The room is clean and organized, with a window to my left, framed by two bookshelves. One wooden bookshelf holds volume after volume of leather-bound books—all about either fighting or dragons. The other bookshelf holds row after row of weapons; knives, daggers, a short sword, arrow tips, throwing stars. “Is this your room?” I ask, turning on my side and pulling the covers up over my shoulder.
Mischief fills Golmarr’s eyes and he nods. “Looks like I got you into my bed before we are married.” Kneeling, he brushes the hair from the side of my face.
“What did your father mean about impropriety starting a war with Faodara?”
One of Golmarr’s black eyebrows lifts ever so slightly. “Don’t you know?”
My cheeks warm as I say, “I have my suspicions.” I look at his lips, and my heart starts pounding.
Golmarr grins and puts his hand over my flushed cheek. “My father meant that if I bed the virgin princess of Faodara before we are wed, I will most likely start a war.” He shrugs. “But I already knew that. Do you want me to bring up some dinner?” My stomach rumbles at the thought of food, and Golmarr laughs. “I take that as a yes. Do you need anything else?”
“I need to get warm.” I burrow deeper under the covers and shiver. Worry tightens the corners of Golmarr’s eyes. He climbs onto the bed, on top of the covers, and presses the front of his body against the back of mine, wrapping an arm around me. Pressing his nose against my neck, he exhales warm breath on my skin. “I’m worried about you,” he whispers.
The bedroom door opens, and Nayadi, King Marrkul’s witch, shuffles inside. I jump and wait for Golmarr to spring away from me so we are not caught in bed together, but all he does is tighten his hold around my waist. Nayadi walks to the side of the bed and peers down at me with her foggy eyes. A trickle of fear sends goose bumps up the back of my neck.
“It is about time you made it home,” she says, her blind eyes surveying Golmarr. They shift to me, and she runs her hands through the air in front of me, like she is combing her fingers through hair. She pulls a handful of air toward her face and leans into it, breathing deeply. Her eyes slip shut for a moment, and the sides of her mouth slowly pull into a wide, toothless smile. With a growl, she opens her eyes and grasps my cheeks in her bony fingers, pinching them so hard that I yelp and pull away, but she doesn’t let go. Golmarr’s arm leaves my waist, and he grabs Nayadi’s wrist, shoving her hand from my face.
“What are you doing?” he asks, climbing over the top of me without letting go of the old crone. Nayadi pulls her lips away from her gums, and for a moment it looks like she is snarling…but then she smiles, and I wonder if I imagined it.
“She killed the dragon,” Nayadi says. “Not you.”
Golmarr drops her wrist and steps between me and the witch. “Why would you say that?”
“She’s marked with his magic for anyone with seeing eyes to behold. He left his golden aura around her.” She runs her hand through the air in front of me again, but Golmarr grabs her wrist. And then her words register. She called the dragon he, not it.
“You knew him,” I whisper and blink, and when I open my eyes again, the discoloration leaves Nayadi’s eyes, and I see her how she once was: long, dark brown hair braided down her back, smooth pale skin, blue eyes, two curved swords held in either hand. Unbidden, a memory of this woman overtakes my thoughts, and I know I am witnessing something Melchior the wizard passed on to me.
When she walks into my tower, the first thing I notice is her face. She is barely older than a child. Her eyes are such a pale shade of blue that I cannot help but stare into them for a moment. They are framed by black lashes, and her dark, braided hair makes the pale color even more remarkable. At her waist she carries the black stone blade of her people. Her twin swords are strapped to her back, as I requested, and I can tell by the way she keeps tightening her shoulders, she is forcing herself not to draw them.
Piles of gold are behind me, the treasure I got from two desperate kings. The payment for binding the fire dragon beneath the mountain nearly two hundred years earlier. Not a single piece of the treasure has been spent or lost; it is as complete as the day it was delivered to me. She studies the treasure, and greed fills her eyes. It diminishes any beauty I first thought she had, for I have had hundreds of years to learn what true beauty is.
