by Abigail Owen
“But…” She shrugged and directed her gaze back to Ladon. “It can’t work.”
Brand let out a silent breath, though it didn’t ease the tightness banding his chest.
Ladon studied her closely. “It’s over now?”
“Yes.”
The finality in that one word had a roar rising up Brand’s throat, a sound he had to choke back, the effort searing his throat. They’d agreed. She needed safety. Ladon needed a phoenix. And Brand needed revenge. They’d chosen the right path.
Granted, that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Just so we’re clear,” Ladon said slowly. “You’re open to being courted?”
“Can you give me some time to get to know you first, and vice versa, before I give you a final answer? And I would have some stipulations.”
“Of course. Like what?”
Kasia took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be some talisman or a pawn,” she said. “I know what’s on the line, but I’m not the good little girl who sits in her room and waits to bring you luck and has to be rescued and—” She flicked a glance over the men, ending on Brand. “Guarded.”
Ladon followed Kasia’s glance with a flicker of his eyes, and Brand couldn’t tell from his unchanging expression if he was annoyed or impressed. “What do you want?”
“My mother taught me about dragon shifters and phoenixes. She taught me survival skills. I’m a trained mechanic.”
Since when? Not that they’d had a chance to discuss education or trade, or really any opportunities for this to come up. He’d assumed she had none. Although, given her independent nature, he couldn’t say he was all that surprised. Suddenly her comfort in his lap looking under the dash of the Hemi Cuda made more sense.
“Plus, I have my gifts. I want to participate. Let me train, show you I can fight for myself. Let me shadow you, possibly see where I can be of help to your reign. Let me be part of your decisions, even if it’s just behind closed doors. If I were to mate you, I would want to present a united front and be a true partner.”
Ladon studied Kasia. Did he see what Brand saw? A woman with strength, grace, and an iron will? Someone who could fulfill that promise to walk beside him, a partner in life, and not just in ruling the Blue Clan of dragon shifters?
“It won’t be easy,” Ladon finally said.
Kasia tipped up her chin. “Nothing worth fighting for ever is. My mother taught me that.” She paused. “So did my father, in a roundabout way.”
“Your father?” Ladon asked.
“Zilant Amon.”
“The hell you say,” Duncan snapped.
Ladon didn’t speak, but took a step back, a flash of something mean crossing his features before he controlled it. “As in the previous ruling family of the White Clan?”
She glanced at Duncan. “Yes. And my mother was the daughter of the previous King and Queen of the Red Clan, before Pytheios killed them.” She paused, letting that sink in. “I have as much reason to hate Pytheios as all of you. More maybe, because he killed both my parents. My father before I was born. Their mating bond hadn’t fully formed.”
She seemed to disappear inside herself a moment. “My mother always wondered what the brand would have looked like. A combo of the two families, maybe.”
Then she blinked, coming back to them. “Pytheios found us and killed my mother last year. He took everything from me.”
“I see.” Ladon seemed to consider the implications even as the men shifted on their feet. Then he took Kasia’s hand, and Brand held back a growl.
“I hope you’ll learn to trust me enough to tell me about them someday,” Ladon said.
Brand’s respect for his friend went up another notch as Kasia took a deep breath.
“I accept your conditions.” Ladon went down on one knee, a gesture of honor and agreement. “If you choose me as a mate, then we will be partners.”
XII
Pytheios made his way up the winding stone staircase, treading stairs worn into smooth concave dips by countless dragon shifters over the centuries.
The inside walls, like the stairs, were carved into the natural stone of the mountain. Any outside-facing walls, however, were a special glass made only by dragons. Generations before him had hewn those walls from the very mountain itself, turning it hard as diamonds, strong enough to continue to support the weight and designed to allow those inside an unimpeded view of what lay outside. Any being standing outside saw only the rock, snow, and ice of the most massive mountain on the planet.
Tonight, the weather was crystal clear, stars and moon shining brightly from the black skies above.
Merikh huffed and puffed behind him, disturbing the peace of the icy view. “We should look into moving the prisons to lower levels.”
This tower was the highest point of the Red Clan’s stronghold. The top of the spire sat just under the top of Mt. Everest and housed a series of jails where his prisoners could forever see the vast skies dragons were meant to rule.
See but never touch again. Never feel the wind against their scales. Never know the freedom flight provided. Even be able to see those who came to their rescue fly by but with no way to contact them.
“Oh?”
That one word had Merikh snapping his mouth shut with an audible clack. If Pytheios turned around, he’d bet his crown that his son was reconsidering his words. Rash and holding no true convictions, Merikh was at least learning when to quit.
Still, my blood runs in his veins. He can be taught.
“I suppose,” Merikh mused now, “a necessity to house our worst enemies and biggest secrets far from the rest of the clan population overrides the inconvenience.”
“You only suppose?” This time, Pytheios couldn’t keep his frustration from seeping into his voice nor out of his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder. Dressed in a purple silk shirt and matching tie today, Merikh appeared the entitled man his witch-mother had molded. That would change, too.
