Subtle. "I slept fine. I need you to do me a favor. Bring me the dress you think would be most pleasing to the king."
Leya rushed into my wardrobe while the other women worked on undressing me. She came back with the last dress I would have guessed. A leather garment with linen lining, two high splits on the skirt and thigh high boots. It looked more appropriate for riding or hunting than seducing a king. "Are you sure?"
"When he sees you in this, his jaw will hit the floor."
I trusted her judgment. The servants went to task getting me cleaned and ready. Leya convinced me to wear my hair down and to try darker makeup more common in Deabru court.
I looked like a tart, but there was something empowering about my free flowing hair and kohl-rimmed eyes. Once I was ready I turned to Leya and asked, "So where exactly is my husband?"
“Last I saw, he was in the center courtyard with Lord Alaster and Lady Mara.”
I tried not to cringe at the mention of that woman’s name. I wondered how frequently I’d have to see her. “Are they close with the king?” If Zuriel was good friends with Alaster that would explain why he was slow to shut down that shrew of a woman the night before.
Leya nodded enthusiastically.
Well that explained it. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass his friend, who had lost control of his female at court.
“You must understand. The king and Lady Mara have been friends from childhood. She’s only concerned about him, she doesn’t mean to quarrel.”
Quarrel? Was that really what she called it? The woman tried to insult and humiliate me in front of everyone. Yet, she was the kind of person the king chose to keep company with. My role as wife and queen seemed to get more complicated by the second. “Center courtyard? I’m sure I’ll be able to find it.”
I managed to find Zuriel with little difficulty right where Leya had mentioned. I approached one of many high arches that separated the hall from the courtyard. Plush green grass met the vibrant dark stone walk way and a large water fountain spewed water rhythmically just beyond Zuriel and the others.
He was shooting targets with Mara and Alaster. The ease with which he spoke to his friends quickly faded as he spotted my approach. But Leya had been right, when my change of attire registered, he stared with his mouth hanging half open.
I strolled over to him and suggestively ran my delicate fingers up and down his bow. “Are you winning?”
“Huh? Wha…?” he asked, still gawking.
I gestured toward the targets with arrows jutting out of the white and brown rings. “I assume you’re competing to see who can hit the target, correct?”
He managed to tear his eyes from me long enough to look where I was pointing. “We’re not keeping score, but I’m the better shot. Would you like to try?”
I laid my chin against his broad shoulder blinking up at him. “I’d rather watch you.”
Mara, who seemed to be determined to undermine me interjected, “Why do you bother asking her? You said she swore to do whatever you told her to. Just tell her to do it.”
My desire to fire the bow increased exponentially, though I had no interest in aiming for the target. I slipped the bow from Zuriel’s fingers. “If it pleases my king …”
I picked up three arrows from their holder, noting their balance. “I noticed you’re no longer referring to me as it, I’m curious what prompted this change.”
She shrugged, her wings rising and falling with the motion. “Aly and Zu convinced me that even if you’re a thing, you’re a female thing, and referring to you as it was needlessly rude.”
I positioned each of the arrows between my fingers and against the bow string. Zuriel took a step toward me assuming I was confused on how bows worked, but the glare I gave him stopped him in his tracks. The idea of Mara calling him by a nickname grated on me. He was a king, the least she could do was call him by his entire name, it was only two syllables. “I suppose you consider the rest of the rudeness needed for some reason.”
“I’m trying to protect my king. Same as you.” Another insult. Zuriel became my king the moment I married him, but she was implying my loyalty really belonged to my brother. But as long as there was peace between the two kingdoms, my loyalty wasn’t split.
I let lose all three arrows at once. Unsurprisingly, they all hit the target, dead center. Both Zuriel and Alaster were impressed. Mara looked irritated. I offered Zuriel his bow back with some advice. “You shouldn’t mistake submissiveness with incompetence.”
“If females don’t fight, why did anyone bother training you anyway?” Mara snapped.
“Due to vampire females’ exquisite grace and tractability, men of other species covet us. Especially those stuck with less delicate women. We are taught to defend ourselves. Being of royal blood, I'm highly trained in several forms of combat.”
“Interesting,” Alaster interjected.
Mara whipped around to look at him. “You can’t tell me you believe that crap?”
“No. But she believes it. Else she couldn’t have said it.”
His wife waved off the idea. “Her species has turned deceiving without lying into an art form. That just makes her more dangerous. You never know what she’s thinking. You never know who you’re really dealing with.”
“Your majesty,” Alaster said, “can you recall a single instance where a Deabru male violated a vampire female?”
I hadn’t thought about it, but he was right. I’d heard stories of Deabru tearing people apart and eating their insides but not a single story of a woman being violated. “No. Why is that?”
Once again, Mara took it upon herself to answer for others. “You don’t understand the first thing about us, yet you hope to rule us? Can I ask you something, your majesty? How many lovers have you had over the years?”
“Mara…” there was menace in Zuriel’s tone, as if she’d finally crossed a line that I had no hope of seeing.
“Six,” I answered not sure where this was going.
