Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

He took an involuntary step forward. A thousand stories raced through his mind, explanations, excuses. There could be only one answer here, only one female in the world who could steal into his home undetected—

She lifted one hand, her fist closed. Without looking away from him, her fingers opened, and she inverted her palm. Twin flashes of metal fell to the rug, bounced against the woven flowers with a muffled tattoo before rolling flat.

She'd dropped rings, a pair of them. Signet rings.

Tribal rings. Exactly like the ones worn by Jeffrey and Luke and Hayden.

Kim raked his eyes back to hers.

"I've brought you a gift, as you can see." The Princess Maricara gave a small, chilly smile. "But perhaps we might make this an exchange instead. Is there something you wish to tell me?"

Mari's experience with Others was limited. She knew the peasants of her land—knew them well, in fact, as she had once been among them, although the manifestation of her dragon Gifts had set her undeniably apart.

She knew the visiting clerics who would on occasion attempt to ascend her mountain and preach to her people; after a few weeks of the feral alpine nights these men would nearly always retreat back into their safely walled chapels.

And she knew Zane, the thief, the husband of the drakon Lady Amalia.

She had not known him well, granted. Nearly all of their time together had been spent with Lia there too, the pair of them thick with secret looks and a language Mari hadn't mastered. But she had liked Lia well enough and was disposed to like Zane, who—for an Other—was handsome and quick-witted, and had eyes of golden amber.

It was possible that Mari had developed the very slightest infatuation for Zane during his months of stay at her castle.

But he was in love, and Lia was in love, and eleven-year-old Maricara had seen for herself what their love meant: blood and sacrifice and a great deal of noble, unspoken suffering. It had all been a little tedious.

Yet she remembered the man Zane for something more significant than his looks, or even his devotion to one of her kind. Maricara remembered Zane most for the very last words he spoke to her, just before climbing into his carriage and disappearing from her life.

He had turned to scan the small crowd in the castle courtyard waiting to see them both off, then limped slowly back to Maricara. She'd been standing farther away than most. The horses spooked when she ventured too near.

He'd taken her hand. He'd swept her a bow, even though he'd already bid her adieu. "They're going to come for you," he'd murmured in French, very low.

Mari tipped her head, puzzled. There had been some discontent in the hold since the death of Imre, but surely even this human understood she could manage it.

"The serfs?" she'd inquired.

"No, Princess." Zane lifted his eyes and sent her that clever, crooked smile that had, just perhaps, made her heart beat somewhat faster. "The drakon. The English ones. They know about you now, and you'll be far more dear to them than any mere diamond. They will come." He released her hand with a final squeeze of her fingers. "A bit of unsolicited advice, my pet: They'll court you and flatter you and offer any sweet vow they'll think you want to hear. But you'd be a fool to trust them."

And he had walked back to the carriage and was gone.

So when she'd finally found her way to the outskirts of Darkfrith—a land as lush and distant as Lady Amalia had once dreamily described—Maricara was already on her guard, flying low, her senses prickling. Yet she was still taken by surprise at the sheer number of drakon patrolling the skies of this dark English place.

From miles away she had first begun to perceive them, initially just one, then three more, and then, suddenly—as the half-moon glowed across her back and she caught the fresh, warm scent of a river below—over two dozen. And they were a patrol, she could see that. They followed a set pattern, not deviating. Some were smoke; some were dragons.

Mari had banked instantly, wheeling back a few miles to conceal her trail, darting through a cover of hills and trees. It seemed to work; no one followed. Perhaps she had escaped before any of them felt her.

She landed beneath a shadowed outcropping of granite crumbling with lichen and remained there a good while, considering, observing.

She could not Turn to smoke to slip past them, not carrying her valise. It held all her garments and bread and cheese and some of her most favorite gemstones. Damned if she was going to leave it behind just to avoid a troop of sentries, and she suspected it was still much too far to Darkfrith to walk. Everything around here was either forest or field; she hadn't seen anything like a village in nearly an hour.

And if they were patrolling the skies, they were likely patrolling the ground as well, so she needed to be closer, already hidden in their center, if she was successfully going to avoid them.

She had crossed a sparkling channel of ocean that very morning. Mari didn't know what these English dragons were looking for, and at the moment, she didn't care. Her body ached, every joint and tendon. As a species the drakon were exceptionally strong, but she'd been approaching her limits for weeks now just to reach this place. It didn't seem fair that she'd have to surrender so near to her goal.

Maricara did not consider herself a fool. The English had sent envoys to her home despite her repeated directives they stay away. They'd been pushing to enter her realm for years and had apparently decided to no longer wait for an invitation. She would not simply promenade into their midst and request an audience with their Alpha, this Kimber earl. She needed surprise on her side. She needed every advantage.

