Chapter 2
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KATALENA
King Rhole really needed better guards.
Or more of them.
Either way, getting in and out of the Rensaran palace was far too easy. I was glad, because it worked in my favor, but my father would be horrified if he knew how lax security was. I was bringing a dragon into the palace for fuck’s sake.
I slid through a small space between the extremely well-hidden overlapping walls I knew women in my line had been using to get out of the palace for centuries, and into the cellars. My cloak was the first thing to come off.
“You’re going to need to hide somewhere other than my neck,” I whispered. “Until we can find a place for you.”
The shirt I wore was loose, and I tugged the collar open. If I’d been wearing a skirt, it would have been easy. But the leather trousers I wore when I left the palace didn’t have much in the way of hiding.
“Try not to look too lumpy,” I muttered as he slid beneath the cloth, forming a little warm shape pressed to my side as he clung to my undergarments.
I stowed the cloak and weapons in a trunk no one used. Honestly, I didn’t know if anyone ever came to this section of the cellars anymore. It was dusty as all hell, and the only footprints I ever saw were my own.
But I didn’t bother to change further. The sight of me in trousers wasn’t exactly scandalous. Most of the palace servants knew I preferred them, and I got out of wearing the cumbersome skirts required for court whenever I could.
Not that I didn’t like dresses. I did. But until now there was no true way for me to enjoy them. The only time I had the opportunity to wear them was when I was being paraded around like a newly trained drayg, so everyone could act impressed and amazed.
I had more freedom than the draygs, at least, though most of that freedom was in secret.
Slipping up the servant’s stairs into my chambers, Helena was pacing back and forth across the floor, gnawing on her thumbnail. Given how much she prided herself on her nails, she was anxious. I didn’t even have a chance to ask.
She whirled on me. “Where have you been? Your father is about to cut off my head for not producing you in the courtroom.”
“I told you I needed to make a visit to the city.”
“You didn’t tell me it would take two hours.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And my journeys there and back have a history of being shorter than that?”
Helena glared at me before storming to the armoire and throwing it open. “This isn’t funny. Your father is summoning you to meet the Craisos delegation, and every minute you’re not there, he gets angrier.”
Sighing, I crossed into my small workshop and placed the ingredients from Taia on one of the tables. “Fine. Send one of the chamberlains to inform my father I’m on my way.”
My maid and friend wasn’t wrong. My father was mercurial on the best of days, and the arrival of the Craisos delegation would make him that much worse. She went to do as I asked, and I tapped gently on the little dragon’s body through my shirt. “Time to come out. Hide somewhere in here while I’m gone and don’t let anybody see you. Not even Helena.”
Helena had been raised in the old ways, much like I had been. She wouldn’t harm the creature, but showing him to her would be a conversation they didn’t have time for, and her shocked scream while finding a dragon in my rooms wouldn’t be welcome when I was in the midst of meeting the royal delegation from the kingdom famous for hunting them.
The dragon crawled across my collarbone and down my arm onto the table, his coin in his mouth. He didn’t hesitate, going to a large, empty, and most importantly opaque, jar, and hopped inside. “Thank you,” I whispered before I placed the lid on top.
Now. To make myself presentable.
Helena already placed the dress she’d chosen on the bed, and I smiled. She knew me well. The dress was sleek and subtle—far simpler than the gowns I usually wore, and about a thousand times simpler than the dress I would wear tomorrow. And the color made me grin as I stepped out of my damp clothes. Silver. All shades of silver, from the darkest of steel to the palest brush of dawn’s light, but everyone would know what it meant. And I didn’t give a star-ridden fuck.
The dress was light enough for me to slip into on my own before Helena returned and could lace me into it. I took the time to strap my favorite dagger on my thigh—easily reachable through a cleverly constructed and invisible split in the dress.
The shining metal matched the gown, and what everyone would think about. Silver was the color of war and weapons. And to some, the color of defiance.
I would wear blue tomorrow.
Blue for our new alliance with Craisos. Blue for the sky which they claimed we ruled now. Blue, which was the opposite of a dragon’s flame. Blue for the power to quench that fire out. Smother it and control it at all costs.
