Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Iwoke without opening my eyes, warm, too comfortable to move and…breathing fresh air?
Cracking one eyelid, I peered at the unfamiliar room around me, taking in the curtains gently swaying in a breeze, the gauze canopy, the rumple of sheets pulled up over my shoulders…the muscular arm curled around my ribs.
I had slept in a bed. Without once waking up glazed with cold sweat, shaking and panting from the dregs of a nightmare. Without shaking in panic.
I had breathed easily all night long, the chest-clenching terror held at bay by the warmth of the dragon curled behind me, the length of his body molded against mine.
For a few minutes I allowed myself to close my eyes again and listen to the soft rhythm of his breathing, the slight hitch in his breath when he inhaled, the tiny grumbles he let out when he exhaled.
Without warning, my stomach clenched. What if…had the mate bond…?
Although I had been told that I would know, unequivocally and absolutely, when the mate bond had taken place, I didn’tfeel any different…but if it had happened, if this one night had ruined all our plans…
I sent out a tentative thought. Rhylan? Will you wake up?
Nothing. The inside of my head remained silent; Rhylan didn’t so much as twitch.
Relief crashed over me, and I exhaled slowly, beginning the delicate work of extricating myself from arms and sheets without waking him up.
There was a fraught second when I thought he’d awaken and I’d have to look him in the eye before I had time to compose myself, but he rolled over, sprawling out and taking up most of the bed.
My eyes lingered on the red marks my teeth had left on his shoulders…and I made myself look away. I left his shirt on the bed and crept into the bathroom, closing the door quietly and hoping he’d sleep through the sound of running water.
I scrubbed with a spicy-scented soap, taking mental inventory of how I felt.
A little sore, which was to be expected, given what I’d heard about how deflowering usually went. But I also felt relaxed and well rested and…well, I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d woken up with all my muscles pleasantly loose, without the stickiness of night-terror sweat clinging to my skin, with nothing but a general sense of contentment.
It was strange and pleasant and unnerving and I very much wanted to experience it again.
The door cracked open while I stood in front of the mirror, wrapped in a towel and running a comb through my still-dripping hair.
“Good morning, gorgeous.” Rhylan came up behind me, slipping his arms around me and under my breasts, holding me against the stark heat of his chest. “Sleep well?”
Horribly enough, my first instinct was to shove him away with harsh words, to push him back to arm’s length and then some.
But I didn’t want to be that draga anymore. I didn’t want to be the callous, cold creature I’d been molded into by my mother.
So I decided to be honest. “Better than I’ve slept in years. We should…we should do it again sometime.”
Saying it out loud—expressing any desire to be naked, vulnerable, and completely open to Rhylan—was somehow more terrifying than the prospect of throwing myself off the side of an eyrie, but…I had chosen to turn this new leaf.
To be vulnerable to him in a way I would never have allowed before.
He studied my reflection, his brows furrowing, that tiny line appearing between them as he studied me.
I bit the inside of my cheek, wishing I hadn’t said it aloud as I watched his reflection. Maybe that had been too vulnerable. Too honest.
I didn’t know where the line was…had it just been a night of amusement for Rhylan? A way to pass the time, knowing that the mate bond would never form between us—because he already had a draga he wanted, so deeply, so intensely that he wasn’t remotely concerned about it.
It was just for fun. A way to while away the night in a strange place.
After a minute that felt like an eternity, the line smoothed out, and he grinned at me. “Ask me any time you want, Sera. I don’t care what we’re doing, I will drop everything for you.”
I rolled my eyes skyward, relieved that he was no longer examining me like he could read the inside of my skull. “Is that tacit permission? Because I promise you, I will find a way to choose the absolute worst moment.”
“Not tacit, beautiful, explicit. I don’t care if we’re on a diplomacy mission, if we’re flying, in the middle of a battlefield—I will make sure that the princess gets what the princess wants.”
I groaned, tossing my comb back into my bag and finding a leather tie for my hair. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“In the middle of dinner? Who needs to eat? Planning an attack? That can wait. We could be in the middle of fighting a Primoris and I would call a break for—”
“Don’t joke about that!” I glared at him in the mirror. Mentioning the name of Ustrael’s children right now felt like a bad omen. “Not about…that.”
