Chapter 1 #2
Attalus slid from the tangle of bodies easily, his scales still well-oiled from last night’s revelries.
Sore in all the good ways, a mighty yawn clutched his jaw as he stumbled from the dark hall.
In the early morning, the air was cooler but still held the heavy scent of sex and incense.
Over a dozen people still slept amongst the thick shadows and thicker cushions, and he picked his way over a few to find the open arched threshold.
Shuffling into the warm sandstone courtyard outside, Attalus opened his wings to stretch all seven limbs. Elbows, knees, and wing joints cracked pleasingly as his tail slunk lazily behind him.
Another enjoyable evening in Bargarad. One of several cities and towns along the balmy southern coast of the continent, Bargarad and her sisters were a lively mix of dragons, humans, halflings, sirens, and sometimes mantii.
Anything could be procured in her bazaars, from fabric to flesh and everything in between.
His mother had found her human mate here—along with her doom.
Perhaps that’s what Attalus, too, sought in the narrow alleyways and colorful city squares.
Inasmuch as Attalus was ever likely to make a nest, a home for himself, Bargarad was the closest he’d come.
He’d even been trying his hand at investments, buying a stake in his favorite drinking den and the vineyard they kept outside the city.
Anything could be found here, and perhaps that was the reason Attalus had come looking.
Shaking out his wings, he pushed his long dark hair from his face with a huff. This was why he didn’t like early mornings—they lent themselves to philosophical musings he’d no business with.
He tried to take as little as possible seriously. Even before his father, the mad anax, had slain his mother and her human mate and his siblings had fled into the northern wilds without him, Attalus had never been the serious one.
He left that to Araxos, the new anax, and his elder half-siblings. Let them writhe like a ball of snakes for power. All Attalus wanted was a little peace—and a good fuck.
Though there’d been plenty of good wine last night, he remembered most of the activities.
Their party of about a dozen had consisted of mostly humans, with another dragon and a halfling.
Although he lost precise count of how many orifices he’d slid his cock inside, as well as how many cunts and cocks he’d licked, overall the night had been a rousing pleasure.
Attalus found humans delightfully soft. Was that what drew his mother Damaris to her own human?
Karik had been a strong, sturdy man; a sea-salted sailor, with arms the color and strength of rope and a weathered visage from squinting at the horizon.
He couldn’t be called soft save for his eyes, which always looked fondly upon his dragoness and their halfling daughter.
Ugh. Attalus shook his head again and fully unfurled his wings.
It wasn’t good luck to think about fucking and then the dead one after the other.
In fact, he sought the former in order to wipe his mind of the latter.
Even as one of the younger royal diadochos, or heirs, he’d already seen what politics and power games wrought.
Give him a goblet of wine and pleasant company over schemes and politicking any day.
Lay-about his siblings called him. And stalla princeps, prince of grapes.
Just as Attalus wished. No one bothered to include him in their schemes, and no one considered him a threat.
It was the only way to survive on the Droplets.
Not bothering to find his linen kilt, Attalus took a running start before hurtling into the sky.
This establishment was another of his favorites, sitting topside along the cliffs with easy access for winged patrons.
The city fell away below him, the marble and abalone-enameled faces of the buildings glittering in the dawn.
Ships of all sizes bobbed in the harbor while a few already set their bows toward the open sea.
Attalus pointed himself in that direction too, letting the shift take him.
Bones popped and snapped—far less pleasingly than his stretch earlier—as his body elongated and grew.
His two-legged form wasn’t small. Indeed, he was taller and bigger than a human man.
He was even bigger than some of his half-brothers standing on two legs.
But his dragon form was only about twice his man size.
Dragon forms never stopped growing; when his father the mad anax was finally put down at age three-hundred-twenty-nine, he could barely fit through the doors of the great hall.
Araxos, the second-eldest diadochos and certainly the surliest, was massive for his age already.
It’d take Attalus another seventy years at least to match Araxos’s size; yet another reason he was regarded as no threat.
