Chapter 19
Rally’s wife looks back at me, all innocence. “Your mating stone,” she says again, and not quietly at all.
I throw a panicked look over my shoulder, praying my guards weren’t close enough to hear. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her forehead creases at me as if I’m being daft. “Your sapphire?” She points at the starburst around my neck.
“My…sapphire…?”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “At that size, I can’t imagine it could be anything but a mating stone, right?”
I suddenly feel a bit dizzy.
“Oh, Marta,” I laugh, snatching up her arm in mine, “I had no idea you were so funny. Come inside for a moment and share some tea with me.”
I rush her into the tent like there’s fire at my heels.
Inside, I hold the necklace out to brandish the gem at her. “Is that what this is? Is that what they—the dragons—is that what they call this?”
Marta blinks back at me. “Of course.”
“And its meaning?” I demand, wagging the thing at her.
Her head cants to the side. “That you’re claimed.”
Claimed? “As in betrothed?”
“I suppose.”
I relax a bit. Betrothal bracelets are exchanged in Vasna. Rings are common in Silesh. This pendant isn’t so different after all.
“Except…” Marta begins, and at the quick snap of my head toward her, she grimaces.
“Except what?”
Now she, too, glances toward the tent entrance and my guards outside. “Has no one talked to you about this, Your Highness?”
I groan inside. That “highness” bears all the weight of unpleasant news. “Well, a minister was sent to instruct me…”
She nods and guides us toward a pile of floor cushions. “Abely. I heard.”
“Then you likely heard how he spent his time in Vasna,” I say as I sit.
This she frowns at. “I did, but I have to tell you I had a hard time swallowing it. Not that I don’t believe you. Tilly told me about the minister’s audience with the king.”
It’s my turn to frown. “Tilly wasn’t in the room.” Not for most of the encounter, anyway.
Marta’s mouth twitches. “The girl has good ears.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry Abely represented Tirenth so poorly,” she says, dusting some sand from my cushion.
“You may not know this, but Rally and Ty’s parents left them when they were young, and Abely essentially adopted both of them.
He loves Tirenth and his king. It’s difficult to believe he would do something so reckless without persuasion. ”
I stiffen. “You think someone in Vasna encouraged him to act the way he did?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t mean to offend. I’m only telling you that what I heard didn’t sound like the Abely I know. Soren never would have sent him if that was the case.”
It’s true that Soren doesn’t seem the type to tolerate incompetence. He was shocked when I told him of Abely’s behavior, shocked and outraged.
“Though why the king didn’t assign someone else to you afterward, I can’t say,” Marta says with vehemence.
Then, as fast as a weathervane changing direction, she takes my hand gently in hers.
“About the stone, please keep in mind that I’ve been among dragons for years now, and their blunt ways have rubbed off on me. ”
She looks to me as if waiting for assent. “Of course.”
A nod is given to me, to herself, and finally to the room at large before she says, “The stone is a gift for your first mating, Princess.”
I stare at the woman, her words clanging around my head like a fistful of pebbles thrown into my mind.
First mating.
“It’s tradition,” she continues, “to give the stone directly after.”
My ears start ringing. “Directly after what?”
“Your first mating. Is that not when Soren gave it to you?”
I jerk my hand away and spring to my feet. “Of course not! He gave it to me on the carriage ride from the docks to the palace. We were in plain view.”
She winces. She tries not to, but I see it all the same. Instead of blushing, I go absolutely pale. “Are you saying…?”
“That a dragon would assume your first mating took place in the carriage?” She lets out a sigh. “Yes.”
That’s impossible. “That’s impossible,” I repeat aloud as I begin to pace. “The ride was hardly long enough to accomplish such a—such a thing.”
She props her cheek on her hand. “Have you met a drake?”
“A what?”
“A male dragon. A virile male dragon, I should say. They’re hardly known for patience.”
Now a blush does take hold, and the more I think back, the more it deepens. No wonder Lord Tallin looked at the gem with such significance when I first stepped out of the carriage and met the wyverns. I was announcing to him, to everyone, that Soren and I had consummated in a carriage.
What would my sisters think? Mother would die of mortification if she knew. I’m thinking of doing so myself.
“What do I do with it?” I cry, my hands flying up to cover the thing.
Marta crosses her arms. “Now don’t say it like that. There’s no telling what Soren went through to get it. They dig the stone up themselves, you know. I can’t imagine where he got something that size.”
I sink back onto the cushion. “But I can’t wear something that says so plainly that I’ve done something I haven’t.”
“Most of Tirenth has already seen it, and it’s good that they have. They’ll more easily accept a human queen when she respects their traditions.”
With sudden alarm, I realize that I’ve revealed far more to Marta than I meant to. Everyone is supposed to think Soren and I are two fated flames so wild with desire that we couldn’t wait until the ceremony to be together. The panic must show because she gives me a kind smile.
“Princess, I’m not going to tell anyone,” she says.
“I’m the one who reminded Soren that you’re human and told him he best control himself until after the ceremony.
No one was there to tell Rally, and I thought I’d go mad trying to keep his hands off me.
For weeks, I carried a wooden spoon with me to fend him off. Still do, at times.”
I can’t help a weak laugh. A thought strikes me then, along with a surprising amount of concern over the answer.
“Was I meant to give him a gem when he gave me mine?”
She shakes her head. “No, only females are given a gift for the first mating.”
Of course. Because what are the odds that the act is the male’s first time? Likely none, just as men aren’t expected to save themselves for marriage or their wives. The thought puts me in a dour mood.
“Just so you know,” Marta says softly, “to a dragon, that stone is the same as marriage vows.” She touches the emerald at her throat. “When Rally gave me this, I became his, and he became mine. I’ll never be a dragon, but for just that moment, I felt as if I might fly like one.”
Her words send a jolt of surprise through me.
I felt the exact sensation when I accepted the gem from Soren. I told myself it was the heat causing the strange fluttering that traveled along my limbs, urging me to lift my arms to the skies.
What type of magic makes two different women feel the same thing?
I’m about to mention this to Marta when in walks Soren, still shirtless and bearing an enormous platter of desserts, all of them drenched in chocolate.
Flustered by his appearance and still reeling from embarrassment, I lift the sapphire on its chain and say, “When were you planning on telling me about this?”