Rhys unclasped his hands. His voice kept its strange, hard note. "I'll take Durham. I'll need four others who don't mind..."

But Kimber was no longer listening. Between one breath and the next, he felt the change. It was that sudden, that complete. He was looking at his men, the pewter shadows of the room, the waxed reflection of the tables and the chandelier above them throwing crystal blades of light, and then he turned his head and saw the gentle, betraying billow of the pale blue velvet curtains of the far window. The almost invisible swathe of smoke that condensed into something more substantial: a woman's leg. A woman's hand, her fingers fanned against the blue, holding the material high against her chest.

Her face. Her eyes, lifting straight to his.

Kim held immobile, wondering if he was more tired than he even thought, if after hours without sleep he was finally imagining her standing there behind the drapery. But Maricara looked away from him to the rest of the room and released a little breath. A beat of suspended silence followed; small as it was, everyone had heard it.

"Princesse, " he greeted her, and surged to his feet before anyone could wrench from their surprise to do something stupid. He sketched a short bow, continuing in French. "Welcome back."

"Lord Chasen." She offered him a nod, her cheek and chin cupped with blue velvet. "I thought I'd spare you the fetching, as you put it. But I see you're busy."

He had to think without thought; he had to convey what he wanted of his men without a single glance in their direction.

Don't move. Nobody bloody move a bloody damned muscle—

Kim gave an easy smile. "You've had us a bit tangled in knots, I fear. There was some concern for your welfare."

"How sorry I am to have worried you. But I've been quite safe, I assure you."

"Excellent. Happy to hear it." He risked a glimpse at the council then, their ominous faces, their shoulders taut with restraint; he smiled again at the princess. "And your guard?"

"Most content."

"We didn't spot them with you this morning. They allow you to fy without accompaniment?"

He hadn't really expected much of a response; she seemed as polished as porcelain. But at his words emotion flashed behind those clear gray eyes, alarm or consternation, swiftly erased.

Perhaps she'd thought she'd been unseen. It seemed unlikely—she had crisscrossed the sky nearly just above Chasen. But she'd been so quick, and disappeared so effectively. It was conceivable she'd thought she fooled them all.

"It was a lovely dawn," he said placidly.

"I fly as I please," Maricara said at last. "The guard allows me nothing. I am the princess."

From the corner of his eye Kim saw Larousse, damn him, begin to push back his chair, rise to his feet. Maricara switched her focus instantly to him.

"Your Grace," he said, also bowing. "You honor us. Please, won't you—"

But he obviously couldn't offer her a seat, not as she was. Kimber watched him comprehend it, that not only had she managed to show up without warning, that she was nude, that she had to be, and the lines of her figure were clearly visible even beneath the curtain's folds. The councilman's face slowly began to flush.

"I won't trouble you long," said Maricara. "No doubt you have all manner of pressing plans to consider. Spies to engage. Betrayals to enact. That sort of thing."

"Only on Sundays," Kim replied. "It's Tuesday. We're discussing stealing sweetmeats from small children today."

She didn't return his smile. The fingers of her right hand remained pressed lightly against the velvet.

She had to realize the danger surrounding her: that she was alone, and female, come to a room full of silent, eager beasts who certainly all felt her as strongly as he did in such close quarters. She had to have realized everything she chanced, and still she only stood there with an air of bored civility, as if she had arrived to take tea instead of facing down the living dark congress of the tribe.

Kim began to shrug out of his coat. He was glad to do it, glad to have an excuse to walk toward her, to put himself between her and the tables of other drakon men. With his back to the council he held out the coat, lapels open. Maricara gave him another long, assessing look with her mirror eyes—he felt exposed with it, like she was plucking the thoughts from his head—he hoped to God not—and Turned to smoke.

Damn.

Silently he willed all the men to calm; he still didn't dare to shift his gaze to warn them. He'd seen her do it before and yet again the sensation lit through him, as blatantly alluring as that bare leg had been or the image of her body beneath velvet. She could Turn. There was scarcely anything more desirable in a female. But she had gotten in twice; she had escaped twice. How difficult could it be for her to manage it a third time—

Yet all that happened was someone's chair tapped against the table, and the blue drapery sighed back into place.

The princess became a pillar of smoke before him, rising, filling the shell of his coral brocade coat all the way to the sleeves. Then she was woman, scent and power, just like last night, the back of her head nearly bumping his nose.

He released the heavy coat as if it burned. It fell to her shoulders, pinning her hair. She bent her neck and reached up to run a wrist beneath the trapped strands—in the daylight he could see the color wasn't black but the deepest brown he could imagine—before taking a step away.

He was taller than she, much larger. He'd never thought to be glad the council held to court dress, but the coat was old-fashioned, long-skirted. It reached almost to her knees.

"My thanks," Maricara said.

"My pleasure," he answered, and put another step between them. "Do join us." He motioned to his empty chair.

