Deal with the Dragon
Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Blanchard
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Dedication
To Bruce Wayne
Thank you for being with me through some of the toughest years of my life. You truly have been my very best friend. As I type this now, you are twelve years old and curled up at my feet. I couldn’t have asked for a better writing companion.
I love you so, so much.
Contents
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Members Only
1. Elena
2. Rhysander
3. Elena
4. Rhysander
5. Elena
6. Rhysander
7. Elena
8. Rhysander
9. Elena
10. Rhysander
11. Elena
12. Rhysander
13. Elena
14. Rhysander
15. Elena
16. Rhysander
17. Elena
18. Rhysander
19. Elena
20. Rhysander
21. Elena
22. Elena
23. Rhysander
24. Elena
25. Rhysander
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Nicole Blanchard
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1
Elena
The sight of blood before breakfast was never a pleasant start to the day.
“Hold still you damned ingrate,” I hissed under my breath. When the farmer rolled away from the needle and thread I was using to stitch up his wound, I ordered the attending novices to take his shoulders and legs to keep him from moving. It was nearing sunrise, and blood soaked from neck to ankle in a crimson wash. I had seconds, maybe less, before the life under my hands slipped through it.
“Don’t let him move,” I warned them, as I bent over the battered body in front of me.
“Curse ye’, stupid bleedin’ wench,” the farmer muttered through gritted teeth. He was on the edge of death, but had strength enough to make scathing remarks.
I paid the novices shocked reactions as much mind as I did the farmer’s vulgar cursing, which was none. The moment I’d received the call of an injured tenant, I’d slipped out of bed and into the black robes provided by the priests, as I’d done every morning since I arrived at the temple under the cover of night. The sky was dreary when I found them in the bowels of the surgery with the bleeding human farmer moaning and ashen on the table before me.
As I threaded the needle, peace stole over me, steadying my hands and clearing my mind of intrusive thoughts. I gave my assistants one last stern look to remind them to keep him as still as possible, then I went to work. With the bit of mangled flesh pinched between my forefingers, I began the long, arduous work of joining the ragged edges of the wound with care and precision. It was an intricate, tedious task, but as it often did, it soothed my riotous thoughts. Save for a whine here and a jerk there, the farmer contained his responses to the pain as I repaired the damage.
By the time I tended the wound to my exacting satisfaction, he’d given into the pain and surrendered to unconsciousness. His slack face and bone white complexion made him look like a corpse. It gave me a jolt to see his ashen face slack when it was full with such life and rage moments ago. The fragility of human life stole my breath. How easy a life was to lose—and how powerful to restore it.
“Just resting, milady,” said one of the novices under her breath.
I shook my head as a chilled calm steadied my voice and resolve. “He’ll need it,” I replied, taking the proffered towels damp with an astringent cleaning solution for my bloodied hands. The farmer’s waiting family stepped forward from where they’d been waiting in an alcove. To them, I said, “He will be just fine. He must rest here for a few more days so we can check him for fever. Once he’s cleared, you’ll be able to take him home.”
A woman, his wife I assumed, stepped forward and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough for your kindness, your highness. Acasia is blessed to have you,” she said.
A shock reverberated throughout me. It had been a long time since anyone had addressed me by my royal title. Even longer since I’d thought of it. An icy apprehension crept over me, numbing my previously nimble fingers which were chilled from the still-drying solution. A shiver threatened at the base of my spine, but I refused to let it come to fruition and instead straightened it in defiance. The woman, clueless to my internal struggle, squeezed my shoulder, and I remembered to smile and thank her.
After she left, I dried my hands on a clean towel and turned to my assistants. “You may move him to the recovery beds to rest. Please inform me if he shows any symptoms of fever.”
“Yes, my lady,” they said in unison. One of them signaled for a waiting male who strode in, head bowed, and scooped up the patient to take him to the attached surgery. The novices filed out after them, leaving me alone and surrounded by a bloody mess.
Idleness had never been one of my strong suits, and although I wasn’t required to clean up after each patient, I couldn’t sit still long enough to let the mess go untouched. If a novice found me, I’d no doubt be berated for doing chores unbefitting of my station. A princess, they’d gasp, should not be cleaning, as though it were an atrocity. There were males for that chore. I snorted as I tossed the soiled towels into a bin and began wiping the stone table with a clean one. A princess shouldn’t be hiding in a temple, either.
