by Raye Wagner
“I will not,” Irrik said in a quiet voice.
The king chuckled, relaxing his grip enough that I was able to blink the room back into focus.
Dyter was struggling against three Druman. He stared at me with wide eyes, scarred face blanched in horror. The prince, also surrounded by the king’s guard, studied me as if I were a puzzle, which I assumed meant he was ignorant of my Phaetyn nature.
Tyr was gone.
I longed to see his hooded face, his wry smile. My heart yearned to feel his lips on mine one last time. We’d shared one kiss. . . I’d hoped to share many more with him.
Irrik tossed the black bag, and my throat squeezed in horror as it hit the ground with a sickening squelch and the head inside rolled out. I didn’t want to see further evidence of his death or Irrik’s forced cruelty, but never once had I seen Tyr’s full face, and I wanted this one last thing before I died. I swallowed the lump of emotion at the back of my throat and let my gaze go to the decapitated head.
I blinked, my mind refusing to accept that the face of the Druman before me was Tyr. He was nothing like I’d pictured him. I tilted my head to the side, examining the young man’s face. His dusky skin was smooth, but his lips seemed thinner than I remembered, and his chin . . .
The king released my hand and grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back to expose my throat.
“Kill her!” he screamed. “I command you. I invoke the power of your oath to me. Slay this traitor.”
My gaze collided with Lord Irrik’s dark eyes. The Drae stepped toward me, lips pursed, his eyes filled with haunted sadness. He was the bringer of death, and he would deliver me from the torment of King Irdelron. “Don’t be sad,” I said, choking on the words. I would be in the stars with Mum and Arnik in the blink of an eye. “I’ll be free.”
“Už ti nikdy neubližujem,” Irrik said, shaking his head. He held out his hand, and as he stretched his fingers, his skin darkened, his hand shifted, and black talons appeared on the end of his scaly digits. Razor sharp.
“Make it fast,” I wheezed.
Lord Irrik broke eye contact with me, and then he lunged forward.
I closed my eyes, feeling the whooshing air of his movement brush my cheeks. The hair on the top of my head rippled. I felt the warmth of Irrik’s body, and his terrible snarl echoed in my ears. The last sound I would ever hear.
I wasn’t afraid.
32
There was no pain.
There was no darkness.
There was no end.
The warmth receded. The air settled around me.
The king released my hair, and my eyes flew open.
Lord Irrik stood before me, boxing me between his legs and the king’s. I twisted to look up.
Shock drove me out from between them, and I scrambled back, unable to tear my gaze from where the Drae’s black talon was punctured clear through the king’s neck, several inches of the tip visible on the other side.
Irdelron opened his mouth and gurgled. His eyes wide and disbelieving.
“You can’t compel me to do that. Your blood oath isn’t strong enough, Irdelron.” Lord Irrik’s eyes gleamed as he retracted his deadly talon, slowly. He lowered his arm to his side, the king’s blood dropping from the sharp tip to the stone ground.
The king slumped to the floor as blood pooled from the gaping wound. He gurgled again, attempting to speak.
I began to hyperventilate, feeling my face and body, over and over again, certain my mind was playing tricks on me.
Irdelron continued his attempt to communicate, hands gripping the floor uselessly as his lips opened and closed. Head spinning, I stared at the dying monarch, unmoving as his movements became weaker and weaker.
I knew what happened next. I’d seen it happen to my mother.
His movements stopped.
Irrik crouched next to the king, staring into his fading eyes. “You sealed your fate,” he said, jaw clenched. “With the command to kill her.”
The king’s expression slackened, and he looked past Irrik to where I was curled. Irdelron clearly understood what Irrik meant.
The life disappeared from the king’s eyes as he suffocated on his own blood, but my mind said it should be me. Why wasn’t it me? How had Irrik broken the oath?
I shifted my gaze to Lord Irrik. He shuddered, and black scales danced up his arms. He snarled a reverberating roar at the Druman, flashing his fangs. They dropped their weapons to the floor as though the swords were scalding hot.
