Briana instantly jumped to her feet. “Scent? Wait! Don’t tell me we just left my friend Carol alone with another dragon-shifter—no, that isn’t important—with a potential killer!”
“Harold would have made sure she, at least, made it to safety,” he assured her firmly.
Frantic with worry, it took her a long moment to remember that Harold was Taron’s so-called appraiser. “Don’t tell me your appraiser can shift into a dragon, too!”
Just how many dragons were now running around the world pretending to be human?
“No, just a very capable human.”
Looking around, Briana spotted the building’s rooftop door and started to step towards it. “I need to go back, anyway—hey!”
Between one blink and the next, Taron snatched her up into one giant fist and lifted her up to his eye level. Feeling as though she was trapped inside an uncomfortably tight and textured tube, rather than struggle futilely to free her arms, Briana settled on glaring at one of his enormous eyes.
“The best thing you can do for your friend is to stay away,” he said frankly. “Cabak will have no doubt caught your scent from the shop. He will realize what I have found, recognize the potential danger, and think that I have fled the city to hide you away.”
“You never did explain why he was after me in the first place,” she said pointedly, trying to ignore the painful way one of the book’s edges was digging into one of her boobs.
“It’s because of your blood.”
Briana stilled. “What about my blood?”
“It’s very faint in you, but I would never in all eternity forget that scent. You share a bloodline with the witch that exiled me to this world.”
CHAPTER SIX
Briana’s first instinct was to shout out “that’s insane!” The next was to stiffen as she felt a jolt of very real fear shoot through her body. Was that what this was all about? Not some old, weird book but trying to find the “witch” that possessed it to make her pay for what her alleged ancestor did to him?
“You want revenge.” She was shocked at how utterly matter-of-fact her tone sounded.
That giant eye that filled her vision blinked slowly before he abruptly lowered her back to the ground and released her onto unsteady legs.
“That’s not what I want from you at all.”
Although every instinct within was screaming for her to run away, Briana forced herself to remain where she stood. Taron looked so taken aback by her accusation that she couldn’t believe that he was lying to her. Who knew that a dragon’s face could be so expressive?
She took a deep, calming breath. “Okay.”
Taron’s gaze sharpened as she once again lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the ground.
After a tense moment of silently staring at one another, Briana finally said, “Not that I’m ready to accept just yet that one of my ancestors was a real, spell-using witch from another world, but even if that’s true, how does dropping that bombshell on me help you in any way? Because I can tell you right now that I don’t have anything even remotely resembling a witchy power.”
“As I said before, the answer to that question remains to be seen. All I ask right this moment is for you to hear me out. Then once I explain my situation, we will open Beatrice’s book to the drawing of the key and see what the Fates have in store for both of us.”
Briana suddenly had a strong urge to fling the book away. “What exactly do you think’s going to happen?”
“What I ‘hope’ will happen,” he corrected. “I hunted that book for nearly two centuries for the information that it contained. I even infiltrated the Hildebrand family and offered to aid them in their search for their lost heirloom. It was fitting, really, given that their surname is derived from words meaning fire, battle, strife, and sword. I never thought it would lead me to another of the Ansi blood, and make no mistake, you are of that bloodline, no matter how thin that blood has become within you. It’s likely not a coincidence that your late grandmother had that book in her possession.”
“My grandmother wasn’t a witch, either, if that’s what you’re insinuating. She never would’ve kept something that important a secret from me.”
But she didn’t tell me about this book, did she?
Pushing that very uncomfortable thought away for the moment, Briana asked a bit crossly, “What do you mean, ‘Ansi’ blood?”
“That’s what we call non-dragon-shifters who can wield magic in my tongue,” Taron replied. “Witch, mage, magician, wizard, warlock—those are the closest terms you humans have in this world. It’s all interchangeable.”
“Did the Hildebrand family know that you could shift into a dragon?”
“Of course. How else would I have been able to explain the fact that I don’t age? We dragons are essentially immortal as long as we don’t fall victim to violence. We are very hard to kill, but we still can be killed. I needed them completely in the know to help me keep my secret from the rest of humanity over the long centuries, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. You need to understand the circumstances that led to my exile here.
“The history of my people spans across millennia, and I couldn’t possibly explain every nuance of our society in such a short time. I suppose the most important thing you need to know is that there are two races of dragons in my world, the firedrakes and the stone dragons. For the most part, our two peoples have lived together in relative harmony along with the non-shifters, but underneath that cooperation, the stone dragons have always resented the fact that our ruling monarchs have always been firedrakes and only from the royal House of the Red Flame.”
Briana sighed. “That sounds like the prologue to every attempted coup in history.”
Taron grimaced. “Yes. Living here in this world over the last couple of centuries has taught me that lesson all too well, and that is, indeed, exactly what occurred. The highest ranking noble house among the stone dragons, the House of Blue Stone, convinced their people that they were strong enough, cunning enough, to take out the firedrake king and secure the throne. For the most part, they were correct.”