A princess should rule, my brother often reminded me in his letters.
I pushed the thought of him to the back of my mind and focused on the task at hand. My growling stomach that drew me away from cleaning, and to the kitchens, in search of breakfast before my regular daily visits from the ailing began.
The temple in the morning, before its inhabita
nts woke, was my favorite part of the day. Cook and his helpers were the only ones awake, and the halls were quiet and smelled of fresh baked bread with a dash of cinnamon. Until patients started arriving and the other novices woke to tend to their duties, I’d be blessedly alone with only my food for company.
After retrieving a tray of bread and fruit rations from the cook, I excused myself to the gardens where I no one would disturb me. The surgery had been my domain since the day I arrived at the temple. The healer at the time didn’t want an apprentice, especially a disgraced princess. Unlike life at the castle, they required every person at the temple to pull their own weight. I was used to giving orders, not taking them. It took her death last spring and the subsequent overwhelming responsibilities of the lives in my hands for me to realize why she’d been so strict. The first time I lost a life, I’d gone to her grave and wept.
If the nobility could see me now, they wouldn’t recognize me. I wore a plain wool gown, ate tasteless meals, and worked for my keep. Men’s work, they’d say with a sniff and an upturned nose. I used to think the same, until they banished me to the temple, though they wouldn’t call it that. A respite, the advisors had said, until they figured out what to do with me.
As I stuffed myself with raisin bread drizzled with honey, I wondered if it would be possible for me to never return. I could live my life out in peace here at the temple. No more political machinations or backhandedness. Saving lives was tough work, but unlike being a princess it was honest, fulfilling work.
When I cleaned my plate, I gave it to a servant waiting in the hall to do my rounds in the garden. Besides tending to the sick and the injured, I maintained the temple’s store of herbs and medicines in the attached courtyards. I checked the seedlings I planted recently, pruned those with overgrowth, and gathered any supplies I was running low on in the baskets stacked in a corner. By the time I finished, the sun had risen over the tops of the stone enclosure. I warmed myself for a moment in the radiant heat, my face upturned, before beginning the busiest part of my day.
I opened my eyes, blinded at first by the brilliant light, and found I wasn’t alone as I’d assumed.
“Sister,” the figure said, and for a moment I thought I was imagining the image of my brother.
But it couldn’t be.
He looked wholly unlike the older brother I’d left behind those years ago. Even if it was just a dream, I drank in the sight of him, hope fluttering in my chest like a baby bird ready to take wing for the first time. I’d missed him so much. He was the only family I had left in this world.
As he drew closer, I studied how much he’d changed. There was a harshness about his face that wasn’t there the last time I’d seen him, more than three years before. Silver threaded through the gilt color of his hair, and deep grooves carved into the corners of his mouth and along his brow. It was as though he’d aged a dozen years in the time since I’d seen him, and I ached at the lost time, the reunion bittersweet.
“Brother,” I managed, my voice faint, before he tugged me forward and into his arms.
He wasn’t a figment of my imaginaton.
“Elena,” he said into my hair. “It has been much too long.”
I buried my nose into the coarse material of his overcoat and inhaled the familiar scent of spices and tobacco from his favored pipes. Emotion long buried clawed at my throat, stung my eyes. I was grateful my hands were full because I would have been tempted to throw them around his shoulders and such a show of emotion would have embarrassed us both, even though we were alone. A display of that sort would have been frowned upon in public. Blatant displays of affection were characterized as masculine. Calm, cool reasoning was favored in Acasian society, even out here in the rural area where the temple was located.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when he released me, and I was certain I had my response tightly lidded. “Has something happened?”
The once familiar gaze studied me without revealing anything. As a result of constant scrutiny, Gideon had always been much more adept at controlling himself than I had been. Reserved. Composed. It made him favored among the court in the capital. “It would be best if we could speak inside,” he said.
Not for the first time, I wish I had a modicum of his self-control. He should have been king, though it was unheard of for the crown to be passed to a male descendant. If he had, he wouldn’t have embarrassed our people as I had. “I need to take these to the surgery and then I can meet you in my rooms.”
“As you wish,” he said, and then bowed as I hurried away.