But tonight I would wear silver, if only to show them that I wasn’t a fool, nor was I a woman who would bow her head on principle.
“Oh, good,” Helena said, coming back and immediately lacing me into the dress.
“Thank you for the silver.”
“I’m not any happier about this than you are,” she murmured, previous anger gone. “We do what we can.”
“We do what we can.” I swallowed hard against the pain of the familiar words.
My grandmother spoke them every day as she taught me what she knew of the truth: that dragons, though feared and hated through all of Gleira and the world, were not our enemies. There was once a time when humankind and dragons lived in peace. And the fact that we were enemies was not the dragons’ fault.
The rest of the world had forgotten, save the few who had the blessing of someone to tell them differently.
When the whole world was against you, and you were surrounded on all sides, there was little to be done, but you did whatever you could, for whoever you could, with faith that the Fallen would one day bless those efforts and help the world come back to wholeness.
“Sit. Quickly. You look like you just spent two hours in the rain.”
I rolled my eyes and sat at the dressing table. It wasn’t nearly as bad as all that. I’d kept my hood up the entire journey. There had been plenty of times I’d come back looking worse than this. But I sat and let her tame my hair into something resembling a court hairstyle, complete with a silver circlet touching my brow.
“It never ceases to amaze me how you do this so quickly,” I told her. No matter that I’d tried, I’d never been gifted with the art of hair. It never seemed to bend to my will the way it bent to Helena’s.
She snorted. “Bask in my glory later and get to the throne room so your father doesn’t have me beheaded.”
“He likes you,” I said, smoothing down the skirt of the gown. “He’d honor you with poison, at least.”
“Stars, you are going to be the death of me. I’ll prepare the ink for when you return.”
With a wink, I left my chambers, two guards falling into step behind me. I nearly rolled my eyes. If they knew where I’d been not even an hour before, they would be both horrified and finally aware that I didn’t want or need their protection. My grandmother ensured I knew more than just the truth about Gleira’s past. I might not be a soldier worthy of the Craisos army, but I could defend myself.
The herald spotted me coming down the corridor and hurried to have them open the doors. His voice boomed through the space, even though I was entering from the side entrance and not the main one. “Her Royal Highness, Katalena Isabel Arslan Savea, Crown Princess of Gleira.”
I made a face at the herald. We’d had many a discussion over the years about him announcing my full name. It was just as unnecessary as the actual length of my name, but he never wavered, claiming it was his sworn duty to announce me as I was named.
He smiled as I passed.
As I entered, I was vaguely aware of the court bowing, but my eyes were on my father. His expression was carefully neutral, but I saw his displeasure at my absence. I sank into a curtsey. “My apologies for my tardiness, Your Majesty. An ill-advised walk in the garden and rain earlier today left me feeling out of sorts. But I have recovered now.”
“Thank the Fallen for that,” he said, eyes dragging down the very intentionally not appropriate gown I wore. My father might have instructed me how to appear this evening.
Too bad I seemed to have misplaced that memory.
“Now that you have finally graced us with your presence, you may meet our guests. His Majesty, the King of Craisos, and his son. Prince Andaros.”
I turned and curtsied to the assembled party, taking them in through lowered lashes. The prince was everything a prince should be. Well built with golden hair and a face most would consider handsome. He wore well-loved armor, proving that his talents in battle weren’t a mere story.
And, of course, he was the Crown Prince of Craisos. A powerful, brutal land known not only for their hatred of dragons, but their prowess at slaying them. People said Prince Andaros had personally slain more than a dozen along the borders between human and dragon lands.
I hated that he’d been allowed to cross our borders, let alone that he stood in front of me. Oh, how lucky I was to be in his presence.
As soon as the idea had been given breath, I’d fought it tooth and nail. I’d screamed and railed. I’d begged. I’d gotten on my knees, and it still hadn’t been enough. I was powerless in my own life. A tool to be wielded instead of a person to be loved. So, even as much as I hated him, I had no choice.
I smiled as I stood once more, meeting the eyes of the man I was to marry in the morning.