Chapter 40
Forty
Casimir
“This is taking too long,” I growled under my breath, my fingers drumming on the stone arm of my throne.
“We don’t know how long it might take,” Dirk whispered back. “You knew that going in. Now calm down and focus.”
“That’s like asking a fae to just touch some iron, saying it’s not that bad,” I growled once more.
“Alpha?”
I glanced down in front of me, working to restrain my dragon at the sight of the useless dragon, lord of something or other. Just another one of father’s former admirers, begging for things to return to the way they were.
My dragon stirred, flicking its tail restlessly as we both toyed with the idea of what our most preferred method would be to kill him.
Whatever it took to free us up to focus on Anna.
“Continue with your whining, Lord Farcuahde,” I ordered, gesturing tiredly at the shorter but rather broad-shouldered elite. “I promise I’m not listening.”
A stir ran through the other assembled members of the elite who were sitting in attendance today, but I didn’t care. Only one thing was on my mind, and that was my mate and her safety.
“I should be able to feel her,” I hissed at Dirk. “She’s gotten fainter, not stronger. I know she’s alive, but that’s about it. No emotions, no thoughts.”
No comfort. That was what I longed for the most. That closeness of body and mind that we had shared right after the claiming.
For most of my life I had been alone and content that way. Now, just a few days without this new part of me, and I was incomplete. Almost broken, without Anna by my side. I didn’t want her. I needed her. She completed me, and my dragon and I were both feeling the effects of her absence in our mind.
“Maybe she had to move farther away to find what she was looking for,” Dirk suggested, leaning over slightly from where he stood at my left and back a step. “Focus on this, here and now.”
“Alpha, if I may, I—” Lord Farcuahde started to say before I cut him off with a glare.
“Yes, I know what you actually want, my lord,” I spat, making a mockery of his title.
“You want to change the laws so that you can pay your staff even less than you already do. You want to extend the abusive laws toward clippys to other levels of power as well, all to fatten your own wallet so you may spend more money primping your hair and trying to hide your own … lackings, you pathetic excuse for an ice dragon. I’m surprised your own peers haven’t taken you to task already. Get out of my sight. You disgust me.”
Farcuahde sputtered and stammered, looking around to the audience for help.
I rolled my eyes. Surely he didn’t think those who had put him up to this sham would actually step forward and support him now.
Did he? They were going to hide in the background and avoid catching any blowback.
That’s what people like Mirko or, more likely, Damon did. They got their way by using lackeys.
In the Ice Kingdom, only the strongest come out on top. Farcuahde should have known better.
Apparently, he really is that stupid, I decided, watching him gather himself to speak again.
“Alpha, I …”
I surged down the steps from my throne, grabbing the much shorter Farcuahde by the collar and tossing him clear over the first few rows of seats.
“Get. Out,” I snarled as the hapless elite landed quite coincidentally at Damon’s feet. At least he was smart enough to get the message that I had seen through the charade. Farcuahde would assume he’d landed there by a stroke of good luck.
“All of you. Out now!” I bellowed. My dragon surged forward, and I didn’t hold back. The room shrank rapidly as I grew swiftly in size.
The attending ruling class of the Ice Kingdom headed swiftly for the doors at the back. A few cast back curious looks, but I shrugged it off. They could wonder about the unusual outburst all they wanted.
My care was only for Anna.
“Brother,” Dirk said once we were alone. “That was … unwise.”
“No. Letting Anna go alone was unwise. Letting her out of my sight was unwise. Risking my mate’s life was unwise,” I growled, frost billowing from my snout with every breath as I tried to keep myself under control. “Something is wrong, Dirk. I can feel it.”
“Okay.” Dirk took a deep breath. “But you can’t feel her. So what do you plan to do?”
I looked at him. “Tear the entire kingdom apart piece by piece if I must. But I will find my mate, and I will rescue her. I made a promise, Dirk. I intend to honor it. Assemble a team. We’re leaving.”