Rhylan raised his hands in a peace-making gesture, but he was still smiling. “Fine, I’ll leave that one alone. But at any other time, I am all yours. Just say the word.”
“Just get dressed already,” I grumbled, twisting my hair into coils and pinning them in place.
“So…you’re not going to say it now?”
I threw the bar of soap at him. “Rhylan!”
He caught it one-handed, laughing at me, but before I could escape the bathroom he caught me with the other arm and pulled me in, kissing me so intently I almost forgot what I was supposed to be doing.
He finally released me after several long, sunlit moments and left me in a rather pleasant daze.
When he emerged, wearing easily-discarded trousers and his hair dripping, I had dressed in my comfortable warm leathers, with gloves and a soft woven scarf—I no longer had a reason to make any special effort for Chantrelle, and there was no way I was enduring six hours of flight over thin-aired, frozen mountains in the split dress again.
I tied my boots, threw my bag of toiletries in the smaller saddlebag, and grabbed Rhylan’s discarded shirt off the foot of the bed.
While he was looking away, I tucked it in my bag. It smelled like him, cool spices and woodsmoke, and the odds were good that he wouldn’t notice a single missing shirt.
And it was just in time, too—Rhylan took my saddlebag as soon as I’d finished buckling it and slung it over his shoulder, leaving me empty-handed.
He casually dropped his hand in the small of my back as we walked down the corridor. At least last night had accomplished one thing: I was growing more used to his touch, no longer leaning on the gut instinct to jump away like a scalded cat.
We passed Maristela’s rooms, and Rhylan raised his head, sniffing the air. “Gaelin’s here. I need to speak with him. It’d be more convincing for Kirana to visit Undying Light with allies from other Houses, if they can spare the time for a long flight.”
I reached up and took the saddlebag. “I’ll get the harness ready if you want to talk to him.”
I still wasn’t entirely comfortable around Rhylan’s friends, and the idea of a few moments to myself in the eyrie sounded much more appealing than clinging to his side and over-analyzing every word I said.
But he seemed to understand. He released the saddlebag and leaned down to brush a kiss over my cheek. “Don’t fly off with any other dragons,” he said, the corner of his mouth tilted up in a smile. “I’ll chase you down.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” If I rolled my eyes much harder, they’d fall right out of my head.
“Technically, that was a response.”
I scowled at him. “You are so impudent.” Then I hefted the saddlebag over my shoulder and left him to knock on the door and confer with Gaelin.
A sweeping staircase took me up to the eyrie’s dragon terrace, with its enormous archway overlooking the sky, and I blinked at the blinding morning light playing over the snowfields far below. The inside of my nose immediately froze as I took a breath of the crisp air.
But, despite the cold I so despised, it was a beautiful sight.
And the Eyrie-Master of Kirion had laid out Rhylan’s harness for us already. The leather gleamed with fresh wax.
A chill that had nothing to do with the icy wind ran down my spine. I couldn’t remember giving instructions to leave his harness untouched…but surely one of us would have mentioned something? Had I been too tired from the long flight to think of it?
As I approached it, my shoulder aching from the weight of the saddlebag, Chantrelle emerged from a room on the far side of the harness. My heart jumped in an uneven beat at the sight of her, and the little smile playing about her lips.
“Serafina.”
“Good morning, Lady,” I answered, falling back on politeness as I began buckling the saddlebag to the harness. “We appreciate the hospitality of your House—”
“Shut up, whorespawn.”
The venom in her voice cut me short. I looked up and found Chantrelle had come to my side of the harness, and she stood there staring at me, lips pulled back to expose her sharp, yellowed teeth.
My self-control began to fracture, a frozen river cracking to reveal the hot torrent of anger beneath. “But not that hospitable, of course. Gods forbid you send us off without spewing some more wyvernshit in our faces.”
“You have no right to speak to me,” Chantrelle whispered. “No right to stand here, in my eyrie, and speak to me of hospitality. You are a liar, Serafina, just like your whore mother.”
The chill I’d felt when I saw the harness became a flood, ice water running through my veins, cooling my anger under a rush of fear.
Chantrelle’s smile was back, alight with vindication. “A liar… and a fraud.”
