Master of Dragons

by Angela Knight

  Instantly, the Grimoire materialized at his elbow in a swirl of sparks. “Aye, my liege?”

  “What’s going on with Merlin’s Wards? How do the Dark Ones intend to get through them?”

  “A spell.”

  “No shit. What kind of spell?”

  “Are they going to attempt to sacrifice my wife and child?” Llyr’s voice was very quiet, but the simmering rage in it drew everyone’s eyes.

  “If they can capture her.”

  Llyr’s hands curled into fists as his jaw flexed in rage. “And if they do not?”

  “They will attempt another spell.”

  “Grim, give us a straight answer.” Arthur demanded. “How do they intend to break through the wards?”

  “The answer is not yet clear, my liege. There are several possibilities.”

  “Great.” He fell back in his seat with a grunt of disgust. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

  Nineva was heading down the corridor toward the building’s exit when a tall male figure stepped into her path. “Princess Nineva?”

  “Yes?” She studied him warily. A brawny Sidhe with hair as purple as a pansy, he wore a suit of gleaming malachite armor. Which would make him a member of the Morven Sidhe palace guard, according to what her father had told her years ago. Nineva tensed and prepared to call her magic. Just in case.

  “Her Majesty, Queen Diana, requests the honor of your presence.” He gestured toward the set of double doors he’d just emerged from.

  Nineva hesitated. What did the queen of the Two Kingdoms want? And where had she been during the interrogation?

  “Your Highness?” The guard opened one of the doors and waited.

  It seemed ducking the invitation wasn’t an option. She stepped through, then stopped short, impressed yet again by Magekind architecture.

  The room was obviously a kind of magical conservatory, full of flowers, plants, and green growing things. An enormously pregnant woman sat on an elegant marble bench in the center of the room. She glanced up, her silver gaze curious.

  Nineva sucked in a breath as she recognized those striking eyes and sculpted features. The queen of the Sidhe was the woman she’d seen in her vision, the one in labor.

  Which meant it had been her bloody infant the yellow-eyed creature had threatened with the sword. No wonder Llyr looked as if he’d seen a ghost. I just told him his wife and child were going to be victims of an act of death magic.

  The queen lifted her delicate dark brows. “May I help you?”

  What the hell should she tell her? Mentally fumbling, Nineva stalled for time. “Your guard said you wanted to see me.”

  “That’s odd.” The queen frowned. “I didn’t make any such request.”

  “But I did.” The captain drew his sword with a metallic rasp. The six guards around them did the same, surrounding the women with a forest of glittering points. “You’re coming with us.” He bared his teeth. “Both of you.”

  The queen’s eyes narrowed as they flicked from blade to blade. Despite her massive belly, she rose easily from the bench. If she could have, Nineva suspected she’d have coiled into a crouch. “Turning traitor, boys?”

  “Just switching to the winning side.”

  Kel! As the Sidhe queen distracted the guards, Nineva had gathered her magic for a psychic cry for help. Now she sent it blasting outward, only to hiss in frustration as it promptly fizzled out.

  Dammit, the bastards must have erected some kind of barrier.

  There wasn’t time for a second try. Conjuring armor and sword, Nineva stepped between those razor points and the queen’s pregnant belly. “Your Majesty, behind me…!”

  But the guard captain snaked forward and grabbed the woman’s wrist. Nineva spun to face him, but he warned her off with a flick of his blade. “Drop the armor, girl. We’ll take you in pieces if you don’t have the sense to surrender.”

  Captain Gamal’s hand tightened painfully on Diana’s wrist as he dragged her back from the determined-looking Sidhe girl. “Come, Your Majesty.”

  “I don’t think so, asshole.” Diana twisted her wrist and jerked. Werewolf that she was, she was stronger than he expected. Her wrist slipped free of his fingers.

  “Bitch!” He grabbed for her again, but she sidestepped, quick as the wolf she was. He stalked her, a faint scent of putrescence wafting from his body. She gagged at the stench as the hair rose on the back of her neck.

  She knew that stink. Evil. No wonder her instincts had been clamoring. “How’d they get to you, Gamal?”

