City in Ruins (2 page)

“I’m not looking to mate with you, Stone. I
need you as a voice on the council. A voice for the
dragons.”

After King Raemon’s removal from power, Prince
Cadeyrn had not only gifted me a school, he’d given me the position
of head scribe and a place on the Medeisian council, a chance to be
a voice in our government.

My head shook. “Lochlen, I’d be
ridiculed.”

“Why?” He scowled. “Because you’d be the
presumed lover of a dragon? Is that so hard to imagine?”

My gaze roamed the man in front of me, a dragon
prince in human guise. I’d begun to see him differently after
Raemon’s fall, after we’d died and been brought back by the
pendant. There were days when I felt like my body was too hot, as
if my clothes restrained me, my connection with the dragons
thrumming through my blood.

“I would be honored to be your consort,” I
whispered. “It’s not what you’re asking. It’s what people will
believe.”

“And you care so much for that?” Lochlen
asked.

I stiffened. Truth be told, I didn’t. Rumors
surrounded me. There’d always been misconceptions and truths I’d
had to endure and overcome. First I was the illegitimate daughter
of a noble and a prophesied savior. Then, I was the lover of a
bastard prince, the war trophy of Sadeemian royalty, and the
illegitimate daughter of a powerful government official.
Illegitimacy was the one constant.

My hand fell back to the desk behind me. “Do
dragons do that?” I asked, my fingers playing with parchment. “Take
human lovers I mean?”

Lochlen scoffed. “We don’t view love or mating
the same way humans do. We mate to survive.”

“You love,” I argued. “Feras loved your
mother.”

Lochlen froze, although his foot continued to
sweep the floor. “I didn’t say we didn’t love, but we do mate to
survive. Since we can’t conceive a child with a human, we don’t
normally take them as lovers. It’s happened, but it’s rare.” His
gaze raked my figure. “Always the curious one, Stone.”

My face heated, not from embarrassment but from
the truth of his statement. I dug too deep into a
subject.

“You’re already on the council as the dragon
envoy,” I pointed out, but I knew even as I said it why he had come
to me. He was a dragon envoy in Medeisia, but outside of Medeisia
the dragons were not a favored race. In Sadeemia, I had spoken for
the forest and for the dragons. This wasn’t about local
politics.

Clasping my hands in front of me, I murmured,
“I accept.”

Lochlen inclined his head, his yellow-green
eyes shining. “I told Feras you would. You will do great things,
Stone.”

“You’ll do better things,” I commented. “You
are the phoenix after all.”

Pushing away from the wall, Lochlen stepped in
front of me, his hands finding my shoulders. He squeezed them. “You
were reborn with me, little bird, and you are my rider. The dragons
trust you. Don’t let us down.”

He turned away.

“You realize that, as the consort of a dragon,
not everyone will respect what I have to say,” I said, stopping
him.

He paused. “No, but they’ll respect who they
think you belong to. They may not want to listen to a dragon, in
human form or not, but they’ll listen before they’ll incur our
wrath. The Dracon will always have fear on our side

Another worry nagged at me. “This would make me
unmarriageable.”

Lochlen glanced back at me. “And you want to
marry?”

“No,” I murmured. The words had slipped from my
mouth unbidden, but I couldn’t take them back.

“He won’t look down on you, Stone,” Lochlen
said suddenly. “If anything, it would be the opposite. He respects
the decisions you’ve made to protect your people, the forest, and
the dragons. He’s had to make the same kind of hard
decisions.”

There was no point pretending I didn’t know
what he was talking about. “It doesn’t matter,” I
replied.

It did matter, but it shouldn’t. The prince of
Sadeemia was just that, a prince and an acting king of Medeisia
with a wife and an unborn baby on the way, his alliance with
Henderonia stronger than ever. What he was put him stations above
me and worlds away.

I’d learned that people in power often had to
sacrifice what they wanted for what needed to be done. Lochlen knew
that, and I did, too.

