Chapter Eight
The laboratory was more magnificent than any I'd worked in before.
Several worktables lined the walls, with a massive one running down the center of the room.
Everything I requested was there and more.
Beakers, burners, jars, tools, and even a shelf full of components.
A work sink sat at the end of a counter against the wall, and the cabinets above contained towels, pots, plates, and mugs.
A small round table with two chairs sat in a corner near the fireplace, and a small bed against the wall next to the table. It was a lab and living quarters.
I lifted my eyebrow at the bed.
“In case you need to rest and don't want to leave the lab,” the King explained.
“Thank you. That was incredibly intuitive of you.”
“There are other alchemists here. I know how they can get with their experiments.”
I set my satchel down on the central table and unloaded the samples I'd taken from Eberein and the armory door. The King came up beside me and set a key down.
I looked from the key to the King. “Thank you.”
“Shall we investigate the second armory?”
“Perhaps I should analyze these first. It may help if there's a trace of rot in the old armory.”
“There shouldn't be.”
“Still, it's better to be prepared.”
“Very well.” He sat down at the dining table and flicked a finger toward the fireplace. The wood waiting there caught fire.
I smiled to myself as I went to gather the equipment I needed. He was showing off. For me. How amusing. Images of the night before came to me, and that same strange shivering rose; this time it filled my chest. I didn't know him, but I was beginning to. Perhaps I even wanted to know him.
No, I couldn't allow myself to get distracted. He was the Dragon King. His interest would fade. I couldn't let him impede my work. A casual affair based solely on sex would have been wonderful, but I had the bad luck to find a Dragon King who didn't want casual sex.
Setting him from my mind, I set about processing the samples.
From studying them beneath a scope to boiling them in different elixirs to note their reactions, I used all the identifying techniques I knew.
My conclusions didn't surprise me. I'd been correct in deducing that this wasn't an organic rot.
The reactions I'd observed pointed toward a magical origin. Magic killing magic.
“You work so smoothly,” the King said.
I flinched, having forgotten that he was there.
“It's as if you were born for this.”
I cleared my throat, unsettled. Generally, I received recognition for my results alone. I didn't know what to do with praise for my technique. “In a way, I was. I was born to alchemists.”
A knock came at the door.
I set down the beaker full of elixir and went to open the door. “Daglor?”
“Hey. I heard you had a new lab, and I wanted to bring you a lab warming gift.” He handed me a cotton pouch.
“Thank you. Come in.” I took the pouch to the central worktable and opened it. “Tybor tea? Thank you!” I lifted it to inhale the scent of citrus and black tea. “I've missed this.”
“I thought you might—oh, fuck! Your Majesty, I didn't see you there.” He bowed.
“Hello, Head Archivist. I didn't know you were friends with Master Sevarin,” the King drawled.
“I, uh, grew up in a village near his,” Daglor stammered. “Sire, did you find what you were after in the books I brought you?”
“Not exactly what I was after, but something interesting.” King Falken straightened in his seat. “Have you ever heard about a sealed off armory?”
“Not beyond the one you had sealed today.” Daglor frowned.
As they continued to speak about Sconheit history, I went to the sink and pulled a kettle from the cabinets above. After filling it with water, I lit a burner and set the kettle on it to boil. Things got quiet as I opened a cabinet to get out some mugs.
When I shut the cabinet door, Daglor was gone. “Where's Daglor?”
“He went to find another book for me that he thinks might be helpful.”
“Ah.” I returned to my work while the water heated.
The King went silent, but I could feel him watching me. If only I could tell him to leave. But although it was my lab, it was in his palace. Despite his lurking, I achieved success.
“There!” I lifted a beaker of bubbling blue liquid. “I believe this will reveal the rot before it becomes dangerous.”
The King stood up and went to take the whistling kettle off the burner. Then he lifted an eyebrow at the liquid. “What is it?”
“An alchemical reagent to reveal rot even when it is still beneath the surface.” I shrugged. “I won't be sure of its effectiveness until I test it.”
“How will you know what to test it on?”
“That's a good question.” I poured the reagent into a glass bottle and capped it. “Are there more iron chairs in the garden?”
