by Black, C. I.
“Is it you?” Grey kept his voice low and his gaze on the doorway. “Or... her?”
“Her name is Anaea.”
“Jeez, Hunter. You know her name?”
“Kind of hard not to when I’m in her head.”
I heard that, Anaea mumbled.
“Yeah, but you’re using it.”
“Tell me you found a suitable replacement,” Hunter said.
“I’ve got Cole on it.”
Swell. How many more drakes could he get involved in this disaster? “You couldn’t have gone out and taken care of this yourself?”
“Cole is discreet, he doesn’t know any details, and he can slip almost anything past Tobias. For all he knows, I’ve taken up pathology.”
“Fine.” Hunter supposed it would have to do. He ran a hand over his head. The stubble, usually his preferred haircut, felt out of place on Anaea’s scalp. “Let’s get this over with.”
He strode out of the antechamber too fast and wobbled on the heels, unfamiliar with balancing on that kind of shoe. Grey grabbed Hunter’s arm and snickered.
“Now I know it’s you and not the woman.”
Hunter jerked out of Grey’s grasp. “She has a name,” he growled.
“Yes, and better balance.” Grey wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement. Why did everyone have to find this so funny?
“When I get an appropriate body back I’m kicking your ass all over Court.”
“Merely incentive for me to find the smallest, wimpiest man I can.”
Hunter swallowed another growl. He really just wanted to slug Grey, but with Anaea’s strength the silver drake would likely mistake it for a love tap. Instead, he focused on making it the rest of the way to the feast hall without falling over.
This night couldn’t end soon enough.
He’d eat his meat then leave. In and out. No problem. Really.
He stepped through the enormous arch into the mostly empty feast hall. The room could hold close to two thousand but was only set for the hundred and fifty drakes attending the pahar dinner. Their tables huddled at the far end near the dais, making the room look desolate instead of grand. Less than a thousand years ago the hall had been full. It was a testament to their declining ranks and the growing disinterest toward Court activities among the younger dragons.
He squared his shoulders. Walking the length of the room to his seat beside Regis’s at the royal table unsettled him more than any other duty as Prince’s Assassin. But it was necessary if he wanted to keep his position in the Royal Coterie. His heels clicked on the polished marble floor and the room fell silent before he’d even reached the first tables.
Everyone looked at him. Every doyen of every coterie—major and minor—their seconds and thirds, their mates, their advisors, and every coterie’s security detail. Any one of them could be responsible for the human mages, although he had a short list of suspects.
He ground his teeth. Fine. They could look all they wanted. He’d still won the wasu tahazu. He was still Regis’s Assassin. And if he told himself that enough times perhaps he wouldn’t feel like an insect on display.
Striding the length of the hall to the dais, he passed the tables of the Minor Coteries who, for the most part, had made alliances with the more powerful ones. Closer to the dais sat the doyens of the Counseling Coteries and their seconds. Depending on where the coterie’s doyen stood in Regis’s favor at the time would determine how close he or she was placed to the throne.
Nero, doyen of the Major Black Coterie and always Regis’s favorite, sat the closest. Barna, doyen of the Major Brown, was next. Zenobia, as expected, sat with her Second and Third and their mates as far away from Regis as possible without actually proclaiming that she’d been ousted from the Counsel. Her coterie wasn’t magically powerful, but it was large and Regis would be a fool to completely alienate her.
“Look who lived to fight another day.” Zenobia leaned back in her chair and traced the lip of her wine glass with her index finger. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”
Hunter bit back a growl but still showed a little teeth. “I always have it in me.”
“Not from what I hear, Prince’s Assassin.” She brushed a dark lock from her eyes toward the pile of black curls and braids cascading from her head down her back. Her enormous, almond-shaped eyes narrowed, drawing focus to how dark her irises were. “Even the best get tired every now and then.”
The nerve. She was barely veiling her threats now. “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.”
Who’s the bitch? Anaea asked. She sounded far away, as if she was peeking out of a crack in her mental box.
Top suspect for our current situation. “I’m not so easily killed.”
Zenobia swirled her finger in her wine then slid it into her mouth and sucked on it. “That’s what makes it so fun to watch.”
Someone’s soul needed collecting and writ or no writ, he was going to come calling soon. Trying to kill him or making a play for the throne was one thing. But breaking dragon law to create human mages went too far. Screw the Asar Nergal taking care of it. This was personal.
He marched the remaining feet to the dais and eased into his seat beside Regis’s empty throne. The Prince wouldn’t arrive until just before the ceremonial meat. Which meant Hunter had a much-needed moment to compose himself. He reached for his glass of wine. Boy, did he need a drink. Something stronger would be nice, but he’d just have to be satisfied with rotten grapes.
His hand didn’t move.
He concentrated on raising his arm, flexing his fingers, moving, twitching, anything.
Nothing.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
Like the last time, he hadn’t noticed the switch. There was no box, no sense he was cut off from the physical form he inhabited. He really hadn’t wanted Anaea to have to act her way through this dinner. He didn’t know if she could.
Grab that glass of wine, will you? We need a drink.
Are you kidding me? She didn’t sound happy at all.