  “I just don’t care to serve a werewolf bitch and her whelp. Both of you are better off dead.” Gamal’s eyes were cold and flat as a snake’s. “Take the princess,” he added at his men, who had moved to keep the Sidhe girl from coming to Diana’s rescue. “But don’t kill her. She’s…needed.”

  With a rising feral growl, the six guards closed in on their target. The princess leaped back, parrying the first exploratory attack.

  Dammit, Diana thought, retreating from the captain’s relentless approach. If I could just transform, I could take these bastards out in five minutes. They’d be no match for seven feet of fur, claws, and fangs.

  Unfortunately, the change would kill her son. She didn’t dare.

  Gamal lifted one hand as a bright blue globe formed around it. He hurled it at her head like a fastball, magic boiling off it like a comet. Diana tried to dodge, but her belly made her slow. The globe hit her with a flash of heat, then splashed harmlessly away.

  “You really are immune to magic, aren’t you?” His wide mouth curled into a snarl. “Let’s see how you do with a fist.”

  She ducked, but he was ready for her this time, and he clipped her jaw hard. Stars exploded behind her eyes as she tasted blood. He was faster than she’d thought.

  Another blurring blow, this one a stunning backhand. She tried to jerk back, but her belly threw her balance too far forward. She felt herself start to fall. Gamal’s mailed hands clamped over her upper arms and jerked her upright. Her fingers curled into fists, nails cutting into her palms.

  No, not nails. Claws. Her hands had partially transformed.

  Quick as thought, Diana slashed those curving talons down the captain’s face, laying open his cheeks in ten parallel furrows. Blood spurted. He reeled back with a roar of surprised pain, groping blindly for the sword he’d sheathed in order to hit her. “You little bitch!”

  A metallic rattle, and Diana found herself staring down the gleaming blade. Gamal’s bloody face snarled at her over it. “You don’t have to be in one piece, either. All I need is the contents of that fat belly.”

  She flashed her claws at him and bared her teeth. “You’re not getting my baby, traitor.”

  “We’ll see.” He lunged.

  Kel! Llyr! Once again, Nineva tried to force her magical cry past the barrier. Again, she felt her magic hit it and die.

  One of the warriors lunged, his sword darting at her heart. She parried and jumped back, simultaneously throwing a quick look at the queen.

  The woman might be enormously pregnant, but she was surprisingly agile. She jerked aside from the sword the captain sought to jab into her shoulder, though she staggered a little, off balance from her precious burden.

  Luckily, the traitors apparently wanted to take them both alive, but it was only a matter of time before sheer numbers overwhelmed them. Nineva was good with a sword and reasonably powerful with magic, but she couldn’t hold off six Sidhe fighters.

  She had to get a message through that barrier. It was the only chance they had.

  The Mark throbbed on her breast as she reached deep, drawing on all the magic she had, gathering it into one solid blast. If this failed, she was finished. And the queen wouldn’t have a prayer.

  KEL! We’re under attack! She felt the barrier shatter as her spell punched through it.

  The captain whirled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a grimace of pure rage. “She got through! Kill them!”

  Oh,
hell.

  Kel fought the urge to fidget as the Grimoire droned on through an explanation of the physics of Merlin’s Wards. Now that Llyr had finished questioning him, he wanted to find Nineva before she got into trouble. Which, God knew, she was more than capable of—

  Kel!…under attack! The mental voice was faint and garbled, but the raw fear in it was unmistakable.

  “Nineva!” Kel jolted out of his chair and headed for the door at a dead run. “Something’s wrong!” Between one step and the next, he was armored.

  Magic flared behind him, and the others rose to chase at his heels. He didn’t even glance back as he threw open the door and charged into the corridor. The steps of those behind him grew loud and rattling as they conjured armor of their own. Nineva?

  Nothing. Kel stopped short in frustration, his sword naked in his hand as he scanned the empty hallway. There were literally dozens of rooms she could be in. “Where the hell is she?”

  Behind him, Llyr cursed like a dockworker. “I’m not sensing Diana either. She was in the conservatory.” The king shoved past with a flash of iridescent plate as he broke into a run. Kel shot after him, his heart pounding, his mouth brassy with an unaccustomed taste: fear.