“I will divide this in half. You may pick either pile, Nayadi. You take half of the pile now, and when you have brought me the fire dragon’s scale, you will get the other half,” I say.
She forces her eyes away from the treasure to look at me. “What is the worth of a single dragon scale?” she asks.
I shrug. “They have no worth, for there are none except those attached to the beasts.”
Her eyes narrow. “Then why are you paying me so much to bring you one, Melchior, son of Mordecai?” I frown at her words. “I know who you are, old man. And I know how old you are. That is what I want—eternal life, not your gold. Tell me how to get that, and I will bring you a dragon scale.”
I take a deep, patient breath. “I have watched almost every person I have ever cared for die from old age or disease. Eternal life is not necessarily a treasure, though once I thought it was.”
“Then tell me how to become like you, a wizard, so that I can bind the stone dragon that is destroying my kingdom beneath a mountain, the same way you bound the fire dragon. That is what I want in exchange for the fire dragon’s scale.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know what you’re saying, child. The price will be high. Everything comes at a price.”
“I am no child! I am nineteen. And any price is worth saving my kingdom.”
“Very well. If the ability to work magic is the payment you wish, then you have only to perform this feat and you will have it, but I make no promises regarding the stone dragon.” She blinks at me and smiles. I stare into her striking blue eyes. Such a pity. Such a high price to pay. “Hold out your swords.”
She reaches over her head and crosses her arms, sliding a short sword out from a sheath behind each shoulder. She lowers them before me, and I pull energy from the air and touch each blade. When I am done, the metal has turned from gray to a pale, silvery blue. “You have seven days before the magic leaves your blades. Seven days to face the fire dragon before your weapons are worthless against his scales.”
“Why don’t I just kill him?” she asks.
“Because you cannot.” Her eyes burn with defiance at my words. “It is not in your destiny to kill him—at least not with your own hands. But your choices today will one day bring about his death, and set in motion the defeat of Grinndoar, the stone dragon.”
“We’ll see,” she snaps. In one swift move, she crosses the swords behind her back and thrusts them into their sheaths. Without a backward glance, she strides from my room.
“Such a high price,” I whisper.
I blink, and no time has passed. Golmarr still sits on the bed beside me with Nayadi’s wrist in his hand, and she is still staring at me with her clouded eyes. “You tried to kill Zhun, didn’t you?” I ask.
The old woman nods. “When I took his scale, I stabbed him.” She touches her face. “His blood burned my eyes and gifted me with a tiny piece of his magic, but stole my sight.”
I see her through Zhun’s eyes, as she tears the scale free with one sword, and then thrusts the other deep into his chest. I see the blood rain down on her as the fire dragon takes flight in his columned, underground prison.
“Was it worth it?” I ask.
“It will be when the time is right,” she says, studying me with hungry eyes.
“But you can still see.”
She shakes her head. “Not in the way you do. I see energy, not flesh.”
“Nayadi, what’s wrong with Sorrowlynn?” Golmarr asks, releasing her wrist. “She healed me, and now she can’t warm up.”
“She needs to feed on what Zhun fed on,” the crone says.
“Fire,” I whisper. That has always been the ans
wer.
“Yes, fire,” she says. “But you don’t know how to feed on fire, do you?”
I shake my head.
Nayadi smiles, and my skin crawls. “Then you might die.”
Golmarr’s hands close into tight fists, and his breathing accelerates. “There must be something you can do,” he growls. “If she dies because she saved my life—”
“I can’t,” Nayadi snarls. “She has to do it herself.” The crone leans toward me again and closes her eyes, as if basking in the golden aura she spoke of. Golmarr grabs her frail arm and drags her toward the door.
“Out. Go!” he orders, pushing her into the hall. He slams the door shut and looks at me. “You stay there. I will have Enzio stand watch at your door while I get you some food.”
