The Royal Wizard (22 page)

Nia struggled to raise her arm to push him away, surprised to find his skin was warm to the touch. Rough, as if he wore armored gloves, but warm as any human flesh. Nia was shivering even with the many furs covering her, but this creature, whatever he was, seemed comfortable enough.

He growled and twitched his hand to get away from hers, then pressed the cup to her lips again and tipped it, giving her no choice but to drink or have its contents spill all over her. The tepid herbal brew choked her at first, but she made herself swallow more, recognizing its power. Three gulps later she felt her strength returning, and after four she felt overheated and had to wrestle several of the furs off her just to breathe.

When the creature decided she’d had enough, the goblet disappeared behind him and he sat back on his haunches, studying her. “You are strong,” he said, his voice as deep as it was menacing. Nia got the impression that this was a whisper for him, his way of tempering his presence. She was grateful. “Most would not have taken more than a sip.”

“Where are the others?” she rasped, then coughed.

“Asleep,” he answered, “as they have been for the greater part of a month. I thought it best to keep them that way until you were well enough to mediate.” Then he leaned closer and she could almost make out his features. “Understand me, wizard, if one more raises arms against me, I will burn them all.”

“They fought you?” She struggled to comprehend, but her mind wouldn’t work properly.

“Thinking they were defending you, no doubt,” the almost-man said, sounding amused. “I will admit I was a bit gruff when you arrived.”

“A bit,” she agreed. Squinting in the dark chamber, she tried again to make out his features. “Who…what are you?”

Though he’d not moved much since he’d sat, Nia somehow felt him grow still. “You don’t know?”

Nia shook her head. “I have never seen anyone like you.”

There was silence as she felt him study her and Nia caught herself reaching for the furs to hide. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, his gaze felt piercing sharp, as if he could see inside her skin into her soul and found her lacking.

But when he answered, there was no distain in his voice, only something she might have called surprise. “I am a dragon.” 

CHAPTER 22

Nia’s head swam as the light in the room intensified, aided by magic, to reveal the dragon as well as his dwelling. He looked so much like Saeran, but there were also marked differences. His hands were scattered with scales, his fingertips clawed. Though he was tall for a human, he seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, as if it didn’t quite fit. And why would it? He was, after all, a dragon. His hair was black, reflecting many colors when light touched it. The strands fell below his shoulders, but couldn’t disguise the smooth horns growing out of his temples. He had glowing silver eyes, slitted like a reptile’s, and even his features seemed sharp, hard somehow, as if his skin was stretched taut over stone.

He allowed her to study him without comment, and didn’t speak even when her gaze slipped past him to glance at the chamber. But it wasn’t exactly a chamber. Though there was furniture aplenty, they were still in a cave. The dragon had made it as comfortable as possible, but at the border where the burrow ended and cave tunnel began, all luxury stopped. Nia could make out the sleeping outlines of the knights in the darkened corridor. They slept on the cold, hard ground, with nothing but blankets to warm them. The dragon’s hospitality, it seemed, didn’t stretch that far.

As if reading her mind, he spoke again in a deep gravelly voice that made her think he was growling, “Their comfort was not my concern.” He pronounced the words carefully, as if unused to the need to form them.

“Then why am I not among them?” Nia asked, not certain she wished to know the answer. From what little she had read about dragons, they were very few and very solitary creatures. But although they despised crowds of people, singular companions, usually chosen for their charm, or wit, were almost a necessity to them. Nia had read stories of maidens choosing to remain with a dragon and giving up everything else. If that was what he wanted from her, Nia might have to fight him to leave.

“You are a wizard,” the dragon replied with an elegant shrug, his ancient eyes taking in everything about her. “Wizards are kin to dragons, in the same way wolves are kin to foxes.”

“Does that mean you are only being polite?”

He nodded.

Nia shook her head. “You are lying.”

The dragon’s mouth quirked, but he didn’t smile. She wasn’t certain he could. “I will admit there were other reasons for keeping you alive.”

A knight stirred in the tunnel, drawing Nia’s gaze. “Wake them,” she said, before she could temper the order into a plea.

