The Dragon King and I (20 page)

I could feel his tongue there as he consumed the tiny droplet, and then his mouth traveled across my own. A slow, drugging trail, that stole all complex thought from my head and left me reeling in a sea of sensation. The need for tears vanished as quickly as it had arrived, and finally Sam cocked his head to one side to regard me levelly.

“This spell,” he began, “Isn’t just about you. It isn’t a spell to cure a curse. It’s a Second Chance. A new beginning.” hesitant, he took a deep breath as if gathering his reserves. “You say you want a normal life? I can give you that. And by helping you, by giving you my heart, I can also save my people.”

I shook my head, but didn’t look away from him or try to pull back. I was enjoying the way his fingers were massaging my scalp and the nape of my neck too much. “I don’t understand.”

“A clutch is only as strong as its Alpha, and I’m sick, Alex. My magic is weakening; I’m weakening, and with every day that passes more and more of my clutch is dying in order to keep me alive.”

He went on, and what I heard made my blood run cold. According to Alex the hierarchy of dragons was pretty simple. The strongest dragon was the one who ruled, and if that dragon got hurt then the weakest members of the clutch would begin to fade away, the master siphoning their magic for continued strength and vitality.

“It’s a fallback from the days when there were more of us. When battles were a regular occurrence and we lost many good Alphas through negligence or treachery. It’s a fail-safe, but in my case, it backfired. None of us have a choice about it. My dragon can’t stop feeding from my people any more than they can stop themselves from giving me their lives.”

“This is stupid, Sam. There has to be another way. Can’t you step down or something? Abdicate?”

God. When had I ever expected to use that word in a conversation?

He shrugged, and began working on my arms and hands.

“I have a second in command but I can’t just give him my place. He has to take it. Otherwise the magic won’t recognize him and nothing will have changed. Which is why he has orders to kill me if things don’t work out like they should here.”

“The hell!”

“It’s his right.” He overrode my outrage easily, the steel in his voice brooking no argument. Then his eyes darted to mine in apology. “It was supposed to be that way from the start but Diedric, my second, couldn’t bring himself to do it. Plus I owed Ma—” he broke off and grinned, “—your lovely Godmother a favor. So, here we are.”

“Sam-” I felt helpless and the anguish in my voice reflected it.

“Do you know what it’s like, little Siren?” he said all contemplative, his fingers ever gentle as they worked the salve deep into my skin. “Do you know what it’s like to be a cancer? A growth? A plague to all you hold dear?” My fingers laced in his and I gripped his hands until my knuckles whitened, my own heart breaking when I saw the way his throat worked and his eyes flickered from place to place as he worked to avoid my gaze.

“Because of my status as ruler, I’ll eventually kill every man, woman, and child I’ve ever known. People who once depended on me for protection and safety. All because,” his laugh was bitter and the blue of his eyes looked washed out and dull, “all because I have a mass of tissue in my brain that just won’t, stop, growing.”

This was it.

This was why he couldn’t hold the jar without it reacting to him as if he had an injury.

A brain tumor.

I laughed, but not like it was funny. I laughed because it was all I could do to keep from crying. He had a fucking brain tumor.

Either way; heart or no heart, Diedric or no Diedric, Sam was going to die.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

* * * *

Sam spent the rest of the night making phone calls. He checked in with his second in command and they had a tense conversation out on my balcony that I wasn’t able to overhear no matter my many attempts at the contrary. I paced, my mind picking over all the information I’d received over the last few hours. It was the middle of the night, but neither one of us was tired.

I managed to force myself to eat something, even through the food tasted like dirt in my mouth. The ointment was doing its job and soon I found myself completely healed and ravenous. I also took a shower (heavenly) and changed into a fresh pair of clothes, muttering angrily to myself as I dug through my underwear drawer for a choice that wouldn’t make me feel like a hooker, a stripper, a porn star, or any combination of the three.

Once I felt human again, I put my cell on a charger and listened to the messages I’d missed over the past year. Most of them were from my school and a couple were from my increasingly irate mother. There was only one message from Rachel and it had been the first in the queue. The message began, in typical Rachel fashion

“Thanks for ditching me the other day, trollop.” She snapped. “What’s your childhood trauma anyway? We had a deal babe, and now I have to play tea party with your mother so she can grill me about why your ‘condition’ hasn’t improved.”

I loved how she getting mad at
me.
I wasn’t the one who’d made promises to a crazy middle-aged, southern belle. I was half convinced that my mother still thought that the south would ‘rise again’ so it was no wonder she was tearing Rachel a new one for breaking a promise. Don’t get me wrong, she wouldn’t have gone easy on anyone, but the fact that Rachel was black probably didn’t endear her any either.

“But none of that matters now.” She continued, voice growing tense with excitement. “I found something. Something…shit. You’re probably going to think I’m crazy.” When she spoke again her voice was musing. “Then again, maybe not. Just…just call me back as soon as you get this, all right?”

