Dragons Realm (9 page)

Still, she also knew right from wrong.

There were some things,
some people
, worth stick­ing one’s neck out for. And Ta­tiana Ward was one of them. She hadn’t de­served this, and it would not go un­answered.

For­ti­fy­ing her re­solve, Mina shif­ted her weight be­neath Ta­tiana’s shoulders and pre­pared to lift her, just as a tall, skinny young­ster des­cen­ded the steps.

The boy walked as quietly as a mouse to­ward the Sk­la­vos Ahavi, his curly blond hair re­flect­ing a myriad of nat­ural high­lights in the fire­light, his down­cast eyes brim­ming with curi­os­ity and kind­ness. “Yes, mis­tress Ahavi. How may I serve you?” His voice was as gentle as his coun­ten­ance.

Mina lowered Ta­tiana back to the floor and took a care­ful step to­ward the squire. “Are you Thomas?”

“I am,” he answered re­spect­fully, still avert­ing his gaze.

Mina forced her­self to swal­low her fear. “And you and Prince Dante have a
spe­cial friend­ship
, do you not?”

The boy’s face lit up, and he raised his head, ex­pos­ing bright hazel eyes that seemed to shim­mer with curi­os­ity and in­tel­li­gence. “We do.” The words were merely a whis­per, but Mina heard them just the same.

She nod­ded. “Very well, then can you keep a secret?”

He bit his bot­tom lip and frowned as if think­ing it over. “What kind of a secret?”

Mina looked over her shoulder at Ta­tiana and ges­tured to­ward her battered body. “This kind.”

The boy cringed as he stared at Ta­tiana’s ter­ri­fied, broken form, slumped on the ground like so much garbage. He swal­lowed a lump in his throat and met Mina’s seek­ing gaze. “If nobody asks me a ques­tion, I will not say a word. But, if I’m ques­tioned, I must an­swer hon­estly.” He aver­ted his eyes in a ges­ture of apo­logy. “Even then, I will try to say as little as pos­sible.”

Mina slowly nod­ded.

It would have to do.

“Very well. I need you to help me get Ta­tiana back to my cham­bers, and then I need you to take me to the prince. To Dante.”

Thomas’s eyes grew as wide as sau­cers. “Oh, no, mis­tress. I can­not.
You can­not
. He’s in the throne room with his father.”

She thought she heard a clipped tone at the end of that sen­tence, al­most as if he had spat the word
father
. “I real­ize that I can’t go in the throne room, but I need you to show me where it is. Per­haps there’s an ante­cham­ber or a nearby hall, some­where I can wait for Dante?”

The boy wrinkled up his nose and looked off into the dis­tance, think­ing. “There’s a stor­age room, just bey­ond the back en­trance, but again, I don’t think you un­der­stand: King De­mitri would…” His voice trailed off.

Mina raised her eye­brow and waited. “
Well?
He’d what?”

He squared his jaw. “He’d kill you if he found you.”

Mina was wait­ing for the catch, the con­tin­gency, the ex­plan­a­tion that she knew must be com­ing, but there wasn’t one: The king would kill her if he caught her ap­proach­ing the throne room? Without ask­ing ques­tions first? She cringed. Some­how, she knew the boy was telling the truth. It was as if he had some per­sonal ex­per­i­ence with this side of the king. “I un­der­stand,” she whispered. “Just the same, my friend may be dy­ing, and I need Dante’s help. Will you take me to this stor­age room or not?”

Thomas stared at Ta­tiana, who was now shiv­er­ing un­con­trol­lably on the floor, and slowly nod­ded his head. “Okay.”

Mina sighed with re­lief. “Thank you.” She ap­praised him from head to toe then—he had to be at least five-foot-seven, and al­though he was thin, he had wiry, ad­oles­cent muscles. He was prob­ably far stronger than she was. “Can you help me get Ta­tiana up the stairs?”

He nod­ded im­me­di­ately then. “Of course.”

He stepped for­ward, slid an arm around Ta­tiana’s waist, and began to lift her off the floor, even as she cringed in pain. As blood seeped through her night­gown, and her head lolled for­ward, Thomas the squire took the brunt of her weight on his slender shoulders and began to half drag, half carry her up the stairs, and Mina slowly fol­lowed.

“Oh, by the way,” Mina whispered, pla­cing her hands on Ta­tiana’s back to steady her. “I’m Mina Louvet.”

