Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

In all the hours of travel, those three never uttered a word. It was the fourth man who spoke to her, a whisper in her ear after they'd snatched her in the hut and jammed the hood over her head, and they'd pressed the blade of a knife into her throat until she'd felt the warmth of her own blood.

The man had knelt to where she lay in the dirt, put his lips to the hood, and murmured in French, "Do not resist. Do not speak."

And she had not. He was the one with the terrible music; he was the reason she lay here now in some unknown location—not a hut or even a cottage, because the scents were far more sophisticated than that. A place of narrow halls and many rooms.. .coals gone to ash and lukewarm brandy, faded opium and whale oil and cleaning chemicals laden with cologne. She had no shoes; as she'd walked to this chamber her feet met a series of carpets laid over a cool stone floor. She sensed no change in heat or light through the dyed hood, no resonance of glass against any slight sound; if this place had windows, they were probably bricked over.

London. Beyond the walls and corridors lifted the cries of street vendors hawking fish and sweet cherries and tea. More carriages rattled past, more than she could count, with dogs yelping and children begging, and the nearest clear conversation she could make out was between two men discussing trade winds and ivory and hemp. By slowing her breath and relaxing her hands she was able to focus enough to even hear the tiny, continuous slap of water striking rock walls and a shore, a great deal of water, and that had to be the Thames. She'd read of it in books, the mighty river of commerce, the merchant heart of England. Never, never once had she thought to be so desperate—

Never once had she thought to venture this close herself.

Her own heart was pumping far too fast. She obeyed the fourth man's commands; she could not speak if she wanted, and resistance truly seemed out of the question. At least right now.

Sanf inimicus. Fear and wrath settled into a queasy, cold knot in her stomach. If she had the chance to eat any of their hearts, she would.

Fourth Man had wrapped a blanket around her after the hood, fastened it with tin pins in some way so that it did not slip from her body. The material was coarse wool, cheap, like the other men. But it wasn't nearly as awful as the hood, which had gone damp with her breath and now adhered to her entire lower face, suffocating. It was black and tied under her chin. No doubt it was just the same as the one they had on Rhys.

Rhys. She'd been hauled from the shepherd's hut while he was still inside; she didn't know what happened to him. He was nowhere nearby now.

Perhaps they'd killed him. But she'd never smelled more than just a trickle of blood.

The sanf led her to this room, to what felt like a bed. Fourth Man helped her to sit upon its edge; the blanket rode up and began to separate along her lap. He tugged it back in place impatiently, tucking the folds of it hard beneath her legs.

There was metal on his hand, a ring. As his fingers grabbed the wool it must have turned against his knuckle, because she felt the brush of a diamond against her knee—not just any diamond.

This one burned her. It hurt—not terribly, because the stone was small—a deep angry prickle that set her nerve endings alight. A wave of intense dizziness rolled up to peak inside her head, black and blue fireflies exploding behind her closed lids.

It felt marvelous. It felt agonizing.

She knew that stone. And she knew now with complete, appalled certainty, who was leading those other three men of the sanf.

The Alpha went alone to the roof of Chasen. He went to the same place he had found her before, seated with her knees drawn up, her back against the majestic blue-water glass curve of the Adam dome. He knelt and placed his palm upon the layered slate at its base.

She was still there, traces of her. She rose up and surrounded him in soft welcome, phantom girl, sinking into his cells, linking, whole. His wife.

He did not shut his eyes. He lifted them to the edge of the shaped tiles, past the chimneys and carved limestone gutters, to the sight of the woods poking up, stiff-fingered, into the deep bowl of the sky.

Inhale. Exhale.

He knew her now. He knew who she was, and how she was. Fragility; wit; reckless valor. He knew the hue of her eyes by moonlight and by sun. He knew the softness of her skin, the shape of her breasts and belly. He knew how she felt inside, the vivid pleasure of her sex, and all these things united, became a key to the lock of the mystery of her vanishing.

He could find her. He could find her through the fires of Hell.

The diffusion of Maricara began to pulse, to become more than scent and memories, transforming into energy. Into color.

He'd experienced this before, only a very few times, times when the hunt for a runner had been so dire he'd lost the feeling of being human entirely. He was drakon now. All that, and only that; it was everything he needed. He knelt in a pool of gold and orange and violet that opened around him like a flower, slowly gathering streamers of light, the last living colors of the female he claimed as his mate. When he turned his head he saw her path with dragon eyes, a vanishing bright line headed south, glimmering and wavering like the aftermath of a sparkler on a dark Bonfire Night. He stared at it until his vision blurred, until he was absolutely certain.

Distant gunpowder rose on the wind. He felt her, small and rash and strong, and came to his feet.

The Alpha Turned into a dragon, pushing off the roof of his home, dislodging a flurry of slate that skipped and toppled and shattered into pieces against the earth below.

