The Dragon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  That thought made him smile. Because he had a wife who would literally kill him.

  “You’re smiling. Thinking of Evie?”

  “Of course,” he shrugged.

  “She’s well, then. I heard she was quite injured during the fight.”

  “Nothing I couldn’t take care of,” he said softly, recalling exactly how he’d taken care of it. By killing a few sons of bitches, drinking them dry, and then forcing his wife to sink her fangs into his own neck and take her fill. It had been a good night.

  Crap, he thought. Now he was uncomfortable in the chair.

  Across from him, Katrielle laughed softly. “You know,” she said, her blue eyes glinting, “I’ve always been a little envious of the love you two share. It’s pure.”

  Roman regarded her closely. He leaned forward over the table, folding his hands. “You’re thinking of Bantariax.”

  She shook her head. “Now it’s your turn to read minds, I suppose?”

  “You know damn well I can’t read yours.”

  She grinned. “Fair enough.” But her smile slipped a little, just enough for him to notice. “Okay then… yes. I was.”

  “Can you still feel him?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Roman could almost feel her heartache from across the table. “I have no idea where he is, Roman. Something happened to him, somewhere, some-when. And I have no idea what it was. But he’s cut off from me. I think he only managed to break through that small amount because of Eva. Once she was safe, he was gone again.”

  Roman waited a while before he spoke. Finally, he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.” But then she rolled back her shoulders and sighed. “But that’s not why we’re here, is it? You need to know, Roman, that it isn’t Amunet, Ahriman, and Arach you need to be thinking about right now.”

  Roman frowned. “Why’s that?” Those three were very much the ones on Roman’s mind at the moment.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed William Solan’s absence of late.”

  Roman sat up straighter. He remembered the clock tick during their meeting. Warily, he said, “Yes.”

  “And I know you noticed the clock. You were just thinking about it, weren’t you?”

  “Not much gets past you.”

  “I take after Mimi Tannym,” she said with a smile. The smile was gone in the next instant. “Roman, William’s powers have returned.”

  A darkness swept through Roman, thick and sludge-like. He felt cold inside. “How?” And then he added, “Why?”

  “Because the contract that originally took them from him has been broken.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I know you’re going to explain that to me.”

  “Yes, but only because we’re short on time. Remember that firstborn son I mentioned the last time we sat in these chairs? The one born to Amunet and Ahriman when Amunet was in her second human form?”

  He’d been wondering about that child. He nodded. “I do.”

  “Well, he grew up big and strong, Roman. But he grew up wrong. His parents are so one-sided, their pureblood son is, in a way, incomplete.”

  “Like he only has one arm incomplete?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You mean he needs a mate.”

  She nodded.

  He was afraid she was going to say that. “Go on.”

  Thousands of years ago, William Balthazar Solan fell in love with a woman named Helena. Well, at the time, her name was Helen. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of her. She was very – very – beautiful.”

  “The Helen?” he asked incredulously. He’d been alive at roughly the same time she was supposed to have existed, but not once in that lifetime had he come across her. He’d always figured she was pure legend.

  But when Katrielle didn’t say anything, he raised a brow, took a drink of his table water, and swallowed it down with the rest of the heavy truth she was laying on him.

  “There’s a very good reason she’s so beautiful. Helena is a pureblood as well. In a manner of speaking, that is.”

  “She’s a Nomad?”

  Katrielle shook her head. “She’s not even human. Hell, she’s not even supernatural. She’s literally a creation of Fate. Pure Fate, Roman. Capital ‘F’.” She licked her lips. “Helena is the embodiment of it.”

  Roman blinked a few times, his brow furrowing. “To be honest, I’ve never thought of fate as being particularly… well, beautiful,” Roman said as he tried to wrap his mind around the idea of a walking, talking being composed of such a thing.

