21. One Shouldn’t Enrage the Psycho Dragon Lady
21. ONE SHOULDN’T ENRAGE THE PSYCHO DRAGON LADY
In the midst of slowly drifting clouds, Rush stood like a god—or perhaps an apparition from the Etherlands. Outfitted like the fiercest of warriors and armed to the teeth, his long silver hair blew behind him on a breeze I didn’t feel. His skin seemed dewier than usual; it nearly glowed. His sculpted muscles strained against his fighting leathers more than they had before. Even his lips were more supple than when I’d last kissed them in the dark of night.
The queen shouldn’t have bothered with whatever spell she’d ordered to enhance his appearance. He was already more magnificent than any man I’d ever known.
The queen would do everything in her power to get him to kill me. And yet … I couldn’t help but want to be closer to him, to touch him—better yet, to have him touch me.
When his stare met mine, his irises swirled as swiftly as the clouds at our feet, revealing to me every bit of conflict over our predicament he must feel. His eyes were heavy, suggesting as many secrets as the mysterious full moon.
I wanted to speak to him, though I couldn’t guess at what I’d tell him now, but a collective dozen eyes, ears, and even a pair of mouths—a set of masculine lips and the other feminine—darted here and there around us, as if the queen were unwilling to leave a single aspect of our match to chance. But Rush would already have his orders. No matter how many times I’d heard the queen herself tell Rush his job was to protect me, it had been for show.
Everything about the Gladius Probatio and her fancy arena was about appearances. I’d grown up among ferocious dragon shifters who’d sworn to defend the dragons with their dying breaths. As beastly, crass, and violent as some of them were, none of them killed for glory, or worse, for entertainment.
But the queen offered her subjects barbaric, bloodthirsty sport under the thinly veiled artifice of pomp and ritual.
She probably occupied the grandest of the viewing balconies now, my father likely sitting in her shadow as he always did. I refused to look their way. The power to decide whether or not I participated in such a brutal contest had been stripped from me. I wouldn’t give them my attention or energy. At least for now, that was mine alone.
Azariah walked over to us, stopping halfway between Rush and me, his twisted horn spearing the veins hanging from a floating, spying eyeball—red closer to the eye, blackened where they dangled. The eye had been facing me, recording my every move, and startled when Azariah’s horn nudged it, jerking out of the way—a reaction much like that of a person. Oblivious to the severed organ directly next to him, the unisus tossed his head, knocking the eye to the ground, where it bounced and stopped … a moment before Azariah took another step—right onto it.
I grimaced at the squishing squelch before remembering there were more eyes on me. I schooled my face into disinterest, hoping I hadn’t been too late to conceal that I saw what others apparently didn’t.
“Our magnanimous queen will now come down to encourage our fighters with a few private words,” Azariah said as he drew closer, leaving behind a mess of eye white, brown iris, and pink and red and black. Bile tickled at the back of my throat before I made myself look away.
The crowd clapped at Azariah’s pronouncement, though it was difficult to believe any of them would consider their queen “magnanimous” after the display she’d put on for the week of the Gladius Probatio.
Royal guards, dressed in her colors only, emerged onto the field moments before she did to another smattering of applause. Her crown towered above her head, thin chains of silver hanging down from it, framing her face, ending in a pair of rubies the size of quail eggs, the deep and vibrant color of freshly pumping blood. Each of the crown’s five spikes was capped in more modest versions of the same stone. Her dress was a long and draping fog gray, a train skimming the ground behind her, sending clouds skittering. Red crystals adorned her décolletage and the hem of her skirt. Her skin was pale, her hair dark as night, trailing loose behind her, picked up by that same breeze that tickled Rush.
She was a vision, a spectacle. No trace of the woman who’d openly fondled crotches and breasts the previous night.
And she’d left the king behind. I at last found him atop his throne on the balcony, a scant few inches behind hers so it could always be dismissed as an accident by the staff.
His attention was already on me, but it revealed nothing beyond the fact that he was a shell of a man dominated by his wife.
The queen’s stare, as intent as a hungry predator’s, was also on me.
She stopped within a dozen feet of me, her guards rushing to fan out around her, especially as my fingers twitched around the many weapons I could throw her way before any of them could stop me—sans the magic which I suspected all of them, as fae and her personal guard, must have.
A surge of energy swept up from my feet and zipped across the entirety of my body, leaving me tingling all over, while I also experienced a simultaneous pull toward Rush. As if he held his arms open wide to me, I took my eyes off the apex predator to glance at him.
It was a mistake.
The queen hissed and her little bloody spies zoomed toward me like a swarm of wasps. But with her glaring wrath now on me, I managed to keep myself from wincing. Whatever limited power I’d discovered, she couldn’t suspect it.
A single eye with a gray iris that was somehow familiar crept slowly closer until it bobbed an inch from mine. My fingers now itched with the need to swat away the grotesque sight.
I only smiled at the queen, wondering if she recognized how much I hated her, if I outwardly appeared as close to shattering whatever vestiges of civility remained in me as I felt.
