Hoarding Secrets

by C. I. Black

  Jet’s eyes narrowed.

  “You need an address to the ekas. The gate goes to the courtyard of a dragon-kept public house across the river, not directly there.”

  Jet huffed again. “That wasn’t well thought out.”

  “Sure it was. When the ekas was built, there were still some human sorcerers who could make gates. No one wanted them to be able to lock onto an anchor and step into the middle of a safe haven.” And while some drakes now had gate anchors created as part of their establishments as a courtesy for younger, less powerful drakes, none of the ekases had been given anchors.

  Jet handed over her phone and Servius entered the address. “Call when you have the key.”

  “I know how to do my job.” She took her phone back and hissed her power word. A gate formed under her feet and she disappeared.

  It was a risk, sending her after the key. There was a chance that, when she found both pieces of the coin, she’d betray him and sell it to the highest bidder, but the risk of being exposed was greater — especially now that Servius knew Grey and one of Tobias’s agents were on the case.

  He couldn’t afford to have Regis know he was after the coin until the last possible minute. Too much could go wrong, and if Servius didn’t have the coin in a medallion first, everything would fall apart.

  It was bad enough he hadn’t been able to hide breaking into the Handmaiden’s chambers at Court and the plan to ransack them hadn’t worked. Tobias and all his agents were supposed to be busy looking for a perpetrator in Court. Their first suspects should have been a member of the sect of the Divine Mother.

  But the bad luck kept coming. The Handmaiden’s man was also involved and he shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Handmaiden’s chambers. Since he’d stuck by his red drake friend who’d disavowed the prince, Grey had been moved into the top two of Regis’s most wanted list. Did that drake have no sense of self-preservation?

  Servius headed out of the temple and into the plain granite hall. He needed more information about Tobias’s agent and anything Regis was planning, and to do that, he needed to spend time with the monster calling himself Prince of the Dragons.

  It was the only way to gather as much information as possible. Nothing could be overlooked in the next couple of days. Not with things already having gone wrong, and not if he wanted to survive his coup—

  No, not a coup. That had been Zenobia’s problem. She’d wanted to grab the throne without having any right to it. This was Servius’s rightful ascension. The prince might be one of the two remaining gold drakes and the son of Constantine, the Sumerian dragon king who’d defeated the Zhongguo dragon empress before the Scourge, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other options for royal succession. Like himself.

  He was a direct descendant of the empress, one of two grandsons. Neither his father nor his uncle had survived the Scourge, but their offspring had, and while his cousin Nero might be in Regis’s pocket, Servius wasn’t, and he had every intention of saving dragonkind from Regis’s insanity. Even if it meant he had to rebirth everyone who stood in his way.

  He reached a narrow, curling staircase, leading down to the heart of the dragon Court. It was early afternoon, but Regis didn’t have a schedule any more, and Servius wouldn’t know where the prince was unless he talked with Tobias. It was a safe bet with Tobias — who didn’t have much of a schedule, either — to guess he was in his chamberlain’s office. Recently the black dragon was spending more and more time there, and rumor had it he now slept there instead of returning to his suite.

  Five flights down, Servius reached the greater promenade and headed toward the chamberlain’s office, but Regis’s booming voice in the opposite direction made him stop.

  The prince was yelling about something, and without a doubt, another drake was about to be sent to his torturer.

  Servius squared his shoulders and forced himself to turn around and head toward Regis. Save that it was obvious Regis was becoming soul sick and mentally unstable, there was no reason to be afraid. Servius had taken every precaution to avoid discovery. He and Jet were using an app that erased their texts the moment they were read, thereby eliminating any evidence she was working for him. Everything else, like creating the magical two-shot lockpick spell and a spell to pull the medallion from the heart of the arena — since regular earth manipulation magic didn’t work on it — had been done in private. And while he’d worked the spells as fast as he could, it had still taken him over a hundred years to weave the two of them.