“Wait! Don’t tell me you are their king!” Briana exclaimed.
Her entire body was suddenly rocked by vibrations and gusts of hot dragon breath as Taron abruptly burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. It was a very valid conclusion to come to, but the look of incredulity on your face was priceless,” he said, mirth making his eyes shimmer more brightly. “Do I not seem a king?”
His presence was certainly intimidating enough for a man used to wielding absolute power over his people, but he was a dragon after all. Her subconscious could have just as easily been reacting to the fact that the mother of all apex predators had been staring her down.
“Considering that you’re the first dragon-shifter I’ve ever met, I wouldn’t know one of your society’s kings from the regular folk,” she said with a huff. “I just couldn’t help but think ‘of course he is.’ That the first dragon I meet is a dragon king just seems so absurdly cliché.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know that I am, in fact, not the king. I’m merely the second-born son of His Majesty, King Lyven of the House of the Red flame. My true name is Astaron of the House of the Red Flame. The name ‘Taron’ was the closest I found to it in this world. At the very least, I didn’t want to completely lose that small part of myself after having my home taken from me.”
Briana looked at him sadly. “I can understand that. Should I call you Astaron, then?”
He shook his head. “Taron is fine. I’ve grown so accustomed to it over the centuries that I think of it as a true part of my name now, a nickname.”
She nodded. “So, you’re a prince? I’m not sure that bodes better for us given that you’re still a member of the royal house. Royals are always a magnet for trouble.”
Taron sighed, and she was taken aback at how deeply weary it sounded. “I can’t argue with that.”
The urge to comfort him rose up strong within her, and for
a moment, Briana wished that he was in a form that she could easily show him some physical comfort, an empathetic squeeze on the shoulder or hand. Although she never in a million years would have done it, an image of her hugging his very nude body in comfort after he shifted back into a man rose unbidden in her mind. She was so startled by it, that she couldn’t completely control the blush that briefly heated her cheeks.
What the hell was wrong with her?
If Taron noticed the extra color in her cheeks, he didn’t let on with either expression or tone as he picked up the thread of his story again, “The head of the House of Blue Stone, Jathar, is the mastermind of the rebellion. He patiently waited for the time when either the king or the heir to the throne, my older brother Dagon, entered a period of Soul Sleep. Think of it like a bear entering hibernation. Only, instead of for the survival of a brutal winter, the Soul Sleep is our body and mind’s way of coping with our immortality. For the firedrakes, the removal of that which helps fuel half of our life-force, our Dragon Fire, by a trusted family member is enough to send us into hibernation.”
Suddenly, Taron rose up until he was sitting back on his haunches. Briana’s eyes latched on to his right hand as he raised it to hover, palm up and level with the center of his chest.
Her eyes widened when what looked like a blood-red fireball exited his chest and settled down into the palm of his hand, undulating in a chaotic, pulsing pattern. She could feel the air around her warm up at least a few degrees even though she was a good twenty feet away from it.
“This is my brother’s Dragon Fire. Without it, he has no hope of ever awakening.”
“How long does a Soul Sleep last?” Briana asked, fascinated despite the grim direction his story had started to take.
“It’s different for everyone. It can be as short as a decade to centuries, but the median time is usually fifty years.”
“I can see how leaving yourself so vulnerable for so long can backfire for those in power.”
Taron shook his head. “It may seem so to you, but those who enter their Soul Sleep are as protected by the king’s guardsmen as the king, himself. We have a temple, a single, four-story tower located on the highest peak of a mountain range within my kingdom where every firedrake goes to Sleep. The stone dragons have a similar temple of their own within a different range and equally as guarded. Even an army would not be able to break through their defenses very easily.
“But Jathar tried, anyway?” Briana hazarded.
“Dagon was ten years into his Sleep when the stone dragons made their play.” She could hear the festering rage of that long-ago betrayal within those words. “We were led to believe by what we thought were several reliable sources deep within the heart of the House of Blue Stone that the plot involved the abduction of the Sleeping heir. While we scrambled to send a second army to supplement the army of troops already stationed at the tower, we were completely blindsided by the lone assassin that had slipped into the castle and succeeded in murdering the king. We have been at a stalemate ever since—trapped in an unending civil war, or at least that was the status before I was banished to this world.”
“But you said your brother couldn’t be woken up without his Dragon Fire and that he entrusted it to you,” Briana said slowly. “With Dagon out of commission indefinitely and you trapped here, I can’t imagine that the situation remained so black and white, us against them, that there wasn’t at least a bit of infighting on your side about who would take up the seat of power in your absence. Would that have been enough to weaken the firedrakes’ efforts to the point of losing?”
“This is where our own ancient laws of succession work against us even worse than you’ve guessed. There is a clause that covers even what was once the very unlikelihood of a coup during a ruling monarch’s Soul Sleep. The usurper can legally claim the Dragon Throne as the de-facto king until the rightful ruler awakens and challenges the usurper king’s authority in a fight to the death. He or she needs only to physically sit on the dragon throne before the true heir. The firedrakes must honor this or by law, risk losing the kingdom to the usurper forever. Fortunately, Jathar had yet to step foot within the palace at the time of my exile, and I pray that it has remained so.”
