by Olivia Myers
“Rhys.”
She chanted his name, telling him all the things she’d been holding back since that day in her office. Earlier, really. Since they’d met.
He responded to each whispered revelation with deeper, harder thrusts and more passionate kisses. His hands stroked every inch of her, learning her by touch.
She was burning, her skin like ash, ready to crumble with pleasure.
Cassandra met Rhys’s dragon eyes and let that winding, tightening, building pleasure spiral out and higher. Her body clenched, squeezing him with rhythmic, fluttering pulses.
She cried out, the words garbled between their lips.
His thrusts grew harder, more rapid, that familiar rumbling swelling in his throat. He rode her through the long waves of pleasure as she fell apart, and then he followed her. Cassandra felt the throb of his thick shaft, the flood of heat.
Just as he’d done when he’d come inside her at the office, Rhys roared his satisfaction.
She held him as he shook and poured himself into her, stroking shaking fingers down tense, sweat-slick flesh.
They collapsed, quiet and breathless, into a soft, warm, boneless heap.
Rhys rubbed a kiss along her jaw, his voice a bass rasp in her ear. “Don’t think I didn’t hear what you said, little rabbit.”
Cassandra smiled against his damp shoulder. She’d wondered if he would understand her whimpered confession, if he’d acknowledge it. She licked the salt from his skin, tasting smoke and sweetness and Rhys.
“Good. And do you know what else, my dragon?”
He sifted fingers through her hair, his obsidian irises sparkling. “What’s that, rabbit?”
She kissed him, hard and sharp, her answering grin just as toothy and feral as his ever was.
“I’m keeping you, too.”
THE END
Ravished by the Dragon
Shadows streamed from behind the thatched homes, the open-air market and the barracks with its imposing, dark-walled façade, and threw wild shapes on the dirt road. A vague figure with loose hair and flying skirts tore down the street.
It would be curfew soon, and Gwythn knew that she must hurry.
She lifted her skirts and dashed through a puddle, giving a sportive toss of her head when the water splashed her knees. Fafiny trailed behind, tail wagging, mouth panting and tongue out hanging. He got caught in some bramble and hurt his leg two days ago when Gwythn went out to hunt rabbits, but no one who saw the stupefied pleasure on the dog’s face would ever guess that the creature was in pain.
“Here boy! Here boy!” Gwythn patted her knee for the dog to catch up. Fafiny took a few limping bounds and came to her side, where he was rewarded by a generous pat on the scruff.
“Gooood dog!”
The road dipped and curved to the right. Rounding the turn and splashing through another puddle, Gwythn and Fafiny fell under the enormous shadow of Dom Araf, the king’s castle. The castle was as huge as a mountain and resembled a forest of turrets stacked on top of each other. It was miles away—a day’s travel through all the traffic of the city—but despite the distance Gwythn could plainly see the decorations adorning the castle’s façade.
Hundreds of dragons, or perhaps thousands, occupied every inch of stone. The depictions of dragons were as varied as they were expertly carved. There were dragons in combat, dragons spraying fire and terrifying villages; dragons hunted and dragons slain; and even a few depictions of dragons paying homage to their human masters from the old times when dragons were noble creatures.
When the first king had commissioned the castle, artists from every corner of Gythry had answered his call. Through the years, their work continued to shine: a testament to the magnificence of human ability.
Gwythn paused to admire the castle. She thought about the words her father had told her the first time he took her to see it. “I am no master architect,” he’d claimed with his characteristic modesty. “I will never have the ability to contribute anything to so wonderful a creation. And that fills me with joy. What else is joy than being content to admire something perfect?”
There was no denying that the castle was perfection, but it was antique. In the times of the old kings, no one would have imagined that the days of dragons were numbered: that soon not only the huge dragons that roamed the wilds but also the tribes of dragon shifters would be no more.
Gwythn felt a surge of pride, but she didn’t dally long. She scrambled further down the road and into the main square. A few tradesmen and buyers remained scattered and there was one man in the stockades, hanging his head, but otherwise the place was empty.
