by May Sage
As soon as Xandrie made the connection with the tiny creature, she felt how passionately it wanted to be in the world. It was coming at them, ready to fight, and had no way of understanding that the fight might kill his mother. Xandrie let the cerulean braid of energy coil about the child and soothe his battling spirit. The little one calmed. She could have sworn he sang, but she couldn’t stop to ask; she needed to keep him calm enough to come into the world without sending his mother from it.
“Deep breaths.” Demelza mimed the breathing pattern she wanted Galdia to imitate.
Demelza looked up and smiled at Xandrie.
“Now, push. Hard as you can. You’re about to meet your dragonling, Galdia.”
Xandrie bent to Galdia’s ear and whispered. “Galden is on his way.”
“Really?” Galdia sobbed. “A boy?”
Xandrie nodded.
Galdia heaved until she was beet red, and her dragonling came into the world, a feisty wee thing with a set of lungs to rival an opera singer. Demelza scooped him up and handed him to his mother, and everyone, her included, cried again and again.
They’d only made it out of the room when her friend cornered her outside, accusingly saying, “I could see it going wrong. You did something.”
Xandrie nodded.
“Dragons are animals—and animals are my thing, I suppose. I felt like it needed to stop moving so much, and I was able to make him do so.”
Demelza was practically shaking.
You’re going to be here, every time, to do exactly what you just did. I want your hands on birthing bellies. Swear you’ll help me.”
“Just you try and stop me.”
They were her people to care for now, too.
King Rhey Vasili couldn’t stop grinning. The woman who was to be his queen had come to his kingdom with nothing to recommend her but her wits, and in only three months she had saved all their lives, trounced the competition, won The Claiming, and now saved a dragonling and his mother. He’d hoped his partner might be any one of these things—brave, fierce, talented, to say nothing of beautiful—but he’d gotten the full package. He eyed the crown he was to place on her head. The gems encrusted around the rim sparkled almost as brightly as his bride-to-be’s eyes. Almost.
The Nobles were assembled in their ancestral seats, but the Cathedral was packed to the rafters with people of every class. His household—the servants, the Guard, even Ramog, his curmudgeonly Head Chef—all loved the woman he adored and wanted to be there as she became their queen.
Xandrie stood tall and proud, ready to walk down the aisle to her throne and claim her title. The music filled the ancient halls and Rhey readied himself for what promised to be one of the happiest moments of his life.
Garald thundered into the hall ahead of a contingent of Warriors, every man of them oozing terror and bravado and their willingness to fight to the death. “We’re under attack,” he yelled. “We need the king out of here, now.”
Rhey turned to see where Xandrie stood, desperate that she not be in the line of fire.
The huge wooden doors to the hall were thrown open. In the archway, a mage hovered, the energy about her glowing and crackling and bursting with life. Her hair flew about her shoulders and her eyes bore into him, rooting him to the spot. Though he was unable to turn his head, Rhey swiveled his eyes to his left and then his right. Garald was frozen as his bear self, teeth bared and fangs extended. His entire Guard were immobilized, just as he was.
The mage flowed toward him, her feet barely touching the ground.
Rhey fought the bonds that held him in thrall, desperate that the mage not reach Xandrie or harm her in any way. He’d only just found her, he couldn’t lose her. He sharpened his will and plumbed his dragon power and managed, finally, to put one foot in front of the other.
Xandrie stepped around him, apparently untouched by the mage’s spell. “Talia?”
To the shock of the whole kingdom, their future queen’s arms flew around the shoulders of the single strongest magical entity they’d ever encountered; stronger than the enemy which had almost killed them all at their borders. More astonishing yet, the mage’s arms circled her frame and squeezed as hard as she could.
“You’re here,” the stranger whispered against her neck. “You’re really alright.”
Relief and delight were both evident.
As quickly as it had taken them all, the spell keeping them in place released their limbs, and Rhey sheathed his weapon, ordering his men to do the same.
