Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

"I will not marry you. I want that to be plain between us right now." "Your Grace, I assure you—"

"I know how we are, Kimber." Her use of his name startled him; she'd meant it to. "I know how we think. You're the Alpha, and you're not wearing a wedding band, and no one has come forward to me as your wife. You perceive that I'm also Alpha, and this is true. But I'm not one of your people. I rule a land, even though it's far away. I control my fate, not you. I won't wed you."

Kimber lowered his lashes. He kept his fingers loosely cupped around the stem of his goblet.

"You're not remarried?"

"No."

"I thought your brother ruled Zaharen Yce. " "Nominally. In my absence."

His eyes lifted to hers, bright piercing green. "Your people allow a female to lead them?"

It was a trap, she realized. If she said yes, he'd think the Zaharen weak, the castle open for the taking. If she said no, he'd think she was lying before.

She wasn't willing to be bartered. Not ever again.

Maricara motioned to the footman, who hurried over with the fish. She allowed herself to be served one thick, blanched fillet, the flesh oozing butter across her plate. Without waiting for the others, she lifted her fork and took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.

"We're not so very alike," she said at last, to the fish. "Whatever kinship we once shared has been stretched thin with time. No doubt there are many of our ways you would find foreign, as I do yours."

"No doubt," Kimber replied, unmoving. "But I look forward to celebrating our differences, Your Grace."

"As long as that's all you wish to celebrate." "It's a promising start."

"Or a natural conclusion," said Mari, and took another odious bite.

She used the lemon fork for the fish, and the fish fork for the salad. She ate in small, tentative mouthfuls, as if the flavors were all new to her, as if she had to explore each and every texture and spice before moving on to the next bite. Her expression remained aloof as she dined, her dark hair tied back with a simple ribbon like a girl's, like a drakon maiden off for schooling in the village.

She kept her gaze focused downward most of the meal, her eyelashes long and sooty. Kimber did the same, Rhys noticed, and so felt free to let his own gaze roam.

She drew him in. Brash and brittle on the outside, looking out with eyes of endless gray, an oddly wounded depth to her every glance.she seemed a princess trapped in a shell of ice; a strange magic indeed in this heat.

Rhys glanced at his brother and wished, for the first time in his life, to be more than what he was. To be eldest.

She desired to walk outside after the meal. His instinct was to refuse her—hell, his instinct was to lock her up, to keep her bound to Chasen, let the dragon in him take rein. It'd been done before. There were dire instances of drakon run feral, there were precautions already in place. For all her cool composure, Kimber had witnessed Maricara's other face, and he'd felt her other heart. She would Turn in a flash if she felt the need.

The council had convened a new, whispered meeting while she'd dressed. Within moments they'd abandoned the whispering—no one knew how well she could hear, and in light of what he knew now, Kim thought it a good thing they'd switched to scratching out messages with what quills and ink they could gather from the scattered corners of the mansion. That thrush had been miles away. She might not understand English, but she would damn sure know her own name.

It'd taken three sheets of paper and all his authority to convince them that entrapping her was not the solution, not now. If she went missing, who knew what her guardsmen would do. Far better now to adhere to diplomacy; there was too much at stake to risk losing her, or provoking an unnecessary fight. They needed her.

He needed her, it seemed, in more ways than a scribbled block of sentences on parchment could convey.

In the end—ten long minutes later—he'd achieved unanimous agreement. For all that she had their senses spinning, no one had forgotten her news, or the rings.

So Kim only nodded when Maricara commented over her sliced strawberries and cream that she'd like to see the sky, and suggested the garden in the back of the mansion, where there were trees and a fountain, and a chance for water-cooled shade.

They strolled out into the blistering sunlight. He removed his coat once again and left it dangling from the arm of a stone cupid that marked the beginning of the herb maze. At least his waistcoat had no sleeves.

Rhys remained inside. He hadn't even needed Kim's pointed glance before declining to join them on the walk.

The princess had no fan. He hadn't thought of it when he'd offered her the use of Lia's room, and Lia's gown. Ladies used fans. Ladies wore hats. Gloves. Yet Maricara moved forward into the day without these things, wearing only an expression of supreme indifference. The sunlight rippled down her hair, shifting between walnut and bronze. It fell in a tail down her back; the ribbon was slipping loose, its jaunty bow wilting somewhat in the humidity.

Her throat, her arms, the soft contours of her chest. Her skin appeared nearly as snowy as the ribbon, dewy, untouched by the heat. With the sun high above them the shadows drew sharp and deep; he found himself watching her hands as they walked, how her fingers curved and her wrists bent; no bracelets or rings, no adornment of any kind. But she shone like a flame by his side.

The fountain was in the center of the maze, easily spotted. Few of the herbs grew higher than his hips, but the fountain was as tall as two men together. It was Botticino marble with carvings of palm fronds and lilies; a single nymph at the top held a shell that bubbled with clear water, splashing down to the layers below. His parents, he recalled, had it imported before his birth. His mother had enjoyed the sound of it as she clipped roses nearby.