I wish I was.
His hand jerked forward, or rather, her hand did. She took the glass and sucked back a large swig. How soon can we get out of this?
Look sullen, eat the meat, and then we can leave.
She finished the glass. He could feel her struggling not to shake. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to think about what had happened in the wasu tahazu or about Constantine and the crazy Jester. She didn’t want to think about what was going to happen now.
It will be okay. I promise.
Rivers of blood, pouring over her, flashed through her mind.
And to top it all off, she was still in shock from the fight. It made him ache to know he was the cause of her turmoil.
You did what you needed to do.
She blinked and he felt her throat constrict.
I don’t know if I can do this.
Yes, you can. She couldn’t cry. He needed to distract her with something, anything.
Raise a finger. Let’s get our glass topped up.
She obeyed and a young woman in a gossamer gown refilled the glass. Regis’s imagination reflected a time period long dead, along with its misogynistic beliefs, but Court still mirrored that in hopes of winning his favor.
Anaea didn’t comment on the dress or lack thereof. He would have thought she’d make a biting remark of some kind.
This wasn’t good.
Maybe a familiar face would help. Grey is on your left, halfway to the dais.
She didn’t look up. Everyone’s looking at me.
That’s because you look hot in this dress.
you You mean it’s because they all think look hot in this dress.
That was better. I suppose so. If a little laugh at his expense helped her to calm down, so be it. What he really needed was to get her emotionally detached, make her see the situation from a distance... appeal to her intellect. She was already curious, but too afraid to ask anything. Now, look at Grey. Over there. He’s with
his coterie.
His coterie? Anaea’s gaze darted to the left, hit Grey, then returned to the wineglass.
Excellent. He’d hoped the interesting word would catch her attention. If he could keep her intellectually focused, perhaps she’d be able to ignore her emotions enough to get through this. We’re organized in groups or clans called coteries.
That’s why a democracy didn’t work. Everyone was loyal to their coterie.
Yeah. Some habits die hard. We lived this way before we lost our physical forms and nothing else seems to keep order. There used to be a lot of coteries, family and extended family groupings. But with Constantine being unstable, there’s safety in numbers and the smaller groups have joined more powerful ones.
Anaea swallowed. You have a complicated society.
You have no idea. It’s been around for thousands of years. Currently there are thirteen coteries and everyone sits by color association. Even if they were at the dinner for other reasons, like Grey who sat with the Silver Coterie but represented the Handmaiden who never attended events.
That’s why Regis called Grey a silver drake?
Exactly. For the most part they’re based on our original dragon-form colors. He really shouldn’t be telling her any of this, but thank the Mother of All it was working. Her panic had eased a bit even if she was still staring at her glass.
Dragon-form colors?
Our original colors reflect a drake’s primary element: fire, water, earth, or air, and therefore his weakness, but with the discovery of magic that’s no longer important. Although after a couple thousand years without bodies, seeing a dragon for his color seemed pointless, like the humans’ prejudice to skin color.
But you said only a few of you have magic.
It’s enough to distinguish leaders from followers. We live in a precarious state between order and chaos. If the leaders of the coteries are roughly equal in strength no one will try to upset the balance.
But if nothing changes, Regis will stay in control until he dies.
And if he stays safe, he never will.
Her shock billowed over him. You don’t die?
We’re spirits. The magic in our spirit stops our vessels from aging. We can still be killed, but we don’t die from natural causes.
Her thoughts stilled and a chill went through him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he could guess. If she had survived the wounds she had and he stopped his vessel from aging, was her cancer gone? He didn’t know what he’d say if she asked.
So if you can’t die and no one challenges Regis, he stays put.
Hunter swallowed his relief. He should probably tell her the truth about her cancer, but if it was discovered that they were body-sharing there wasn’t anything he could do to save her. It would be better if she thought she was still dying. To give her hope and then take it away would be cruel. Once he knew she was safe, he’d tell her the truth.
You don’t like Regis, she said.
No. Regis held onto his power through cruelty and fear. He supposed that was one way for a leader to keep power, but he didn’t agree with it.
You don’t think he should be in charge.
He’s not in charge. Constantine is.
Anaea snorted, but still didn’t look up from her glass. Even I can tell Constantine isn’t in charge.
But that was all part of the tentative balance as well and likely the reason for the attack on him. As soon as they were through this and Anaea was safely away from Court, he would prove he wasn’t a blind follower. Until then, he needed to keep his goal in mind, getting through dinner without anyone noticing that he wasn’t himself. And to do that, he needed to get Anaea to look up. Enough about Constantine. Let’s see who’s here.
Okay. She gathered her courage and scanned the area.
Good. All the usual suspects are here. He hadn’t missed anyone on his way in.
The usual suspects?
All the coterie doyens, the leaders, are here. There isn’t anyone I wasn’t expecting. Attending the pahar and its feasts is all about maintaining or gaining political power.
Just by showing up? she asked.
It’s more complicated than that.
I figured as much. But why don’t you continue trying to distract me.
And yet again, she demonstrated the depth of her acuity. He supposed he wasn’t being particularly subtle about his intentions, but he hadn’t been trying to be obvious either. I shouldn’t be telling you this.