Beaming, his bride was pulling the mage who, now, didn’t look all that terrifying—she was a young woman who walked a little awkwardly, tripping over her own foot. Her gaze never met anyone’s, other than Xandrie’s.
“Talia,” she said, pointing to him, “meet my future husband. You made it just in time.” Then, she added, “Rhey, this is my little sister.”
Right.
So, when she’d said that her family was powerful, what she’d actually wanted to say was that someday, they would rule the entire world.
Two Weeks Ago
It didn’t make sense. Not even a little bit, actually. Every time they repeated their inane story, Talia’s head hurt.
She’d come with news—great news—but she’d wanted to tell it to her sister first, and Xandrie wasn’t there. Her parents told her about demons, dragons, and other such crazy things that didn’t belong in Malec.
After a while, she lifted her hand, and the words stopped.
Oops.
She forgot, now, how much power she had at her fingertips.
“Sorry. Please be quiet. Aleria, would you tell me what happened?” she asked her older sister.
The blonde beauty smiled sadly.
“You won’t like it. Darsen, the oaf, tried to rape Alexandria, then accused her of being possessed by a demon, because she pushed him back with fire. Father and Mother took his side. She was imprisoned, and sentenced, too. They tried to torture her. They couldn’t. Finally, she was rescued by a dragon; we all saw it fly away. No clue how that happened.”
That was plainly said, and made a little more sense; not a lot, though.
“Dragon?”
Aleria shrugged.
“No clue how that came about, but at least she didn’t get drowned. I don’t think she’s dead. I’ve done location spells and they worked for a time—now, though, they’re vague, as though some shield is protecting her.”
Talia nodded.
“Come on, there was no proof that…”
She lifted her hand again, this time intending to shut her mother up.
“Truth,” she ordered.
Her parents were class four mages, some of the most powerful in the land. Few spells worked on them, fewer mages could hope to best them.
She wasn’t a mage, though. Not anymore.
“The girl was a disgrace.” Daria clapped her hand over her mouth in an effort to stop her own words for damning her further, but there was no resisting the magics of Talia. Not anymore.
They’d had what they’d wanted. They’d sent their child to the capital of the Northern Var in hopes that she’d be noticed by the Order.
She had been. “We wanted rid of her honorably. If she had married Darsen, as planned, she might have salvaged a little pride and undone the damage she’d done to our name, but she was always a wayward child and refused to obey. I curse the day she sprang from my loins and am glad she was snatched away by some dragon. May it not choke on her bones.”
Lars Astria stood behind his wife, thunderstruck. Talia could read him. He wasn’t alarmed by what he heard from his wife, he was worried what was about to come out of his own mouth. Talia turned her attention on him, binding him with the same truth magic she had lain upon her mother.
“I didn’t believe she was mine,” said Lars.
Daria clouted her husband over the head.
Talia smiled. They were their own worst enemies. She didn’t need to do more to punish them for what they’d done to Xandrie.
They would keep telling the truth for days and by the time her truth spell wore off, their reputations would be in tatters and their business a shambles. They deserved no less. No self-respecting parent sentenced their daughter to be tortured and murdered. They only got what they’d brought upon themselves.
She left her parents screaming obscenities at each other, and headed towards the Guard post, stopping at the door to turn to Aleria.
“You’re coming?”
The woman didn’t hesitate.
Darsen was lounging at a small table in the corner of the common area, where the guards loitered when they were on break and playing at cards and dice. His tunic was unbuttoned and his suspenders off his shoulders and around his sagging waist.
“Down,” said Talia.
Darsen’s pants fell around his ankles. His colleagues wept with laughter.
“Again,” said Talia.
Darsen’s underpants were on the floor in a trice.
Talia smiled. The man was well endowed. Not for long.
“Walnuts to hazelnuts, then hazelnuts to pinenuts.”