Rising warmth from the graveled path bent the air into shimmers. Maricara raised a hand to her brow and lifted her face.

"You've made me your prisoner, I see," she said calmly.

Dotting what had been a previously cerulean clear sky were now a dozen small, drifting clouds, following the lofty path of an invisible zephyr.

There were more of them in the woods. There were drakon all about, Kim knew, honed to their every move.

He could stop them from detaining her. He could not stop their curiosity, the profound, primordial instinct to see her, to bear witness to her presence. Every man in the shire would have sensed her by now.

"Honored guest," Kimber replied, smooth.

"Lord Chasen, I have been wed. I know full well what imprisonment is." She halted at a turn in the path and studied him, speculative. Beds of nodding anise surrounded them with hot licorice perfume.

"Do you think I could escape?"

He sighed.

"Shall we wager on it?" she persisted.

"No."

"The English never gamble?" "Not in matters of the heart."

"How very suave. A Frenchman could not have said it better."

His voice roughened. "You must understand, Maricara, what you mean to us." He spread his hands, palms up. "There's never been anyone like you here before, never a single drakon beyond our own blood. You're—of immense interest to every member of the tribe."

"I wager I can evade you and your men up there. I wager I can do it for at least one full day. Should I win—"

"Your Grace—"

"We take our walks," she gestured to the clouds, "without accompaniment." He paused, curious in spite of himself. "And if you lose? If I'm able to find you?"

She tipped her head, and the shadows from her lashes threw dusk across her eyes. "What is it you want?"

He couldn't help it; he smiled.

"Oh," she said flatly.

His smiled vanished. "If I win, I want you to reconsider the possibility of.of a union between us. I want you to stay here at Chasen at the very least."

"Well, which shall it be?"

Marriage, he almost said, but saved himself in time. "You'll promise to stay here."

"Oh," she said again, this time breaking into a wide, glorious smile. "I'll promise it now if that's all you require."

"No." Kim reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips. She wasn't immune to the day after all; she was warm, very warm, and just as soft as he'd imagined. He realized he'd not touched her bare skin before this moment, not even in passing. Her fingers kept a faint, questing pressure against his.

"No," he said again, huskier. "I want you to mean it."

She gazed up at him. Without warning, without even a blink, she Turned and was gone, leaving smoke in his palm and her empty gown to the path. The hair ribbon floated sideways in a flourish, last to fall.

Master John Wilcox of Hetton-le-Hole reported the Loss of Two of his Finest Charolais White cows to a Vicious pack of Angry Beasts at an Unknown Hour in the Dark Night of Wednesday last.

Mistress Edith Shelby of Hought-le-Spring reported the Same on Thursday regarding her Ribbon-Winning Spotted Hog, awarded Best Pig at the Sunderland Spring Faire two years past.

Each of the Animals was grazing afield. Little was left of Any but bones and a single horn. Heavy Claw marks upon the Remains revealed the Monstrous Strength of the Creatures.

Wolves have not been Sighted near Our Fair Province for nigh a full Century. It is Assumed the pack has Arrived from the uncivilized Wilds of Scotland and is Moste Fleet to have Traveled so swiftly between the two Townes.

Huntsmen have been Dispatched with Great Haste to Eliminate the pack.

Gentle Readers of all Regions are urged to spend their evenings Indoors with their young Children and Pets until the Beasts have been Destroyed. Shepherds are urged to Bear Arms.

"Explain to me again," Kimber said, in his most aggravatedly patient voice, "how a woman weighing no more than nine stone, and reaching no higher than my forehead—a foreign woman—has been able to elude an entire population of the finest hunters on this earth. For eight days."

"Did you actually think," responded Audrey politely, "that she would be easy to find because she is a woman?"

"No." Kim placed a careful hand upon the crinkled newspaper spread open before him on his desk. "I thought she'd be easy to find because she is a dragon. "

The Marquess of Langford had made a point of subscribing to every periodical available that might contain news of Darkfrith, in addition to several of the London weeklies. Preventive measures, he would tell his son. Don't drown in the comforts of the shire. Pay heed to the outside world before it pays heed to you.

The Morcambre Courant. The Durham Chronicle, the York Afternoon Advertiser. Three papers carrying stories about a pack of savage, mysterious beasts that carried off cows and pigs—and according to one, an entire gaggle of fat geese—in the black of night, leaving behind only feathers and ravaged bones.

But the worst one, the worst one by far, was a small article that had appeared in the Whitby Daily News. It detailed the account of a tinker and his kin who all declared they saw a giant, winged "Serpent Fiend" in the sky Friday evening as they'd camped in the North York Moors.

Not wolves, not feral dogs. None such creatures could travel from town to town at the speed of flight. Trust a bloody tinker to get it right.