Stop. I cuffed her shoulder.
You’d better be bold or I’ll shove you off the wall, she said. You never know how life will go, Ezeru, so be bold with the people you love. She bit her lip. I wondered if she was thinking of Niko’s father. I wondered if she had ever felt the way I did. Peri was so controlled, it was hard to imagine, but I guess she’d been a girl once too.
After dinner, Himika led us outside the castle walls and down a sandy little path. Some of the rock dragons wanted to follow me.
“Is it all right if they accompany us?” I asked. “I think they’ll mind their own business.”
“Of course,” Himika said, as I was starting to know she would.
That was what made me love her more than anything. Sometimes I even thought she might accept me even if I was an ordinary half breed. The way she accepted the rock dragons was different from other women, even here. I had seen the Gaermoni women shying back from them.
Some of the tribe wanted to rest, but Aknu and Nuru came with us, and so did some of the female elders of the tribe with the children.
I heard a steady roar in the distance. The air smelled particularly salty here, and birds hung low in the air as if suspended on wires. Fishing boats dotted the sea.
“There! Waves!” Himika sounded excited as we came in view of the shore. “I didn’t get to come down to the ocean even when I lived here. It didn’t used to be safe outside the walls.”
“Waves,” Aurek said. “Is that what you call this sound? Is it safe?”
“Yes, as long as we don’t go out too far. They make quite a roar but they’re actually pretty gentle on the shore. The waves come in sort of like a shelf of water and they smash on the sand and then they go back in sort of under the next shelf. You’ll see!”
More birds stood on long legs in the water. The sand had rippling lines of shells. I could tell where the waves came in and pushed the shells up.
Now I definitely understood why she didn’t care if the rock dragons came with us. Families were playing in the waves already, a ways down, but the ocean and wind had such a loud, steady roar and a vast sense of space that there seemed plenty of room for everyone. The rock dragons ran down to the water and then got nervous and waited for the waves to creep up to their toes.
“I’m taking off my shoes,” Himika said. “It’s so warm.”
Aurek stepped out of his shoes too. I shrugged and yanked off my boots, and followed them in. The water suddenly rushed up to our ankles.
Aurek laughed with surprise. The water went out again just as fast, and the sand melted away around my feet. It was strangely pleasant.
“There is a very different kind of magic here,” Aurek said. “No wonder you and Oszin seemed sad sometimes.”
“Not too sad,” Himika said. “I am happy to see it again. It will always be home. But…even more than that, you two are my home. And…I want to tell you…” Her eyes moved between us. “I don’t know for sure if it’s true yet, but one of the priestess’ handmaidens told me I’m pregnant.”
A chill of dread went through me.
“Pregnant?” Aurek sounded very happy.
“And—she said it could be twins.” Himika let out a little bark of relief. “Twins! I was so worried I might be barren or something.”
“I knew you weren’t barren,” Aurek said.
“You have no idea,” she retorted.
“It had only been a few months.”
Pregnant… Aurek was right. A few months was not long. Still, it didn’t escape me that this meant Himika got pregnant right after I had mated with her. I had gone into heat for her, and rock dragons in heat rarely failed to produce a child. One might assume the blood knew when it was time. Especially after all the fuss about how I had the blood of King Orvenu…
What if it’s my child?
It will be one quarter rock dragon. Is that enough dilution to produce a child worthy of a queen? Or will it be…
The rock dragons were playing in the waves. One of the small females found a colorful shell and held it up in triumph, letting out a little cry that warned other dragons off from her treasure.
It could be too much of a beast for the high dragon court. To be a prince or princess…and if that is the case, they will be shunned and live a life of misery. They’ll be just smart enough to know they aren’t good enough…
“I hope they’re Seron’s,” Aurek said earnestly. “But this means we have a time limit. Seron has to see the birth of your first children.”
“I hope so…”
“Ez? You haven’t said a word,” Aurek said. “If Himika is happy, you can be happy for her, whatever dark thoughts are swirling around your brain.”