Thomas glanced over his shoulder and angled his chin. “I know.”

Chapter Seven

“
I
am go­ing to
levy an ad­di­tional prop­erty tax in the
com­mon­lands
, noth­ing op­press­ive to the farm­ers or the mer­chants, just enough to in­crease the num­ber of guards at the en­trance to the state. And I would like to build sev­eral small, armed gar­ris­ons in Forest Dragon, posts that double as toll­ways between one province and the next, in or­der to try to ad­dress the il­legal slave trade, which still re­mains out of hand. The tolls will provide ad­ded pro­tec­tion for the wo­men and chil­dren be­ing sought by the shad­ows, and if we can mon­itor who comes and goes across the bor­ders, per­haps we can fer­ret out who is be­hind this costly, il­legal activ­ity.” King De­mitri Dragona sat back on his red vel­vet throne and leaned to one side, bra­cing a mus­cu­lar arm against a golden sup­port. “Dante? Are you listen­ing?”

Dante Dragona re­garded his father—
and his king
—cir­cum­spectly from the bot­tom step of the plat­form, just be­neath the royal dais. “Yes, Father,” he mur­mured. He straightened his back to demon­strate his at­ten­tion, even as his eyes swept over his father’s purple-and-gold bro­cade robe and the golden crown, in­layed with enough jew­els to build fifty gar­ris­ons in every province, rest­ing snugly on the king’s head. He eyed the two fear­some Malo Clan guards, now perched at his father’s side, cap­tain and lieu­ten­ant, and shivered. Each male stood at least seven feet tall and would die without hes­it­a­tion for the same Dragona ban­ner that had en­slaved their an­cest­ors nearly eight cen­tur­ies past. They were a bar­baric race of muscle-bound hea­thens who could fight like demons, en­dure im­meas­ur­able suf­fer­ing like her­oes, and die like love-stricken brides wel­com­ing their long-lost hus­bands. All without cry­ing out for mercy. And just why King De­mitri in­sisted on hav­ing the bar­baric sentries be­side him, even for private fam­ily meet­ings, Dante couldn’t say. It was as if the king ac­tu­ally feared his own sons, when he had no reason to do so.

None at all.

“Very well,” King De­mitri drawled lazily, “then look like it, son.” He turned his at­ten­tion to Drake and sat straighter in his chair. “Now then, Prince Drake, have you cal­cu­lated the fig­ures I asked for, de­term­ined what per­cent of farm­land hold­ings should be taxed as op­posed to store­front leases and mort­gages?”

Drake cleared his throat and began to speak, but his voice drif­ted off into the ether as Dante con­tin­ued to con­sider the dy­nam­ics of his fam­ily and the cur­rent state of the Realm: Al­though he and his broth­ers had not al­ways re­spec­ted the king as a man or a father, while they may have even re­sen­ted his cruel, sad­istic treat­ment of them grow­ing up, to say little of his heavy-handed con­duct with his sub­jects, Dante could not deny that he re­spec­ted the male
deeply
as a king.

As the su­preme dragon of the Realm.

Sure, as a child, Dante had hoped—as all chil­dren do—that one day his father would re­cog­nize him in some in­dul­gent, pa­ternal way, that the tyr­an­nical les­sons and harsh beat­ings would some­how come to an end, and Dante would be wel­comed into De­mitri’s in­ner circle of trust as an equal. In truth, he had loved his father deeply, but time had a way of bring­ing things into much sharper fo­cus—and boy­hood fantas­ies had a way of evolving into adult­hood real­it­ies. Child­ish hope gave way to ma­ture ac­cept­ance; ju­ven­ile dreams gave way to reasoned ob­jectiv­ity; and over time, Dante had come to un­der­stand ex­actly who and what De­mitri Dragona was…

And was not
.

No, he was not a lov­ing father.

And no, he was not a pa­tient or kindly king.

But he was an an­cient, prim­or­dial dragon, the eld­est of their kind, and at 269 years old, he was the only dragon in the Realm who could fully shift into pure
drago­nian
form, at will. As it stood, Dante would not reach the
age of mat­ur­a­tion
for an­other thirty-one years; Damian still had fifty-one ahead of him; and Drake still had fifty-four. Con­sequently, King De­mitri Dragona was the single force that held the Realm to­gether and kept their en­emies at bay. He was the only creature power­ful enough to in­cin­er­ate an en­tire vil­lage in one fell swoop, turn the ocean tides into a ra­ging sea with the flut­ter of his wings, or bury a city block be­neath a crum­bling crater with the simple wag of his tail. In short, he was death on wings if he chose to be: fire, ash, and fury at will.