She didn’t wait to see her handiwork, but his shouts could be heard from one end of Malec to the other. With a nutsack that small, he wouldn’t be dropping his drawers any time soon.
Talia washed her hands of the small, backwards, oppressive town of her youth and set off. Truth be told, she may have stayed in the the Northern Var—might even have carried on working for her parents—if things had unfolded in a different way, but instead, Natalia Astria, the only living Enchantress in Eartia, set off without knowing where her steps would take her, and embraced her destiny.
* * *
The End
To Catch a Prince
The Prince
Vincent found himself pondering politics; legislations, to be precise. For surely, as prince of the realm of Farden, duke of Norda, baron of Wellyem, and cousin to King Rhey Vasili, he should have a say in such things.
“I’m going to pass a law against meddling parents, if it’s the last thing I do,” he said to the old Archduke, who paid no mind to the threat.
Viktor Vasili was master at the art of ignoring his son when he didn’t want to hear what was said.
“What about dear Saskia? She’s grown into quite the beauty, I hear.”
Vincent groaned, lifted his gaze high towards the ceiling, and closed his eyes. He then prayed to all the gods for the patience to deal with the would-be matchmaker.
At one thousand, one hundred and three years of age, Viktor, eldest amongst the elders, the most ancient member of the royal family still breathing, had been practically stunned when the pretty she-bear shifter he’d been keeping at home had produced a son and heir.
That hadn’t been part of the plan. Viktor was a scholar, a hedonist, a musician. He enjoyed life and freedom, and was quite indifferent to political games. As his name was Vasili, having a child was a political move, so he’d never thought of it. But when Vincent came, Viktor took to fathering with an unceasing wonder.
“I suppose I may as well marry you now,” he’d told Mula, his mistress, who was so good as to inform him that he could go do something he deemed anatomically impossible.
She’d made him work for it, but Viktor was patient and, at long last, earned himself a wife.
Mula wasn’t swayed by the courtship as much as the fact that the father of her child was, simply, a good dragon. He hired no maid, no weapons master, no great tutor. It was he who played his violin to their son at night, as he had no voice for a lullaby. It was he who held his baby close, while their driver turned the carriage round their citadel when he still wouldn’t sleep. Vincent learned to walk holding his hand, and, soon after, learned to fight with him, too. No son had ever had a better father. Or a more adoring mother.
Vincent had to repeat that to himself quite frequently of late, for Viktor and Mula were in agreement right now. They wanted grandbabies. Badly. And to acquire those, they needed Vincent to choose a bride.
Although, neither Viktor, nor Mula, was against him simply throwing a wench on his shoulder and having his way with her until she was with child. They weren’t fussy like that. Viktor had wed Mula, by and by, but they hadn’t been bound at his birth. No wonder that their sense of propriety wasn’t quite in line with every other noble’s. A somewhat familial trait.
“Saskia,” said Vincent in a slow hiss, “would cut my throat in my sleep.”
This wasn’t an exaggeration to anyone who knew the beautiful blonde creature his parents were considering as a potential wife for him. They apparently didn’t place the value of his neck above their lust for grandbabies.
“Poppycock,” Viktor protested. “The girl has honor. She’d attack you while you were awake, and come at you from the front, too.” The man had a point. “But, perhaps not. It wouldn’t do to hasten your demise. What think you of Demelza, hm?”
Vincent sighed, deeply. “We’re related,” he reminded his father.
In his long life Duke Drakr, Viktor’s father, married twice. Of his first wife, Wuja, a proper lady his own father handpicked, he birthed Rhey’s father, Ryker, who was to become king. After Wuja’s death, Drakr chose to elevate his favorite mistress, Syn, to the outrage of some and the amusement of many. Viktor was born of Drakr and Syn. Drakr perished before his second wife, and finding herself rich, but without a husband, the lady, still beautiful - as dragons were for many years - devoted her life to her pleasures. She had an entire harem to satisfy her needs, so it was no surprise that she gave birth to three other children.
