by Alyse Zaftig
Dragon Twins Bride
Alyse Zaftig
Eva Wilder
Contents
Newsletters
Part 1
1. Key Pass
2. Blueprints
3. Blood Thief
4. Dinner
5. Drink
6. Perfect Dress
7. Run
8. Evening in the Garden
9. Prep Time
10. Tea Leaves
11. Tally Boards
12. Plus One
13. Glittering Hoard
14. Racing Smoke
15. Captured
16. Collector
17. Displayed
Part 2
18. Weapons Archive
19. Simulacrum Discovery
20. Test Results
21. Woken Up
22. Staying
23. Sensitive
24. Pool Game
25. Nightmare
26. Wandering
27. Supernova
28. Ripped Dress
29. Remedy
30. Cabin Fever
31. Lagoon
32. Demand
33. Feverish
34. Warming Up
35. Seer’s Visit
36. Empty Bottles
37. Questions
38. New Beginnings
39. Acid
40. Another Attack
41. Blast
42. Lucien
43. Found
Part 3
44. Reclaim
45. Goading
46. Spellbook
47. Raining Kisses
48. Net
49. Shopping Trip
50. Offering to Help
51. New Flowers
52. Mission Planning
53. Passion
54. Bad Dreams
55. Strange Dreams
56. Wine
57. Leaving
58. Infiltration
59. Marc’s Invitation
60. Kitchen Love
61. Mating Ceremony
62. New Empire
Outfoxing the Alpha
Afterword
From Alyse
Copyright
Newsletters
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Part I
1
Key Pass
Phuong
Phuong swallowed hard as she pushed open the door to the store. She hated doing this. Last time, her brother said. Just once more.
“Hello! How can I help you?”
She tried to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she smiled back at the store clerk.
Her eyes turned silver. “I need your help.”
She could see the silver in her eyes reflected in the clerk’s eyes.
“How can I help you?”
She couldn’t control other people, but she could suggest things to them.
“I really need your help to get a key pass, but I don’t have any money. Do you think that it would be fair to give me one, since I can’t afford it?”
She nudged him in the right direction, but the clerk was the person who made the final call.
“I think that would be fair. What color do you want? Do you have a code number for the lock that it should open?”
Phuong hadn’t thought through what color the key pass should be.
“Gold, please. And the code number is 5894.”
“Coming right up.” The clerk went to the back, got a gold key pass, and swiped it to activate it.
“There you go. Thank you for your business!”
Phuong nodded. “Thank you!” She took the gold key pass from the clerk and tucked it safely in her pocket. The bells chimed as she walked out of the store.
That was the last time. Xuan had promised her that she’d only need to do it once more, just to get all of their ducks in a row. After this, her brother said that they’d be on easy street.
She trusted her brother, but she thought that he might have over-promised.
She slipped into the shadows as she neared the service entrance of the aquarium. Inside, there were burnished bronze tunnels that made a lot of noise if she was careless enough to touch the walls. She walked quickly and carefully towards the den that she shared with her brother, trying to be as quiet as a ghost. To her relief, she finally got to the hatch door that would let her into their living space.
It hadn’t been easy to find a place, not when they didn’t have any real money. They were stowaways from Heritage House, the group home where they’d been raised. It’s not easy finding a place to live when you’re wanted. Even harder when you can’t live in a place connected to the city’s water supply.
When Phuong or her brother Xuan used “tap” water, they broke out in full-body hives. Either they had to take antihistamines on a daily basis, or they had to use clean water.
The aquarium was one of the few places in town that had ultra-purified water, so they had to stay near it.
Phuong was ashamed about it, but it also had a steady supply of fresh fish. They were careful not to take too many or too much, but they sometimes had no other choice. At the most desperate moments, fish could get them through.
“Xuan?”
Xuan didn’t reply, so Phuong went past the circular front area of their home. It had a bunch of water pipes that brought them their supply. She looked around their small living space, but Xuan wasn’t inside. He must have gone somewhere.
Phuong settled down on one of the boxes that they’d taken from the aquarium. She stared at the Kiyin stone sitting on the mantel of the generator vent.
The Kiyin stone was the only clue to who they were. There weren’t any other indications of where they’d come from when they landed on the doorstep of the group home.
It shimmered, just a little bit. It was obviously powerful, but they didn’t know what it did. When they’d left, Xuan had stolen it from its place of honor in the head office.
As hungry and desperately poor as they were, it would’ve made sense to sell it. But Phuong and Xuan weren’t willing to part with it. They’d kept it close in their den, and Phuong could feel something awakening inside of her gut.