“That’s not that many when you consider her age,” Alaster said to Zuriel as if defending me. But I didn’t understand why I needed defending. Deabru weren’t chaste.
“Yes, that’s what? Only one lover every thirty years or so. Given how delicate vampires are, perhaps they all died forcing her to move from one to the next. How many of these men still live?”
While she was talking to me, her eyes were on Zuriel. Was this really something Deabru cared about? “Four of them still live. And it wasn’t one man ever thirty years, I was with Max for almost a century.”
“You abandon a man you’ve loved for almost a century, and are already trying to seduce our king?”
“No. I—” The shock of my own words stopped me. When she asked me if I abandoned a man I loved, I said no. It was pretty obvious that I abandoned him, lost and broken, stuck carrying on while I died, so I must have meant that no, I never loved him. He made me happy, but I always knew the depth of my feelings didn’t compare to his. We deceive without lying. That’s what Mara said. Had I deceived Max for over half my life?
I changed topics, no longer wanting to discuss my past. “I am his wife. It is my duty to bear him heirs.”
Mara grabbed Zuriel by the arms. “Listen to her. She cares nothing for you. Her kind is incapable of love. She just wants your seed because she sees that as her purpose. Are you really considering giving a thing like that your soul?”
Rage radiated from my core, threatening to boil me alive from the inside. This was too much. I couldn’t maintain my composure much longer. I was very close to ripping Mara’s head from her neck and causing the very war I sacrificed to prevent. “Please, excuse me.”
I left them there, debating what to do about me. It was like none of them understood this was my life. I had to win Zuriel’s heart, or my brother’s kingdom would forever be in danger.
CHAPTER 25
I rushed through the halls of the castle. Every pitch black pillar served to remind me of how desperately far I was from hom
e. For the first time in my life, I was utterly alone among strangers. I’d been arrogant. I thought my appearance and willingness to please would be enough, but whatever attraction Zuriel had toward me was countered by a hatred for my kind as deep as mine for his. How did I think I could live like this? Scorned and mocked by everyone around me.
The walls became shadows, closing in around me. Cutting off my ability to breathe. I had to get out. But that was just one more sick joke. Without the ability to fly, there was no way out of my dark coffin. Laughter bubbled from my throat. Me? The Queen of the Deabru. I was a prisoner in my own castle. The absurdity of it was driving me mad. I should have never agreed to marry him. I should have begged for him to accept my life as payment for his loss. I hadn’t thought things through. There were things far more precious than my life that I could lose— my dignity, my sanity, my spirit.
People stopped and stared as I passed them in the halls. I could only imagine what they saw. Their disheveled queen laughing madly at the gray fog that filled the air. I didn’t feel like myself. A queen, not a princess, with wild hair, strange clothes and my every servant a winged monster from my childhood nightmares. Never had I been so alone. And starving. I had expected to be dead by now, so I hadn’t fed, and had my new husband offered to send for my slaves? No, he’d be jealous of them. Instead he wanted to sustain myself on the black blood that threatened an end to everything I’ve ever cared about. Yes, death would have been a mercy.
Only when I looked up and noticed that I’d wandered into the kitchens did I realize that subconsciously I knew what I needed. The one person here who could possibly grasp how I was feeling. Leya and Tannin had both been kind to me, but this was their home, they wouldn’t understand. “Where is Alik?” I asked one of the women cleaning pots in a nearby sink. “The human? He’s probably in the stables, your majesty.”
Oh yes, he’d told me he was a stableboy. “Can you tell me how I get there?”
The woman gave me directions and I made my way to the northern gate where the drakes were launched from. Of course those vicious creatures that had torn apart so many of my kind were pointed in the direction they were most needed—toward my home.
The stables were a massive stone building that seemed out of place next to the castle walls which shined like glass. The gray stone walls stretched up towards the sky with barred holes cut from the sides for windows and a large lattice iron gate for the door. Inside were dozens of winged reptiles, residing in large stone pens, one floor above another.
Vampires had once tried to domesticate these beasts for our own usage. The attempts didn’t go well. Many of my people lost limbs before we finally gave up all hope of canceling out the Deabru’s air advantage. So being surrounded by them on all sides, whether they were in pens or not, was nerve-racking. But I needed to find Alik, and I had to assume they weren’t as dangerous as the ones we’d tried to tame if a mere human boy was tending to them.
I strode down the center, peeking into each pen looking for the boy. As I made my way through the stables I was met by as set of steely glowing orange eyes. Black scales rippled over its lean muscles alongside prickled spines that ran down the length of its back and tail and horns adorned with shiny metal caps protruded from their skulls. Drakes were menacing looking beasts in general, but the build of this one was far beyond the ones I had witnessed in our attempted training. It sent a chill down my spine at the thought of a fragile human being left with such monsters.
I found him, four pens in, washing the red scales of one of the beasts. As I approached from behind, it hissed at me, causing me to stumble back and alerted him to my presence. My step backwards put me too close to a green and brown one that stretched its neck towards me. I jumped.
“You don’t have to be afraid, they recognize their queen.”
I still kept a careful distance even though the drake did not seem intent on harming me. “Then maybe they should point me out to Zuriel. He seems confused on the matter.”