“All hail Her Royal Highness Queen Talisa Zafira Tatiana!” Azariah called out.
As one, the spectators in the stands bowed their heads to her.
“Very good,” the queen said to the magical creature. “Now give us some privacy. You too,” she added to her sentinels, who, unlike Azariah whose relief was etched across his long white face, hesitated. But none complained, retreating just out of earshot.
“Your Majesty,” Rush said, bowing deeply.
The queen turned toward me expectantly. But I only held my head high in a silent Fuck you, bitch.
She scowled so fiercely her eyes flared blue, then waved a couple of fingers in the air. Instantly, my body wanted to obey her power, to bend so deeply my nose neared the ground and that small lump of eye gore.
I dipped in a feigned reverence she surely didn’t deserve. Before, her power had wrapped around me with the force of steel bands—irresistible. Now, her power felt like the strands of spider webs—strong but breakable. I could fully resist the urge.
When that desire to bow ceased, I rose, and when I smiled at her again, my amusement was genuine.
“What do you have to smile about?” she snarled.
“Nothing in particular, Your Highness , I’m just happy to see you.”
Rush grunted and apparently choked on air. He coughed and wheezed, all while shooting me panicked looks that told me, Don’t poke the fucking dragon .
The queen frowned, the expression odd on her otherwise perfectly immaculate face. Her lips were painted—what else?—a blood red. “Then you’re either stupider than you look or you still believe you’ll get away with your little plot against me.”
Again, Rush’s stare flicked toward me.
The queen noticed. “She’s not the only one who’s betrayed me, Rush . At least she’s new to court. She was raised by beasts and savages. I don’t expect much from her. But you? You and I’ve been friends for years.”
I snorted before remembering Rush was right, I shouldn’t enrage the psycho dragon lady.
Her eyes already narrowed accusingly, the queen whirled on me.
Thoughts tumbled through my mind. How should I behave? Should I pretend not to hate her? Was there reason to play along with her farce?
Would it save me?
Could it spare Rush?
Hastily, I landed on neutrality, of a sort. “You aren’t friends with him. You might not be friends with anybody. You’re a mighty ruler in these lands. You aren’t considered for your friendships, but for your power.”
She smirked at me. “Ha, true.”
Dismissing me, she again faced Rush. “Did you really think I wouldn’t uncover the plot against me? How could you have been that stupid?”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I’m not sure what you’re speaking of.”
She tsked. “Don’t play games with me. I’m not in the mood.”
“I assure you, I’m not playing.” His silver eyes were earnest. He understood all too well what was at risk.
“Sandor admitted to plotting with you and your little friends. All vipers in my midst, competing to become the next heir to my throne while planning my assassination in secret.”
Rush brought a horrified hand to his chest, his face a matching mask. “I assure you, Your Majesty, I have never , ever, spoken with Sandor of any such thing. He lied .”
She stared at him, then me. “She’s here to try to take me down. The king, apparently, believes she’s strong enough to do so.” She chortled darkly. “As if that were even possible.”
“Again, Your Majesty,” Rush implored, “Sandor lied. His Majesty the King, Lady Elowyn, and my friends … we’ve not all plotted together against you.”
No … but only because the king wasn’t involved in our discussions .
The queen studied him some more, me, then him again.
“Your Majesty,” Rush went on, “I swear to you, what Sandor said is a lie. I have every intention—and hope—to become your heir to protect the fae of Embermere and the entire mirror world. I want only to help, not harm.”
“You’d swear on Larissa’s life?”
He gulped visibly, throat bobbing, but nodded anyway. “Yes, I swear on Larissa’s life that Sandor lied, and His Majesty, Elowyn, my friends, and I are not meeting behind your back to plot your death.”
That and was essential to the fine line he was skirting between truth and untruth.
Rush scoffed but nerves made his eyes jittery. “What Sandor suggested is insane.”
Only because we could never trust the king to join our goal of murdering the beautiful woman before us who was so horribly hideous on the inside.
“You’re willing to repeat that with Azariah here?” the queen asked.
“I am.” Everything about Rush’s stance spoke of his earnestness, his trustworthiness .
Which told me just how good at lying he was. How little I could trust him.
“I’ve long been honored you’d choose me as a successor to your throne,” Rush said. “You’re the most exceptional and powerful leader the mirror world has ever had.”
No doubt, also the most terrible.
But his flattery tipped the queen’s head upward, a shadow of a smile toying with her lips. “Azariah!” she barked.
The unisus trotted over and dipped his head with that majestic horn toward the ground. “How may I be of service, Your Majesty?”
“Rush is to swear an oath before your magic.”
“Yes, of course.” He stood, and Rush quickly repeated the same oaths as before, his carefully precise wording identical.
Azariah nodded and announced to the queen: “He speaks the truth.” But once she again dismissed the unisus, he glanced back at Rush several times, as if the magical creature knew exactly what Rush was doing.
“Very well, Rush. You get another chance,” the queen said.
“And the Lady Elowyn? I’ve sworn to protect her with my life.”