Chapter 2

That night after Lochlen left, the dream came.
It was a strange dream, white mist curling around my ankles before
snaking up my body, enfolding me like a butterfly wrapped inside
its cocoon. The cool wetness soaked me, causing my shift to cling
to my skin, chilling me. I stood outside within the forest. A full
moon bathed me in silver light.

“She’s here,”
the trees chanted.

My frantic gaze searched the darkness. Yellow
eyes stared at me from the bushes, and I clutched my wet
clothes.

“Oran,” I called.

The wolf did not answer me,
but
she
did, the
ethereal woman I’d met in my chamber in Sadeemia. Silveet, Goddess
of the Forest.

Stepping free of the trees, she came to me, her
hair silver, her face young. She wore a dress of flowers and a
crown of thorns, her eyes as silver as her hair. She was different
than the last time I’d seen her, not only in appearance, but in
strength. Her power slammed into me.

My head bowed.

“You fear me,” she stated, her sing-song voice
causing tears of joy to streak down my cheeks.

“You’ve come to me before,” I replied vaguely.
In Medeisia, the gods never came unless they wanted something. In
most cases, the relationship with a god ended in death or
madness.

She glided toward me. “The forest has asked a
lot of you, Drastona. I’ve come to warn you once more.”

We’d had a similar conversation in Sadeemia.
I’d escaped madness then, and I hoped to escape it now.

From the forest another figure emerged. My eyes
widened, more tears spilling forth. This woman was as beautiful as
Silveet, but where Silveet was light, this woman was dark. Midnight
hair fell over pale shoulders, her body enfolded in dark cloth.
Black eyes stared at me.

“Daughter,” the new woman cried. She stepped
forward, and though I wanted to recoil, I found myself eerily drawn
to her. I knew this woman.

“Escreet,” I whispered. The Goddess of the
Scribes.

She moved closer, but remained out of my reach.
The tears that poured from my eyes still came, but they’d turned
inky black, staining my cheeks.

“Daughter,” she repeated. “You will be tested
soon. Do not shun us,” she warned. “Do not turn away from your
gods. The Prince of Sadeemia has taken on new gods. He has done so
to protect his kingdom. You must never do the same.”

She meant Cadeyrn and the ceremony he’d
undergone to accept the gods of Henderonia before his marriage to
Catriona. It had allowed him to marry both the princess of
Henderonia and the princess of Greemallia. Why did that matter now?
Why had the gods come to me?

“He did not disown his gods,” I defended. “He
simply took on more.” He’d done it because I’d suggested
it.

The black eyes watched me. Their emptiness and
the knowledge I knew they held disconcerted me.

“The gods of Medeisia are jealous gods,
Drastona,” she raged. “We have suffered much at the hands of
madness, mad kings, and dragon power. You bring worlds together,
but you must never let those worlds tear us asunder. Your power
comes from us.”

“Even if it means protecting Medeisia?” I
asked.

“Especially if it means protecting Medeisia!”
Silveet suddenly roared. “You are the daughter of more than one
god, including a foreign one. We acknowledge that, and we admire
the god and goddess of Sadeemia, but you must not accept others. We
are a dying country, Drastona. If the Sadeemians rule us, if they
strip the people of their gods, we will cease to exist. You must be
an envoy of the gods.”

Fear crept up my spine. They were right. If
Cadeyrn and his brother remained in power and Medeisia failed to
seat a ruler, then we’d be expected to take on the Sadeemian gods.
If the Medeisian people elected to keep one of Hedron’s heirs in
power, then I suspected Arien would have temples built here,
temples for the God of Unrest and the Goddess of Serenity. I didn’t
know what kind of king Arien was. Our late monarch had murdered his
son. He couldn’t possibly feel gracious toward the
Medeisians.

I stared at the goddesses. “Are you asking me
to turn against the Sadeemians?”

They stepped forward, closing me in. The mist
hugged me tighter, and the black tears choked me.

“There is change coming, little one. Great
change. These forests and ruins are old and sacred. Medeisia is a
land of power and gods. If we lose that, then the people lose their
power,” Silveet intoned.