She reached into a pocket, and pulled out one of the safety straps from the saddle. It had been cut away cleanly, the silver hook glinting at the end.
The draga held it up, peering at me through that hook as her smile widened.
The ice froze around my heart, pooled deep in my stomach.
“My Eyrie-Master thought this was rather interesting,” she said, the strap swaying as she shook it. “What self-respecting draga would need such a thing? You keep a prince harnessed like a dumb beast, unable to sit a dragon of your own accord. You are simply full of lies, Serafina. You are no princess. Merely a pretender.”
I couldn’t speak. My tongue remained frozen in my mouth as I listened to her tell me…exactly what I thought of myself.
“Maristela should have been the Dragonesse,” Chantrelle continued. Her knuckles were white as she lowered the strap, her hands shaking with fury. “You come into my eyrie, demand my fealty, crush my daughter’s rightful place underfoot…all while lying through your teeth!”
“I’m not…” I whispered, but Chantrelle raised her hand, as fast as a striking snake.
The strap whistled, cracking against my cheek in a sharp blow. Pain exploded in a white-hot burst, the hook catching my skin, tearing away flesh.
My hand flew to my face, blood spilling through my fingers. Chantrelle raised the strap and shook it, and all I could see was the splatter of blood across the leather, a tiny iridescent scale caught on the hook’s sharp curve.
“Don’t you dare speak to me,” she hissed. “I will give you one chance to make this right, lying whore child: you will come to the Second Claim, and you will stand down. You will renounce your claim and back my House. You will bend the knee of fealty to the Shadowed Stars, and give everything your House has to our success…”
She thrust the hook back in my face, and I stumbled back a step.
“Or I will ensure you do not walk away from that Circle,” she ended quietly. “All of Akalla will know you for the deceiver you are, and you’ll pay for your insolence in blood.”
I stared at her, my fingers sticky and hot with blood, the sickness in my stomach threatening to come up all over the floor.
Chantrelle lowered her fist, tucking the bloodied strap away. She backed away from me, pointing with one bony finger as she disappeared into the eyrie, slamming the door behind her.
We were ruined. I blinked away tears before they could freeze.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, hand clasped to my bleeding face, before Rhylan came in. He looked as relaxed as he had before, radiating contentment…and I couldn’t bring myself to ruin it yet. I needed to regroup, to rid myself of this awful, cold shock…
I yanked my neck scarf up, covering the lower half of my face, and wiped my sticky fingers surreptitiously on my pants.
“Hurry,” I urged, turning so he wouldn’t see any sign of the wound on my cheek or the redness around my eyes. “We need to be back before nightfall.”
“It’s not that cold,” he said, looking bemused at the scarf covering my nose and cheeks.
I missed a beat, unable to fathom levity at the moment. “Maybe if you’re a dragon, it’s not.” It was impossible to keep the edge of panic from my voice, and I swallowed hard.
The line between his brows was back. He stalked closer, eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong?”
Oh, gods, I couldn’t let him see my face…not while we were still in Kirion, not while Chantrelle knew that we were lying, that we were breaking the Law—
“Please, let’s just go home,” I asked, on the verge of begging and unable to care, as long as we got out of here. “I want to go back, right now. Just take me home!”
He hesitated, clearly torn and hating it, wanting to give me what I wanted and knowing I was hiding something.
I pressed the advantage, feeling no shame. “I have a bad feeling about…about Kirana. We need to get to her as soon as possible.”
It was a dirty, underhanded tactic, to appeal to Rhylan for the life of his only remaining family…and it worked.
I knew the very instant that he broke, giving in to his own fear and letting it drive him—that little gleam of fear was a cold spark in his eyes.
“What kind of feeling?” he asked, climbing under the harness and beginning the shift. As his face lengthened into a snout, the words garbled into draconic growls.
I frantically buckled the harness, climbing up into the saddle without a speck of grace. When I checked for the other safety strap, I found it had been cut free as well, leaving me with nothing.
I swallowed my own fear and reached out to pat his scarred back with a quaking hand. “It’s just an intuition, but it’s better to hurry and check, right? And please, for the love of the gods, Rhylan, don’t roll over today. I can’t…I just can’t do it today. Not now.”