The King chuckled. “Yes, many.”
“Then I'll start there.” I joined him at the counter. Ignoring the way he watched me, I took a few pinches of tea and put them in the kettle to steep. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes, it smells nice.”
“It's made in my home village, using the oranges grown in the region.”
“Oranges?” He leaned over to smell the steam rising from the kettle. “Yes, that's what I smell.”
“Orange peel, to be precise. I'll have to ration it.” I tucked the pouch into my inner jacket pocket.
“You can't find it in Eberein?”
“No, Daglor must have brought some from home. It's only sold at the mountain markets.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“I'm not sharing!”
The King jerked back and held up a hand. “All right.”
I didn't like the way his gaze made me nervous.
It had only been two days, and he was already getting possessive.
That not only made me uncomfortable, but it also made me afraid.
The King said he wouldn't claim me, but acting possessive was nearly the same thing.
I shouldn't have slept with him. Now I knew to stay away from Dragons.
I cleared my throat. “Sharing is a way that Volpers choose a partner.”
“Ah.” He chuckled. “All right. Then you're not sharing your tea with me?”
“I'm being hospitable. Giving you a cup of tea.”
“I see.” King Falken pressed his lips together, but they still twitched.
“It just needs a few minutes to steep.” I turned away.
He took my hand and pulled me to him. “Are you angry with me?”
“No, of course not, Your Majesty.”
“Why don't you call me Falken when we're alone?”
“No, thank you.” I pulled away.
His hand dropped. “Sevarin, you seduced me, remember?”
“Yes, I remember. It was my choice, and it was sex, that's all.” I met his gaze.
“It will always be your choice and mine. It's called consent.”
I frowned.
“Have I given you reason to think I'd force you to do anything?”
“We've had one night together, and yet you're behaving as if we're a couple.”
“No, I'm not.”
“You fought your knights because you thought they were keeping you from me.”
The King cleared his throat and looked sheepish. “Yes, I did that. All right, I have an interest in you that extends past the bedroom. But I don't have an interest in anything non-consensual. If you don't want to be with me again, I will leave you be.”
“You told me you expected me to come to you tonight.”
“I assumed you wanted to, and I said it as a conclusion that I left open for you to rebuke.” He stepped back. “Again, you seduced me, Sevarin. You even told me you were seducing me. I don't think it was unfair of me to assume you'd want to have sex again.”
“No, it wasn't. And I would like to have sex with you again. But not if you're going to get possessive. I don't belong to you.” I went to sit at the dining table.
The King joined me, taking the other chair.
His brow was pinched and so were his lips.
“I don't want to possess you. You're a person, not an object.
But I would like to sleep with you—in every sense of the word.
I'd like you to come to me tonight, not because I asked but because you want to.
And I'd like for you to stay until morning.”
My tail twitched and curled around my leg. The King's gaze tracked it.
“Can I say no without repercussion?” I got up and poured two mugs of tea.
“Of course,” his voice followed me.
I returned to the table with the tea and set a mug before him. After I had a steadying sip, I said, “Then, no.”
The King's face twitched. He sipped his tea. Then he blinked. “This is delicious.”
I nodded and sipped more. “No, to the sleeping part. Yes to the sex.”
He looked up, eyes sharp. “All right.”
“I don't want to be your concubine.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“No, you didn't. But I want to be clear with you before this goes further. I'm not interested in romance, and I'm certainly not interested in being tied down to one place. I'm in my wander years.”
“Your what?”
“Volpers have life stages. The first is childhood. Next is our wander years, when we travel the world to see what interests us.”
He leaned forward onto the table. “What's next?”
“After wandering, we find a partner and make a home together.”
“That seems simple.”
“There's more to it. During the wander years, we take lovers, try different types of work, and generally decide what we want to settle on.”
“That makes sense. So, I'm a lover. That means you could decide on me.”
“Doubtful.”
The King burst out laughing. “I should be offended, but instead I'm fascinated. Why do you doubt that we could be good together?”
“Because you're a Dragon and a king. I am neither.”
“And you don't want to be with a Dragon or a king?”
“I don't think it our lives will merge well. Your people have mates, correct?”
