Salena gripped the wall and leaned over. The stone was textured but looked too smooth to climb. Her heart began to pound at the idea of scaling down the wall for the full height of a castle, for they were near the top. There were no exterior stairs leading down from the platform. The only safe way off was to go back into the palace between the metal doors.
Payton took Salena by the jaw and turned her head to direct her attention to narrow stairs below them leading to a palace door on the level below them. “We climb down there. If we go inside, someone will see us.”
“Oh, thank the stars,” Salena swore. “For a moment I thought you meant for me to jump off the roof.”
“Even I am not that adventurous. Cats prefer their feet on the ground.” Payton led Salena along the wall to the corner of the roof. “Watch me. Use the footholds and when you’re close enough to land without hurting yourself, jump down.”
Payton hopped onto the ledge and held on as she lowered her feet over the side. Salena leaned over to watch where the woman put her foot. The rocks jutted out like narrow steps. Payton maneuvered herself down a couple of feet before pushing off the wall and dropping down to the landing. She looked up and waved for Salena to follow.
Salena made the mistake of looking at the trees below. Her stomach knotted, and she had to concentrate on trying not to shake. She grabbed the ledge. Something about the fear made her think of that night, to her sisters climbing out of the vent. The thought of them gave her courage, and she didn’t let herself contemplate the danger as she moved her feet over the side.
“Left,” Payton instructed.
Salena swung her foot to the left and found a toehold. From there it was easy to climb to the landing.
“The adventure begins.” Payton led the way down the stairs. “I know a place we can go for supplies.”
Salena looked up at the castle. She felt Grier as if there was an invisible cord linking them together. She wanted to be with him.
“Salena, he won’t want you to go into danger,” Payton said. “He’ll want to protect you. He’s a dragon. It’s what they do. I told you, it’s ingrained in him.”
“Promise me. If something happens to me, you’ll tell him—”
“Nothing,” Payton interrupted. “I’ll tell him absolutely nothing. Because if something happens to you, it’ll happen to me too. I won’t abandon you, and I sure as fire will not go back to Grier without you. I’d be one roasted kitty.”
“Fair enough.” Salena couldn’t help but smile.
Payton rushed down the stairs, leading the way along the wall. When they neared the bottom, the way to the forest was blocked. The only option was a door leading inside.
Payton climbed over the wall as if she’d done it many times. She sat on the wall and waited until Salena joined her. They jumped down together and ran into the forest.
24
“What the hell happened to you?” Roderic asked as Grier limped into the palace.
“Do you have that drink you offered me?” Grier asked. Leaves stuck to his hair and beard, and dirt smudged his naked body. How he survived the fall, he’d never know. He woke up in his human form in thorny underbrush feeling as if he’d been run through with a sword a few hundred times.
Two guards tried to run up behind him, but Roderic held up his hand. “It’s fine. Back to your post, please.”
Grier kept walking, heading toward the guest room he’d shared with Salena. He wasn’t the best at navigating that part of the palace, but he was sure he could figure it out.
If he put his face to the pillow, he might be able to smell her.
If he closed his eyes, he might be able to feel her.
If he begged the gods, he—
“Sacred cats, Grier, your back looks like you landed on a bed of spikes.” Roderic strode next to him. “Let’s get you into the medical booth.”
“I need a drink,” Grier said by way of denial.
“You need medical attention,” Roderic argued. “What did you do?”
“I tried to stop the spaceship. I failed,” he said.
“You let the dragon make the decisions?” Roderic’s tone said what he thought of that choice. “I see that worked out well for you.”
“I will punch you in the face,” Grier grumbled, knowing he would never.
“After the medical booth,” Roderic said. “Then you can drink and punch as much as you want. I won’t stop you.”
“Fine.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” Roderic said. “Unless you wanted to make a naked appearance at the dining hall to say hello to the cat-shifter elders?”
Grier stopped his own wayward course through the palace hall maze and followed Roderic’s lead by turning around.
“I know you dragons pride yourself on the whole living simply thing, but here at the Var palace we have these things called communication devices. With a few buttons we can hail spaceships that have left our airspace,” Roderic said.
Grier grunted. “Slargnot.”
“Call me all the names you like.” Roderic led him to the medical booth door.
Grier paused and looked at the booth, remembering Salena inside it, her body covered in light, and the sheer gown she wore when he’d later made love to her. He looked at the wall where the gown would usually be hanging. It was missing. He wondered if it was still in the room they had shared, along with the pottery shard from her leg and his broken crystal.
Wait, no.
Grier had held onto the shard. He turned to leave. “I dropped something. I have to go.”
How he was going to find a tiny piece of pottery outside the Var palace was beyond him, but she had said it was a piece of her and he couldn’t lose it.
Roderic touched his arm gently. “I’d rather your anger have a direction than to sit inside you and boil. So yell at me, hate me, argue with me, punch me. I don’t care. But first, get your ass in that booth.”
“I dropped the shard Salena gave me,” he said, as if that would explain why he had to leave.
“This?” Roderic reached into his pocket. The pottery shard was smeared with Grier’s blood. “You dropped it before you flew off on your little death wish.”