  “No?” Katrielle asked. Now it was her turn to raise a brow. “Is your life so bad, Roman? Or did you become king of the kings and marry the woman of your dreams? In fact, did you make mad, passionate love to her just hours before meeting me here?”

  Roman hastily cleared his throat, but he was gentleman enough not to deny what she was saying. “Very well,” he admitted quietly. “I see your point.”

  “There is good fate – fate like yours – and there is bad fate,” she told him. “Helena is the former. She embodies the end result of what everyone longs for. The perfect life consisting of the perfect happiness. And hence, she is perfect. And believe me, she gets people’s attention.”

  “I can imagine,” said Roman. A perfect woman who was everything a person desired. Oh, he could imagine that quite well.

  “The firstborn of Amunet on the other hand is the embodiment of fate’s dark side. Of course he can look like anything he wants; he’s a Nomad, and the most powerful in existence. Never mind his parents, Roman. Believe me, he is where the true strength lies.”

  Roman swallowed hard. Why was it, the old witch always managed to make his throat tight with trepidation?

  “But his outward appearance belies what’s underneath. For what is the worst fate you can imagine, Roman? What is the worst fate anyone can imagine? What is the one thing everyone is afraid of? The thing nearly everyone desires least?”

  The word formed on Roman’s tongue in a heartbeat. But it sat there, heavy and wrong, and it was several more heartbeats before he could give voice to it.

  He parted his lips and pushed it through is teeth. “Death.”

  Chapter Forty-six

  “So…” hedged Mimi, who was clearly sick and tired of being cooped up in someone else’s realm, because she hadn’t stopped grinning since Cal and Eva had brought her back to the Dragon Realm and to Cal’s castle. She leaned in toward Evangeline and smiled wickedly. “Did he show you his purple dragon?” she asked with a smirk. “And… was it legendary?”

  Eva gave her a playful, indignant look and shook her head. Then she picked up the throw pillow beside her on the couch and smacked the young dragon across the face with it.

  Mimi went down laughing riotously and fell off the couch. “I’ll take that as a yes!”

  Eva rolled her eyes. “No wonder Cal has to homeschool you.”

  Mimi sat up on the floor and put her elbow on the coffee table, leaning on her hand. “Speaking of Cal,” she said, the mirth fading from her tone to be replaced with genuine curiosity. “He said you pulled some amazing shiznit in Seattle with your healing. What happened, exactly?”

  Eva chewed on her cheek for a moment and then looked down. “I just… It was nothing. I just did what I had to do.” It had been a long time coming.

  “Really? ‘Cuz that’s not what I heard. I heard you practically brought your mom back from the dead, or close to it. And that when she came back, she had red hair. And that you did it inside a shield that Calidum and the other sovereigns couldn’t get through no matter how hard they – ”

  “Good grief, child, is there anything you didn’t hear?”

  “Yeah, actually,” she said tentatively. “What finally happened with Arach?”

  Now Eva straightened on the couch and cleared her throat. It was tightening a little. “You want the truth, or one of those sugar-coated lies adults tell kids to protect them?”

  “What do
you think?” Mimi dead-panned.

  Eva took a deep breath. “Okay, the truth is, he was a genuine asshole. So Calidum ripped his head off.”

  Mimi’s eyes widened – and kept widening.

  Oh crap, thought Eva. Too much.

  “Freaking – awesome!” Mimi suddenly cried, jumping to her feet. “That S.O.B. so had that coming!”

  “Christ,” Eva said, shaking her head. “You watch too much Tokyo Ghoul.”

  “But he really did!” Mimi insisted. “You know, ‘cuz I heard that he kidnapped you and tortured you and stuff and that he was turned into a vampire but also a Nomad but that you then became a badass mo-fo black dragon and wounded the asshole but couldn’t kill him ‘cuz you’re half Nomad so then – ”

  “Oh for the love of…. ” Eva pushed off the couch with a huff. “You’re unbelievable.” She tried not to smile as she left the study of the castle and made a bee line for the kitchens. Of course, Mimi wasn’t fooled by her fake annoyance. She was very hard to get anything past.