  As well, no one, not even the Handmaiden, knew Servius’s earth magic was a medium degree of sorcerer’s ability. Everyone thought he was an ancient drake with no earth magic at all. No one knew he’d spent the last two thousand years weaving three difficult permanent spells into his human body, tattoos carefully drawn into his flesh giving him the power to mimic the earth magic abilities to control earth and wind, and to free gate.

  It had taken him centuries just to cast each spell — and he wouldn’t have even been able to do that if he hadn’t stolen the glyphs he’d used for the tattoos from the Handmaiden’s grimoire. Only one drake had ever learned about his magic and he was now dead. No one else was going to learn the truth until he had control of the complete rebirth spell and had dealt with Regis, the prince’s favorite drakes — his cousin Nero included — and anyone else who threatened his claim to the throne.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be able to find him?” Regis growled.

  Five sycophants, dressed to match Regis’s Henry the VIII hideousness, stood a good four feet behind him, staring at a young orange drake in a tailored black suit that accentuated his sharp facial features and his black hair and beard. The drake radiated a deadly intensity, clearly unable to hide his dangerous intent, which only made him look more inexperienced. Even Jet was old enough to disguise how dangerous she actually was.

  “Only if he’s within a hundred mile radius,” the young drake said, either too naive or stupid to know he shouldn’t piss off Regis. “And it doesn’t work across dimensions.”

  “Well, I know you can’t free gate, so you better start hopping from gate to gate and pray he steps within a hundred mile radius of you.”

  The young drake’s expression darkened, and one of the sycophants — a yellow drake in a willowy female body, wearing a full-skirted gown in deep gold and orange — gasped.

  Regis bared his teeth. Not just a quick flash, but outright bared, and growled.

  The orange drake’s eyes widened, and if the situation wasn’t so dangerous, Servius would have laughed at how realization swept across the orange drake’s features and then turned to horror at what he’d said.

  For a moment, Servius considered stepping back and letting the matter play out. He’d yet to be seen, and interrupting Regis when he wanted to turn a drake into an object lesson about obedience could be dangerous for the drake doing the interrupting. But if this orange drake did have the earth magic ability to find Grey — even if it was a limited radius — that could be useful.

  Servius shoved his hand into his pocket and gripped the coin-sized copper disc with the spell on it to pull the medallion from the heart of the arena. The disc was a one-shot deal. He’d only get one chance, and there was no point in risking capture without the coin.

  “You’re looking for the Handmaiden’s man?” Servius asked, pleased his voice didn’t crack.

  “I am,” Regis hissed as he jerked to face Servius, his teeth exposed and his wide face red with rage. “What do you want, Servius?”

  “I couldn’t help overhearing.” Servius fought to keep still, his chest tight and his pulse pounding in his ears. Disgust curled in his gut, and he mentally clutched at that. He shouldn’t fear Regis. He was almost as old as Regis, with as much right to the throne, and was more magically powerful. Regis thrived on fear, consumed it as if it sustained him and not the magic within his dragon soul. Servius would be damned if he became the prince’s next victim.

  “The drake attacked two royal guards
and I don’t care that he’s the Handmaiden’s servant. Enough is enough. He will pay for his crimes.” Regis’s gaze shot to the orange drake. “If Bolo can’t find him, I’ll give his job to someone who can.”

  “I’d heard something happened with the Handmaiden’s chambers.”

  “How did you hear that?” the orange drake, Bolo, asked.

  Servius shrugged — the action taking more effort to keep smooth than he liked. “Court is small and I’m the Third for the Minor Black Coterie. You don’t think I would have risen to that position without having connections here at Court?”

  “Your connections have gossiped about private Court business,” Regis said, his voice a low growl again.

  Servius’s pulse sped up, racing in a wild tattoo. This was his opening. “Those connections also thought Grey was going to the ekas in Seville.”

