The Dragon's Queen (Dragon Lords) (2 page)

Var Royal Palace,
Eighteen Years Later…

Prince Attor
of the Var smiled at Lord Myrddin from across the inner courtyard of the palace where they had come to dine away from the king’s hall. Though they were not related, the man was like an older brother to him and sometimes even like a father. Myrddin was well liked in the Var court—especially by the visiting female dignitaries. Though he was shorter than most catshifters, his dark hair and eyes seemed to draw the women in. There was an air of power in him that was well deserved. He came from a long line of nobility, one of the old houses.

Like most of the Var palace, the inner courtyard had intricate
symmetrical patterns on the walls made of decorative tiles of red, orange, blue, gold and green, with beautifully arched entryways with no doors. There could be no doubt the palace was lavish, but the maze of halls was purposefully confusing to outsiders. The idea had been to disorientate those who should not be wandering the palace alone. Instead, it made for many nights when servants had to be sent out to find some drunken dignitary who’d stumbled around and had become lost.

Attor had proposed installing a central mainframe computer connected to every room. It would not only help the drunks find their way back to their rooms without assistance, but
it would monitor their whereabouts. He’d done his research, found a system that could answer vocal queues, track bio-functions, open doors, deliver food and locate anyone programmed into the system by a simple command. But did his father hear him out? No. The king had laughed and waved him out of the dining hall.

Attor
looked at the piece of fruit in his hand. He had been told the courtyard had been one of his mother’s favorite places and, as a child, it was one of the only ways he could feel her presence. King Auguste loved his son from a distance, and Attor had never known the love of his mother. She’d died giving birth to him—an only son—and King Auguste had never fully recovered from the loss of his life mate. Over the years, the king took other women to his bed, but nothing came from the empty pairings. And, with each passing affair, his father seemed to lose a bit of himself until he was a drunken, hollow shell of a king. Attor resented the weakness his father allowed to show.

Had he bothered to shift into his mountain l
ion form, he would have been able to hear Myrddin’s words over the rush of the water fountain behind him. The fountain was in the center of the room, surrounded by fruit trees and yellow ferns. It was the fruit he had come to dine on, since he was avoiding his father’s inebriated conversation.

Myrddin winked at
him and smoothed the front of his long nobleman’s jacket. Attor gave a small laugh. He didn’t need to hear the conversation to know what the man was doing. Myrddin didn’t believe in taking only one woman. He wanted several and had made it his roguish mission to have sex with as many women as he could seduce. And the women did come easily, for who were they to say no to money and power. Though not nearly as jaded as his friend, Attor would not turn a willing woman from his bed.

“
I thought you were chasing the visiting Azoomian woman,” Attor said as Myrddin approached.

Myrddin grinned, reaching to test the firmness of a fat yellow fruit hang
ing above him. “Mm, she was not as big of a challenge as she would have me believe.” He gave the fruit a notable squeeze. “I squeezed her juices from her last night and had to tell her this morning that I would not be making her my lady.”

“
Did you promise to marry her?” Attor knew it wouldn’t have been the first time his friend had used that line.

“
Does it matter?” Myrddin laughed and gave the fruit a hard yank, snapping it forcefully from the limb it clung to. The noble tossed it at Attor, forcing him to drop the piece he held to catch it before it hit his face. “Women are like fruit on a tree, to be tasted, enjoyed, and then discarded for the next piece.” Myrddin kicked the half-eaten piece across the floor. “Hold one too long and it will be sure to rot in your hand.”

“
There are many who find happiness with life mates,” Attor argued.

“
Like your father joining fully to your mother, bowing to her like a besotted fool? I was young, but I still remember how he doted on her. There is your proof that a man cannot bow to a woman and still call himself a man. Women have the potential to be the ruination of men and kingdoms,” Myrddin countered. He sighed sadly and shook his head. “Life mating is for peasants who cannot afford many half wives. But you will be king someday, Attor. Someday soon, if your father continues to keep company with liquor bottles and too much food.” He sat and placed his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “To be ruled by a woman is to be ruled by weakness, and kingdoms are only as strong as their rulers. A king must stand alone, beholden to none. When you are king take half mates—many, beautiful half mates. If one dies, you can have sons with the others.”

Attor said nothing. This was not the first time
Myrddin had tried to convince him of such things. He looked at the fruit in his hand. It was ripe, but it didn’t feel as firm as the piece he’d been enjoying before Myrddin had made him drop it. The kings before him had all had one mate and they’d been happy, or so the stories told.

“
The king is drunk again, isn’t he?” Myrddin let go of Attor’s shoulder and leaned his elbows onto his knees.

Attor nodded. “
I left when he started challenging the Azoomian noblemen to duels.”

Myrddin thought the king pathetic and had
often admitted as much to the prince. Attor however just found his father a sad, broken buffoon.

“
Enough depression. Let the king have his games. Your time will come soon enough and you can lead this kingdom to greatness. You can give your people the war your father promised us years ago. I’ll be by your side, leading your armies, while we defeat those stinking dragonshifting Draig and take the northern lands as ours. Yours will be a great kingdom, catshifters ruling over our slave dragons. Why should they get the mountains when my castle is stuck in the shadowed marshes?”

Attor didn
’t really care for politics. In fact, they bored him. Wars were tedious and long. He had a palace. What did he want with more land? Then, again, if he was living in the stinking waters of the marshes near the Var-Draig border he might think differently.

“
I know what you need,” Myrddin said, dropping his voice to a whisper. He reached into his tunic shirt and pulled out a tiny bottle. “I acquired some nef off a couple of marsh farmers.”