Himika gave him a little swat. “Well, don’t bully him into it. Ezeru, it’s okay. I told you, I’ll be happy with any child I might have with any of you.”
“You say that now, but you haven’t given birth to one of them.” I watched them and I could practically feel my insides shattering into two. I was always torn between worlds. My instincts saw the rock dragons as my own kind. I understood all their squawks and signals and I knew how to talk to them. As Himika said, they idolized me. But other times, I hardly felt worthy of them, because when I looked at them, I felt disgusted with myself. Their presence was a constant reminder of what I really was at heart: an animal, who mated based on scent and instinct, and cleaned his plate of anything that looked like food.
“I’m not worried,” Himika said. “Anyway…only one quarter of its blood will be rock dragon.”
That was exactly what I did not want her to say. Himika was one of the most kind hearted girls I had ever known, but she was still a human queen, not an angel. She had her own reputation to uphold. “Exactly. But if that blood comes out strongly, then what will you say? What will you all say?”
“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”
“Never mind,” I said, turning away.
Aurek took a step closer to me. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I think I just would rather be alone—”
“You will not go and be alone anymore,” Aurek said. “Himika loves you and she loves the rock dragons, and there is no use in brooding over something that hasn’t even happened. We all have our problems. I’m about to stumble and fumble my way over the whole human kingdom. You think a part of me might rather not go be alone? But what’s the use of that? If I think about the skills I lack, I’m tossing aside the skills I have. Muster your pride, for Himika’s sake. She lost Oszin and Seron and we don’t really know for sure what will happen or what state they’ll be in when they come back. Your place is at her side, as she carries our children. And they are all of our children, no matter who the father might technically be.”
Himika looked startled. “Aurek, I don’t mind if he wants to be alone.”
I looked at Aurek’s unfocused amber eyes and cringed inwardly. His speech cut to the bone.
“No,” I said. “He’s right. I’m used to retreating from the world. In the mist dragon court, they didn’t really want to see me. But this is a different place. I have to stop…thinking of it as if I’m still back there. I can see the truth right in front of me, and the truth is that you accept me and the rock dragons, so I shouldn’t doubt you. But doubt is…”
“Doubt is survival,” Himika said. “At least, it was, wasn’t it? Well…the truth is, we…we don’t really always know how we’ll feel. Of course I want my children to be the best. If they were like you, I wouldn’t mind. If they’re more like rock dragons…I think we might both be a little sad for them, because we know their life would be harder. But I can’t imagine that I would not love your son or daughter. We would do what we could to protect them and ready them to protect themselves.”
You’re not horrified to give birth to a rock dragon?
I didn’t say that. It seemed an insult to the concern in her eyes.
I watched the rock dragons playing in the surf. Now all the children were looking for shells. But Aknu and Nuru
were walking together down the shoreline, Nuru trying to outdistance Aknu a little, her tail in the air, but then always glancing back to make sure he was following her—a mating dance, to be sure.
“Yes,” I said. “If you should ever honor me with a child, I will do my best for them.”
Still, deep down, I hoped all of Himika’s children were crystal dragons, beautiful and untroubled by a life torn between worlds.
Chapter Four
Himika
No one would teach me to ride a horse.
“We’ll give you a carriage, of course,” the master of the stables said.
“Surely you have a gentle horse I could ride,” I insisted. “I have all day to learn before we leave tomorrow. Remember, I don’t have glass bones anymore, so you don’t have to protect me.” As he looked uncertain, I took out my knife and did a few of the choreographed slashes and strikes Aurek had taught me on one of the posts in the stable.
“I’ll teach her.”
I turned. Niko and his mother Peri were walking into the stables behind me. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to secure my own horse for the journey.
I wasn’t very happy about that. Niko’s conduct around me was not befitting a queen.
