Chapter 27
KIEREN
My dragon’s irritated already when I land in Cloud Rift. It’s been almost a week since I’ve been here. Almost a week since I almost picked Raine up by her shoulders. The castle smells of human men, and I can’t pick up any of her scent.
“Leopold?” There’s a robe next to the portal. Because the ancestral knows I won’t have bothered to change at the Crest Wing portal. It’s not necessary this time of year. The blustering winds around the mountain keep aren’t worth the effort of shifting at the edge of the portal.
There’s a push at my skin. “Leopold?” I tighten the belt of my robe and march down the hallway.
“Sir?”
“Where is she?” My voice echoes around the atrium.
“She’s not here,” Leopold says, his light crystal-green eyes piercing through me.
The mark down my spine itches. It never itches.
I’m about to growl at Leopold when Evander clears his throat behind me. “I’m waiting too.” He holds up a glass of Dragon Ale for me. “Come on, prince. Let’s have a drink.”
My eyes flick to the glass, then to Evander. The shimmer of brown liquid has gotten him through too many candidates. Too much back and forth. I’m done. She’s got to be the one. Why else would my mark itch? “I’m good. I need to shower. Forgive me, Leopold. I shouldn’t raise my voice. Where is she?”
“Roark took her to Zurich. The men were here today to install the cabinets.”
“Good.” I breathe in, searching for the faint lingering scent of thyme and chamomile.
I page through my memories. Have I ever cared about another male being around a candidate as much as Raine?
Yes, no. It’s been too long, too many women to count, too many years.
“I’m showering.” I pivot and head up the stairs.
But Evander’s steps thud behind me, bouncing and thudding as if he was in his scales.
I open the door to my suite, leaving it open behind me.
I drop the robe and march through the sitting room into the en suite bath.
I flick the water on to scalding and step in.
The water tries in futility to wash away the stress and dust of Crest Wing.
If I could stay on Earth and never go back there again, would I?
Some days, yes. Most not. My dragon craves the power from our realm.
I rest my head against the marble wall.
“That bad?” Evander sits on the corner of the sink, his empty glass clinking to the stone counter next to him.
“My parents.”
He nods. Because this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation, and it won’t be the last, I’m sure. “Could be worse. Your parents could be like mine.”
“What, supporting and funny?”
“That’s your take. But I guess that’s one way of looking at them. They’d have made shit royals, though.”
“I’m not sure that’s even the problem with them. They could have just asked—”
“Kieren? They did ask about ten years ago. Or did you forget? It was after we were taking a break from candidates. They asked to throw a selection ball.”
I straighten. “They weren’t being serious.”
“Maybe not your dad. But your mum was. The queen’s had enough of this. We have to.”
“Raine might—”
“She might be. My mark aches when she’s not around. But I’ve heard that can happen when you make a decision to stop with candidates. You start grasping at straws.”
“You think Raine is a straw?”
“She’s a damn fine straw if she is one. Fuck, if she wasn’t human, I’d say forget the fates and ask her to be ours.”
I turn the shower off and grab the towel that Evander throws me out of the air. “But she is human and we can’t. Only fated thunder mates can enter the realm if they’re not dragons.”
“Yes.” He tips back his empty glass. “So we don’t go to the realm.”
My dragon pushes at my skin. The prick likes the power surge we get in the realm.
“Yeah, my beast thinks that’s a shitty idea too.” Evander sets the glass down on the counter again. “But you know what’s an even shittier idea?”
“A selection ball,” I say and finish drying myself off. I put on a suit. I have no idea what time it is here. The time shift requires a formula and a bit of calculus to predict it. Two things I’m not using when I can look out the window.
“Exactly, and if your parents don’t let Aisling finish at the academy? And keep her locked up in her chambers?”
“She won’t find her thunder either.” I pull on shoes and retrieve my phone from the dresser where Leopold places it when I go through the portal. I’m not ready to step back into my Earth business duties. Not yet.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve tried to convince them that by not having her at the academy, they are signaling that Crest Wing has something to do with it not being safe. They don’t get it. It’s like flying into the side of the mountain with them.”
“It might not matter. Raine might be the one.” Evander moves with me into the sitting room of my suite.
“She might be. But—”
“We give candidates six months because it can take that long for the marking to appear on a human.” Evander crosses his ankles, his legs stretched out between the chair and the sofa.
“True, but the Elderglen thunder that—”
“They found their mate while visiting Las Vegas, and her marking appeared instantly—without the ceremony—yes. My mother has brought that up more than once. Every time I go home, in fact. But that’s not us.
Or rather, that’s not you. Can you imagine having our mate in the castle and sending her on her way after a few weeks? ”
“We’ve sent candidates away that quickly before.”
“Yes, but not many, and just ones who wanted to go. Ones who were clearly not suited to us, nor us to them.” Evander puts his arms behind his head and closes his eyes.
“And I’ve never had my marking ache like this.
There have been a half-dozen times since my lightning.
The moment I was tied to Evander, once in battle, and another time in London when all three of us felt it. We all felt it, but then it vanished.”
“Right, well, Raine’s never been out of America before now, and she would have been a child then anyhow.”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert at things like this.”
“I’m no expert at markings.” I’m the same as Evander.
There have been only a few times my markings flared.
The first week at the academy when Evander took a turn down the wrong hall and ended up in Crest Wing instead of Elderglen’s dorms, the lightning dropped us both to the floor.
My father, the king, wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy that my thunder mate was an Elderglen, and more so that he’d woken from his lightning before I had.
Then the next year, after we were taken out of the first-year corral and moved to the upperclassman dorms, Roark was in our flight class.
It’s the only time I’ve seen him pass out.
We don’t talk about the other time.
Our phones buzz at the same time. Evander has his out already. “Roark’s back with Raine. They’re coming through the village now.”
We’re shoulder to shoulder, thudding down the main stairs.
“You’re sure you want to greet her in the parking lot?” Evander asks.
“I need to talk to her about what happened. I’ve been stewing for a week. I can’t wait any longer.”
“Right.” Evander leans on the fender of the Rolls.
“What?” I cross my arms over my chest. It’s a nice night, mercifully warm compared to the middle of winter back home.
“Don’t fuck this up.”
“How could I fuck this up?”
“I think you might want to reevaluate that question,” Evander says.
The town car crushes the gravel as Percy parks next to where I’m standing. I open the door.