The queen pursed her lips, mumbling something under her breath that sounded very much like, Thanks to my idiotic husband , but I couldn’t be sure.
A pair of eyes danced too close, making me work ridiculously hard to ignore them, when the queen relented. “Fine, I won’t publicly accuse Elowyn of conspiring against me either.” No mention of how she’d imprisoned me for days and intended to let me die in the dungeon. None, either, about how she’d gotten Lennox to stab me when everyone’s backs were turned. No reference to how a public accusation was the least of my worries when it came to her.
My muscles didn’t so much as ease in relief. I knew what was coming next. What someone like her would do.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” As if bored, she studied the giant ruby on her finger—a match to the ones swinging around her face—and how it glimmered in the sunlight.
I warred with the urge to snatch that ring and ram it down her throat. Death by opulence would be a fitting end for her, if a little too light on the suffering.
She met Rush’s waiting stare. “You must do what’s best for Embermere. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“In case you’re tempted to forget, I have your precious Drakes Hiroshi, West, and Ryder in the fae dungeon awaiting … my command. Make a wrong step and they’ll join the corpses of Elowyn’s shifter and that hideous dragon of hers.”
Which was it, already?! Were they alive or dead?
She was lying now. She had to be, or I’d have failed my friends for good this time.
Rush’s tan face paled. “They’ve done nothing wrong. ”
“And if you don’t either, then you’ll have nothing to worry about. Remember, Larissa depends on you too.” Another casual scan of her ruby. “She’s been looking a bit wan lately, wouldn’t you say?”
The queen’s lilt was mocking, taunting, but all Rush said was, “Please.”
She only hmmmphed in his direction before grinning evilly at me. “I’ve made sure you can’t call on any more of that dragon filth today. This fight will be won based on your personal magic alone.” Her mouth twisted in repulsion though I wasn’t entirely certain why.
“I don’t have personal magic.”
That disgust morphed into pleasure. “Exactly.”
“You have enough to revive from certain death,” Rush said.
She spun on him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of what’s right.” But those words, he directed them at me. Though he looked back at the queen, I felt them in my heart almost like an … apology. “I’ll do what needs to be done.”
I couldn’t decide whom he was speaking to now, perhaps both of us.
“See that you do,” the queen said tightly. “Your prize will be the eventual crown of Embermere and a wife who’ll do whatever you want, no matter how base your desires.” My jaw clenched and my nostrils flared before I forced myself to pretend I didn’t care. “You’ll join me in doing what must be done for the mirror world and its fae. ”
“And Larissa? My friends?”
She smiled amiably and I cringed inside. “Larissa will be well cared for, and your friends can become your generals.”
“And Elowyn?”
“She’ll be free.” But the queen said it too quickly, too easily—because she believed Rush would kill me before the day was out.
She took a step toward him. “There will never be a crown prince better than my Saturn, but you’ll be a fine second choice. Now, prove it to me .”
She placed a hand on his shoulder.
I tensed; Rush stiffened.
Suddenly alarmed, she looked between the two of us, examining us from top to bottom, scanning even our immediate surroundings. The eyes, ears, and mouths raced out of her sight, as if the intensity of her scrutiny were too great.
“What is it that I’m sensing?” she asked intently.
“Your Majesty?” asked Rush, all innocence.
I willed myself not to so much as think of the man I’d shared my bed with. Not to remember the feel of him on my skin, inside me…
The queen stared at me with such ferocity that my flesh heated as if it might peel off my bones. I dragged in a ragged breath and waited.
“There’s something … different about you both,” she finally said, considering him.
I sucked in a deep breath, surreptitiously patting my cheeks, relieved to find them still smooth and unaffected by the queen’s vehemence.
“I’m nervous,” I blurted.
But the queen was searching for her answer now only with Rush.
“Could it perhaps be the magic of the Gladius Probatio?” Rush suggested. “We’re in the finals now. It could have done something to us.”
“That’s not supposed to happen.”
“But the Fae Heir Trials haven’t been held since the mirror world was created. There’s no one still alive who would be sure.”
“I suppose that’s true…”
“The magic of the probatio might think we already should be fighting, drawing us together to do so.”
“Hmm, yes, perhaps that.” Finally, she searched the stands and the thousands of fae, with heads still bowed in deference to their monarch, watching on as best they could.
“Very well.” To Rush alone, “May your ancestors cheer you on from the Etherlands, and may you draw first blood.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Without another glimpse at me, as if I were no longer a problem for her to concern herself with, the queen stalked off, her guards scurrying after her. Her bloody spies hovered in a vast circle around Rush and me as if they didn’t want to get caught in the action.
As soon as she was out of earshot, I whispered to Rush, “What was she feeling? ”
His eyes shimmied like silver flames. “Our bond.”
“Our bond?”
But in answer, all he said was, “I’m so sorry, El.”
He drew his sword with a loud shiiiing that sent Azariah trotting farther away, calling as he went, “Well, ladies and gents, beasts of all sorts and sizes, it appears our contestants can’t wait to get started.”
Azariah was still speaking when Rush charged me.