“Well, Faffy,” Gwythn patted the shaggy, silver-grey coat of the husky and looked up at what she’d come to see.
A stage, raised about twenty feet, dominated the center. Through it protruded the torso of a massive statute, veiled with a white sheet. The statue stood about fifty feet and was, apart from the mountainous castle, the tallest thing Gwythn has ever laid her eyes on.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Fafiny, perturbed that his master had ceased petting, closed his mouth and nudged her with a soggy cold nose. But Gwythn couldn’t disguise her pride or the incredible sensation moving within her, the excitement that began in her stomach and rose to her throat, as she looked at the veiled masterpiece. Of course being the sculptor’s daughter, it was overwhelming pride that she experienced burning deep. A part of her, however small, felt a certain responsibility for the great artwork. However, most of her pride rested in the sculpture itself.
In all the kingdoms in all of Gythry, in every family in every house of Araf, not one citizen could be found who didn’t recognize the magnificent figure of King Blethen the Redeemer, even if it was veiled. Sent by Heaven to vanquish evil and its far-reaching corruption, he was the king whose lengthy and tumultuous reign ended in the destruction of every trace of the dragon infestation that had haunted and destroyed the kingdom. Neither man nor God, King Blethen was the divinity that separated them: a savior.
The light in Gwythn’s eyes was fiery and bright. Not the enthusiasm some feel for great leaders and great reformers, but the brilliance of a fervent, religious conviction burnt there. For Gwythn, King Blethen was everything, every man: King, Redeemer, Savior, Protector, second father. Or, she sometimes thought in a moment of fancy, her true father. A man whose example, if she could follow it, would open to her the gates of salvation and paradise.
Tears streamed down her face as she gazed at her ruler. Her thoughts swirled. She thought about tomorrow, about King Blethen’s visit to her city all the way from the capital to see her father’s work. She tried to imagine the look on his glorious face and grew so happy at the thought that a smile blossomed, turning her cheeks into little apples. Then, her thoughts turned, and in her mind she was a young girl again. Young and frightened.
She was four, maybe five, and it was her first time in Araf. She had been with her father, destitute and living in a hovel that smelled of piss and cabbage. In her mouth she tossed around like a chicken bone that uncomfortable word home, wondering how she would ever learn to apply it to the muddy, cold city. She turned to her father who held her in his arms, warming her, and asked when she will see her mother again. Her father said nothing, but bowed his head. A moment later, she felt him sobbing.
She learned all the details about the raid years later; that not just her mother but most of the village had died in the attack. She learned that the village was burnt to the ground and that even the stones were pulverized to dust, and that she was indescribably lucky to escape. She learned the name of the attackers—Tribe wyt Dune, famous for their cruelty—and for the first time in her young life she learned the word dragon, and she knew at once just how cruel and devilish the creatures were.
Fresh from the massacre, deprived of her mother, her friends and her home, and given only the name of her enemy, Gwythn vowed revenge. She swore that she would always hate dragons and daily curse their name, and
that if ever she met a member of Tribe wyt Dune, nothing except death would stop her from sticking a knife into his guts. But her vows turned out to be unnecessary.
Less than five years after the attack, the mighty Tribe wyt Dune was reduced to a few scattered marauders. King Blethen’s campaign against dragons was at its strongest, and it had acquired the ability to vanquish an entire tribe in less than a few years.
Gwythn first heard the news in a kind of stupor. What kind of man or king was this, whose justice was so swift and so perfect? At her tender age, she knew nothing about King Blethen’s divinity, yet by his acts alone she knew that his powers were beyond a normal man’s. She recognized at once his strength, his justice, and his greatness, and from the moment she learned his name she determined that her life would be spent trying to pay him back for the debt he’d settled.
The man in the stockades next to the stage groaned and tried to move his arms, but they hung limply like cracked branches, stiff from the cold. It was not an uncommon sight in the city to see a man punished as he was. In the last ten years of King Blethen’s campaign, the reform of ‘Fugitives’ was introduced to the purpose of rooting out all dragon shifters trying to disguise themselves as regular humans.