The automatic voice told me that that was the end of the message and asked me if I wanted to delete it. I saved it instead, and made my way into the living room, Rachel’s enigmatic message fading away to the back of my mind as I began to pace. While the thoughts I’d been holding at bay finally took free reign.

I didn’t know how Sam felt, but personally, I was an anxious mess. There was also a good bit of irrational anger scattered throughout there as well. There was no reason why I should be so upset by all of this. I barely knew the man and his death, no matter how tragic, was necessary. At least as far as he was concerned. He was going to die no matter what and for whatever reason he’d decided to let me benefit from that death. Though why he and Maleficent just hadn’t made plans to have his heart delivered after the fact was beyond me. Why make him help me before hand? Why let me get attached? Why go through all the trouble when they both knew damned well I couldn’t keep him after all was said and done?

The venom in my own thoughts brought me up short, and I stood in the middle of the living room simply staring at the carpet for what felt like the longest time.

It didn’t matter, I told myself.

My feet started moving again.

This was Sam’s decision and if I was really his friend I would honor it.

So what if I’d felt a connection? So what if the spirit Fae had shown him to me? So what if we’d spent a maybe forever trapped beyond the veil? None of that mattered. None of that had any bearing on reality. And, like it or not, the reality was that Sam and I just weren’t meant to be. Even if I hadn’t been cursed and he hadn’t been sick, we were from two different worlds. Hell, he couldn’t even survive on my side for too long without turning into a mega monster. Then of course there was the small issue of us being two entirely different species.

I wanted a normal life. One unaffected by the evils of magic.

So how could I cure myself only to turn around and fall for someone like biker boy? It was crazy. Not to mention stupid. If my mother had believed in any of this in the first place she would have blistered my ears about what a moron I was being.

Speaking of my mother...

At this point I hadn’t just missed dinner. I’d missed an entire year. She probably thought I was dead or working as a prostitute down in Vegas (which had often been a worry of hers for whatever reason). I remember once how I’d spent the night at a friend’s without letting her know and she’d told the police that I’d been kidnapped by a Hispanic and sold to human traffickers. Suffice it to say that Rosalie never spoke to me again after that. Which had been a shame since I’d really liked her.

Anyway, I knew I had to call my mother, but something kept me from picking up the phone. The main something was fear. The rest stemmed from the simple fact that I had no idea what I planned on telling her.

How do you explain something like this?

Then there was Rachel.

We hadn’t spoken since the day she’d come to my apartment to tell me about Madam Clara. Rachel was the only other person who would have noted my absence and I was even more worried about explaining myself to her than I was my own mother.

Not only that, but I’d flunked out of school by now if the voicemails I’d heard were any indication. Thank God Maleficent had decided to keep my apartment paid for otherwise I would have been homeless, too. Or worse. Living with my mother again.

I shuddered.

‘What am I supposed to tell her?’

My thoughts would have probably kept circling one another had Sam’s return not thrown a monkey wrench into the inner cogs of my mind. The sight of him brought everything to a halt and I felt my heart jolted.

It’s been doing that a lot lately. Can’t say that I approved.

Rubbing my chest I perched on the arm of the sofa and watched him steadily as he moved through the living room to the kitchen.

“So? What’d you find out?”

He was making one of his sandwiches, meat on the outside, bread in, and I wanted desperately to correct him but something about the stiff, mechanical, way he moved made me hold my tongue.

“There are only thirty of us left.”

My mouth went a little dry. “As opposed to—”

“As opposed to the thousand who started out the year.”

I did some mental calculations and cursed.

970 people. Dead. All because Sam had stayed beyond the veil for too long.

Here I was agonizing over my mom and Rachel and whether or not I was actually falling for a terminally ill, fire breathing, lizard, and his entire race had just qualified for the endangered species list.

It really put things into perspective.

Sam finished his sandwich but instead of taking a bite, he just stood there, staring down at it. Without looking at me he once again began to speak.

“Diedric will be here in three days.”

My nails dug into the couch but I refrained from getting to my feet.

“Why?”

“His son began to weaken a few days ago and Diedric’s finally agreed to…” he waved his sandwich and juicy bits fell off to plop onto my counter. “You know.”

Kill him.

He was coming to play executioner.

“What about us?” I shook my head to clear it of the fog. “I mean the spell? We went through all of this just to end it now? Without accomplishing anything?” I knew I sounded selfish, angry, but they were the only words that made sense coming out of my mouth. I had no real right to demand anything else.

His people were dying. Who was I to ask him to let them?

Sam looked at me and his voice was pleading, but there was also a thread of anger in his eyes. “Time is running out, Alex. I’ll do what I can, but if the spell can’t be completed in three days then you and your Godmother will just have to find someone else to play sacrificial lamb.”

I blinked at him and he groaned. Setting the sandwich down on the counter he placed his elbows on the island and buried his face in his hands.