Irrik continued to roar until every one of them was on their knees.
Dyter rushed to me and supported me with an arm behind my shoulders. “Ryn,” he said hoarsely. “Mistress Moons, Rynnie. What have they done to you?”
I heard him, but Dyter’s question didn’t seem to want an answer as he clutched me to him, stroking my silver hair with shaking hands.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Irrik, and finally, finally he met my gaze.
“How did you do that?” I managed, glancing toward the king’s blood nearly touching my extended foot.
“Not here,” he replied tersely. His hand had shifted back to human, and the king’s blood coated Irrik’s fingers.
“No!” I shouted. I extricated myself from Dyter’s arms and sprang to my feet, ignoring my shaking legs. “I want to know right now. Right now!”
Cal and Dyter gasped to my right at the way I was speaking to the king’s Drae.
Not the king’s anymore.
Irrik’s fangs appeared again, and he forced them back, the struggle evident on his face. “There are too many ears here.”
“Then get rid of them,” I ordered. “But I’m not leaving here until I get answers.”
“Ryn?” Dyter asked.
Irrik snarled an order in Drae to the Druman, who marched out of the throne room in ordered lines. He turned to Cal and Dyter, but I held up a hand. “They stay.”
We warred silently, Irrik before me. He showed all the signs of being about to lose control and shift: scales, talons, fangs, inky eyes.
“As far as I was aware,” Cal spoke for the first time, calmly—as if his father hadn’t just suffocated on his own blood. It made me like him more. “Your blood oath was absolute. If there was a threat to Irdelron’s life, you had to protect him. Him above everyone else.”
Irrik sucked in a breath between his fangs, and the black glossy scales appeared up the sides of his neck. He shook his head. “There’s always been a way to break it.”
What? Without thinking, I closed the gap between us and gripped his forearms. “Tell me. Irrik, talk to me. Whatever it is, I can handle it. You know I can.”
He turned his head, closing his black eyes and breathing thinly. “One hundred years ago, the emperor gave King Irdelron a choice. He needed to get the Drae to fight for the emperor or eliminate the risk they posed to his war plans. With the emperor’s help, Irdelron slaughtered my kind. When all the male Drae were murdered—my brothers, father, uncles, grandfathers—he took me, the youngest, to where the females were corralled, unconscious from their mates’ deaths. He then gave me a choice: I could swear an oath to him, or he would kill my female kin. I was nine and hadn’t come into my power. There was no way I would’ve said no. And so I swore to protect him. But a blood oath is not infallible. There is one thing that is more powerful to a Drae, something which supersedes a blood oath, something that is unbreakable.”
Shivers exploded down my arms.
“Irdelron had been well informed. He sent the emperor the females, and I was the only Drae left with him, so there was never any danger of the oath being broken, before now. I’ve always been the only Drae in Verald.”
“What are you saying?” I whispered.
Irrik opened his eyes, human once more, and faced me. He slid back the sleeves of my shift.
“Drae cannot kill each other. I cannot physically kill one of my own. It is not magically possible. To tell me to do so would shatter the blood oath and allow me the freedom to prot
ect my fellow Drae.” He glanced down and, frowning in confusion, I did the same.
I gasped at the sight of the lapis lazuli gems stuck to my skin. Except . . . I stepped away from Irrik. They weren’t gems. I swallowed. I thought I was Phaetyn? I sucked in a breath. “What . . . am I?”
His answer didn’t come quickly enough.
“What am I?” I screamed at him.
He tried to get closer, but I shifted away to keep distance between us. His eyes went inky again, and when he spoke, his menacing Drae voice rumbled through the throne room. “You are Drae.”
My legs folded underneath me, and I sank to the ground, staring at my arms. My blue-scaled arms. “I can’t be,” I said. “I’m Phaetyn.”
“You are Drae, too,” Irrik said.
Dyter’s voice was incredulous. “How is that possible?”
“The emperor’s experiments,” Irrik answered tersely.
Cal and Dyter looked at each other in confusion. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.