“It’s only been a day. Give it time. You’ll warm up to each other.” He continued running his brush over the red one’s scales.
“Warmth is not something I see in my future.”
He stopped and approached me. “Are you alright? What are you doing here if you’re scared of drakes?”
I stood in the middle of the stable hugging myself. “Because I feel trapped.” I admitted shamefully. A queen should never be so blunt and vulnerable to a commoner, it made me appear weak when I should be the backbone to my people. But I couldn’t help it. I was at a loss with my situation and I needed someone on a common ground.
He gently took my hand in his own, squeezing it in reassurance. “We’ll just have to set you free then.” It was the first time since I arrived that someone had touched me without being required to and the simple gesture lessened the tension coiled in my shoulders.
He guided my hand over to one of the drakes and placed it on its forehead. I touched its scales, right between its eyes. In response, it closed its eyes and made a rumbling hiss sound. That’s when I realized the hiss wasn’t a threat, the beast was purring. “Treestomper is going to take you for a nice, easy ride, aren’t you girl?”
My eyes shot at Alik. “Ride?” I’d been happy the beast hadn’t chewed my arm off yet.
“Of course, if you don’t want to feel trapped in a sky castle, then you’ll need to learn to fly. Unless you don’t think you can do it.”
My pride answered before my brain could catch up. “I’ve yet to encounter a skill I could not master.”
Alik smiled broadly. “That’s my queen.”
I should have been irritated by the way he spoke to me. But there was something genuine about him that just made my lips curve whether I wanted them to or not. “You know I can toss you clear across this room, right?”
“Really?”
I nodded. “With one arm. Vampire strength and all that.”
“Good to know. I better stay on your good side then.” He said with a sly grin as he saddled Treestomper and led him out into the open field. I followed behind wondering how a mere human managed to do what hundreds of vampires couldn’t. I peered into his mind for some insight, but he wasn’t thinking about riding drakes.
“A vampire brothel would buy you just to sit you in the corner and have you think.”
He blushed. “So what you’re saying is I’m valuable.”
I chuckled. “What I’m saying is you need to focus because if I fall to my death you’ll be hung for treason.”
He knelt down and entwined his fingers offering me a place to step in order to get on the mount, which seemed to be contently waiting for me to climb on. But I didn’t need his help. I grabbed the side of the saddle and hoisted myself up, glad for the long splits in my skirt. Had I been trying to do this in my normal dresses, it would have been much less graceful. The saddle pressed against my bare thighs where my boots stopped.
Alik tried to pull himself up behind me. Realizing what he was doing, I reached down and picked him up, helping him onto the back of the saddle. He wrapped his arms around my waist, starring wide-eyed at my show of strength. He really hadn’t spent much time around my kind. Deabru were stronger, but they were big hulking creatures, their strength showed. I understood Alik’s surprise, but it was strange for me to see a human regard a vampire in this way. After all, my kind ruled over and protected the humans of the realm, our ability to do so was something ingrained in most humans from birth.
“What now?” I asked.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?”
It couldn’t be that simple. A slight tug of the reigns and the drake spread its wings and lifted off into the sky. Figuring out how to guide it was intuitive. The slightest movement, the smallest squeeze of my thighs and the drake responded. “Why does it obey my wishes?” I just couldn’t understand how something so easy for me could be so hard for so many others before me. Had we been able to control drakes, there was a chance we could have won the war.
“Because you’re her queen.”
That was the second time Alik implied the drake understood rank. That couldn’t mean… “Are they sentient?”
At the question Treestomper dove making it perfectly obvious she understood what I was asking and the answer was yes. No wonder they fought us to the death. We sent trainers when we should have sent diplomats.
Alik clenched me tighter as we fell. When we leveled out, I stroked the back of Treestomper’s neck. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend.”
That seemed to be enough because we ascended again. Like the Deabru, I was unable to see the thoughts of drakes. Though I would love to see into a mind like that.
We flew beyond the gray fog that obscured the castle from view and out into the bright sunlight. From the distance I could see the lush green plains and valleys of my home. What would stop me from flying all the way to the palace and sitting down next to my uncle as he settled disputes for the day? Well, I didn’t know how far a drake could fly before needing rest, and my people might attack before realizing I was the rider. But if I sent word ahead that I was coming…
Alik had been right. This was exactly what I needed. With the sun on my face and my hair fluttering in the wind, I felt like I could do just about anything. Even handle the madness of court. As I enjoyed the thrill of flight, Alik rested his chin on my shoulder, content in his thoughts. How he cared more about his arms around my waist than cutting through the sky was beyond my understanding.
“We should head back,” I said, regretfully. The last thing I needed was to cause an incident by making them think I ran away.
Treestomper took us back to the same spot we left from. I jumped to the ground and then helped Alik down. He gave me a look for handling him like a child, but humans were fragile, a fall from even that short height could break a leg.
“You realize I do this every day, right? For a living.”
“Not my fault your kind has the constitution of wet parchment.” We were both laughing as we headed back into the stables where Zuriel stood with his full guard preparing to come after us.
Moonstruck (Warring Hearts Book 2) Page 12