I nod and curl my knees up against my chest. The sound of Golmarr’s boots echoes on the wooden floor as he leaves the room and strides down the hall. Before he has gone down three stairs, I am drifting to sleep.
It is the smell of bacon that wakes me, and I open my eyes to bright morning sunlight. I am still in Golmarr’s bed, and the last thing I remember is him leaving the room to get me some food. On the bedside table is a bowl of cold stew and a piece of dry bread.
I pull the covers back, and my Satari clothes are creased with wrinkles. Standing, I try to smooth my blouse but give up when the wrinkles refuse to straighten out. My stomach growls, and I forget the wrinkled clothes as I quietly pad across Golmarr’s bedroom on bare feet.
When I open the door, the smell of bacon and the sound of distant laughter swirl around me. The laughter dies down and is replaced with a deep, muffled voice. As I descend the wooden stairs, the voice becomes clearer. It is Golmarr’s. He is telling the story of how the fire dragon burned his hair, and how he knelt at my feet and had me hack his hair off with the hunting knife his father gave me. And people are laughing.
“It is a good thing northern princesses prefer men with short hair,” a woman says. “Otherwise, I don’t think she would agree to marry you. You are a disgrace!”
Laughter spills out of a partially open door, along with the maddening scent of bacon. It is my overwhelming desire for food that gives me the courage to push the door open and step inside—barefoot, with rumpled and slept-in clothes, and unbrushed hair.
The kitchen is huge—more of a great hall, really—with a wide hearth, iron stove, and water pump for the food preparation, and a table big enough to seat Enzio, Golmarr, Golmarr’s father, his eight brothers, and their wives. Those who don’t have room at the table—mainly children—are sitting on benches pushed up against the wall, and everyone is eating.
Golmarr’s eyes are on the door, like he’s been watching for me, so the moment I step inside, he stops laughing and stands. “Speaking of knife-wielding, hair-chopping, skirt-hacking northern princesses,” he says, “it is my pleasure to formally introduce you, once again, to Princess Sorrowlynn of Faodara.”
My eyes grow round with horror, and I shake my head and point to my slept-in clothing. I am most definitely not attired properly to be presented to his entire family. But Golmarr simply smiles.
At my hesitation, King Marrkul hastily stands from the head of the table and motions to his chair, which is beside Golmarr’s. “Please, have a seat and fill your belly, Princess Sorrowlynn,” he says.
Holding my limp skirt in my hands, I curtsy to him and search for the proper response to give to the ruler of a neighboring kingdom. “Thank you, sir, but I cannot take your chair. You are the king!”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Nonsense. A king I might be, but shortly I will be your father as well. And I treasure my daughters-in-law.”
A small smile cracks through my reserve. “Thank you,” I say, and walk across the cool wood floor to the chair at the head of the table.
One of the women, dressed in brown leather pants and a green tunic, hurries over to the stove with a clean plate. A moment later she places it before me, and I recognize her. It is Jayah, the wife of Ingvar. She has loaded fried potatoes, bacon, and eggs so high, I cannot see the glazed plate beneath.
“Thank you,” I say.
She nods. “There’s more if you finish that.”
A hand finds mine beneath the table—warm fingers against my cold ones. “Good morning,” Golmarr says. He is clean and shaven. His clothes are fresh, and his hair is brushed. The mere sight of him makes my heart beat a little faster, and I tighten my fingers on his.
I start eating, with my free hand in Golmarr’s, and listen as he tells of more of our adventures, embellishing them and making them funny in the retelling, like when he came running over to save me from the burly mercenary when we were fighting in the Satari wagon camp. Only, before he could impress me with his fighting skills and perform his knightly duty by killing the fiend, the vile man started to totter forward and back like a chopped tree, falling dead with his nose on the toes of my red leather shoes. “She had already saved herself,” he adds, shrugging.
Golmarr’s family burst into laughter, but I can barely muster up a weak smile. The memory is still too fresh for me to see the humor in it.