The dragon didn’t seem to mind. “Not yet. I expect they might give me trouble for what is about to come.” He studied them for a moment longer before shaking his head. “Fools,” he scoffed. “They risk their lives for something they cannot even use.” When he looked at her again, Nia felt him probing her mind. “You do not know what they seek. But how could you? They themselves have never seen it.”

Nia pushed off one more layer of furs. Her strength was returning quickly, but even with the dragon’s help it would be awhile yet before she was back to herself. It worried her. How long had they already been gone? She thought of Saeran alone in the castle, then remembered he wasn’t alone anymore, and never would be again. She cast her worries aside and settled. Nia was in no rush to get back.

“What is your name?” she asked, then winced when he raised a mocking eyebrow. Names held power over their bearers. To name a thing meant to have control over it. Of course he wouldn’t tell her. “What do I call you?” she asked instead.

Rather than answer, the dragon reached behind him. When he faced her again, he held a wooden chalice. “Behold, your knights’ coveted prize. One of man’s most wondrous inventions.”

“What is it?”

“A cup.”

“What does it do?”

The dragon huffed with impatience. “It holds drink,” he retorted.

Nia gaped. “That’s it? That is what we have almost died trying to find?” She’d seen little more than ideas in their minds when she’d searched for their treasure. Nothing but myths and legends, stories of miracles and great power to those who found it. “We came all this way for a cup?”

Before her anger could manifest in the air, the dragon waved his hand down, forcing her power into submission. “They came here for the cup. A cup which is useless without something to drink from it, though they would not believe even me, should I decide to tell them. You, Lady Nia, are here for the drink itself.”

Leaving her to ponder that mysterious proclamation, he rose and walked to a table near the far wall. He made no sound at all as he walked, making Nia wonder whether he was there at all, and his long, reptilian tail swished left and right in his wake. Taking up a pitcher, the dragon man returned to his seat before her and poured deep red wine into the wooden cup.

“At least tell me it’s the magic one. The one they said once held the blood of…I forgot his name.”

Again, that almost smirk. “Humans,” he said as he set the pitcher aside and placed the cup before her. “Always twisting everything to serve their own purpose.” He uncurled the fingers of his right hand and pressed a black claw into its center, drawing blood. He allowed three drops to fall into the wine before the wound closed and the wine boiled and sizzled, giving off black smoke.

Nia swallowed with difficulty, but accepted the cup when he held it out to her. Staring into the dark liquid, she imagined she could see shadows in its depths. “It will hurt,” she said, knowing it was true.

“You have and will yet endure far worse,” he replied. This was a gift, as well as a test. She knew nothing about the magical properties of dragon’s blood, something she was sure dragons kept a close secret. Combined with her own magical essence it could do any number of things: permanently alter her physical being or even mark her soul. If she drank, it would mean submitting fully to the dragon’s will. Blood bonds created a link between beings, allowing the stronger to control the weaker if he so desired.

If she refused it, he might simply move on to another topic of conversation, or he might burn her to ash where she sat. There was no telling what mysterious thoughts compelled a creature so old and powerful to give up three full drops of his blood for a lowly, finite human.

“You wished for answers,” the dragon said. “They are in the wine. Drink.”

She took a bracing breath before bringing the cup to her lips. Her hands shook, but she made certain not to spill a single drop. The wine flowed smoothly down the back of her throat, leaving warmth in its wake, a mere taste of what was to come.

She’d no sooner handed the cup back to him than fire exploded in her belly, sending tendrils out into her blood to scorch her from the inside out. Nia doubled over, unable to draw breath to cry out. Her tears turned to steam before they could be shed, and the inferno inside her kept growing, burning, changing her. Her muscles locked until she couldn’t move, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

When the fire reached her mind, she choked on a scream as her vision went black and the shadows she’d thought to have seen in the wine took shape. Dozens, hundreds of images flew at her, too fast for her to understand, but they ingrained themselves among her own memories, as if she herself had lived them.