He had a few apples in his hand, and he fed one to a horse and then Peri, seeing that they were safe, took one and did the same. She chuckled at its big teeth and lips and made a hand gesture.
“They are funny looking,” Niko said.
“Do you understand her sign language already?”
“No. But I can guess.”
Peri shrugged. Ezeru was the only one who actually knew her signs. Whenever I saw her, I felt very nervous thinking that Oszin and Seron were in the hands of the people who cut her tongue out, but Peri was such a lively person that it was hard to feel too uncomfortable around her, and she helped to redeem Niko in my eyes. He treated her well, anyway.
Niko snapped his fingers at the master of the stables. “Let’s get these ladies the best horses around.”
Ugh. He really was bossy. I should be the one to order up my own horses.
It did the trick, though. The stablemaster gave up on arguing and found us two pretty horses and one handsome horse, as far as horses could be pretty or handsome, which was a surprising amount. Someone had groomed my horse recently and braided her tail. Niko was fairly patient in teaching us both to ride, and when he tried to get snarky with me, Peri didn’t let him get away with it.
At one point, she whipped a notepad out of her pocket and wrote in the dragon language, I’m sorry about my son. When I last saw him, he was a real sweetheart, so it’s not my fault.
I nodded, suppressing a laugh. “You might be able to whip him into shape yet.”
Niko turned sharply. “What are you saying over there?”
Peri shot him a look and shook her head.
“I shudder to think of when you meet Phoebe,” he said.
The next morning we set off, with fresh supplies and horse-drawn carts so we could carry proper food and tents. But we were still mostly on foot. I tried to get Aurek on a horse, to spare him the walk, but he refused.
“Maybe later. I like to be on my own two feet, in case we run into trouble. I can’t turn into a dragon while I’m on top of a horse. And I must say, there’s a lot of room to be a dragon here. I could spread my wings.”
The path was wooded and still mostly empty of other travelers, except for military patrols. I noticed a weird tingle in certain spots, as if I could sense magic in the plants. Maybe it was from working with my garden underground, but I couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from. I tried to explain that to the guys.
“Hm. Do you feel it now?”
“A little.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Um…everywhere and nowhere. I can’t tell. I noticed it around these blue flowers a little while back, but then we passed other flowers that were just the same, and I didn’t feel it at all.”
“Magic?” Ezeru asked.
“Oh, yes. Definitely magic.”
“Is it a good feeling?”
“Yes. It’s a lot like my garden…but maybe even nicer. It feels like crystal magic and sunlight at the same time. I just wish I could tell what it was.”
“When we stop for dinner, you should try to concentrate until you figure it out,” Aurek said.
“Well, I don’t know if I can figure it out. Or if it matters.”
“Remember what I told you about sword practice?” he asked.
“Uhh…patience?” I said, annoyed.
“Magic isn’t just going to slap you in the face and tell you how to use it,” he said. “But if you sense a little of it, you might as well see where it leads.”
“I sense magic here, too,” Ezeru said. “Plenty of it. There’s rock everywhere. Sometimes it’s right under our feet. Past the dirt.”
That sparked something in me. “Maybe what I’m sensing is under the plants. Like over there.”
“Where? Let me see.”
The caravan slowly passed us, soldiers staring at their king pro tem with amusement while he patted the ground.
“You’re right. There are veins of crystal under the ground here and there,” Aurek said. “But it’s not nearly as powerful as I’m used to.”
“I feel like it’s more powerful,” I said. “I wonder if it’s because I’m human…” I gathered some of the plants growing over the vein of crystal. It would be a good way to keep working on magic even though I had to leave my garden behind. I bound different samples of flowers and leaves, although I didn’t recognize most of the plants. I couldn’t make tea out of them until I looked them up to make sure they weren’t toxic.