  If he was fortunate, Grey wouldn’t go to Seville, because he knew nothing about the key to finding the pieces of the rebirth coin. But on the slim chance he figured it out, adding another drake, especially one out to apprehend or kill Grey, could only help keep Grey out of Jet’s way. The black drake might be confident in her abilities, but Servius wasn’t willing to take any chances. Failure wasn’t an option.

  Regis’s eyes narrowed. “How would your connections know that?”

  “They told me Grey and the Handmaiden used to spend time there, in the temple, during the…” Damn, he needed a reason. “They’d spent time there… during… the Inquisition.” It was the only thing he could think of.

  Bolo frowned, but Regis’s expression grew darker. The Inquisition had been a bad time for many drakes, and some of Constantine’s most aggressive restrictions on what dragons could and couldn’t do — the same ones Regis now fully supported — had been brought into law then. Without a doubt, Grey and the Handmaiden had been to the ekas — a safe haven for dragonkind during their worst moments in history — in Seville during that time.

  “Go,” Regis barked, making Bolo and the sycophants jump. “And don’t come back without the silver drake.” Regis bared his teeth again. “Or word that he’s dead.”

  * * *

  Diablo shifted, unable to get comfortable on the cafe’s hard wooden chair, and checked his phone for the third time in ten minutes. No message from Grey. Not that he’d expected the silver drake to call, but he hadn’t looked good before he’d gone to Court to meet with Tobias, and he’d looked worse when he’d returned. Now he was at one of the Handmaiden’s residences — one so private not even Nero knew about it — alone, possibly confronting whoever had ransacked the Handmaiden’s chambers.

  A hint of a growl bubbled in Diablo’s throat and he swallowed it back. His beast, curled too-tight within him, wanted to join Grey for the confrontation. Heck, it didn’t care if it was Grey he confronted. He just God damned needed to fight something.

  “Hey,” a feminine voice said.

  He jerked his attention up, not realizing it was still stuck on his phone’s blank display. Eva stood across from him, gripping the back of a chair now half pulled out from the table.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, with more growl than he’d like.

  She raised a delicate eyebrow and finished pulling out the chair, her doubt radiating through him. “You sure? There’s this churning thundercloud above your head giving you away.”

  He fought the urge to glance up. There wasn’t a cloud. His earth magic was rapid free gating, night sight, enhanced physical abilities, and his Mother-cursed empathy — not that anyone else knew about the empathy. He couldn’t control the weather, and what his empathy was picking up from her emotions — besides concern and — as always — her attraction to him, was that she was just doing that human thing where they exaggerated obvious emotions.

  Which in itself wasn’t great, since he was supposed to be happy to be there to have a late lunch with her. And he was. He just also had other, pressing problems on his mind. Like Grey—

  Not that he cared about the drake. Really. Grey wasn’t a part of his public coterie, or even his hidden puzur, but right now if he got caught, both of Diablo’s coteries were in danger.

  Honestly. That was the worry.

  Not to mention Diablo was also worried about Nero. He was struggling with his magic as dugga of the Asar Nergal and having trouble pinpointing the few remaining human mages from Zenobia’s coup. To add to that, they still had the problem of a leak within their organization tipping off those human mages when someone was sent to apprehend them.

  “Earth to D,” Eva said, a hint of a smile pulling at her lush lips. He’d met this striking woman — his new neighbor, actually — only a week ago when Court’s politics had wrenched him into its shit. Which wasn’t true, either. A crazy human with the ability to see auras had thought dragons and human mages were demons and had killed Andy Reynolds, a human mage and Diablo’s closest friend. That was more than just Court shit.

  His chest tightened and his beast twisted tighter, hot with rage and grief. He needed to break something, someone, feel less, anything.

  Except that was the thing Andy had managed to help him with. Not releasing his beast and not destroying everything around him, accepting that feeling everyone else’s emotions was just a part of who he was.