There were thousands of years the dragon had given her—his years, his memories. In them, she saw a beautiful, fair haired woman. She laughed as she spun around a pyre, looking back at the dragon many times with so much emotion in her gaze that even the mighty dragon’s heart squeezed in his chest. Nia felt his love for her.

But in an instant, the strength of that love turned to agony as she saw through his eyes the beautiful, dark haired child held in his big, rough hands. Only memories of the child’s mother remained, and each brought with it equal measures of pleasure and pain. All he had left was his daughter, his beloved’s final gift to him.

And he adored that child more than his own life.

The girl grew up and ventured into the world, and met a man Nia recognized, though he was still young and full of all the joy he’d lost when his queen died in childbirth.

And then it was the widowed king who stared at a child in his arms, his beloved wife far and gone. The boy opened his big gray eyes and uttered soft coos, mourning his mother as his father did.

The dragon caught her against him when she would have collapsed. “Saeran,” she whispered, fighting for breath and shivering as the fire slowly died down inside her. “He’s your grandson.” It all made sense now. His thirst for spells and magic, his aptitude at both—it was in his blood. Why had she never questioned it before?

“Humans,” the dragon said, his voice thick with emotion, “cannot carry our seed. A dragon’s life essence is too powerful to be contained in a human vessel, too ravenous. It needs magic to feed on and in its absence, it drains its mother’s life.”

“It takes dragonblood to birth dragonblood,” Nia said, beginning to make sense of what he’d shown her. She could feel the effects of the drink. Her essence was brighter than before, and more volatile as well. Nia would never again be as she’d been before. Dragon’s blood was now a part of her.

Why hadn’t the dragon changed his beloved mate this way?

She already knew the answer. By the time he’d realized the danger, it had been too late. She would have risked her child, and had refused to do that. The dragon had been helpless to change her mind, forced to live out her remaining days with the constant knowledge that each hour was one closer to losing her. The mere thought that he could save her, but she wouldn’t allow it for the sake of their child had driven him mad time and again, and when his daughter was born, and he felt his mate slip away into eternal sleep, the little girl’s gentle presence had been the only thing preventing him from becoming a monster.

“But Saeran’s mother—”

“Was only half dragon,” he said. “She would have lived for a while, in agony, had she survived the birth. No one can live for long with only half their being.”

Nia’s arms crept around him. She wanted to offer some comfort, but there was nothing she could do or say that would take away the torment he carried. “What do you want me to do?” she said, knowing he hadn’t done this to her without good reason.

His hold on her tightened for an instant before he pulled away and resumed his seat. Now, when she looked into his silver eyes, she could see his love’s shadow dancing in their depths. His mate was always with him, if only in his mind. And he could never forget, never leave it all behind. “Look after my grandson,” he said at last. “He needs you more than he will ever admit, even to himself.”

Nia hesitated. “I will stand as his advisor,” she said. “I have sworn that much and will stand by my oath.”

The dragon cast her a look full of sympathy. “He needs far more than your counsel, Nia.  And you do as well.”

“The kingdom must come first,” she insisted. The future of Saeran’s rule was only as stable as his people’s trust that the hand of their king was guided by one outside the hierarchy, who would judge fairly for not having anything to gain from another’s loss. If they betrayed that, if she ceased to be neutral to his reign, there would be war. It would take so little to incite a battle, merely the suspicion that Saeran was unfaithful to his Aegiran queen.

“Nia,” the dragon said, his voice echoed with another—Nico’s. Her heart fluttered in her chest at her mentor’s familiar rasp, even while she knew it was nothing but a dragon’s trick. “Saeran rules with his heart. If it breaks, his kingdom will as well.”

“Nia?” Lucca’s voice sounded from the tunnel, an unwelcome reminder that soon she would have to return and face her king again. The dragon held her gaze, refusing to release her, weighing her soul and judging her strength.

“Do not fear this,” he told her as the others began to rise. “He needs your strength to lean on, as you need his. You are well-matched, Nialei of the Streams. It is only your fear of love that hold you back. Let go. Leap and he will catch you.”