His hand shook as he reached for it. He studied the unglazed side of the blue clay. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by getting in the booth,” Roderic gave him a push, no longer gentle in his request.
“Salena was in there. She had so many old fractures,” Grier said, more to himself than to his friend. “I shouldn’t have let her go. I should have locked her in a tower and hidden her from the Federation.”
“For the rest of her life?” Roderic reasoned. “Only the cruelest of husbands would wish such a fate on their mates. You know that. It’s why you sent her somewhere safer. The ESC has the best security and ship facilities for their staff. You couldn’t have put her on a better vessel than that.”
Grier took a step toward the booth, wanting to be close to his mate in any way possible. Her body had touched the booth walls. Now his would. He climbed in and closed his eyes. He remembered every line of her form, every degree of her smile. The booth moved, laying him back at an angle, and the warmth of the lasers began their trip over his body to repair the damage from the fall.
“Don’t fix the pain in my chest. It’s all I have of her right now,” Grier said.
“Now who is the slargnot?” Roderic answered. He appeared next to the booth as it worked to heal Grier’s cuts. “She is still your mate. A billion galactic miles will not change that. Self-pity will do you no good. But if you must wallow, you have one drunken night to do so. Then this cat-shifter will claw your stupid ass if you talk like that ever again after tomorrow morning, dragon prince.”
“Deal,” Grier mumbled. He held the shard between two of his fingers. He knew his friend was right, but that didn’t make what he was feeling easier. “But your supportive talks leave much to be desired, Var ambassador.”
“So I’m told.” Roderic chuckled. “You’r
e lucky I’m not Payton.”
“Payton would have skipped the booth and gotten me the liquor,” Grier countered.
“True, but she’d also convince you to shift with her and attack Shelter City while you were both drunk. She likes Salena. I haven’t seen her take to someone like that in a long time.”
“I like that plan,” Grier said. “Go get me Payton.”
“No clue where she is. The last I saw her, she was supposed to be checking on the ship. All is well with the takeoff or my father would have informed me otherwise.” The console beeped, pulling Roderic away. “If I had to guess, I would say she ran into her father, or she’s avoiding him. That tiger has been wild since the day she was born.”
“Even so, would you mind having your communications check with the ship just to make sure Salena is settled?” Grier asked.
“Of course. I’ll put a request in as soon as we are finished here.” The sound of his friend pushing buttons on the console interrupted the conversation. “Three hundred fifty-two cuts. A broken rib. Sprained wrist. Dislocated ribs. Knotted muscles along your spine. The list goes on. Sacred cats, Grier, how far did you fall?”
“Not sure. I passed out before hitting the ground,” he answered. “I barely remember the descent.”
“And what were you going to do if you actually caught a spaceship? Hold on as you went into orbit to die without oxygen?” It was clear by this tone that Roderic thought he was a dumbass.
“The dragon didn’t plan that far ahead.”
“Evidently not,” Roderic grumbled. “Fractured arm.”
“That would explain the numbness in my hand.”
“No, that would be the pinched nerve.” The sound of Roderic pushing commands into the console again cut off the conversation. Finally, he said, “There. Now all you have to do is lay there while it fixes you.”
“Just do the major things,” Grier dismissed. “The rest will heal on its own.”
“You stay right there and let it work, or I’ll have this medical report sent to your parents,” Roderic threatened.
“You really are a slargnot,” Grier swore.
“You’re welcome,” Roderic said.
“Yeah, thank you,” Grier grumbled. He closed his eyes. He didn’t feel Salena by lying in the booth like he thought he would. All he felt was the hard shell of the panel holding him up. Salena was softer than that. But he could remember her body under the lights, her thigh during the surgery, the look in her eyes as she peered out at him. He held on to the feelings she evoked.
Grier barely felt the burn of the Old Earth whiskey as he swallowed the entire contents of the tall glass Roderic had handed him. It would take a lot more than that to get him drunk, but he was desperate to stop the agony.
There was an alien saying that time made things easier, lessened pain, something like that. Those aliens had probably never felt a tenth of what he did for his mate. If they had, they’d know that time would not ease his pain. If anything, it would only give it the chance to grow worse until it ate him from the inside out. There was only one thing that could stop the breaking of a dragon-shifter’s heart, and that was his wife.
He now understood the hollowness he’d seen in dragons who had lost their mates. It was in their eyes, ghosting every conversation, every laugh, every action. Bachelors thought they knew the depths of what mating meant, but the truth was no one could know just how deeply the bond formed until they’d had their crystal broken. That moment had solidified what was between them.
Grier knew the moment the crystal shattered. It sent a vibration through him, as if calling to the gods to say, it is done.
Roderic didn’t speak as he refilled the glass. Grier downed that one as well.
As he handed it back for yet another refill, his eyes turned to the bracelet on his wrist. He’d sewn the shard into the jewelry where the crystal had been. He would not drop a piece of her again.
Tomorrow he would fight. He would fly to Shelter City and camp out on that watchtower until he had the solution he needed to take down the Federation, save the Cysgodians from their rule, and get his wife back.