“A female Drae can only breed with her mate,” Irrik snapped. “What he was trying to do is unnatural.” Scales rippled over his skin, and he trembled to maintain his human form.
“Do not shift on me right now,” I yelled at him, climbing to my feet. I was pushed far beyond my coping level and unable to feel fear. I grabbed his arms and shook him, though he didn’t even budge.
Irrik closed his eyes, and his black scales smoothed to skin. He rested his hands on my shoulders and took slow, deep breaths.
My breath was ragged. “So what? I’m Phaetyn and Drae?” I swallowed, and my voice shook when I said, “Apart from the scales, I don’t seem very Drae. I don’t shift. I don’t . . .”
I didn’t even know what other powers Drae had, but I didn’t have anything else besides my Phaetyn powers. And those twinkling bumps.
“When is your eighteenth birthday?” Cal asked.
Irrik asked me that same question not long ago. I had no idea how much time I’d lost recovering from my injuries, so I took a guess. “A few days. Maybe?”
“A Drae does not come into their powers until adolescence,” Irrik said. “Males come into them earlier, at age twelve.” He fidgeted then met my quelling gaze and said in a strained voice, “Females later, usually around eighteen, when they are of mating age.”
He did not just say mating. Drak, no. I backed away from him, suddenly needing distance. It hit me. “You knew I was Drae? This whole time? Was it my itchy arms?”
Irrik exhaled. “No, that’s when I knew your transformation was close. I knew you were Drae the first time I touched you. I recognized you as my kind. But I first knew you were both Phaetyn and Drae when your mother told me, before . . .”
She killed herself. “My mother was Drae,” I said in a daze. I’d suspected it once before, long ago, believing if she was that would mean I wasn’t actually her daughter. But my mother had been Drae, and I was her daughter. That was something, it was outweighed by everything else at the moment, but it was something.
“The Phaetyn blade that killed her . . .” I had to know but couldn’t actually ask.
Irrik’s eyes flashed black, and his fangs lengthened. He trembled for a long moment before answering. “Yours.”
I closed my eyes as a dead weight landed in my stomach. It shouldn’t mean anything. I hadn’t been the one to put the blood on there or shove it into my mother . . . but my blood had killed her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, hugging myself.
My question fell flat. I knew the answer before he parted his lips. Shaking my head, I answered my own question. “Because you couldn’t trust me.”
“Ryn, I—”
“No.” I held up my hand to stop his excuse. I didn’t want to hear him say it. My heart couldn’t take anymore. “It’s fine. You couldn’t risk it in case Jotun got it out of me, or I screwed up in front of the king. I get it. Truly.” I’d made that mistake with Ty. Arnik had been broken. Everyone cracked under the right pressure. My mind understood that.
Dyter’s arms closed around me, tugging me to him. “My girl,” he whispered in my hair. “What have you been through?”
So much. Too much. I couldn’t even feel anything anymore and didn’t know when I would. I turned to my friend, my mentor, and buried my face in his chest. A low grieving sound came from deep in my chest, but my eyes remained dry as my mind spun to take in all that had happened and all I had learned.
“You’re al’right now,” Dyter shushed, rocking me.
My eyes were drawn to where Tyr’s head still lay facing me on the ground. I wasn’t okay. I wouldn’t be. I was a Phaetyn and a Drae. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that would make me highly valuable, or highly threatening.
I returned Dyter’s hug, my heart swelling. “Dyter, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
He choked. “I’m so sorry about your mother.”
“No, please,” I stopped him in an emotionless tone. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, except that man’s.” I pulled away and studied the king’s body.
He was dead. But I didn’t believe it yet.
Cal crossed to his father’s body and pried the crown from Irdelron’s head. The prince studied it, tipping the golden circlet side to side, and I wondered what he was thinking. Sighing, he held it out to Irrik and said, “This belongs to you. You slayed him, so his possessions shift to you, including control of the Druman. You are their alpha once more.”
Irrik’s nostrils flared, and he clenched his teeth. “If you held a Phaetyn blade to my throat, I would not take anything from the house of Ir.”