Once Ladon Ormarr was removed from the blue throne, Pytheios had every intention of filling that vacancy with his son. Until now, he’d helped dragons from within their clans take the thrones. In theory, the clans would submit more easily to one of their own kind, and in the meantime, those dragons owed Pytheios their allegiance.
But that theory had broken with the Blood King’s takeover of the Blue Clan. Time to try a new tack.
Merikh held his gaze, and Pytheios gave a mental nod. Stronger.
This place, the magnificent supremacy of being a dragon, the spectacular power that belonged to them alone…it was a legacy he had to protect and grow at all costs. Even if it meant eliminating the dissenting few, which included Ladon Ormarr.
Like a piece of glass embedded in his heel, a snake in the grass, an itch no amount of scratching would soothe, Ormarr represented a fundamental problem with dragon shifters. In order to survive as a species, they had to make hard choices, like ensuring the leaders mated before lower level dragons got the chance, like pooling the wealth to ensure it could be applied in the most appropriate ways, like eliminating those who disagreed. Harmony as a society required kings to be brutal, or it would never work.
With the light tread of Merikh’s steps behind him, Pytheios ascended the final stair onto a small landing with a single door. Pytheios stepped through into a massive round chamber that housed the prison. New dragonsteel doors to each of the eleven cells were spaced evenly around the edges of the room.
Rhiamon, his witch, stood in the center of the room bathed in moonlight that streamed in from the glass moonhole directly above. Her hair glowed white in the contrast of dark and light, as did the flowing pale dress she wore, giving her an ethereal appearance as she held her hands to the sky, head thrown back, eyes closed. Her lips moved in a silent incantation.
Magnificent.
She was the one exception he made to his own cre
ed of relying on no one. While he was careful that the part others played could easily be eliminated, and still he would reign, Rhiamon kept him alive. Until they syphoned off the phoenix’s power, granting him immortality, he needed the witch.
Pytheios waited as she finished her spell, a nightly ritual, a necessity to cage the man who occupied the center cell directly opposite from where Pytheios stood—not just with steel bars, but with magic.
Merikh stood behind him, blessedly silent for once. Chanting complete, Rhiamon’s hands shook as she lowered them. The dark shadows consuming her eyes seemed to bleed from the sockets to the skin below, then slowly dissipated as she let the magic go. He caught a glimpse of the black depths that took over when she performed her magic, silver irises seeming to float in the center of the void. Then she blinked, and her eyes returned to normal.
Seeing him standing just inside the door, Rhiamon smiled. “My king. Have you come for the failure?”
Pytheios didn’t need to glance to his right to see the man waiting behind the barred cell door. “I have. But first, how is our other guest?” He allowed his gaze to linger on the heavy bars of the center cell. From this vantage point, it seemed as though nothing lived or breathed inside that space, but Pytheios knew better.
She followed his gaze, then slid him a sly smile. “A pussycat, my king. So biddable these days.”
“Still alive, though?” Pytheios needed to know. Serefina’s mother had spoken a prophecy over this man, a mere child at the time, one that made keeping him alive crucial.
Before Rhiamon could respond, Merikh stepped out from behind him. “After this long, how can you still question my mother?”
Pytheios watched in unimpressed silence as his son crossed the room to stick his face near the bars.
“This…thing has been broken since the day you threw his scrawny ass in here and gave my mother the task of keeping him captive and alive,” Merikh sneered, addressing his words to Pytheios over his shoulder. He shouted into the darkened cell. “You’re not going anywhere. Are you?”
Now Pytheios could make out the faint outline of a man prone on the slab they allowed him for a bed, the chill seeping into his bones yet another cage. The shadow didn’t so much as twitch.
“See, Father? You have nothing to worry—”
Faster than a striking snake, an arm shot out from between the bars. When had he moved from the bed to the door? Even Pytheios had missed it. Only Merikh’s quick reflexes kept him from being choked to death. Instead of choking the life out of his son, the prisoner caught a fistful of purple silk shirt. With a sharp yank, he slammed Merikh’s head into the bars with a ringing clang before releasing him to tumble backward to land unceremoniously on his ass.
After a few moments of stunned dazedness, fury rose inside Merikh, as evidenced by the red shade his face turned as he jumped to his feet. “You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled at the still-silent occupant of the cell.
Pytheios sighed. “I thought you would’ve outgrown tormenting him by now.”
“Father, I—”
Pytheios held up a hand, and Merikh cut off the rest of his excuses, the venom in his gaze still churning until his eyes appeared more red than brown.
“We didn’t come here for Airk,” Pytheios reminded in a deceptively patient tone.
At that Merikh settled, pulling himself up to his full height, shoulders back. “Of course.”
Better. Not good, but better. What he needed, though, was ruthless.
Rhiamon and Merikh said nothing as Pytheios abandoned his interest in Airk and approached a cell farther over to the right. “I hope you have healed satisfactorily,” he said to its occupant.
The glow of golden eyes showed eerily in the dark of the chamber before the man inside moved out of the shadows, approaching the bars. “I have.”
Pytheios clasped his hands behind his back as he took in the other man’s appearance. Dark blond hair streaked with gray hung in limp clumps around a craggy face that had been harshly handsome in youth. “You failed me, Uther.”