Tonight he would drink and figure out a way to breathe without his heart.
25
The foul-smelling mud nauseated Salena as Payton smeared it across her brow, over her cheeks and the rest of her face. She forced herself to concentrate beyond the discomfort as she focused on the task at hand. And that was to find her sister.
A stolen scarf that smelled of old socks wrapped the lower part of her face, and a gown three sizes too big—and just as smelly as the scarf—hung on her frame. It completed Salena’s disguise.
Payton instructed her to walk with a limp and keep her head down as she led the way through Shelter City.
Payton wore a jacket over her clothes, the length hitting her midcalf. Her hair was tucked into a hat that draped down on both sides to cover her ears. A coat of dust covered her face as if that could hide her beauty.
Salena had gotten a glimpse of Shelter City during her escape, but that was nothing compared to walking through the middle of it. Buildings were held together by rope, rusted bolts, and careless welds. It was as if the Federation had given its citizens scrap metal from ships. From where they walked, Salena couldn’t see the pristine buildings towering over the city.
The sidewalks were nothing more than boards and rusted metal laid over the ground, most likely held into place by mud and nothing else. The chaotic sounds of Shelter City were so loud that it distorted most of what was being said—people shouted, children played, vendors advertised their wares and customers haggling for a bargain. Not to mention the ruckus that appeared to spring from substandard living conditions. She’d seen more than a few rumbles in the street as men hit each other with fists, and just about any other object they could find lying around. Salena tried not to stare. Everyone around them ignored the disturbances as if they were just another fight, another day.
Payton kept a determined pace without making it obvious they were in a hurry. Shouts followed them through the narrow market alleyways and wider streets.
“Meat. Nearly fresh,” a woman offered, waving a fistful of questionable food hanging from strings. “We accept trade.”
“Has anyone seen my boy? Anyone?” a father yelled, running through the streets. “Caspar?”
“Fight tonight. Test your mettle against our reigning champion. He’s never been beat. Do you have what it takes to go up against the king of fists? There, you, you look like you want a good beating!”
“Fresh from the marshes, drink yourself numb. Only a half stone per pint!”
“Refurbished light sticks, short-range communicators, time keepers.” The man in a bright yellow shirt was hard to miss. “Or if late-night company is your desire, I have the best part of a pleasure droid, yours for the wooing, men, for only two stones. She don’t talk. She don’t complain. She doesn’t have a head. Who needs the whole robot when I have the only part you really want.”
“Oh, gross,” Payton muttered.
“And if it’s servicing you ladies need, well, that’s free. I got what you want right here.” Yellow Shirt cupped his crotch. No one seemed too eager to take him up on the offer.
“I’d rather cut myself in half,” Payton added under her breath.
A passing woman heard the comment and cackled. It clearly prompted her to turn and yell at Yellow Shirt, “You’d have to pay fifty stones before any of us would climb up on that tiny, diseased rod.”
Salena followed Payton’s lead and limped faster past the metal establishment.
“The thief has struck again, raining terror on those who would suppress us.” A woman stood on a crate to set herself above the others in the street. Her gown was torn and stained, but she looked as if she’d tried to style her red hair on top of her head, as it was pulled up into a neat bun. Her face and hands were clean. She gestured her arms wide as if beckoning the attention of all those who passed. “Why do we sit idly by when one faces th
e many on our behalf? We should join forces. Show our strength so that the tyranny of Shelter City—”
“Shut your black hole, Justina, before you bring the wrath of the Federation down on us!” The words were followed by a clump of mud smacking the woman in the chest to knock her over.
Justina stumbled under the blow, and it became clear where the other stains on her gown had come from.
“They should fear us,” Justina argued. “We are many in number, if only we would join in the common cause. Life does not have to be like this!”
Justina’s declaration was met with jeers and more mudballs.
Payton paused and whispered, “That woman is crazy. She’s going to get herself killed if she keeps up that kind of talk about the Federation.”
“I wish we could help her,” Salena answered just as softly. “I wish we could help all of them.”
“There is nothing we can do right now. We’re here to find Fiora, that’s all. If the Federation knew shifters were coming into their city…”
“I know,” Salena answered, not needing the reminder. “War. Death. Destruction. The overthrow of all shifter government.”
“What do we have hiding under here?” The smell of liquor filled the air as a man swayed close to Salena. She automatically recoiled when he tried to pull at her gown. Payton slapped his hand.
“Do it and lose more than a finger,” Payton warned, throwing her voice a little so she sounded gruff. “She’s got the unmentionable. Radiation won’t cure it. One touch of that and you’ll have parts falling off that you might miss.”
The man recoiled from Salena. He fell on the ground before scrambling away.
“My contact is through here.” Payton crossed the street before slipping into a narrow opening between two metal structures. They had to turn sideways to fit between them. “Yevgen knows everything that is happening in the city. He’ll be able to point us in the right direction.”
They turned a corner into another walkway just as narrow. Metal sheeting had been placed over the top to cast it into darkness.
Dragon Prince Page 20