  Fear for a girl he barely knew.

  In the depths of his mind, Creag tried to fight the spell that held him. His body remained stubbornly paralyzed, though he could hear his king racing down the corridor outside. In his fear for his queen, Llyr hadn’t even realized that his bodyguard hadn’t followed him. Neither had any of the others.

  Yet Creag knew he should be leading the way, protecting Llyr Galatyn. Doing his duty.

  If it hadn’t been for that bastard Gamal…Creag had suspected nothing when the captain called him aside before they’d left the palace. The man’s hand had landed on his shoulder, and evil had poured into his mind like a waterfall of sewage, drowning him in stinking darkness, stealing his will.

  And where had Gamal gotten such power?

  Now that evil rolled from Creag in a wave of dark magic. He cast his will outward, trying to erect a mystical barrier to absorb it.

  Nothing happened.

  Instead, the blast of evil slammed into the book that lay open on the table. The Grimoire made a strangled sound of protest before slamming shut.

  In the depths of his mind, Creag cursed in despair and rage as his body walked over to pick it up. He heard himself speak, his voice so rasping he barely recognized it. “Open the wards, Grimoire.”

  He sensed the city’s great barrier thin directly over his head. A dimensional gateway opened before his eyes, growing in a heartbeat from a tiny point to a rippling oval. With a mental howl of hopelessness, Creag stepped through.

  He found himself in a stone room lined with torches where warriors in barbaric black armor waited for him. A man whose dark hair was tied with animal fangs stepped forward and took the book from his hands. He gave Creag a vicious grin. “Kill him.”

  When one of the fighters swung an axe at his head, Creag couldn’t even duck.

  As they ran for the conservatory’s doors, Llyr flung both hands wide. Kel felt the sizzle of his magic, but the doors remained stubbornly closed.

  “Blocked. Some kind of spell.” The Dragon’s Mark appeared on the iridescent surface of Llyr’s armor, tail lashing in rage as it swam over his body. He swung his sword like a baseball bat. The blade thundered against the thick wood, but the door didn’t even vibrate. Llyr growled a desperate Sidhe curse.

  Kel reached for his own magic, and his sword became a massive battleaxe in his hands. He sent his power blazing into the weapon and chopped at the door with all his strength.

  Axe and sword hit at the same time, both glowing as if from a god’s forge. The doors didn’t so much open as disintegrate, caught between the opposing magical forces of the blades and the enemy’s shield. Kel flung himself through the opening as the spell barrier vanished.

  Nineva was surrounded by warriors in the malachite armor of Llyr’s bodyguard. Two lay at her feet, dead in a lake of blood. Her sword flashed as she wheeled and chopped, trying to fight her way through to Diana Galatyn. The queen was backed into a corner by a man in the horsehair crest of a captain of the guard.

  “Gamal!” Llyr roared.

  The man glanced at the charging king and lunged, driving his sword straight into Diana’s belly. She gasped in pain as she stared down at the blade, buried halfway to the hilt.

  Llyr’s scream of anguish made the hair stand on Kel’s neck. The king swung his sword as his wife went down. The captain’s head went flying.

  Roaring in fury, Kel shot into the group of men that had surrounded Nineva. One man fell before his axe, cut in two. Arthur drove Excalibur through the chest of a second, while a third died shrieking, incinerated by one of Morgana’s spells.

  Nineva rammed her blade into the final bodyguard’s chest and left it there as she raced to Diana’s side.

  “Change!” Llyr cradled his wife’s bleeding body. His voice was broken with tears he didn’t seem to notice. “You can heal yourself!”

  “Not yet,” Diana panted, writhing in agony. “C-section! Save the baby!”

  “Let me heal her!” Nineva laid her hands on the queen’s swollen, bloody belly. “I can save them.”

  “Werewolf,” Diana gasped. “I’m…resistant to magic. You’ve got to…get the baby out! Then you can heal him…and I can change…”

  Nineva looked up at Llyr, her eyes painfully wide. “I don’t know how to do a C-section!”

