Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
It’s hours later, and I can barely move.
Keir helped me get dressed and then we stole back to our chambers in the lull of the storm before stripping each other down and tumbling into bed again. The ache between my thighs feels deliciously bruised in the best way.
Never a bad thing in this particular case, even if my heart is giving me trouble.
Or maybe it’s only giving me trouble because he’s kissing his way down my arms, as if he intends to pay homage to every single rune he marked me with. The second his mouth touches them, a shiver lights through me, like localized goose bumps.
It’s magic of some sort.
Maybe he wants to remind me of what I owe him.
Stop being so cynical. I close my eyes as his lips skate up my throat. Just enjoy the moment. Pretend… pretend he feels the same way.
“You missed one,” I whisper as he finally comes up for breath.
“No, I didn’t.” He breathes the words into my hair. “Three hundred and forty-three.”
My breath catches. I thought it was just me, but he must have been able to feel them too. For some reason, I feel vaguely naked and cold.
It’s a sense of cold so deep in my bones, it feels as though I’ve been warming myself by the fire for months, only to be shoved out into the blizzard.
Maybe that’s just prescience—a glimpse of tomorrow’s future when I play my hand.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re such a liar.”
I allow myself a shiver. “I feel cold.”
Instantly, his arms are around me. “Then let me warm you.”
“Mmm.” I bury my face in his throat, my arms wrapped around him. He’s so warm it’s like snuggling with a bedwarmer. “When you were trying to convince me to be your bride, you should have led with this.”
“Would it have convinced you to accept my suit?”
I glance up coyly from beneath my lashes. There’s something teasing about his tone, as if we’re just playing make believe. But the look in his eyes is anything but.
“No,” I whisper. “I was there to do a job and steal the Dragon’s Heart. Instead, I failed.”
“Did you?” he muses, his voice rough with the dragon.
Keir rolls onto his side, his amber eyes locked upon me.
I don’t know what he’s thinking. I never do.
He has the kind of eyes that can see straight through you, picking apart all your unspoken secrets, and yet his own are locked away and guarded.
“Can I ask you something?” I whisper, our faces mere inches apart.
A smile curls over his mouth. “Always.”
My focus shifts to his mouth. “Why do you want the cauldron so badly?”
I need to know.
Instantly, tension skates through him. It strips the past few hours away from us; once again we’re on different fields of the game board. “What do you mean?”
“You said you wanted me to find the horn, but you never told me exactly why you want to get your hands on the cauldron.” I’ve been distracted. It’s the only excuse I let such an important fact slip under my guard.
Keir pushes upright, the sheets falling into his lap. Shadows play over his face, and his hair falls forward, half obscuring his eyes. “You never asked.”
Grabbing the sheets, I haul them up around my breasts as I sit up too.
Maybe it’s the timbre of his voice or the fact he didn’t directly answer me, but something tells me this conversation is not one I want to hold naked.
Dragging a pillow behind me and propping it against the wall, I face him. “I’m asking now.”
Keir hauls a knee up to his chest, resting his arm on it. Ancient eyes examine me. “I don’t want to find it. I need to find it. Before someone else gets their hands on it.”
“It was washed into the sea,” I point out. “Maybe no one will find it.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “It will be found. It has its own part to play in the future.”
“Tell me,” I whisper.
He leans back against the window, his arms crossed over his massive chest. “I guess the story starts with Calliope.”
Calliope. I hug my knees to my chest. I don’t know what she has to do with—
His expression hardens. “Calliope told you she could trace her bloodlines all the way back to Queen Mab.”
A breath eases out of me. “She said there was a treaty between the King of the Dragons and Queen Mab, forged by a marriage between them.”
His lashes shield his eyes. “There was. The fae feared us for our power. There was rumor of war. We could all sense it in the air and see it spun to life in our dreams. It was coming, whether we liked it or not.
“And so King Vorvane gave Mab his word there would be peace between our kinds. There was a child born of their union—”
“Princess Igrainne.”
“Half fae,” he whispers. “Half dragon. But it was the dragon side that was submerged within her. She held the power of the stars in her blood but she couldn’t touch it. And she wanted to.”
There’s something about the way he says her name. “You knew her.”
