Chapter 7 Next
NEXT
We’re lookin’ tight, feeling somewhat rejuvenated, and ready for dinner as my drakes and I take the mirror-portal down from Strom’s tower rooms to the rest of the Old Palace.
Strom has attire for any occasion stuffed in walk-in closets throughout his rooms. I’ve found a stretchy, club-chic plum cocktail dress with strategically placed black lace to wear for dinner tonight, plus gold hoop earrings and flashy gold stilettos to match.
It makes me feel decently like myself. I would have preferred to stay in guardsman leathers, though Strom insisted we get more gussied up for dinner with his Jarl, and I had to agree.
Strom went for his classic color tonight, a dark emerald silk vest with pinstriped charcoal slacks. Including a charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Strom’s sporting two ornate silver and gold men’s dragon-bracelets at his wrists tonight, not to mention a matching torque around his neck.
Bjorn wears his classic color also, black, in a chic but battle-ready tactical sweater and pants, which paste themselves over his rock-solid muscles.
With his hair up in a neat man-bun, he looks like the handsomest S.W.A.T. team member ever.
His only jewelry is his silver dragon-ring from Aesa on his left ring finger.
Mikkel is club casual tonight, in an alluring flat black shirt and slacks combo. His only shine comes from a black snakeskin belt and boots that somehow glimmer copper in the light—delicious when his dark eyes flash.
As bright as Mikkel is dark, Laerke wears white tonight, a sleek cream twill cocktail dress and eggshell stiletto heels. Her platinum-blonde hair is slicked back, with incredible waterfall diamond and white gold earrings dripping from her ears.
Different from the rest of my drakes, Baldur has gone for his wild man look with black leather pants that lace up the sides, plus a long draping necklace of feathers and bird talons. Gods know where he found that in Strom’s closets.
He was going to go shirtless, but I insisted on one, so he artfully draped a white linen shirt around his bare chest, tucking it in the slightest bit so it wouldn’t fall off. It leaves everything of his strong, lean chest and his beautiful blue, white, and silver tattoos bare to the world.
Delicious.
Though the battle up in Magnussen lands was a shitshow, we are technically the heroes of the hour for returning most of our people alive from that craziness, as we enter the massive dining hall where the Eriksson clan family is having dinner tonight.
Plus, we now have the Soulstone; several notable figures from the True Black Dragon Knights and other allies instrumental in the recent battle halt their talk and turn towards us as my mates and I enter the hall.
Silence spreads through the room now, as all heads turn. Everyone was mingling with cocktails, though as we enter now, hands go to hearts all around, as heads soberly nod.
We haven’t bested the Black Dragon yet, but my mates and I have gone through hell and back to get us at least some advantage against the creature.
And it seems everyone knows it, probably via Strom and Bjorn filling in the heads of the True Knights about everything that happened in the cavern prior to the battle.
Though these dragons keep their silence as my mates and I enter the hall, I feel how every one of them was witness to what went down above the Black Rift. Many still sport nasty wounds in various stages of healing, since the battle was only just over a day ago.
Dragons heal fast when we shift, but I see how most of the wounds here have nasty red and black curse-work cutting through their diseased reaches. The work of the Black Dragon, or the False Knights, powered by Lithava and her mates—they’re even curses from the Black Rift itself.
A violent flashback hits me now of watching dragons at the edges of the battle get consumed by the leviathan’s tentacles. Bjorn’s powerful hands catch me, holding me upright as I stagger, as I blink off my sudden PTSD, shaking my head to clear it.
Sober faces watch me throughout the dining hall—and I know everyone here would have died, had I not made a deal with the Black Dragon to save them.
I still don’t know where that deal leads, or how much it’s going to cost me; but I square my shoulders now, knowing there are enemies, and there are enemies.
I understand the Black Dragon is not my true enemy now. Those who wield it are—like my sister Lithava, and the Black Rift, source of the leviathan might that fills the Usurper’s veins. But the Black Dragon is not anymore, even though I know it has to die.
The trouble is, I have to discover just who or what my true enemy is now if we want to stop any of this crazy war assailing us.
“Honorable Hog Skjaldmaer Rikyava Andersen. Be welcome at our fête.” Jarl Jorg Eriksson breaks the extended silence as he comes forward now, offering me a drink. I take it, smelling sweet bourbon in the crystal glass, poured over a large sphere of ice.