He rumbled assent, spreading his wings as he leapt smoothly over the eyrie’s open edge, but I saw him tilt his head, peering back at me with one eye.
I snuggled deeper into my scarf, wrapping the reins tightly around my wrists…just in case.
“Home, Rhylan,” I urged, stroking his back, ignoring the hot sting in my cheek, drowning in terror.
The ruse wasup the moment we descended through Jhazra’s dragon door, because Kirana was sitting at Viros’s desk, pen in hand and the logbook open before her, eyes shielded against the glare of the late-day sun.
Rhylan landed heavily, taking in Kirana with panicked eyes, who surveyed him in return with a slight frown.
“Yes?” she asked, a little acerbically. “I’m assuming you’ve come tearing back in here like that with good news?
He settled down onto the floor, tail twitching hard enough to knock over several of the provision barrels. He stared at Kirana for another long moment, then twisted his entire head around to glare at me with baleful intent.
I unwrapped the reins from my wrists and jumped down to the floor. I needed to throw up. I needed to be alone to scream out the all-consuming fear before I could think clearly again.
But that was not in my cards.
Rhylan shifted, and as he straightened onto two feet, his body was entirely covered in black scales, flames glimmering in his eyes. “You’re unhurt?” he asked Kirana, in a rather perfunctory tone.
She looked up from the logbook, gesturing with the pen. “Clearly? Although I will say that filling out flight plans is not my idea of a pleasant—”
“Good.” Rhylan whirled around and caught me before I could creep through the eyrie doors.
He was not entirely gentle. There was no way to wriggle out of his grasp as he held me in place, pinned against the eyrie wall. He forced me to meet his eyes squarely, nostrils flared with fury.
“Is your ‘intuition’ under this?” he asked harshly, hand rising to the frost-covered scarf on my face. I gulped in deep breaths, unable to control the rapid rise and fall of my chest.
He pulled the scarf down. Took in the red weal standing out on my face, the crusted blood, the raw spots where scales had been torn away.
Rhylan closed his eyes for a moment, exhaling steam and thin whispers of sparkling black flame. His words were distorted when he spoke by the overly large fangs crowding his jaw; he was caught between the shift, half man, half dragon.
“Who did this?” His voice was flat, a thin veneer for the murder beneath it.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. I needed to be calm. I needed to present this in such a way that he wouldn’t go tearing right back to the Shadowed Stars to rip Chantrelle’s head from her shoulders…
His fingers dug into my shoulder hard enough to make me gasp, quivering like he wanted to shake me into a pulp.
“Who did this?” he roared, jaw lengthening, scales rising in ridges across his forehead and cheeks. The nubs of horns began to spiral out of his skull, and he was only seconds away from crushing me when he shifted—
“Chantrelle!” I screamed back, losing what little self-control I had. “It was Chantrelle, she knows, Rhylan, she knows!”
He stared at me, caught midway in the shift, eyes more scarlet than blue. “Explain.”
“Her Eyrie-Master found the safety straps in the saddle.” The words gushed out of me in a rush. “She guessed, she accused me of saddling you like a wyvern, and she told me I was a whore and liar and…and that we need to retract our declarations at the Second Claim and support her House, or she’ll tell everyone and we’ll be executed, your whole House will be executed—”
In the warm air of Jhazra, the frost and blood was melting, and as I spoke the cut reopened. Blood trickled to my jaw, soaking into the scarf.
Rhylan’s eyes tracked that little crimson rill, and I felt the claws on his fingers tighten, close to digging right through my leathers.
“She knows,” I whispered in anguish. “We’ve lost. It’s over. I’ve ruined everything.”
There was a long, tense silence, and Rhylan finally raised his head, exhaling a gush of flame at the ceiling. Steam trickled from his nostrils as he closed his eyes, scowling, forcing the shift back to the male.
When he looked…almost normal again, except for the scales creeping in patches all over his body, he opened his eyes and released me.
Unwound the scarf with undeserved gentleness and dropped it on the floor.
And picked me up, bracing me under my back and thighs. My body wanted to stiffen, but he gave me a slight shake until I wrapped my arms around his neck and rested my head against his shoulder.