Mari dug a single talon into the granite, thoughtful, pressing deep enough to crack the stone as she weighed her options.

She would have to be fleet. She would have to be silent. And she would have to fly very, very high above them, high enough so she would blend with the infinity of heaven should anyone glance up. At least there she had an advantage: By fate or chance Maricara was the only dragon she had ever seen without color. Even the creatures scoring the sky ahead of her shone bright like May ribbons in the light.

But she .. .she was formed of space and stars, her scales gleaming jet, her eyes and mane and the bare tips of her wings burning silver.

From the safety of her rock she Turned human to devour the last of the bread, the final, thin slices of the Camembert melting against her fingers. She licked her fingertips clean and settled back naked against the lichen, examining the patrol's distant flight.

After a full hour of surveillance she was able to predict their patterns, where they would loop and dip, how the wind would steer them. They were organized and tightly knit, but there was no real sense of urgency threading through the group. If they were hunting, they had not yet spotted their prey, and by all appearances the search was focused below them. Very well. With any luck at all, they'd keep their heads down and their sights fixed to the earth.

At least her valise was dark—not an accident.

Mari stood and brushed the bread crumbs from her stomach. She sent the English drakon one last glance, then Turned, picking up her valise—the leather handle like a familiar bit in her mouth—and launched herself high into the night.

The atmosphere was thicker here in England than in the alps, far more moist. Her wings beat against it. The air sucked hard between her teeth. It was never comfortable to attempt a straight rising vault, but she had to do it. She climbed and climbed, until her lungs labored and her claws opened and closed convulsively at nothing, scratching at the wind.

At the pinnacle of her ascent the ground was a remote, alluring span of ruffled darkness, the dragons below small toys and cottony flecks. Mari drew in a final enormous breath, took aim, then tucked her wings close and began her dive.

She had a single chance. There was only a single spot, a narrow rectangle of air left unguarded between the left-banking of a yellow dragon and the right return of a bottle-green one. It would be left exposed for twelve short seconds. If she hadn't made it by then, they'd discover her.

She dropped nearly without sound. The English weaved their paths, hushed and rhythmic, yellow dragon, bottle-green. The valise pressed like an iron weight into her throat; her stomach rose to meet it. A half league above the patrol, Maricara closed her eyes. She would make it or she wouldn't. She could feel the night with fiercely honed clarity, the drakon energies, their humming vigilance, the empty patch of air; she didn't care to see.

She shot through in a blur, the wind around her parting with the barest siss. The yellow dragon veered up at the last moment, then twisted right—the wrong way, but by then Mari was gone, Turning to smoke mere inches from the deadly tips of a grove of trees, losing the valise after all. It went smashing into the branches, striking the earth with a loud thump.

She sank into mist. She held close to the base of the trees, inert, willing herself into nothingness, only steam, only nature, nothing new or strange or wrong.

A host of dragons convened in the sky, circling. Two of them dropped into smoke and then became men, less than thirty feet distant.

Atom by atom, inch by inch, Maricara began to slink upward, following the knotty crevices of the pine tree she hugged, thin as a thread. She lurked in the first fork of the trunk as the men began to stalk the forest floor.

Her valise had not crashed all the way to the ground after all. It lay snared between two thick, high branches of a yew several yards away. A sprinkling of bark and small broken leaves dappled the ferns spreading beneath it.

The dragon-men hadn't yet drawn closer. They spoke to each other in low, English words, and paused at something Mari couldn't see. One of them squatted down and ran his fingers over the dirt.

She smelled it then, what he had found—deer scat, fresh. Blood on the thorns of a patch of briar. A hart had braved these woods tonight, perhaps more than one. Perhaps even as she had fallen.

Multumesc. Run faster, hart.

A hot breeze stirred and tried to pry her from the bark of her tree. She clung to it as the leaves on the ground flickered, releasing an aroma that covered the scat, thick and rich and earthy.

The dragon-men conferred a while longer, glancing around them. But eventually they Turned and left, rising up again to the stars.

Mari waited anyway, in case it was a trap, but when she opened her senses she found no trace of them nearby. They seemed actually gone.

She slithered back down to the roots of the pine. She Turned, crouching, lifting her face to that breeze, searching for a scent beyond that of trees and humus and whispering wheat.

No luck. England might be formed entirely of forest and heated air, for all she could tell. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks and tried again, fighting the exhaustion creeping black into her mind, and then, when she was ready to give up, to find a safe place to curl up in the leaves—she discovered it. A whiff of gold metal with saffron and hours-gone partridge, roasted with wine.

Surely the bouquet of a prince.. .or an earl, at the very least.

She Turned to smoke to reach her valise, to free it and tuck it deep within a hollow beneath its chosen yew. The case was very large, and it didn't fit easily, but she managed. When it was done she shook her hair over her shoulders and began, barefoot, to walk.