And he was all that stood between the four provinces and the hordes of con­quer­ing Lycani­ans, shifters who lived across the rest­less sea.

Dante shif­ted his weight from one foot to the other and drew in a deep breath as the truth of that state­ment sank in for the hun­dredth time: De­mitri Dragona was the sov­er­eign king of a land that could ex­plode into chaos and vi­ol­ence at any mo­ment, simply be­cause it housed so many sav­age, bru­tal, and power­ful in­hab­it­ants. If his laws were not obeyed, if the shad­ows or the war­locks were to rise to even­tual power, if the sheer num­bers of sub­jects were to unite and stage an or­gan­ized up­ris­ing, then it was King De­mitri Dragona who could rees­tab­lish or­der. And while each of his sons played a crit­ical role in main­tain­ing the Realm’s del­ic­ate bal­ance—while each would rule his own dis­trict, sus­tain life, en­sure prosper­ity, and main­tain law and or­der—De­mitri was the paste that held it all to­gether.

The mere threat of his fury in­spired obed­i­ence and awe.

The king cleared his throat in an un­usu­ally coarse fash­ion, and Dante’s eyes shot back to the throne. “Dante, did you hear a single word your brother just said?”

Dante cast a side­ways glance at Drake, as if he could some­how in­tuit the crux of the con­ver­sa­tion from his brother’s ex­pres­sion, and frowned. “I’m sorry, Father. I was—”

Just then, there was a loud bang from be­hind the east­ern wall of the throne room, a sud­den crash of crates or boxes, and the shuffle of small feet stum­bling to re­gain their pur­chase.

A dragon’s hear­ing was highly acute.

“What the hell was that?” Damian snarled, even as the Malo Clan guards stood to in­stant at­ten­tion.

“In­deed,” the king said, in­stantly for­get­ting his nit-pick­ing with Dante. He flicked his wrist in the dir­ec­tion of the sound, in­dic­at­ing the private back en­trance to the throne room, and both guards im­me­di­ately headed in the dir­ec­tion of the clamor.

Dante, how­ever, did not need to wait on the guards’ re­port.

He had fed from one of the Sk­la­vos Ahavi.

He had tasted her blood and con­sumed her heat.

And now that he was aware of an in­truder,
he could smell her from
here.

Mina Louvet.

*

Mina stared through the nar­row pee­p­h­ole in the cramped, dusky stor­age room, eye­ing the elab­or­ate throne room with its ex­tra­vag­ant, or­nate fur­nish­ings and listen­ing as Prince Drake ex­plained in minute de­tail how he in­ten­ded to ap­ply the new tax in the
com­mon­lands
, ac­cord­ing to the king’s be­hest. While she couldn’t make out every word—she was far more con­cerned about how she was go­ing to get Dante’s at­ten­tion and tell him about Ta­tiana—any fool with eyes could read the royal dy­nam­ics between fam­ily mem­bers as they played out in the hall.

King De­mitri was an in­tim­id­at­ing fig­ure to put it mildly. He looked like he could maim or kill with noth­ing more than a crook of his eye­brow, yet his ac­tions ap­peared al­most rote, as if he were a duty-bound king simply go­ing through the mo­tions, per­haps bothered by in­som­nia and en­ga­ging his sons in the middle of the night for lack of any­thing bet­ter to do.

As if the ex­tremely late hour was ir­rel­ev­ant.

Prince Drake looked far more alert and awake, like he lived to please his father, like he lived to serve the Realm, and he was ex­ceed­ingly fo­cused on provid­ing the king with clear, de­tailed in­form­a­tion. Damian, on the other hand, was vis­ibly ir­rit­ated—per­haps at be­ing summoned in the middle of the night?—and Mina’s stom­ach churned, even as bile rose in her throat, as she stared at the cocky son-of-a-goat, strut­ting like some sort of over­blown pea­cock at the bot­tom of the dais. She shivered at the malice in Damian’s dark brown eyes. His de­cept­ively hand­some face barely con­cealed his dis­dain or his in­ner rage. Just the same, he gave his father a fair modicum of at­ten­tion and re­spect, or at least the ap­pear­ance of the same. In fact, if Mina hadn’t thought him in­cap­able of the emo­tion, she would have spec­u­lated that Damian’s base mo­tiv­a­tion was not re­spect at all, but fear: The dragon prince was ter­ri­fied of the power­ful male on that throne, and he prob­ably re­sen­ted the hell out of hav­ing to sup­plic­ate him­self to a clearly su­per­ior dragon.