She just knew that it was the key to something big, something that would help them figure out where they came from.
As she thought about it, her mind slammed into a stone door. She gritted her teeth. The implant in her brain that neither her brother nor Phuong had been able to overcome threw up mental blocks whenever she thought about something that the group home had deemed “dangerous.”
Growling, Phuong went to her medicine cabinet. They were next to one of the least-visited tanks, and she could see an eye next to her, then a fin in the dark water. The little Kneck loved to visit them, probably because they were something new and shiny to look at.
She went to get a glass to take her medications. She gulped the whole thing down. Just being out and about made her so thirsty, but there wasn’t a lot of water that she could drink.
Then she heard the hatch door open.
2
Blueprints
Phuong
“Where have you been, Xuan?”
“Did you get it?” Xuan answered her question with another question, avoidi
ng the discussion.
“I did.” Phuong pulled the gold key pass out of her pocket.
“Look. I’ve got blueprints.” He pulled a roll of paper out of his pocket and waved it around.
“Blueprints? Blueprints of what?”
“The tunnels under the Alrech Auction House.”
Phuong took in a sharp breath. “You can’t be serious. Xuan, we steal to live. We don’t take the treasure of the mega-wealthy.”
“Everything there would help us, but I want something that’s going to set us free. We’ll never run out of money again. We can live the life we’ve always dreamed of. We can afford to pay healers to take out our implants.”
“Xuan...”
“I know that you don’t like stealing or nudging people to help us, but if we do this one last time, we can be safe and happy forever. Do you want to scrounge in the tanks for the rest of our lives?”
“No.”
“I need to keep you safe. There are too many people who take notice of you. In the last year, you’ve...grown up.”
Phuong blushed. What he was trying to say, in his brotherly way, was that she’d developed in the last year...developed in ways that caught a lot of glances from random strangers. She was getting to be too remarkable to be an effective thief. If she was ever caught, Xuan wouldn’t be able to get her out.
“You’re crazy to try to steal from Marc.”
“I know. I know. His reputation...”
“Xuan, if we get caught by Marc, then it’ll be worse than going to jail. At least in jail, we’d have a roof over our heads, food to eat, and a bed to sleep in. If we get caught, we’ll probably be fish food.”
“Phuong, we have to try. He has Illinium ore that is worth thousands upon thousands of credits in the black market. I won’t even have to arrange for transport off-planet! All I need to do is get it out of the auction den. I know that we can do it. We can do anything.”
“Xuan, he’s a Drakan. He’s a shifter, and he can smell everything. He’s going to know that we’ve been there.”
“Not necessarily.” Xuan pulled out a small bottle. “Smell this.”
Phuong took the little bottle from his hand and unscrewed the cap. She took a good whiff and gagged.
“What is that?” She wiped her watering eyes.
“It’s the essence of peppermint.”
“It’s...strong.”
“Strong enough to mask our scents, I think.”
Xuan looked at Phuong.
“I know you don’t like stuff like this, but I swear, we can do this and be done. We can figure out a way to stop the group home from getting us back until we turn 21.”
“I...I don’t want to go to the auction house, Xuan. I don’t mind taking a fish here and there, but stealing from Marc is a whole other level.”
“We have to. There’s no other way.”
Xuan pulled out a sheet of paper and began to scribble down notes in his shorthand. For their whole lives, they’d seen symbols in their sleep, symbols that weren’t anything like the Drakans’ writing system. Xuan could use it perfectly, but Phuong took extra time to decipher the symbols.
Since they’d left the group home, they’d seen it in a couple places. When Xuan had finally worked up the nerve to ask what it was, they’d been told that the symbols were chu nom, not widely used but sometimes used for decorations.
Neither Xuan nor Phuong knew why they dreamed about decorative characters, but it was part of their past...something about which they’d never been able to learn much. Maybe they never would.
At least when Xuan wrote in chu nom, nobody could figure out what was going on.
3
Blood Thief
Olivier
Olivier felt someone touch his arm. He turned just in time to see someone trying to jab a needle into him.
“Get away from me,” he shouted, deliberately attracting attention in the crowded marketplace. He heard a snap as he broke the man’s pinky finger.
The thief, wearing ragged clothes, dropped the needle and ran through the crowd, disappearing behind people.
Olivier began to push people aside as he pursued his would-be attacker, only to be stopped by a hand on his wrist.
“You better be ready to lose that hand,” he warned as he turned around. “How dare you lay a hand on a prince?”