“
You know they’re called that because they make their liquor stock out of marsh water, right?” Attor gave a small shiver of disgust.

“
But not the nef,” Myrddin said. “And the marsh water is purified during the process. Some of it’s not bad if you need a quick drunk. But I didn’t bring it up to debate alcohol quality. Did you see that Syog beauty I was talking to? A couple of drops of this in her wine, and she’d be game for meeting us in the forest for a chase later. My universal translator is rough when it comes to Syog, but I’m pretty sure she wants light and dark meat.”

Myrddin reached
to muss up Attor’s short blond hair. His friend’s eyes shifted with liquid gold. All Var liked the hunt.

Attor
’s breathing deepened. Nef was illegal and very hard to get. It tamed the cat within them and created restraint in Var men. However, that wasn’t why the drug was forbidden. Restraint was fine. Natural restraint without the aid of drugs was better. But, give nef to a humanoid female and it had the opposite effect, making them wild with uncontrolled, indiscriminate passion. When taken together, it would make men’s pleasure last longer and women insatiable.

His nostrils flared as if he could already feel the ground
beneath his paws. Syogs were not the brightest species, but they were athletic and strong. Unless they were scarred, which many of them were due to their brawling culture, as a whole they happened to be one of the most symmetrically appealing races in the known universes.

The woman Myrddin indicated was phenomenal to look at. Her hair was knotted to the top of her head, but would look marvelously long if she unbound it. She wore the short coat and pleated skirt of her
people, and by the look of her naked legs, would be able to run hard and fast. Her dark eyes boldly met his in challenge and, as was the Syog way, she would not look away until he did first.

“
What’s her name?” Attor asked.

“
Does it matter?” Myrddin countered.

“
She agrees to take the nef?” Attor swallowed in excitement. A run would do him good, especially if it ended in a hard coupling on the forest floor. “She wants us both?”

“
It’s settled,” Myrddin said by way of an answer. “I’ll set it up. Meet me by the flaccid tree in the forest.”

* * *

Draig Territory, Var-Draig Borderlands

“
Mede, I always wanted to ask you. Can you fly?”

Mede grimaced. Saben was clearly well into his cups even though the
Order of the Dead Dragons’ celebration had only just started. Members of the order had gathered to witness her initiation. Well, that was only half true. They really came for the revelry that would ensue while she ran her trial.

“
Well?” Saben insisted.

“
No. That’s just an old story,” she said.

“
But you’re female,” Saben insisted. “If you are captured tonight, I might not get the chance to ask you again.”

“
I’m a woman?” Mede gasped in fake shock. She pretended to look down at her body. “That would explain why you proposed to me when we were children.”

“
Ah, come on, now.” Saben leaned forward to whisper, which wasn’t really all that quiet—especially considering they were in an encampment of dragonshifters with incredibly sensitive hearing. “You can tell me the truth. You shift into the dragon of legend, don’t you? You can fly.” He leaned back, pointing a finger from his goblet-laden hand. “I see it on your face. You can fly.”

Mede had been asked this question almost as much as she
’d been claimed as a future bride. So, yes, she’d had the dreams. She’d felt her body soaring over strange landscapes. She’d felt her arms as wide as wings. She’d felt the fire of her breath and the lava of her blood. Her body had burned so hot she could barely contain it and knew a human body would never survive with pure dragon blood in it. As far as she could tell, men never had such dreams. Her father seemed to think it was a residual memory from the days long past. Though she’d often caught him watching her when she shifted as a child, as if he’d expected her to take flight.

The dragon legend was from before
her people came to Qurilixen, when female dragons were large and fierce and could not take human shape like the men. Their people had no remaining proof of such things, only the stories passed down from each generation, and the fierce creatures depicted boldly in all their artwork and pottery.

“
Can you keep a secret?” Mede leaned in to him. Saben nodded. “I can’t fly, but you can.”

Saben
’s brow furrowed in confusion. Mede shifted into dragon, slipped her hands beneath the pits of his arms and lifted him upward. In his drunken state and human form he didn’t catch what she was doing in time to stop his ascent several feet into the air. He stumbled as he landed on his feet. Then, grinning, he righted himself and held up his goblet. “Not a drop spilled!”

Those who had seen it cheered. Saben went to drink and
tipped his head back. He frowned and turned the cup over. It had been empty the whole time. Cheering turned to laughter. Mede couldn’t help but chuckle as she went to wash her hands. She loved Saben like a brother, but he sweated like he’d been running around the forest.

“
If you want to be one of us, Lady Medellyn, you know what you have to do.” Rolant approached and gave her an arrogant half-grin as his eyes lit with challenge.

Mede flung the moisture from her hands and turned to him.
She’d known the man for years. They’d trained together as children, and he was to inherit control of the ore mines from his childless uncle. He’d even once claimed he was going to marry her—though that had been years ago. So far, his crystal had never glowed around her, so their relationship was pretty much cemented in friendship.

“
The name is Mede,” Mede answered. “I don’t care if you are a prince, get it right or I’ll make you bow to me when I return with my prize.”

“
You know the initiation rules,” Rolant warned, not for the first time. He lowered his voice so the handful of Draig warriors with them couldn’t hear. His green eyes shone with concern. “Seriously, Mede, once you cross the borders, we can’t come after you. If you get caught you’re on your own until your father comes to fetch you.”

She said nothing.
Having her great warrior father come and rescue her from Var imprisonment would be beyond humiliating, almost as much as getting caught in the first place.