She turned her at­ten­tion to Dante, un­able to stom­ach an­other mo­ment of star­ing at Damian’s face, and her in­sides turned over again, this time, from an en­tirely dif­fer­ent set of emo­tions: a mix­ture of fear and in­tim­id­a­tion, curi­os­ity and…in­trigue?

She shook her head to dis­miss the thought.

The king’s eld­est son was be­ing ap­pro­pri­ately re­spect­ful to his father but per­haps a little too re­served. Un­der fur­ther scru­tiny, it ap­peared as if he was tun­ing the en­tire dis­cus­sion out, pre­tend­ing to listen and pay at­ten­tion, while bid­ing his time to…exit the cham­ber? Go back to bed? Mina had no idea. She only knew that Dante looked like someone who had be­come bored with the whole mono­ton­ous pro­cess, oh, maybe about five dec­ades ago.

She was just about to lean in closer, try to fig­ure out where, when, and
how
she could get Dante’s at­ten­tion the mo­ment the meet­ing was over, without at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of the oth­ers, when a huge furry rat dove from the top of a dusty shelf right at the cen­ter of her chest. Des­pite her need for cau­tion, she leapt back­ward, swat­ting at the vile creature to keep him from bit­ing her on the chin, and the stor­age crate she was stand­ing on turned over with a clang.

As it crashed into a smal­ler set of boxes, all lined up neatly be­neath her on the floor, she scrambled to re­gain her foot­ing, and the pile of con­tain­ers rattled to­gether, caus­ing a ri­dicu­lous
and loud
ruckus. “
Holy Spirit Keep­ers!
” she yelped in a hushed whis­per, shov­ing her hand over her mouth to keep from cry­ing out. She had to get out of there,
now
! She would have to do some­thing else for Ta­tiana, find a dif­fer­ent way to help her friend. As it stood, she had just placed them both in in­creas­ing danger.

She spun on her heels, mov­ing faster than she had ever moved be­fore, reached frantic­ally for the sooty brass handle on the stor­age closet door, and al­most jumped out of her skin. Stand­ing dir­ectly in front of her, like a moun­tain of muscle, bone, and grim de­term­in­a­tion, was one of the huge Malo Clan guards, a gi­ant with a fear­some, an­gu­lar goatee, and in her for­ward mo­mentum, she slammed right into his chest.

Mina screamed.

She couldn’t help it.

And as she back­pedaled to get away from the sen­try, she tripped over the over­turned crate, caus­ing an even greater racket.

Mother of Mercy, could this get any
worse?

She tried to duck around the enorm­ous male, to dart out of the room, but the guard caught her ef­fort­lessly by one arm and scooped her up like she was noth­ing more than a sack of fresh pro­duce. He hois­ted her so high that her feet left the floor, and then he simply lowered his arm and dragged her be­hind him, caus­ing the tips of her toes to sweep against the floor like the quills of a broom, leav­ing an ob­vi­ous path in their wake.

Mina twis­ted and screamed to no avail, try­ing to break free.

She wrenched at his fin­gers, try­ing to un­curl them from her arm.

She even con­sidered knee­ing him in the groin or punch­ing him in the gut, but her com­mon sense fi­nally kicked in, and she thought bet­ter of it—this male could crack her skull like a wal­nut if he chose to. He could slam her up against the nearest wall and crush her back. Hell, he could give up on her arm and drag her by the hair, nearly scalping her in the pro­cess.

The grue­some pos­sib­il­it­ies were end­less, yet they all yiel­ded the same res­ult…

Mina could not get away from a massive Malo Clan guard, not in the best of cir­cum­stances, and be­sides, her pres­ence was already known by the king.

She thought about what Thomas the squire had told her, and she cringed. She could only hope that her status as a Sk­la­vos Ahavi would buy her some re­prieve, that maybe,
just maybe
, Dante would have mercy on her and enough in­flu­ence over his father for that mercy to mat­ter.

She could only pray that the gods would in­ter­vene.

Be­cause as it stood, both she and Ta­tiana were as good as dead.