King Falken's expression went strange, his gaze intensifying. “Yes. We are drawn to the person who will make us happiest.”
“You have no choice?”
“The Goddess chooses for us. She knows best. But it's always someone we want anyway. There has never been a mated Dragon who denies his mate or bemoans the Goddess's choice.”
I grunted. “So, I could decide on you, and you could decide on me, but it wouldn't matter if I wasn't your mate?”
He grinned. “But if you were my mate, we'd be in an eternal, joyous union.”
“So you say.”
“So my people and my goddess say. You're a man of reason. You like proof. Well, thousands of Dragons have found their mates, and all of them are happy. How is that for proof?”
“You can't possibly know that.”
“All right. I have met many mated Dragons and all of them are happy.”
“Are these Dragons mated to other Dragons?”
“Some are while others are mated to people from other races.”
“And those who mate people from other races are happy?”
“Yes.”
“Are they mated the same as Dragons?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it the same for someone of another race? If your Goddess draws someone from another race to a Dragon, does she give that non-Dragon person the same blessing?”
“Of course.” He looked away. “Although they aren't as bound as Dragons.”
“Aren't as bound? Elaborate.”
“Dragons give their mates a piece of their soul. People of other races can't do that. So when a Dragon mates someone who isn't a Dragon, they don't get a piece of their mate's soul.”
“That leaves the relationship unbalanced.” I leaned back and sipped my tea. “Imbalance is not good. It creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.”
“The Dragon is the only one lacking, and they don't mind. There is no void in him or her.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “There's something you're holding back.”
The King sighed. “The Dragon is bound by his soul and the Goddess. But if the mate isn't a Dragon, they are not bound as tightly. They feel the magic and receive all the blessings it entails, but if they wanted to leave the Dragon, they could.”
“But the Dragon couldn't?”
“I suppose anything is possible, but the separation would cause the Dragon immense pain.”
“Physical pain?”
“No, emotional.”
“I see. And what are the blessings that the couple receives together?”
The King chuckled again. “You're so analytical about something emotional and magical.”
I lifted my eyebrows.
“The blessings are a unity of souls, knowing each other deeply, sensing each other's needs, and a general sense of wellbeing.”
I made a pensive sound. “I don't think I'd like that.”
“What?” The King jerked back and stared at me in horror. “You wouldn't want to be so close to someone that you could literally feel their love for you?”
I considered it, and then shook my head. “No. It sounds tiresome.”
“Tiresome!”
“Yes. Exhausting. It's hard enough to deal with one's own feelings. To have to constantly cater to someone else's emotions sounds like a lot of work to me. I'd prefer a partner who is supportive but not smothering.”
“Smothering?! Dragons do not smother their mates.”
“In my opinion, such closeness would feel smothering. Frankly, I feel sad for you.”
“Dear Gods,” he muttered. “You do not know what you're talking about.”
“I disagree. I think you are the one who doesn't understand.
You've been raised with this divine decree hanging over you.
Your parents want you to be happy, so even though you have no choice in your mate, they call it a gift.
They make it sound wonderful. It's magic from the Goddess!
But they also call it a bond. This so-called blessing binds you to a stranger whom you may or may not want to be with.
Forever. It's worse than an arranged marriage.
At least you could flee an arranged marriage.
But you can't run away from divine magic. If you try, you suffer. Now, tell me, where is the joy in that?”
The King gaped at me. “The Goddess isn't forcing us into a marriage of her choosing. Her magic searches Serai for the person who was born to be our mate and then draws us together. The magic knows better than we do. It can see into our hearts and the future. I would rather put my faith in divine magic than choose a person whom I might think I love in the moment, but who later betrays me or falls out of love with me. The Mating Magic ensures happiness not because it forces it on us, but because it knows the people it unites will make each other happy.”
I shook my head. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have threatened your beliefs. This is your fate. Unavoidable. It was cruel of me to shine a light on the way you've chosen to deal with it. Ignore what I said. I wish you luck in finding your mate, King Falken. But I assure you, I am not the one.”
The Dragon King stared at me silently for a few minutes and then sipped his tea. When he set it down, he said, “Only the Goddess knows that, Master Sevarin.”