“And I thought we had some bad laws…”
“It is forbidden to kill a dragon during the Soul Sleep,” Taron said. “That’s why the stone dragons’ attempt to abduct the heir wasn’t just a red herring to hide the fact that my father was the true target. With Dagon in their clutches and me, the holder of his Dragon Flame, banished to another realm with no real hope of ever returning, the only way to unseat the usurper from rule once he physically claimed the throne would be to kill not only Jathar, but every last dragon from the House of Blue Stone and retrieve Dagon before the stone dragons can kill him.”
“How in the world did you get banished here in the first place?” Briana asked. “I know you said it was a witch, an Ansi, that did it, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept. Did she open up a portal between worlds with a spell or something and push you through?”
Taron growled. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I was in the form of a man when I was betrayed by a once-trusted Ansi within the tower while trying to return my brother’s Dragon Fire to him after the king was assassinated.”
“Obviously, a witch came to this world since you insist that I have witch blood. Was it her? The one who betrayed you?”
“No. The bloodline within you smells ancient. Although long-lived, the Ansi aren’t immortal. Perhaps your ancestor was also exiled to your world long ago, though I suppose we’ll never learn the truth. No, that witch is very much dead given that I managed to fry her to a crisp before I fell completely into the portal she had created.”
“You said you were in your human form when you fell through the portal. You can breathe fire without being in your dragon form?”
“I’m not sure if ‘human’ is the correct way to describe my other form, but yes, I can very easily breathe fire in that form, too.”
Briana shrugged. “If it looks like a human and walks like a human…”
“The people in this world do smell very much like the non-shifters of my world, so who’s to say we all don’t share a common ancestry? However, that’s a discussion for another time.”
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to pop up into an alien world, not able to communicate with anyone.”
“The portal was connected to an actual, physical doorway in this world located inside an English castle. The moment I stumbled across the threshold and turned around to see not the portal, but a darkened bedchamber with strange furnishings, I knew I was well and truly trapped here. The ability of some of the more powerful Ansi to cross into other realms was well known, so I damned well knew what had just happened to me.
“However, instead of wallowing in despair or rage, I immediately set out to learn the customs and language of the people I now found myself living among in the hopes of trying to discover a way to reconnect that door to my realm. I searched out every whisper, every whiff of magic, but for years, I found nothing even remotely close to what I needed. Then sometime in the mid-eighteen hundreds, I heard talk of a legend in a small English village in the north.
“A key had appeared out of seemingly thin air, one that had opened up ‘a door to paradise.’ At least one woman had disappeared across its threshold, never to be seen again. With an actual object to seek, I started to quickly discover snippets of the same story all across the British Isles. It was only through piecing together these small anecdotes of lore that I finally heard the story of a woman named Beatrice Hildebrand who had allegedly entered a ‘doorway to heaven’ after a glass-like skeleton key appeared in her hands one night. What made her story so intriguing was that she allegedly returned back home.”
Briana sucked in a sharp breath, and her gaze immediately fell to the book still resting on her lap. “Now I see why you wanted this book so badly.”
“I
t was said that her accounts of her time in the other world were bound into a leather volume that had been passed down as an heirloom until the early eighteen hundreds when it inexplicably disappeared from all records. One thing those accounts told me was the skeleton key unlocks the door on both sides. My hope was to verify that point though Beatrice’s own words when I found her book.”
Suddenly Taron’s grin was full of teeth. “Not to mention, Beatrice Hildebrand was a descendant of an Ansi—the same Ansi as you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“That can’t be right,” Briana protested instantly, her pulse racing with something like fear. “Granny Ruth and I have traced our family tree back to the 1700s, and there wasn’t a single Hildebrand among our ancestors!”
“Given how weak that particular bloodline has become in you, I’m not surprised,” Taron replied, sounding unconcerned. “I’ve occasionally run across others of that bloodline all across the world during my endless search, and I doubt their familial ties could have been easily linked without an extensive DNA analysis. Your original Ansi ancestor could have arrived here during the reign of the pharaoh, Khufu, for all we know. As I said before, the Ansi blood I smell within you is ancient. Imagine how widespread her progeny must be after thousands of years.”
“Even so, I still don’t understand why my having witch blood from another world is important to you. If you’re hoping that I can somehow cast the same spell that witch used to banish you here, then I’m afraid you’re just going to be disappointed.”
Briana opened the book to a random page, a little surprised to see the picture of the skeleton key. Taron’s gaze lowered to the now opened book in her lap.
He raised a hand and carefully poked at the drawing with the tip of one, black talon. “What I need from you isn’t a spell. What I need, what I’m hoping with all my soul that you can give me, is this key, a key that once opened a door to my world.”
Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) Page 4