“When you’re a prince, too, somehow the royal status doesn’t mean much,” his twin said drily. “Give up. He didn’t take any of your blood. Your eyes are still glowing around the edges.”
“He tried to stab me with a needle,” Olivier protested. “I need to bring him to justice.”
“Leave the cafard in his filth.”
Olivier glared at the crowd. Thanks to his twin’s intervention, he couldn’t even see the thief anymore.
But Gahariet was already pulling him in another direction. “Forget it. Let’s just head back.”
As they walked towards the cobble road, they heard a shout. They were near the archives when an old woman hobbled towards Olivier. He’d had enough of being touched today, so he quickly sidestepped so that Gahariet was closer.
But she went towards Olivier, stepping too close to him. “Your fate is on the way. She will come, but trouble follows her closely.”
The hair on the back of Olivier’s neck stood straight up. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Mother, don’t bother the princes.” There was a young man who put his arm around the old woman’s shoulders and brought her to a small stall that was near the archives. “I’m so sorry, Your Highnesses. My mother...sees thing sometimes. She says that it’s her obligation to tell the people that she sees...she’s never seen Drakan royalty before. Please don’t arrest her. She’s old and sick.”
“We’re not monsters,” Gahariet said in his smoothest voice. Olivier shook his head. Gahariet had always been able to talk his way out of any sticky situation. They were in a crowded marketplace. Yore everywhere had turned to look at them. Yes, they would be within their rights to harm her, but they’d pay for it. “We appreciate her warning.”
With a nod, the man disappeared with his mother.
Olivier turned to Gahariet. “What is it with everyone wanting to talk to me today? My fate is coming? But she’s in trouble? That could be interesting.”
“Did you notice that her eyes were silver?”
“Yeah, freaky, right? Is that common?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Let’s go home.”
“I’m more than ready to be inside, away from all these people, believe me.”
The two of them headed home.
4
Dinner
Phuong
Phuong’s stomach growled loudly, stirring her out of her meditative trance. She could see her face in a shiny piece of metal on the wall. Her eyes were glowing silver...just a little bit.
She clenched her fist. She’d been right at the edge of seeing something in her mind’s eye. She could get there if it weren’t for her stupid implant. She just knew it.
But until they could afford the surgery to get their implants taken out safely, she was stuck with it. There wasn’t any point in getting angry about it.
The only thing that she could do was work towards the money that they needed to get the surgery.
They weren’t doing it through the government-funded channels; they weren’t supposed to take the implants out, so they’d have to accept a black market surgeon. Anything could happen, but Xuan was desperate to get the implants out of their heads. She figured that she’d go along for the ride. She didn’t have a better idea.
She could smell something. Their den was mostly one space, but their “rooms” were little alcoves on each side. They were a little too regular to be there by chance, but when Phuong had asked Xuan about it, he’d just shrugged. She’d let it drop.
Her sheets were pure silk, the kind that they definitely should’ve sold a long time ago. It was strange how her brother insiste
d on having the best things even when they couldn’t afford much.
The silk sheets had been a gift from her brother. Well, a “gift.” He’d given them to her when she’d gotten him into a Drakan boutique with a little suggestion.
She put on her slippers, which, thankfully, weren’t absurdly luxurious for their circumstances.
She went out into the main area. On their “stove,” such as it was, she could see some pots with steam coming out of them.
“What are you cooking?”
“Amila stalks and lagoon-fresh greens,” Xuan said.
Phuong pressed her lips together. Those foods were way too expensive for people who couldn’t actually afford to feed themselves regularly.
She folded her arms. She counted to five. She was still mad. She counted to twenty.
She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “We can’t afford this.”
“Or the wine.”
“Xuan!”
He gave a wide grin, the one that had gotten him out of sticky situations without any silver-eye mojo. Her brother was a charmer, no doubt about it. It worked on random strangers and it worked on his sister. She just shook her head.
“Come on. Live a little.”
“You’re so focused on today’s pleasures that you don’t see that we’re not going to have enough food tomorrow! I feel horrible when we steal fish from the aquarium.”
“We won’t be doing that for long.”
She shook her head. “We don’t have that Illinium yet.”
“We’ll get it. I’m sure of it.”
“If you quote that motivational speaker one more time…”
“You have to believe it to achieve it. Positive thinking works, Phuong. You just have to believe it.”
Phuong knew better than to argue with someone who was delusional. She’d never win a fight with her brother. He didn’t like to see reality, and it was hard to be the realist. She wished that she could get a good dose of his optimism, but she was depressingly pragmatic. She went to their constantly packed trunk to get out some dishes. She went over to their water spout to rinse some of their dishes off.