“I failed us both.” This admission was delivered with zero contrition, spine straight, gaze direct. The dragon shifter refused to back down, even as he admitted his fault.
Pytheios expected nothing less from the King of the Gold Clan. “What should I do about that?”
“You make a deal.” Uther’s words sounded almost bored, only the light in his eyes was too eager for that.
“What deal?”
“Help me kill the rogue. In exchange, I’ll dedicate my forces to helping you extinguish the Blue Clan.”
Pytheios slid a surreptitious glance to Rhiamon, whose expression remained neutral. She gave a small shrug that could easily be interpreted as “up to you,” but after years with the witch, he knew she approved.
He hid his own satisfaction behind a thoughtful frown. “And the phoenix?”
Uther waved him off, seemingly indifferent. “Do with her what you will, but once we take down Ladon Ormarr, the rogue and the Blue Clan are mine.”
Interesting. “Who is he?”
Grim anger tightened the skin over Uther’s cheekbones. “A loose end.”
He would have to find out more about this rogue who’d managed to wound Uther in one-on-one combat, an unheard of feat. “I’ll accept your deal with one small adjustment.”
Uther narrowed his eyes and waited for the hammer to drop.
“Your dragons take out the blue dragons without my help. A small price to pay for your failure to capture the phoenix when she was vulnerable. I get the phoenix. You get the rogue and a second throne. Everyone is…happy.”
Uther took his time answering, although Pytheios had no doubts the other king knew there was only one acceptable response. As the clan located closest to the Gold Clan’s stronghold in Norway, Uther was the most vulnerably positioned.
“Done,” Uther said. “When?”
“Now.”
…
Kasia carefully flowed through the movements that all the warriors engaged in prior to breaking out into groups for various forms of combat training. The smooth moves were almost a dance, performed in silence, allowing her soul to focus.
“How are you already so good at this?” Arden asked beside her as she also went through the movements. “Reid says I still suck at them.”
Reid, only a few people over, couldn’t have missed the whispered comment, but didn’t turn or acknowledge them.
“My mother taught me,” Kasia whispered, conscious of the handful of glares aimed their way.
Warriors were trying to focus as well. This was part of their daily routine of physical and combat training before they went out on assignment. She got the impression that, while Ladon’s core group had accepted her, the wider fighting force resented their king for making them work with Kasia, a phoenix and not a dragon shifter like them.
But proving she didn’t need to be protected meant honing the combat skills her mother had taught all her daughters and practicing, for now in private, her ability to teleport and her control over fire. She refused to be some poor, defenseless lump waiting for dragons to protect her.
The fact that Brand, whom she was pretty sure most of the warriors viewed as a usurper taking a coveted spot among Ladon’s most trusted soldiers when he’d only just become part of the clan, stood off to the side, arms crossed, unspeaking and giving off serious I don’t give a shit unless you go near the phoenix vibes, did not help her cause. He didn’t train with the fighters. He trained on his own, as did Ladon, at least she assumed he did.
But the king was a different matter. Brand needed friends.
“Do you think King Gorgon is coming for a truce?” Arden asked.
Kasia didn’t absorb the question, still too focused on Brand. Meanwhile, his serious golden gaze scanned every nuance of the outdoor platform on which they practiced and
trained.
Two weeks had passed. Two weeks of enduring the watchfulness of the dragon shifters as she moved through her days, those stares ranging from suspicious to curious. She spent her time training in the morning and in meetings with Ladon in the afternoons followed by private dinners with him in his chambers, after which she holed up in her rooms, practicing at controlling her powers. Teleporting was improving, though it drained her. She’d come to think of her power as a tank which held only so much fuel. No visions had come, which she considered a blessing.
She’d met Ladon’s Curia Regis, his king’s council. Asher as his Viceroy of Security and Reid as his Viceroy of War, she’d gotten to know best, as they were also his warriors and she spent time training with them. But she still wasn’t sure she trusted the other Viceroys, especially Chante. Not that he or the others did anything she could point to. Her unease stemmed more from a gut feeling about the guy.
Besides, there had to be a reason Ladon hadn’t included Chante or the other Viceroys the night he’d introduced her to his warriors, to those truly in his inner circle. Not wanting to incite suspicion without cause, she hadn’t asked. Perhaps Ladon was a warrior at heart, more than a politician.
Meanwhile, two weeks of Brand’s constant presence and silent watchfulness, as he was assigned to guard her most frequently—her own personal fucking ghost—was grating on her nerves.
She couldn’t be mad at him. She knew that. Her logical brain told her that over and over. They were sticking to the plan. The damn plan that was ripping her to shreds, because Ladon might be bloody and ruthless, but he was also good and loyal to his people and meant to be a king, but somehow, she just couldn’t picture herself with him. Those damn images of her and Brand together kept fucking with her head, muddying up her thoughts. Doubts plagued her along with an uneasy feeling of not-rightness.
She should be delighted that she’d lucked out to be mating Ladon. The alternatives could have been so much worse. Instead, as the days passed, the reluctant lump in her stomach grew.
She’d lost weight, unable to eat much, thanks to the worry. All due to the watchful, distant bodyguard who had his own uphill battle—earning his place among his new people.