Kirana was on his heels as he strode into the eyrie, bringing me down the stairs. I pressed my fingertips to my cheek, wincing as more blood trickled down into my collar.
“I’ll be right back,” Kirana breathed, eyeing him askance and fleeing down the stairs to her still-room.
Rhylan kicked the door of his bedroom open, and brought me to his bed, carefully settling me on it. Instead of sitting next to me, he knelt on the floor in front of me, taking my hands.
I couldn’t stand the silence, the heavy weight of disapproval emanating from him. “I’m sorry, Rhylan.”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” His eyes flashed up to me, more dragon than male. “I want you to tell me when someone raises a hand to you. I don’t want you to make up excuses and hide it until well after I could’ve done something.”
I could see him physically working to modulate his tone, the patches of dragonhide flowing over his skin in rapid motion. Rhylan closed his eyes again, hiding their stark glitter, and slowly breathed in and out several times.
“What could you have done? We’re in the wrong.”
He raised his head again, brows clenched tightly. “I could’ve rent her limb from fucking limb, to begin with.”
“And be accused of murder and lying about the mate bond? Rhylan…it was better to get out of there than alienate our allies. Maristela wouldn’t…if you murdered her mother…”
“I don’t give a damn about Maristela or her feelings,” he snarled, his control slipping. The cinders in his eyes flared with crimson heat. “I care that Chantrelle drew blood and threatened you. I care that you’d still rather hide from me when something happens than tell me when you’re hurt. Do you not trust me enough, Sera?”
I bit my lip hard. “Of course I trust you. But…I couldn’t risk it. She has us in the palm of her hand now. I’m not worth it, Rhylan, I’m not worth the ill will of an entire House when you need to—”
“Stop.” He put a finger to my lips. “You’re worth what I say you’re worth. I don’t want to hear the words ‘I’m not worth it’ from you ever again.”
“But—”
“Quiet. I would happily drag Chantrelle to the Scar of the World and throw her in without a moment’s hesitation, because I say you’re worth it. And all I want from you—the one single, tiny thing I want—is for you to stop hiding. Be honest with me. For Naimah’s fucking sake, just tell me when you’re hurt or if someone is threatening you, and let me fucking handle it.”
I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat. “This is all my fault…I forgot to tell the Eyrie-Master not to touch the saddle! How can you care about me right now when you…”
“Sera, I am on the edge of losing all control.” Rhylan gazed up at me, steam puffing into the air with every carefully-enunciated word. “If you say that this is your fault, or that you’re not worth it, or any other ludicrous wyvernshit again, I swear to all the gods I will shift right here and now, fly back to Kirion, and I will smear Chantrelle all over her godsdamned eyrie.”
I kept my mouth firmly shut, because I believed him beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“Now. I want your solemn word that you’ll stop all this. Just…fucking…tell me. All right?
I nodded. It was safer than speaking.
“Good. Thank you. I just…” He bowed his head over my hands, still holding them clasped tightly in his own. “You don’t have to stand alone anymore, Sera. The obsessive training, your shoulder injury, not being able to sleep in a bed, now this…I hurt you on our first flight, I know. I didn’t know what else to do to bring you here. But I promised you then that I would do everything in my power to keep you safe, to keep that from happening again. And I want you to promise me that you won’t hide these things because you think—gods, because you’ll think you’re weak.”
He squeezed my hands hard. “It’s not weak to lean on someone. To have someone on your side. I wish I could make you understand.”
“I do,” I said hoarsely. “But I never could before…it’s so hard now, Rhylan.”
“I know.” He looked up at me again, mastering himself. “One step at a time. Just tell me. That’s all.”
He leaned in, his lips brushing mine in a feather-light stroke. I wanted to promise. I wanted to give him every assurance that I would do exactly as he asked.
But I had never had friends. I had never relied on someone outside my bloodline.
And to show any soft underbelly, to give in to the desire to let a dragon fight my battles…I had always sworn to myself that I would never let anyone but a mate glimpse the fear and weakness within me, but…
But the lines had become so blurred. Every day that I spent here, letting Rhylan past my defenses, was another day that they saw the things I had always strove to hide behind an impenetrable mask.
Now that mask was long gone, and there was no going back.
And I no longer knew who was behind it.