One might have thought that her daughters would be rejected as bastards of low birth, children to a Noble Whore, but, on the contrary, Syn’s children were embraced at court. Syn shared her beauty and her arts with her progeny. Viktor, and his half siblings, Tara, Pyru and Lore, played music, wrote poems and danced so well there was talk about some elvish blood in their veins. When they were of age, the most eligible gentlemen offered for his sisters.
Tara wedded Prince Julian, the son of the king who’d preceded Ryker on the throne; Demelza was their only daughter. She thus shared Vincent’s blood, courtesy of Syn.
“Come, Vik, this won’t do at all. Our son knows every woman of birth and rank in the kingdom. If any of them had caught his eye for more than a night yet, we’d know.” Vincent was about to thank his mother for the unexpected aid, but she then added, “We’d better have a look amongst peasants he may not yet have seen. Should we line them up?”
He threw his hands up in the air, in sign of defeat. “I give up.”
Mula perked up. “So, you’ll wed?”
“I meant, I give up on you, and I’m leaving. Mother,” he kissed her cheek, “Father,” he bowed his head. “Get in touch when you’ve both retrieved a fragment of your sanity.”
On that note, he turned on his heels and left his amused, insane, aggravating, and weirdly endearing parents’ dwelling. In the last year, he’d visited them two dozen times, and two dozen times, they’d parted ways in the same manner. He half wondered if they didn’t bring up the subject of his upcoming nuptials when they’d had enough of him.
They’d grown more insistent recently, though, and he knew why. It was his cousin’s fault. Well, not quite; poor Rhey had had no say in the matter. The fault belonged to the Elders of their kind, who had called for a Claiming.
Within a few months, his cousin would have a queen and his parents saw it as a sign that it was time for Vincent to also tie the knot.
Vincent sighed. He didn’t intend to take a wife, now or later. What sort of a husband would he be to any woman? A dragon that couldn’t shift was of little worth. If he hadn’t been allotted a list of titles longer than a forearm when it had to be recorded on a parchment, he would have been nothing in their world. Thanks to his birth, he had fortune, a good position. Thanks to his father, who’d taught him well, he was as strong as anyone in their mortal shell. He was also blessed as to be able to make use of his fire, in small quantities. But nothing changed
the fact that the dark blue creature with shining metallic scales he’d known, and even loved in his youth, was gone forever, crippling him in a way no dragon should ever be crippled. Worse yet, Vincent knew his beast should stay gone.
He was a man now. A strong one. A handsome one, too. But a man, nonetheless. And men were nothing in the realm of Farden, where dragons were the most powerful, feared, and revered creatures alive.
Any woman who accepted his advances would do so because she wanted to be princess of the realm, not because of his own merits. As a child born of love, bathed in joy throughout his life, and still witnessing so much affection between his parents, he didn’t think he could bear to form a cold alliance.
Eager to chase away such depressing thoughts, Vincent rode at high speed, heading north for two days, until he reached the gates of the Golden City of Tenelar, home to his kin.
The guards flying around the City must have seen him coming, for he was greeted at the gate by the king himself, rather than a simple envoy - an honor few were blessed with.
“Cousin.” Rhey Vasili was smiling, although his eyes weren’t quite there. The vacant expression he wore was familiar. They’d all seen it on King Ryker’s face, before he went well and truly mad. Vincent stiffened. Rhey wasn’t there yet, he had time, perhaps even centuries, but there was no doubt: the madness of kings was upon him. “Back so soon, I see?”
Vincent had been forced to take one of his yearly leaves of absence, and he’d attempted to spend it with his family.
“Welcome me into your home, Rhey, or send me back to work, I beg of you. I just can’t deal with the parental unit.”
Rhey stared at him pointedly. “That you would be welcome under my roof has never been questioned and I shall not have it doubted again.”