Anyway, it was good to have something to pass the time, because we were very slow. I thought it was a long journey in a horse-drawn carriage, but an entire army on foot was much longer still. We kept having to stop to get more supplies in different towns. People cheered us and fed us delicious feasts everywhere we went, but it was exhausting. I tried to take breaks by riding my horse and that was exhausting in a different way. But I refused to ride in the carriage, even if my feet fell off. I had already spent too much time as a weakling to go back to that. At the end of each day I collapsed into unconsciousness.
All the while, there was a count in my head of how many days it had been since I saw Oszin and Seron, and I never forgot that count. Beyond the count of days was a darker count, of how many nightmares I had of terrible things happening to them. But I forced myself not to brood. That was how I got through every day, shoving a smile onto my face, shoving my feet down the path, shoving myself into not giving up.
We had a bit of a break in the resort town of Pentia. I could relax my poor aching muscles and scrub off the travel grime in a warm bath, although it was not the big pool of hot water I was used to in the dragon realm. The square tub was made for one person. It stood in one corner of the room, on a platform of tiles, with a curtain around it.
“You can go first, Himika,” Ezeru said. “You must be aching.”
I definitely wanted to go first, but I also hated to act as if I was the weakest member of the group. “We can flip a coin or something. Aurek is probably as tired as I am and he stepped in horse dung a few times.”
“It’s all right,” Aurek said. “That’s what boots are for and I left them outside.” He was picking at a tray of fruit. “Your muscles are surely aching and your body is making two new people. You seem to be feeling well so far, but that must have having an effect.”
“Well, I’ve been drinking that tea the handmaidens gave me every single day. It’s the tea the priestess takes, and she doesn’t have time to get sick.”
“The priestess has special powers,” Aurek said.
“I want to have special powers, even if I have to invent them in my own head. I don’t want to be the only one who’s tired. I want to flip a coin!”
Aurek laughed. “You’re too stubborn for your own good.”
Ezeru
looked at me with a gaze that made my skin tingle. He threw open the curtains around the bathtub. “I need you tonight, Himika. So you must rest.”
Now my skin was burning. My nipples peaked beneath my thin gown.
Ezeru saw the signs of my desire, and a faint smile crossed his face briefly. Emboldened, he untied my sash and threw it onto a nearby chair, and then plucked open the buttons of my dress and pulled it off my head. I didn’t stop him; didn’t want to stop him, even though I had been far too weary to think of sex the past few days. He yanked off my underwear.
“Get in the bath and relax,” he said, his voice low. “Spare your energy.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, sinking into the warm water. My hair floated in the water.
He took off his shirt and picked up the sponge. Unfortunately, he moved behind me before I got to really admire his muscular arms. He had a sturdiness, and a somewhat grayish hue to his skin, that matched his element. Ezeru reached in the water and lathered up my arms and breasts.
Aurekdel, surprisingly, stayed out of it, although he was obviously listening.
Ezeru washed my hair, toweled it off, and motioned for me to hand him my feet so he could scrub those off too. He didn’t say much. Aurek must have been bored. He was also so urgent, his cock rising in his pants, that I could tell he wasn’t really thinking about getting every last bit of travel grime out from between my toes. The whole bath took less than ten minutes.
I didn’t really care.
“Stand up,” he said.
When I did, he pulled me onto his lap and stroked me between the legs with the rough washcloth. I bucked against his strong grip as the cloth tickled my clit seemingly from every angle at once. He rinsed off the washrag and scraped it across me again, getting water all over his pants and the floor. Then he picked up my naked body and threw me down on the bed.
Gods, he was gorgeous and he had no idea just how gorgeous he was, that was obvious. He didn’t have the swaggering arrogance of other handsome men, but he would be justified in having it. There was a softness to his black, shoulder length hair, a refinement to the line of his jaw and mouth, a feral beauty to his eyes, a more brutish aspect to his brow. Even though the experiments Izeria subjected him to twisted his back a little, it just made me think of a dragon or a wolf, like he was about to walk on all fours. He was my beast even as he was as well-spoken as any of my other men.
The Kingdoms of Sky and Shadow Box Set Page 59