“I’ll just be a moment,” I assured him. I wanted to reach out, touch his arm to make sure he was real again, but for once, I controlled my impulses.
Nerves warred in my stomach as I hurried to the surgery, but I didn’t let them show in my expression. I’d managed the last three years without betraying my feelings to the curious faces around me and I wasn’t going to allow it now. Gideon wasn’t the only one who’d changed. I shouldered through the door and was met with the startled gaze of a novice attending to one of my regular patients.
“Leisha,” I said with a nod.
“Milady,” she replied.
“Would you mind taking over the surgery for a short time? I have some business to attend to.”
Leisha has been with me since the first night I arrived at the temple, battered, beaten down, and a shadow of the person I’d once been. She stood by my side in the surgery during the most difficult procedures. I could confide in her and for a moment, I considered it, but I decided to see what Gideon had to say first.
If she was shocked, she didn’t let it show. “Of course, my lady.”
“Thank you.” She went back to attending the patient, and I put away the herbs and tidied them. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I added, “Send for me if you get too busy.”
“Yes, my lady,” she answered.
I found Gideon waiting inside my sparse living quarters. I’d long since gotten used to the lack of ornamentation, but based on his reaction, he was still quite used to the lavishness of the castle in the capital city of Aurelia. My quarters were identical to any of the other novices at the temple: a simple bedroom with an attached washroom and a small fireplace to keep warm. I kept so busy, the only reason I was even in my room was to sleep and dress, otherwise I was at the surgery or working in the garden.
“You said you have news?” I asked without preamble.
“I do, though itwill not be news you’ll like.” His deep frown emphasized the extra lines in his face, and it reminded me of the elderly farmer I’d stitched together not hours ago. The farmer had been worn tough from many years under the sun, from hard labor and fighting for survival. Maybe it wasn’t so different for my brother, who’d had to weather court politics and societal pressures in my absence.
I forced out a breath and scooped back my unruly dark curls that had escaped from their plait. “Well, out with it then,” I said.
“You know as well as I, the time to return to Aurelia grows closer.”
If I’d been less trained, if I hadn’t spent years of my own facing those same courts, my knees would have buckled. “I’m well aware, however I thought circumstances being what they are, our cousin, the queen-regent would take my place.” I said without a betraying tremor.
“It appears the deal our father made with The Dragon still holds. He wants you.”
I turned away and used the pretense of preparing tea as an excuse to hide how much his news affected me. “Oh?”
“Seleste made it clear about your—difficulties. She even offered him a place as king by her side, but he refused. Told her he has more money than the Goddess herself, why would he want to be king?”
“I bet she took that well,” I said. “I thought she was marrying a lord from the Ursine clan. Lord Blaque hasn’t found a mate? I would have thought he’d find someone to mate.” My voice sounded breathless, hopeful, even to my ears. Foolish girl. My desperate plea since they had sent me to the t
emple was the hope—the wish—that my failures had also been my saving grace. That the dragon I’d been promised to as an infant had learned of my failures and decided not to have me as a mate after all.
My brother, who’d been so easy to smile when we were young, remained stone-faced. “No one else would have him.”
“Lucky me,” I said.
“This is your chance, Elena,” Gideon said, after a long silence.
My hands began to sweat, and I wiped them on my serviceable apron. For a moment, I yearned for the finery that came with being a future queen. It was easy to hide behind the dresses and accoutrements, the glittering jewelry and elaborate coifs. “What do you mean?”
If possible, Gideon’s face hardened even more. “Your chance to undo the disgrace of losing the throne. It’s not as though you have a choice.”
At his words, my hands fisted in my skirts, the nails digging into the fleshy parts of my palm, but I couldn’t feel their bite. I’d gone numb. “I beg your pardon?”
Gideon eyes flashed in annoyance, but I was used to his quick temper. He may be composed most of the time, but it didn’t always outdo his natural character. Like most other males, it was hard for him to see logic, reason. I’d been compelled to follow his directives when I was younger, but I’d come into my own in the years since he secreted me from the castle. I wouldn’t follow him blindly, no matter his reasoning or the difference in our age. “Lord Blaque expects you at the castle within a week’s time to take your place as his mate. You’ve known this was coming, even if you can’t shift, you’re still of royal blood,” he added in a low voice.
Deal with the Dragon (Immortals Ever After Book 1) Page 1