I know.
You shouldn’t be reading my thoughts, either.
I’m not. They’re like... well, they were like a megaphone announcement.
Now that wasn’t fair. How had she managed to turn the tables on him and use his own words from the parking garage earlier that day against him? Fine. How had she put it? In for a penny, in for a pound.
He double-checked his mental shields to ensure she couldn’t hear anything he didn’t want her to. All right. Fine. A coterie’s influence can be determined on many levels, such as the number of its members, like Zenobia’s Major Green.
You mean the bitch?
Yes. The bitch. The Royal Coterie has the most members with the strongest magic.
Which makes them dangerous to annoy.
That was an understatement and definitely something he wasn’t going to go into details about. The knot between her shoulders was just starting to ease, he didn’t want to scare her about Regis’s predilections. A coterie’s power can also be determined by a significant city or geographical region controlled in the humans’ realm. The Major Brown controls Newgate, where the main gate to Court is.
But the most important indicator of power was whether a coterie was in or out of favor with Prince Regis.
As if he could read Hunter’s thoughts, Nero, doyen of the Major Black and Regis’s favorite, met Anaea’s gaze and raised a glass in salute. Light shimmered from the streaks of silver at his temples in his immaculately short-cropped dark hair. He raised a black eyebrow, drawing emphasis to his dark, hard eyes.
Anaea maintained eye contact without prompting until Nero dropped the eyebrow, sneered, and downed his drink.
Do the same, Hunter said.
I was planning on it. She took a sip, letting the wine spread across her tongue.
Nero and his coterie were a prime example of power through royal favor. Before dragons discovered Newgate’s dimensional instability, Bath in England had been the primary gate into Court’s interdimensional space. There were other unstable pockets, Cadiz in Spain, Xi’an in China, but none as unstable as Newgate. As a result, dragons who couldn’t open anchored gates before now could, giving almost half of the population freedom to move between Court and the human realm without assistance. Bath lost significance and the black coterie that had controlled it was politically weakened, opening the way for Nero to sweet-talk Regis into turning his coterie into the Major Black.
You don’t want to have a conversation with that drake.
Nero leaned over to a young woman in a black strapless gown, her hair artfully piled atop her head. Hunter couldn’t tell if she was his new Third, but more than likely she was just eye-candy.
I don’t think I want a conversation with anyone.
Probably not. But Nero is the worst person here for us. He’s a Traditionalist.
Anaea took another sip of wine. And that means?
He’ll kill you if he discovers what you are.
Could you get any more medieval?
That’s probably an accurate analogy. Think of the doyens as lords or dukes. They’ve sworn their allegiance to the Crown, the coterie members have sworn their allegiance to their doyen. A doyen will do anything to protect their members, or a good one will. Some drakes, like Nero, believe the only way to keep us safe is to keep us hidden. Any human who knows about us is a liability and must be eliminated.
On top of that, Anaea had earth magic, which would make the Traditionalists fear her even more. But he wasn’t going to point that out. Her earth m
agic connection was still uncertain, and maybe when he left her it would go dormant again. Regardless, even though she could only call fire and couldn’t cast spells, which technically made her a mage and not a sorcerer, Nero and Regis, and many others for that matter, would demand her death. Which meant once Hunter transferred out of Anaea’s body he wouldn’t be able to see her again. He couldn’t risk someone like Nero finding out about her.
It stung just thinking about it. Irrationally, he wanted to spend more time with her, real time to get to know her better. Which was ridiculous. How much better could he know her? He was already in her body, sharing her thoughts. But there was something about Anaea’s spirit that compelled him and teased his primal dragon nature to hoard and protect.
Gig stood from a table at the back and sauntered up to the dais with exaggerated confidence, drawing Hunter’s attention. What the heck was the kid up to? He looked... ridiculous. There wasn’t any other way to put it. His clothes and hair seemed more unkempt than when he was in Tobias’s office and he’d pushed out his chest, likely in an attempt to make himself look bigger, but it only drew more attention to his lanky build.
“Hi, Hunter.” Gig leaned against the table, placing his hands on the top. “That was a great fight.” When he leaned back, a tiny ensi coin remained, half-hidden by the flower arrangement.
Of all the stupid times to show a coin—
The damned things were dangerous.
Anaea reached for it. What is this?
An ensi coin. It represents support for political maneuvering. Usually for overthrowing a doyen and taking control of a coterie. And before you ask, no I’m not interested in gaining more power. The coins had once been used in early pahars where each doyen and their seconds presented the coins to King Constantine. Funny how the ensi tradition had stopped after Regis had proclaimed his father crazy and took the throne in 1521.
Slide it back, but be subtle about it. If anyone sees it both of us... all of us will be arrested. They’d likely be tortured then reborn for treason, but he wasn’t going to mention that to Anaea.
Anaea placed her finger on the coin and inched it back to Gig.
Disappointment flashed across his face. But before she could say anything, Tobias stepped up to the head table and Gig’s expression jumped to panic. Tobias would certainly turn them over in a heartbeat.