“Have you kissed her yet?” one of the older children asks—a boy with raven-black hair and the long, gangly legs and arms that are an indicator of an upcoming growth spurt.
Golmarr’s eyebrows shoot up and he looks at me. “I didn’t have to. She kissed me,” he says. “And in front of the entire camp of Satari forest dwellers, no less!”
I gasp and glare at Golmarr. “The only reason I kissed you in front of them is because you told me if I didn’t, they might try to kill us.” I turn and look at his amused brothers and sisters-in-law. “I figured if I could be sacrificed to a fire-breathing dragon and live, my chances at surviving the kiss of a horse lord were probably pretty good.”
His family starts laughing so hard the table shakes. When they quiet down, Golmarr adds, “I am starting to think the stories we hear about the reserved and refined northern princesses of Faodara are tales made to hide their true colors.”
Yerengul, sitting directly across the table from me, lifts his hand, and the room grows quiet. “Princess Sorrowlynn,” he says, “you wouldn’t happen to have any single sisters, would you? Because I am in need of a wife who can give the teasing as well as she takes it, and if she’s beautiful and knows how to fight, all the better.”
The laughter is back. Golmarr presses a quick kiss to my cheek, and I eat as he continues telling his family of our adventures.
I spend the rest of the morning soaking in a tub and scrubbing my hair and body by myself for the first time in my life. When I am clean, I dress in a short-sleeve black tunic and light blue skirt embroidered with black vines—clothes left for me by Golmarr. The skirt is sewn with a hem so wide, I already know that if I sit astride a horse while wearing it, there will be enough fabric to span the horse’s back while still covering my legs down to my ankles.
I fasten a narrow black belt around my waist and put on a pair of gray embossed-leather boots. Pulling my hair over my shoulder, I brush it and then braid it.
When I step from the bathing room into the hall, Golmarr is waiting for me. He looks me over and frowns. “Tell me this is real,” he says, stepping in front of me.
I cannot stop my smile as I ask, “Tell you what is real?”
He steps closer and gestures to my clothes. “You. Here. Betrothed to me. Wearing the clothing of my people and looking at me in a way that makes my heart start pounding like I’ve just fought a battle.” He leans close and takes a deep breath. “Tell me it is real,” he whispers.
I grip the front of his dark blue tunic and pull his body flush against mine. Standing on my toes, I kiss him and am filled with a slew of emotions. I name each one as it fires through my body: joy, desire, pleasure, disbelief—followed immediately by belief, amazement, peace, and then an overwhelming sense of acceptance and belonging.
I pull my mouth from Golmarr’s but keep holding him close to me. “It is real,” I
say.
“Yes,” he agrees, and his eyes turn roguish a moment before he starts nuzzling my neck. “And you smell way too good for me to be expected to keep my hands off of you. Will you feed the horses with me?”
I laugh and gently push him away. “I smell good, and that makes you want to feed the horses?”
He shakes his head. “No, it makes me want to feed other things, namely my all-consuming desire for you, which is why we would be wise to go somewhere where there aren’t twelve bedrooms with very comfortable beds in each.”
“Your father’s home has twelve bedrooms?” I ask.
He nods and twines his fingers with mine, pulling me down the hall. “Twelve bedrooms, and we are the only two people in this house.”
“Where are your father and Enzio?”
“They are with Ingvar, making preparations for a feast. Remember, I told you, when we were in the cave, that if we made it to Anthar, my brother would have a feast for me?”
I nod.
“Well, I was right.”
We exit through a door at the back of the house and cross a wide yard with several goats cropping the lush green grass. “That is where I learned the basics of sword fighting before I was sent to our western fortress when I was eight to train with a weapons master,” Golmarr says, pointing to a flat area of dirt. “That is where my brothers and I still spar and condition when we are here. Speaking of conditioning, we need to get you stronger. Starting tomorrow, you are going to train six days a week. You have the knowledge of how to move and fight, but your physical strength is…lacking.”
I swat his arm. “Are you saying I am weak?”
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