“I knew her.” He looks at me. “I was a dragon prince, and she was the daughter of my king. We were of an age, and it was expected….” He considers how best to use his words. “We were betrothed from the moment she was born. I was three years older, so we grew up together.”
There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know what he’s going to say, even before he says it. It feels like being a long-ago voyager, charting your map and knowing what lives in the seas ahead. Here lies dragons…. “You loved her.”
“Of course I loved her. She was beautiful and wild and headstrong. She was promised to me from the cradle, and yet, she yearned for adventure. She hungered for power, and I was not her path to power. When they spoke of her father, you could see the fury in her eyes. Her mother whispered poison in her ear every day of her life, and Igrainne wanted his crown. She played me like a fool.”
Keir sighs and sinks into a chair. “We were mated, and there was… a child. Arianna.” His eyes grow distant. “She was the most beautiful child that was ever born. She had her mother’s pale hair and face, but her eyes, her eyes were like a dragon’s.”
There’s a lump in my throat. He’d had a child. A daughter. And he loved her.
I often think of what that would be like, to have a father who loved me.
A father who would protect me before anything else.
I can see it in Keir.
He’d have moved mountains for a child of his own. He’d have slain armies and set fire to the world if it tried to harm her.
“What happened?”
He jerks out of his reverie. “Igrainne killed her father and ate his heart. It woke his power within her—the power of a dragon queen. But it disturbed the others, for they felt she was her mother’s creature, and Mab could not be trusted.”
“And you?”
His mouth twists. “I knew Mab could not be trusted. I wasn’t even certain if Igrainne could be by this stage.
Our mating was beginning to sour. I had suspicions…
. And she could be spiteful, willful, and her fury at times was all encompassing.
But what was I meant to do? My love for Igrainne grew strained, but Arianna…
. She would curl her little finger around mine and I could not walk away.
“In those days there were seven kingdoms of dragonkind ruled over by the High King. I was the ruling prince of Tarronais, mated to the new High Queen. But the other princes wished to treat with me. They were concerned about Igrainne’s growing need for power.
They urged me to take Arianna and run.” His lashes shield the pain in his eyes.
“But Igrainne was her mother. And while I wondered if I could trust the woman she was becoming, I knew Arianna loved her. When Igrainne walked into the room, she was the whole and center of Arianna’s universe.
I could no more steal her away from her mother than I could cut off her hand. ”
He leans forward, clasping both hands together.
“I let myself be blinded to the truth. Arianna became all I could see. By this stage, Igrainne and I had separate chambers. I knew she had other lovers. She’d forged an entire guard of powerful males in their prime, and they catered to her whims. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but if that was the price I paid to be with Arianna, then I would pay it. ”
All I can taste is ash in my mouth. If there’s one thing I know well, it’s blackmail.
What would you do for the safety of your soul?
What would you do for a child you love?
There’s a horrible suspicion in my chest. This Igrainne sounds as though she was cunning and manipulative, and I know her kind well.
Keir would be a powerful ally, but he’s headstrong and willful himself.
To bind such a prince to your side, you would need to do it with chains so strong they’d never shatter.
I swallow hard. Arianna. It’s always Arianna. “You don’t call her your daughter.”
Tension exists in the hard line of his shoulders, but there’s heat in his eyes when he looks up at me. And pain. “I said she had the eyes of a dragon. I did not say she had my eyes.”
Confirmation. It’s a knife through the heart. I wish I’d been wrong. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs. “There was a point at which I knew the truth. She’d been born nearly a month early, and our mating had not been consummated until the ceremony.
And as I said, Igrainne had her loyal guard, particularly a captain, Theomides.
” His mouth twists. “I would look at him sometimes, and I would see her. And… for all his faults, he loved Arianna too. I knew. I knew in my heart of hearts. I knew. But I was the one who rocked Arianna to sleep. I was the one who fed her goat’s milk when her mother preferred not to nurse.
I was the one who sang her songs and laced my power through her, so she would know a dragon’s magic.
She was my daughter as much as she was his. ”
I go to my knees before him, taking his hand in mine.
There’s a knot in my throat, and it tastes of treachery.
I’ve told myself a thousand times that he knows better than to expect anything else from me. But this…. How do I steel my heart against this?