  “I do.” Guinevere conjured a dagger. “Hold her, Llyr. And pray.”

  Varza opened her eyes and cursed in disgust. It was a good thing she’d had the foresight to leave her former body in Gamal’s bed. If she hadn’t had it to retreat to, everything could have been lost.

  She flung the covers aside and sat up, naked. A gesture clothed her in the appropriate court garb, and she rolled to her slippered feet. Careful to keep her gait casual and unhurried despite her screaming anxiety, she strolled from the room and headed down the jeweled marble corridor of the Morven palace.

  She needed to leave the palace, and quickly. Once she was beyond its heavy wards, she could gate back to the fortress unnoticed.

  If she tried to simply punch through them, Llyr would realize she’d been involved in the attempt on his wife. He might not be able to prevent her escape, but a few well-placed spells would tell him entirely too much about what he was dealing with.

  As it was, Llyr would believe his palace guard was riddled with treason. There might be a way she could use that assumption later.

  A female Sidhe nodded her head, and Varza gave her a sunny smile despite her simmering anger.

  She’d thoroughly underestimated the Avatar and the wolf bitch. The princess was considerably more powerful than she’d believed possible, considering Semira’s weakness.

  Then there was the werewolf. Varza had known she couldn’t transform without killing the baby, but she hadn’t realized the bitch could still create claws.

  Well, it doesn’t matter now, Varza thought in grim pleasure. At least I cost her the brat.

  Unfortunately, that meant the sacrifice she’d had in mind was off the table. But as long as Creag had escaped with Merlin’s Grimoire, there was always the alternate plan.

  The baby was dying. The captain’s thrust had pierced his tiny side, just over one hip.

  His mother whined, a high-pitched canine sound of distress. She’d assumed wolf form the moment Gwen had pulled her son from her body, thus healing the wounds that otherwise would have killed her.

  Nineva rested a comforting arm on her furry back as Llyr cradled the little body in his big hands. His face went fierce with concentration as he sent his magic pouring into his son.

  Unlike his mother, the baby was not resistant to spells. Llyr had said he wouldn’t gain that immunity until he became a werewolf at puberty.

  As Nineva, Kel, and the Magekind watched, breath held, the edges of the horrific injury began to
spark, then knit closed. The tiny prince jerked convulsively, then sucked in a breath.

  And began to wail, a healthy, full-bodied cry of pure wrath.

  Llyr looked up, tears in his opalescent eyes as he looked at the wolf. His relieved smile trembled. “He’s got his mother’s temper.”

  Nineva sensed magic foam through the wolf. The next instant, the queen sat beside her, whole again, though her dress still showed the bloody rent across its full skirts. Like her husband, she had unashamed tears running down her cheeks as she reached for her son. With a gesture, Llyr banished the blood from the small, naked body and handed him to his wife.

  “Hello, Prince Dearg Andrew,” she breathed, cuddling him against her chest. The baby waved his fists, crying lustily. He might be a month premature, but it barely showed. He’d have been a very big baby if he’d gone to term.

  A sizzle of power drew Nineva’s attention to one of his tiny biceps. A small, intricate dragon glowed against the smooth skin there. Cachamwri’s Mark.

  She’d helped save the Heir to Heroes.

  TEN

  The queen cooed to her son, cupping his tiny, dark-haired head in one hand. He calmed, his tears ceasing as he stared up at her. Her lovely face shone with joy. “You look just like your daddy, Dearg Andrew. Yes, you do.”

  “Dearg Andrew?” Guinevere asked.

  The queen looked up and gave her a small smile. “We named him for his grandfathers, Dearg Galatyn and Andrew London.”

  The baby gazed around at the circle of faces that surrounded him, his huge eyes already milky with opalescence and flecked with magic. His ears formed tiny, delicate points. Nineva thought she saw his father in the shape of his nose and chin, his mother in the bow of his mouth. “He’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Thank you.” The queen looked up at her, tears brightening that silver gaze. “Thank you for everything.” To Llyr, she added, “The princess fought to rescue me the entire time. Six guards trying to cut her down, and she was more worried about me than herself.”