Still, he was plenty big and strong enough to ride the winds. Where his father and brother were big and powerful, Attalus was young and agile. He amused himself doing rolls through the sky, the banner of his tail flowing behind him.
He dipped toward the sea, teasing a pod of dolphins as they cut across the sparkling surface. His stomach rumbled, and he considered plucking a smaller one for a snack but decided against it. If he was going to have to suffer the royal court, he was at least going to eat his brother’s fine food.
Attalus did his best not to step foot on the dragons’ home islands, collectively called the Droplets.
The archipelago included several hundred islands ranging in size; some were mere ribbons of sand, while others, like the fortress capital of Highhome, were vast cities carved into the tuff and sandstone.
Every island, even those that were barely a toe-hold big, had been claimed over the centuries. These nests and homes were guarded jealously; more than one vicious feud and all-out war had been fought over islands barely large enough for a dragon to lay down.
It was prestigious to nest within the Droplets. Even a featureless, lifeless spit of black pumice was highly coveted.
Only dragon kind, or the Savrakae, were allowed on the islands, especially Highhome. No humans, no sirens, no halflings.
A pit of vipers was a more welcoming place.
The shining spires of Highhome thrust from the sea, glinting as coldly as steel and just as deadly.
Between the natural tuff and sandstone of the island and the intense heat of dragonfire, much of the city had been crafted from molten glass and set in intricate, elaborate shapes and patterns.
Gardens of glass flowers, halls of glass statuary, a great glass globe of the world—all of it had been made with Savrakae fire, claw, and sheer stubbornness.
Attalus could see why many found it impressive, but it’d lost its luster for him long ago, stained as it was with so much blood.
He circled before landing on one of the lower levels, hoping to delay arriving to the great hall as long as possible. Even if the messenger who’d found him yesterday had been unequivocal: Attalus’s presence was required for this gathering.
As he folded his wings behind him and eased back into his two-legged form, he couldn’t help wondering what this was about. Perhaps Araxos would finally put all the dragonesses out of their hopeful misery and choose an analeia, a queen consort.
True, becoming queen hadn’t boded well for any dragoness for centuries, yet many still coveted the title.
And many thought him mad for preferring the mixed company in Bargarad.
His talons made delicate tinkling noises on the stone and glass of the palace as he indolently made his way higher.
Preferential as they were to lofty aeries, the dragons had made Highhome as tall as possible, with multiple towers jutting up to defy the sky.
The main and tallest tower, called the Pinnacle, was a maze of staircases and rooms. There was nothing uniform or planned about the palace, as though the builders wished it to feel organic, uncontrived.
What it was, was a headache.
Despite being glass, most of the walls and corridors were too thick to truly see through. So, it was easy to quite literally run into someone.
Attalus smelled his half-sister before he saw her. His talons screeched across the slick ground as he tried to avoid her, but their horns still knocked together dully.
A hot cascade of annoyed breath puffed against Attalus’s face as he ducked to pull his horns loose.
“So you’re here, are you?” asked Chrysanthe.
Attalus smiled with all his teeth. “Far be it from me to defy our beloved anax.”
Leaning forward, Chrysanthe sniffed at him delicately before her nose wrinkled in disgust. “You smell like bad wine and worse whore.”
“I didn’t realize you were a connoisseur of either, dear sister.”
Chrysanthe scowled, making the bronze scales around her face bunch.
The second daughter of their father’s second queen, Chrysanthe was the strongest of her sisters and the least fun.
Bold, brash, and without a sense of humor, Attalus found it difficult to be in her presence and not immediately grow bored.
Attalus had no doubt that Chrysanthe, on her part, fantasized about the day she could personally strangle all her half-brothers—starting with him.
“You’re going to show up like that?” She threw a scornful look up and down his naked body.
Dragons didn’t much care about nudity; of all the races, they were probably the least concerned over modesty, after sirens. Still, there was technically supposed to be some state of decorum within the palace.
Look right and proper to get stabbed in the back.
“I just got here, and there hasn’t been a convenient kilt laying about for me.”