  The teenage dragon followed Eva down the hall and through the double doors to the castle’s kitchens. They were empty; the dragons who had served Arach as king had been freed from their indentured servitude. Eva opened the fridge to find it well stocked with all manner of fruits and pastries. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah, but I want these,” said Mimi. Eva turned in time to see Mimi nearly fall from where she’d climbed to grab a box from the top shelf of the walk-in pantry. She landed on both feet, spun, and proudly displayed her prize, holding it up with a grin. “Pop-tart?”

  “Hell yeah I want a Pop-tart,” Eva said, slamming the fridge shut. “What kind is that?”

  Mimi looked down at the box. “S’mores. You okay with that?”

  But when she looked up, Eva was gone. “Eva?”

  There was no response. Aside from Mimi, the kitchen was completely empty.

  *****

  Katrielle called the waitress over as Roman ran his hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. She ordered a serving of tea for two, and once she and Roman were alone again, she continued.

  “Yes,” she said. “Death.” She folded her hands on the table as Roman had done. “Now as I said, William Balthazar Solan fell in love with Helena on sight. As she was for everyone, she was everything he had ever desired. But for him it was different. It was stronger.” She slowly shook her head, her expression distant and a little sad. “William has an air about him of danger, and even of cruelty,” she told him. “I can understand why you suspected him of being the Traitor all that time. But William is actually the loneliest man I’ve ever known.”

  The tea came, and again she waited until they were alone before continuing. Then she began to prepare her cup. “Imagine something for me. Imagine never having found Evellyne. Imagine being alone for another thousand years, Roman. And another after that. And another. Now go back to before your birth and add on several more millennia. Now take all of those years and multiply them by another thousand. And then another. And imagine that in all that time, there was no one for you. You ruled utterly and completely alone.”

  Roman stared at Katrielle. He was frankly stunned by the imagery. So he said nothing.

  She filled the silence herself. “That was William. Until approximately the seventh century, BC, when he met Helena.”

  “Was she really – ”

  “Oh believe me Roman, it’s so much more complicated than the tales of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Homer would have us believe. And so much more simple, as well. It’s also unimportant. Suffice it to say, she fell in love right back. The two were meant to be, as it were. But then, they also weren’t.”

  Roman wanted to slap himself. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means she is Fate, remember? But she’s only half of it. The other half very much did not want Helena to end up with William. The other half very much wanted Helena for himself.”

  Roman lifted his brow. “I see.”

  “You’re starting to. Amunet’s son – we’ll call him Victor since that was the name he was using the last time I saw him – is hell bent on claiming that woman. It’s all he can think about. After all, she is everything he desires. The problem is, if he ever manages to win her over, she will wind up completing him. Two halves of a whole. You get the picture.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “And when that happens….” Her voice trailed off.

  “You’re talking apocalyptic type death, aren’t you?”

  “If you have to choose a word,” she said with a sigh, “that one’s as good as any.”

  But Roman was confused about something. “If she is so precious to both men, why did she have to be reborn? Why isn’t she still alive?” Men that obsessed with winning a woman’s love didn’t allow her to die. He would know. He lifted his teacup to his lips and took a sip.

  “She hasn’t just been reborn once, Roman. But many, many – many – times. And each time, it was William himself who killed her.”

  Roman spat out his tea and nearly dropped the cup. The few other patrons in the café glanced in his direction, but with a flicker of his magic, he turned their attentions away and looked back at Katrielle. “Come again?” he choked.

  “You heard me,” she said softly. Sadly. “William knows about her, Roman. He knows that she is Victor’s other half. And to keep him from ever unleashing his own special Armageddon or Ragnarok or whatever you want to call it upon the planet, Will has taken her out of the picture a thousand times.”

  Roman closed his eyes. He could not. Even. Imagine.