Fugitives were like a weed that, untended, would soon grow to choke all life out of the garden. Their eradication could not be more important. Nothing frightened Gwythn more than the idea that a dragon might be lurking around town without ever being noticed. The reform gave her comfort, even though it had led to so many false claims of people being shifters that King Blethen declared the charge of ‘False Fugitive’ a capital offense punished in the severest manner possible.
‘Severest’ in King Blethen’s reign was no idle threat, now that his campaign was officially over. Talk of dragons was vilified in order to make sure that their unwelcome history was forgotten as soon as possible, and it was looked upon as a kind of treason to introduce the topic unless one was making a valid claim against a Fugitive. But the man in the stockade had not made a valid claim. He’d tried to convince the Watch that his landlord was really a disguised Tribe leader, but his evidence had been weak and the trial had determined in the favor of his neighbor.
In two days he would lose his head.
It never crossed Gwythn’s mind that these measures might be considered excessive. Much worse was the possibility that dragons would be as they once were, unbound, unchecked, and free to terrorize. Justice was bloody, and righteousness must be ruthless if it was to persist. King Blethen’s campaign had ingrained these laws into the canon of common knowledge.
“Well,” a voice came from behind Gwythn. “That’s either a wood nymph a long way from home or a pretty girl, also a long way from home.”
Gwythn whirled around. Voices that snuck up on her from behind always frightened her, and this voice and its loathsome irony was particularly gruesome.
“Better run along, missy. The streets are dangerous at night.”
There was only one person in the city with a voice as dripping with mockery as this. Gwythn knew by the first word that it was the young man from out of town, Rhythion. He’d arrived in Araf a little less than a year ago from a village in the north where, he claimed, his grandfather taught him the ancient languages by making him learn huge portions of ancient poetry by heart whenever be misbehaved. Gwythn didn’t know if she believed the story, but his talent was real enough. She’d heard him once in a tavern recite an ancient epic in four different languages until after an hour he collapsed, stone drunk.
If his talent was incredible, his appearance was no less so. He had a regal nose adorning his sculpted face, under which his mockery dribbled out through the cruel, thin line of his mouth. His body was thick with muscle, and his hair was as thick as a bird’s nest and as ashy as coal. His eyes were so wide and so marble blue that their unblinking stillness gave the impression that she was drowning if she spent too much time staring into them. It was almost unfair that he had been blessed with such good looks, when his personality was so distasteful.
“I…I was,” Gwythn tried to speak before she realized that she’d fallen into those eyes and was lost, trying to find the surface.
“You’re going to be a chew toy for the Watch if you want to stay longer,” said Rhythion. “Don’t think they wouldn’t jump at the chance to put you into the stocks.” The blue eyes widened. The slender mouth cracked a crooked smile. “Or to put their stocks into you.”
“You’re a beast,” Gwythn found her tongue at last. “And you’ll live to regret every slimy thing you’ve said once I’m married to a prince and can do whatever I want with you.” She was going out on a leap. Her father had done no more than casually mention the possibility of a marriage to one of the king’s sons, but it was ammunition and Gwythn was going to use it for all it was worth.
“Why wait until then, missy? You can tell me what you want to do right now.”
“I want—” Gwythn tried to be defiant, but the blue eyes clapped to her again. Her words scattered like crickets. Damn him! Those eyes, their hypnosis. It wasn’t natural.
“You’ll tell me when you’re married to the king’s fairy,” Rhythion said, and narrowed his eyes.
Gwythn felt the tension within her go out, almost as though he’d released her from a physical hold.
“But right now,” he continued, “I don’t have time for you.”
“He’s not a fairy, you—you dog!” Gwythn cried.
Rhythion ignored her and moved past, dragging something covered in dirty cloths behind him and up the scaffolding.
“Is that for the monument?” she asked eagerly. Rhythion worked as a translator and also as an engraver of foreign languages, and he’d been commissioned by the king for an inscription to accompany the statue. What he’d decided to write had been left to his discretion and would remain a mystery until the unveiling tomorrow.