For the first time in a very, very long while, Maricara was aware that she was dreaming. It wasn't a nightmare, not yet; she wasn't flying toward anything in particular, or even away. In fact, she wasn't flying at all. She was walking through cool, shadowed hallways, places she'd never seen before, but at the same time she knew them, and knew them well. It wasn't her castle, it wasn't Chasen.

Voices whispered but she did not understand them; they drew her forward, deeper into that stonework maze of light and dark.

When she looked down, she saw her body garbed in a gown of cobalt, adorned with ribbons and gems and all manner of pretty human things. When she looked aside she saw her reflection in windows of chambers she did not enter: a dragon sleekly pacing, black-scaled, silver-star eyes.

She reached a convergence in the corridors and realized suddenly just where she was: at the priory in the English countryside. If she went left, she'd return to the ruins, to the warren of hallways and empty cloisters. If she went right, she'd enter the open-aired loggia, where, past the pillars, sun and comets and galaxies all glowed against a deep red sky.

A dragon flew against that strangely beautiful horizon. Lonely and distant, soaring, dipping. He was blue and scarlet and feral green eyes and he saw her, she knew. She walked up to the stone railing and pressed against one of the columns, watching him, how he danced and twisted and came no closer. Comets spilled from his wingtips. Galaxies spun in his wake.

He was leaving. He grew smaller, and turned his face away.

An unexpected anguish lanced her heart.

Wait. I love you.

She didn't know if those were his words or her own, but she knew that they were true. She lifted a hand to the creature in the sky, willing him closer, almost weeping for the lack of his touch.

I do love you, oh God, I do. Come back to me.

But he vanished without ever glancing at her again.

She awoke to the fact of tears on her cheeks and her hands and feet chained to the posts of the bed. The chains were short enough that she could scoot around only a very little. Mari pulled at them and felt the low, protesting moan of iron against iron, but nothing gave. When she yanked very hard the bed didn't even tremble. It had to be bolted somehow to the floor.

She stopped, sucking air past the gag, and began once more to assess her situation.

It was a prison of contradictions. The duvet was without question velvet, and a pile of furs folded at her feet felt like sable or mink. The air carried only those same odd scents of food spices and river water and bleach-based cleaners; she caught nothing of decay or effluent nearby. The worst smell still was the leftover stench of the peasants.

And the Thames. That smelled too.

But the bed would not move, and the chains would not give. She'd already rubbed her cheeks raw against the covers, trying to get the hood off. They must have used a cord of steel to secure it, closed hard around her neck.

Despite the voices in her dream, no one spoke in this place. They were more canny than that. She'd heard them walking about sometimes, crisscrossing the floors above, but that had been hours—hours?—ago. Now the rooms remained silent, so Maricara did the same, flat on her back on the very plush mattress, awaiting the return of the man with the tiny stinging diamond that burned her to the bone.

With Draumr.

She did not know what would come next: rape or death, her heart ripped out with her mouth still bound and eyes still covered.

If they didn't remove the hood before it was done, her very last sight in the world would have been of the wrong brother.

She tried to slow the panic in her blood. She thought fiercely of Kimber and saw that distant dragon instead, tilting away from her with wings of scarlet and gilt.

"We should kill them now," muttered the bearded Romanian. "We never thought to have two of them at once. Especially not her. "

He spat the last word with a great deal of disdain that was, Zane thought, meant to belay the fear Graytooth actually felt in the presence of Her Royal Grace the Princess Maricara. Had they still been anywhere near the building where she was being held, Zane had the notion Graytooth would fail to drip nearly so much scorn.

But the four of them were well over a mile away from the place they had secured her. Even so, they spoke in whispers, and everyone was careful not to use either Her Grace's or Lord Rhys's real names. One never knew who might be listening.

In point of fact, Graytooth was not the Romanian's real name either. His real name was Basarab, a convergence of syllables Zane found both slightly sinister and unnecessarily foreign to pronounce. Graytooth conveyed a certain elegance of imagery. It was also, not coincidentally, rather accurate.

England could claim a great many injustices in its treatment of the poor, but there was plenty of nutrition available for those with nerve enough to step up and snatch it. Yet in all these years of travel, he'd found that the diet of the Carpathian Mountains tended to consist of brown bread and cabbage and potatoes no matter where he went. No wonder these fellows looked so wan.

Zane was a man who enjoyed the more exquisite aspects of life. At this moment, that consisted of the cup of African coffee steaming fragrant in his left hand, and the lemon cream eclairs arranged neatly upon the plate near his right. He stretched out his legs and allowed himself the brief luxury of imagining that very first bite. The instant rush of sweetness on his tongue; the tart concurrence of lemon zest, silky filling and lightly fried dough—

It didn't seem so long ago he'd been one of the many starving urchins crowding London's streets, and sugar remained his weakness. He could walk away from platters of ham and beefsteak and marrow puddings; his body was one of his best weapons, and Zane kept it as fit as a wire. But sweets...