She traversed the chamber on silent feet. The skirted coat rose to her thighs when she sat down. Kim looked away, drew in a slow, silent breath, letting it burn before he released it.

Beneath the scattered prisms of the chandelier, Rhys was staring at her, his eyes masked and brooding. Everyone was staring at her, but Rhys.

Something cold began to uncoil through Kimber's gut. Something painful and unpleasant.

"I thought you'd wish to know the manner in which your men died," said Maricara, crossing her ankles beneath the chair. "I realized only this afternoon that we didn't discuss it."

"No. We didn't."

"They were ambushed. That's what I believe. Others found them and took out their hearts." No one gasped; no one stirred. Only Kimber said, "Pardon?" "Others. Human men. They stole their hearts."

He'd informed the council of what she'd told him the night before. He'd shown them the rings and let the speculation unwind. There was no proof of anything—until she'd shown up hours later, flying through the dark, there was no proof even that she had ever come—except for those rings. And the fact that three good men had dropped from the face of the earth.

"Don't you have hunters in this land?" the princess asked.

Rhys leaned forward again, intent. "What do you mean?"

"At home we call them sanf inimicus. I don't know a term for them in French. Hunters. Humans who hunt the drakon. "

"No," Kim said. "Not for generations."

"We do," she said simply.

He stared at her blankly, for the first time seeing not her beauty or her potential, but only a woman in a chair, calmly informing him of the unthinkable.

"If your men confessed before they died," continued Maricara in her attractive, melodic voice, "if they traveled with papers that mentioned you, or carried any hint of this place, the sanf now know of you too."

It wasn't possible. It should not be possible. These were not the Dark Ages. This was today, and England, and it had taken them centuries to get here, to embed themselves in Darkfrith's safety. No one would truly dare breach it.

They were normal here. They fit. This was their home.

Others come.

Kimber thought of the sprawling village unprotected, of the women who could not fly, and the dragon-children who played openly in the fields and dells. He thought of the thick woods and the manor house and all the careful, careful lies that had been created to sustain their lives in this idyllic place.

He thought of Hayden, and Jeffrey, and Luke. Of Zoe Lane's stark, pinched face. A great, static rage began within him, a storm of blinding white.

Maricara uncrossed her ankles and stood, forcing all the council to hastily scrape back their chairs. She smoothed a hand down the front of Kimber's coat. "By the by, is there anything to eat? I'm famished."

I should not have to speak to you of your own history. No doubt you know it far better than I, who was merely able to glean chunks and tidbits from terrible conversations under the worst of circumstances.

For nearly as long as there have been dragons, there have been humans come to hunt them. You are lesser and jealous and brimming with false conceit: Centuries ago, when we first realized you were more than a few misguided knights or villagers—that you were organized, that you were brutal—we devised a name for you. Sanf inimicus, the enemy of soft skin. And you snatched it from our lips and wore it like a badge, with all apparent pride.

You have your own traditions, I know that. You have your secret order, nearly as secret as ours, with a leader of not inconsiderable skills. We are born to our magnificence, family after family; you recruit from the lowest of your own kind and of ours to fill your ranks. I imagine it's not entirely effortless to persuade any human of reasonable intelligence that they ought to begin hunting dragons. Yet you do persevere.

I understand your rage, your envy, your blood-cold fear of us. I even understand your desire to do us harm. I will admit that once, a very long time past, there were those among us who enjoyed the taste of your flesh—although frankly I myself can scarcely stand the stench of you. Devouring you would be repulsive at best.

But it took me a very long while to understand why, after you killed us, you desired to tear out our hearts. Was it to prove the illusion of your strength? To extend your short, hollow victory over a creature greater than yourselves?

This is what I believe, and really, it could hardly be a surprise: You wish you were us. In the black sticky chambers of what you call a soul, you think to compensate for your weakness by consuming our cores. Our hearts, the throbbing muscle of our power.

Well, eat away. You're still going to lose.

It was a vast and mysterious place. Chasen Manor held all the entrapments of an opulent palace, with rock crystal and precious metals lavished about, and oil paintings of villas and masted ships and unsmiling people. There were busts carved from jasper and alabaster and shiny black onyx. There were statues of goddesses with arrows in their hands, and a pair of bronze lions prowling around the corner of the main staircase.

And there were drakon everywhere.

In Zaharen Yce dragon blood flowed through the veins of nearly every person who walked the halls, freeman or noble or serf. There were a few like her, with the Gifts readily apparent, but time had diminished the population of the keep. Most of those left were more human than not. They lived there and they served there, and the echo of a shared, glorious past kept them all bound to the land and the principality. Yet every single being Maricara sensed here—in the corridors; in the elaborate, elegant rooms; above and even below, far below, in what felt like the basements—every one of them gave off the distinct, sparkling sensation of drakon.