I take a cordial sip—as Jarl Jorg takes his gnarled old hand and places it right to his heart. His luminous grass-green eyes bore into me from his lean, wizened face; slim and upright, the Jarl wears a fitted dark grey vest, shirt, and slacks tonight with deep green pinstripes.
A malachite, emerald, and gold dragon-pin is upon his lapel, with a matching gold and green dragon-ring on his left index finger.
I don’t know the meaning of his pin, but I know the honor of his gesture, and his Jarl’s ring.
As this venerable old Jarl stares me down, then silently nods, I know receiving this gesture from him is akin to receiving King Huttr’s highest accolades.
I hand my drink off to Bjorn.
Then, I sink into my deepest bow, going right down to one knee to thank him for his support.
As I bow my head, the Jarl’s old hand caresses my hair. I’ve left most of it down tonight, only braided back a few sections from my face in my own ornate clan-braids.
I feel the old Jarl trace them, understanding that I am the last of the Andersen line, when he has so many young drakes and drakainas to continue his blood lineage. He sighs; there is so much hope and woe, and endless centuries in that sigh it makes me choke up.
I don’t cry, but his ancient benevolence strikes right to my very soul. Moving his hand to my shoulder, he slides it to my hand, then helps me rise.
Jarl Jorg holds my gaze for one last moment before he smiles.
Glancing around my drakes, then at the massive family and allies party, he nods to a few key players.
Then he jerks his chin at my drakes and me, gesturing for us to leave the dining room and head into the adjacent solar where we’ve gone to converse privately before.
A gargantuan dinner is already spread out on three laden side-tables in the gaming hall.
Green and gold Tiffany lamps cast a lovely glow around the vaulted drawing room, as carved dragons coil down every timber and vault all around us, creating a far more intimate setting for our talk than the dining hall.
With us are Strom’s Mormor Annika and his little sister Mathilde, plus two other lovely young women whom I don’t know personally but do know to be Strom’s elder sisters.
Bjorn’s clan is represented by his great-aunt Svanhild Magnussen. She wears tawny battle-leathers and an ice-cat pelt tonight, as if she doesn’t give a damn about fancy, with the towering bulk of Captain Olander Mortensen beside her.
My eyebrows lift as I see them; extending my hand, I clasp arms with the bitchy old Matriarch, then Captain Olander, beyond grateful for them. They both grin as they clasp my arm in turn. I have no time to say anything to them, however, as my own stepfathers crowd in around me now.
Hugging me tight and slapping my back.
My reunion with Trublut Lakkvie, Khosh Harrowsblut, and Vjen Jormunder goes on a long time, though no one says anything.
It’s all tight embraces and hard, loving sighs, as Vjen sets his forehead to mine, and Trublut shakes me by the shoulders before giving me a gargantuan hug.
Khosh grips my nape, kissing me on the forehead and smiling like crazy before he shakes his head at me.
But I don’t get to say anything to my stepfathers before someone else steps in.
I’m surprised to see Mikka Halsbrand before me now, dressed in black battle-leathers rather than any finery. With her all-seeing violet eyes, she stares me down.
Then, she extends her hand, offering me something in her palm.
As she places a little gilded pin in my palm, I take it.
At once, something grips inside me as my throat gets tight.
I recognize it as my mother’s pin, which she would always wear to important occasions.
Little more than a gilded dragon coiled around four bright rubies with a fire-opal in its jaws, it doesn’t hold any magic, but it does for me.
I take it, my tears finally falling, as Mikka watches me.
“For you, Hog Skjaldmaer,” she says as she watches me. “Lithava stole it when she killed your mother at Riksfold. She kept it in her office in the Knight’s compound, as Ruta. So I stole it back. For you.”
“Thank you.” I am quiet, regarding the pin in my hands. I don’t ask Mikka how she found out about my mother’s death and Lithava’s impersonation of Ruta; Mikka was Head Watcher for the Black Dragon Knights, and has figured out things I can’t even fathom with her all-watching eyes.
As I turn the little pin over now, I see the back with tiny, stylized Blood Dragon runes written there. For my darling Rikyava. You are my brightest light.
“Apparently, your mother kept you close to her heart always, when she was visiting with dignitaries, and during social and political functions. I never saw her without it at public occasions,” Trublut says, running a hand down my hair. “I always wondered what happened to that pin. Now, we know.”