“Use your head.”
“What did you choose? Will you tell me? Is it a verse from the Lay of Canniculus? Or maybe a lyric from the Seventy Songs?”
Rhythion dropped the large object at the foot of the scaffolding and looked as though he was going to round on Gwythn. Instead, he stretched, keeping his back to her, and then gave Fafiny a pat on the head. The dog let loose its thick tongue, and then tried to rub its head against Rhythion’s thigh.
“Nice pup.”
But the sight of her faithful dog with this detestable man was too much for Gwythn. “Faffy!” she cried.
The husky ignored her. Humiliated, she took him by the scruff and started back in the direction home. She’d have her opportunity tomorrow to view the statue in all its glory. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t have to put up with any unwanted company. Tomorrow, her father would be honored by the king himself. Tomorrow, things would change.
“Until tomorrow,” Rhythions’s voice came, echoing her very thoughts. She felt a tingle in her back, and sped her step.
*
The night passed Gwythn by like a happy blur, curving towards the promise of tomorrow. Before she knew it, the first thin frays of sunlight had come through the window.
She lay in bed until she could hear her father wake in the room adjacent to hers and then she began to prepare herself. Two hours later, she emerged, regal as a princess.
Artyr, her father, sat at the table, picking at a quail egg with his spoon. He was dressed for the occasion as finely as his modesty would allow, in a simple coat with fur at the collar, and with his greying hair parted and wetted by a dragon-bone comb.
He stood when he caught sight of her. “My,” he exclaimed. A string of quail egg dribbled on to the floor from his open mouth. “You look all grown up, daughter, in that fancy dress of yours.”
Ever since the idea that she would meet King Blethen in person had taken form in Gwythn’s mind, she’d determined that she would greet him as a true lady. And so, for months, she’d waded through mud holes and bog heaps in the pursuit of wildflowers she could sell at market. She’d spent days hunting rabb
its and stags, had shot them, stripped them, cleaned them and sold them, all by herself and all in order to earn a few coins to buy a few yards of silk for a dress she would wear only once.
But her efforts hadn’t been in vain. All the scratches and all the scars, all the mud clots caught in her hair and all the hours spent excavating the innards of dead animals were forgotten. Not just forgotten. It was as though they’d never existed, so perfect was Gwythn’s change.
Her dress was as dark and as softly rippling as a lake seen at night. It was cut low and tight across her chest so that the deep curves of her breasts shown amply, and over her shoulders she wore a tight fur coat. Her hair was thick and luscious and the dark almond of rich soil. Her eyes were broad and beautiful with anticipation, and glistered with light.
“I’ve never been happier to be a father,” Artyr said, still standing, “nor as saddened by the knowledge that one day, I’ll have to give this beautiful creature away.”
“Oh, Daddy!” She flung herself into his arms. “Is it true? Tell me it’s true!”
“Nothing more than a few words, child. Don’t throw yourself too much into a hope.”
“But Daddy! Haven’t you seen him? He’s so handsome! And just think—you’d have a princess for a daughter! A princess of King Blethen!”
“I already have a princess for a daughter,” her old father smiled and then motioned her to sit down. “But child, if it does happen, if you marry Prince Alwen—you must love him, and love him fully. Do you understand?”
“Daddy!” Gwythn cried, indignant. She didn’t like how serious her father had asked, as if there was anything else she could do with her husband, a son of King Blethen, except love him fully!
“You’re a fearful old man if you’re asking that of me. But I forgive you. I don’t think you mean it at all. I think you’re simply nervous.”
“I’ve been a fearful old man ever since I gained something precious I was afraid of losing. But I am cautious as well. Alwen is certainly a beautiful boy—” Gwythn didn’t particularly like that he used this adjective to describe her future husband, but she kept quiet “—but beauty is not everything in a relationship. I need to know if I speak with any emissaries today, that you will agree to love him completely and absolutely.”