I glanced over at him. That’s right. Phaetyn blood didn’t work on him, or at least mine hadn’t. Yet it had killed my mother. I’d thought that I could only kill the Drae side in drumans, but if my blood killed my mum this wasn’t true. So, why was Irrik immune to Phaetyn blood? Clearly, he wanted to keep this hidden from Cal and Dyter. I’d be getting to the bottom of that as soon as they were out of earshot. I was done with secrets.
“You will take the Druman, too. I concede my control over them to you. I hate the very sight of them. Plus, not all were mine. You’ll need their protection once the emperor’s Druman report back to him. He’ll send others to attack if he knows you’re vulnerable,” Irrik said. “You must be the king the people of Verald need. You will need to become a king the entire realm needs.”
Cal’s face sobered as he accepted the weight of rule. “I intend to see this battle through to the end. The very end.”
Irrik’s eyes flooded black. “I would expect no less from the infamous Cal. And I intend to hold you to your word.” His lip curled, and he snarled, “If you ever take your position for granted, I’ll be back, and I will make you pay.”
The prince tilted his chin. “I am not my father. In fact, I’ll gladly renounce his name. The house of Ir no longer exists. I’ll be Caltevyn of House Cal, my mother’s house.”
With a gleam in his eyes, Lord Irrik leaned over the fair young man and said, “A pretty speech, but I look forward to you proving the truth of it by uniting the three kingdoms against the emperor.”
Whoa. My heart skipped a beat as I contemplated the meaning of the Drae’s plan. Now he was free from Irdelron, he was pushing for the empire to be purged of its abusive Drae ruler.
Caltevyn pursed his lips and stared at the crown as if contemplating Irrik’s challenge. After several moments, the prince squared his shoulders and looked up to the Drae. “I will need your help.”
Irrik dipped his head. “You shall have it, King Caltevyn. As long as I agree with your decisions.”
I was sure our king understood the underlying threat. But I agreed with Irrik. Someone needed to help maintain the balance of power. Mum’s stories weren’t just stories after all.
Cal frowned at the crown for a long moment before he placed it on his head. This was the man who had ordered potato stew from me at The Crane’s Nest. I’d known there was something strange about him, something different,
back then. But that he was a prince, never. Now he was king. The crown suited him, but I silently added to Irrik’s threat. If Caltevyn or Irtevyn, or whatever his name was, abused his power, I would come back to end him myself. A deep sense of protectiveness bubbled up from within, and I felt compelled to remind him, “The people need you. Don’t let them down.”
King Caltevyn nodded, a grim look of determination on his face. “I will not fail them.”
Dyter chuckled behind me. Placing his hand on my shoulder, he did his best to reassure me. “I’ve known Cal for more than ten years, Ryn. I believe in him.”
Once, that might have been enough for me to believe in him, too.
Cal crossed the stone floor and knelt before me. Taking my hand in his, he bowed and brushed his lips over the back of my hand. He looked up into my eyes and said, “My lady, I hope you will come to believe in me, too, over time. These are trying times, and I must put the needs of my people before all else. I would implore you to consider their plight. Please, will you help us, too?”
My help? “With growing more food?”
I’m sure there would be more healing of the land that would need to take place, but I could teach them how to do it, and I had a few ideas so I wouldn’t have to always be around for spitting in the pail.
The new king grinned. “Ryn, you’re more powerful than you know.” He sobered and looked me in the eye, all traces of humor gone. “When you turn eighteen, you will be unstoppable.”
The thought made me uncomfortable. Despite Irrik’s theory, I wasn’t really sure he was right. I didn’t feel like a Drae or someone who would soon become a Drae. Though . . . I hadn’t believed I was Phaetyn at first either.
Cal released my hand and stood, casting a look at Irrik.
The Drae had been watching our exchange with sharp eyes, and he shifted his gaze from me to the king.
King Caltevyn smiled. “Lord Irrik, you are no longer tied to my father’s house. I release you from your blood oath to the house of Ir. You are no longer to be called Irrik . . .”