  “Hey.” Eva snaked a hand across the table and brushed her fingers against his, a soft, subtle move, merely a hint of a caress of flesh against flesh, but somehow it eased the seething monster within him. “Remember the good times with him.”

  “I’m that easy to read?” He focused on her heart-shaped face and hazel eyes. Her honey-blond hair hung past her shoulders, tussled carefree locks — a style all the rage right now with humans — but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she really belonged in a different era. Perhaps it was because it had been a long time since things had been right with him, and he didn’t want her to belong to his messy here and now. He wanted her to be from his less messy past.

  Of course, who was he kidding? While the here and now had taken Andy, it had also given him Andy, the only one — drake and human alike — who’d been able to teach him to control his beast since he woke in the rebirth chamber in 1632.

  Still, the sense that she didn’t belong, just like him, was one of the things that intrigued him. That, and her aura, or rather the fact that as a human she had an aura, something only drakes and human mages had. Hers wasn’t as strong as the full mages who had lived in and been trained at Nero’s special program, which meant she probably didn’t even know she had earth magic. Maybe her soul was just so strong that he was seeing her soul magic. Rare, but not unheard of. If he asked her, would she say she’d never been seriously sick? That could be a result of strong soul magic.

  Except he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was more to this captivating woman that just a human on the verge — but with never fully realized — earth magic.

  And maybe that was just his beast making trouble, because just being with her calmed him down in ways he’d never been calm with anyone, even Andy.

  “I’ve seen that look before.” She offered a sad smile. “On friends who’ve lost loved ones. You told me your friend just passed. It takes time.”

  Time he didn’t have, not with the leak in the Asar Nergal or the growing problems at Court.

  He glanced at his phone. Still no message from Grey.

  “Would it help to talk about it?”

  “My friend?” Not that he could talk about Andy’s death.

  “Or whatever has you staring at your phone.”

  “No, sorry.” He shoved his phone into his pants pocket. “Work is blowing up.”

  “Then let’s reschedule. It’s not like we haven’t had lunch or coffee almost every day since we met.” A hint of mischief crept into her smile and her attraction to him slid across his senses. “Maybe we could upgrade to dinner.”

  “Dinner, huh?” The idea had occurred to him after their first date, but he wasn’t the kind of drake to just ju
mp into a relationship, particularly with a human. Humans didn’t heal like drakes and if his beast got out, the best outcome was that she’d be terrified of him. The worse was seriously maimed or dead.

  “I might even be interested in breakfast.” Her emotions flared and her desire seared through him.

  “After dinner, of course,” he said, playing along.

  Her smile turned wicked and blossomed, lighting her face and sparkling in her eyes. “Of course.”

  And, Mother help him, the beast within agreed.

  CHAPTER 14

  Grey reread the page. “Control the whole rebirth spell.” He didn’t want to accept that anyone, especially Regis, could get his hands on the rebirth spell. God, Tobias had been right about the Handmaiden hiding powerful magic. These coin pieces were something no drake should have.

  “I don’t like the idea of someone other than the Handmaiden having that spell,” Ivy said, her voice small. “The page Jet took has to have the key to finding the pieces of this coin.”

  That much was clear. But there wasn’t anything else on the page indicating what the key might be. There was only the list of numbers with the notes, “not ready” and “changing” and really only four of those notes were “changing”: 124, 1049, 1497, and 2012. There was also a small mark — for all he knew her pen might have slipped — beside the 1201 listing.

  They reminded Grey of dates. If the Handmaiden was straining herself by casting the complicated auger spell every hundred or so years, to determine if dragonkind was ready to have control of the powerful rebirth spell, then the list made a certain amount of sense.

  It hadn’t been until the mid-100s that the fallout of body sharing — dragon souls in occupied human vessels, which created human mages — had finally been dealt with.

  The Asar Nergal had been formed and Constantine had managed to bring all the coteries’ doyens back together, and hosted the first pahar since the Great Scourge.