Escreet’s head rose. “The scribes of Medeisia
were esteemed until the time of Raemon. We ruled behind the king.
This country has begun fading in its ignorance. Keep the history
alive, girl. Keep it alive, and with it, our
traditions.”

A great gust of wind whipped my hair into a
frenzy. The black sky fell toward me, crashing down over my head,
blinding me.

I woke on a scream, my body soaked, a mist
rising off of me. Leaning over the side of the bed in my small
chamber, I vomited. From my mouth, black refuse poured, the black
ink I regurgitated pooling on the floor. I was being
consumed.

Lochlen had asked me to represent the dragons
on the Medeisian council. The goddesses of Medeisia had ordered me
to represent them. Gods and dragons.

My fist found my stomach, and I curled into a
ball. I’d been a part of overthrowing a king only to be asked not
to accept our temporary ruler. Medeisia was a country of gods and
dragons. It was the country that bore Sadeemia. It gave birth to
our twin country because of King Hedron’s power hungry twins. We’d
done this to ourselves, and to fix it I was being asked to fight
the people who had helped us.

Leaning over, I vomited again. More ink, more
fear.

Climbing free of the bed, I stumbled to the
wash basin, stripping my mist soaked clothes and rinsing my body.
Ink washed off of me, and I was grateful that it didn’t mark me.
Maybe the gods understood that I was tired of marks.

There was a standing mirror near a Henderonian
armoire in the corner of the room, and I moved to it. Outside, dawn
arrived, replacing silver moonlight with touches of gray light. My
nude body stared back at me, my growing hair wild around my
face.

Turning, I caught a glimpse of the Falcon
tattoo on my back, the one that reminded me I fought for two
countries. I could fight for two countries, but I was expected to
accept only one.

“When the forest speaks, you
listen,
” the trees called.

A window sat opposite the mirror. I kept it
open because I enjoyed the night air, enjoyed the humming trees and
baying wolves. I was the forest, and the forest was me.

“Talk to the prince. There needs to
be a Medeisian ruler on our throne, one who accepts our powers, our
gods, and the dragons.”

I straightened, my spine rigid. “I am to be
everyone’s voice but my own.”

A
kek,kek
filtered down from the
skies.

“You are to be a little
bird,”
the trees said.

A shadow passed over me in the growing light,
rushing wings sending a blast of air over my body.

“A magnificent survivor,” a voice
said.

Glancing over my shoulder, my eyes met the
beady eyes of a falcon. Ari.

“It was he that called me that,” I
whispered.

Ari’s head cocked. “Then prove him
right.”

“By turning against him?” I asked.

Her wings fluttered. “By serving your people.
Our war isn’t over. King Raemon started it, but now we must fight
to maintain what we could lose if we’re overtaken.” She flew up,
away from the window. “Kye died for freedom. They all did. Don’t
lose sight of what we are fighting for. Not just for freedom from
Raemon, but freedom from all oppression. We did not fight for
Medeisia to lose Medeisia. Five months have passed and Cadeyrn is
still in power. The forest is afraid. The dragons are
afraid.”

“He’s a good man,” I argued, “and a great
king.”

It was pointless. The falcon was
gone.

“He’s a great king who can’t be a
king of Medeisia, little one,”
the trees
said.
“He is destined to rule another
country, another people. That leaves Arien, and he cannot be
trusted.”

My spirit heavy, I turned away from the mirror
and opened the armoire. Donning a tunic and trousers made of dragon
skin, I grabbed a brown scribe’s cloak and pulled it around my
shoulders.

I sought audience with a king. Not as a friend,
but as a diplomat. Cadeyrn, the future king of Henderonia now that
his marriage with Gabriella was annulled, fought the threat of New
Hope. I fought for my people, and my gods didn’t want Cadeyrn’s
brother in power. He may not rule Medeisia yet, but the forest was
right to fear it. Cadeyrn couldn’t remain forever, and when he
left, what would become of Medeisia?