  “Finally, just before he met you and joined the Table of the Thirteen in fact, he broke down. Frankly, I’m surprised it took him so long. He begged Time to take Helena away from him, to take her away from reality, and never allow her to be reborn again. He created a contract – the Contract – and he forced Time to sign it.”

  “You speak of time as if it’s a living being.”

  “To William it is. Remember Roman, he is different from the other Kings. He’s so very old, and so very powerful. The Contract stipulated that he would sacrifice his abilities – those Time had given him – so that Time could use them to control Fate instead. And keep Helena from being reborn.”

  “That… explains a lot,” said Roman, because it did. “But it doesn’t explain why the contract was broken or why she’s returned once again.”

  “That was her doing, Roman. She is that strong. She broke free. Such is Fate.”

  “She wants to die? By his hand?”

  “Don’t be absurd. She has no idea who she is. In each life she is born into, she arrives without a clue as to her own real identity, much less William’s or Victor’s. She simply comes into being, happy and kind, filled with all of the things that people love most about life. And none of the things people don’t.”

  Roman swore softly, and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t tired. He simply had no other way of expressing the dread he felt. “So she’s back. And so is Victor. And William’s powers have been returned to him whether he wants them or not.”

  “Yep,” said Katrielle. “That pretty much sums it up, except you forgot to add that William’s emotions toward her have been amplified by thousands of years of murdering the woman he loves and having her die in his arms.”

  “Why doesn’t he just bloody well make her his queen?”

  “Roman, he’s never met her while he was one of the Thirteen Kings. Remember, she’s been out of commission since before he took his seat at your Table. Until now, he didn’t even know it was possible to take a queen. No doubt, being one of the Thirteen has given him a kind of hope he never had before.”

  “So now he’ll try to win her over?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, considering her words. “I think… William will do what he feels he has to do. In the end, he has always been stronger than anyone I know.”

  Epilogue

  They were leaving the café when Roman suddenly felt dizzy. It was
a foreign feeling for him, one he was not at all accustomed to. He reached out for the wall, and Katrielle was at his side. “Roman?”

  “I’m just light headed,” he said, leaning into the bricks of the building.

  His phone chirped and vibrated in his suit breast pocket, and he recognized the tone as coming from Calidum. Closing his eyes to gather his wits about him, he pulled the phone out and answered it. “Cal, what is it?”

  “Roman, she’s gone. Eva’s gone.” The Dragon King’s voice was nearly frantic, his tone grating near the edge of a transformation due to barely leashed rage. “Someone fucking took her! Roman!”

  That’s not possible, thought Roman numbly. Evangeline was a queen now.

  But there was something wrong inside Roman. Once the initial dizziness swept through and was gone, he realized there was an unsettling sensation left behind. It was, for lack of a better word, an emptiness.

  He glanced at Katrielle. Her eyes were wide, and her expression was ripe with fear.

  “Evie,” he said. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he was hanging up on Calidum and pulling up a transportation portal. Just before he stepped into it, his phone rang again. Roman glanced down at the screen. This call was from Nicholas Wargrave. Roman sent it to voicemail and stepped into the portal.

  It carried him with fantastic haste toward his home, a safe house he kept in the Redwood Forest in northern California. Evie was supposed to be there.

  He stepped out of the portal as soon as the exit appeared, cutting it very close so that he had to leap down from the edge of it to land on both feet in his living room.

  “Evie!” he called, his gut already going cold, his heart of hearts already knowing –

  His phone rang again.

  Oh gods, he thought desperately, glancing at it like a victim in a horror story. It was Jack Colton, the Shifter King. And with a swipe of Roman’s shaking thumb, he saw that he’d had three other calls while in the portal. All from different Kings.

  “EVIE!” he bellowed, throwing back his head to roar her name at the tops of his lungs. His butler came into the room, followed by other members of his household. Roman D’Angelo spun like a madman to face them. “Where is she? Bones, where the hell is my wife?”