The Passionate Queen

by Jovee Winters

  I was about to agree with him, when I spotted one male whose name I did remember. Icarus flew high in the sky, twirling, zipping, and gliding along strong air currents. He looked magnificent, like a great golden harpy, and my heart sped to see him in his element.

  “Like what you see?” A heated male voice had me stiffening instantly.

  “And that’s my cue,” Cheshire intoned and then vanished in a plume of cherry-colored smoke.

  I didn’t turn around, couldn’t afford to do so without giving Ragoth away. How had he snuck up on me this way?

  “What do you want?” I bit out.

  “You. I thought I made that perfectly clear.” The hot press of his calloused fingertips traced a swirl along the base of my neck.

  I almost groaned out loud. As it was, I had to press my thighs together to try and make the tingling between them ease up. But the pressure building inside me only worsened.

  “How did you sneak up on me? What have you done to my guards?”

  I hated the breathy quality of my words.

  “Do not worry, I’ve not harmed them. But I had to come see you. I refuse to parade myself before these worthless humans. I need to see you. Alone.”

  “I...I can’t.”

  “You’re queen, you can do whatever you want.”

  “Ragoth, I—”

  He sucked in a sharp breath, and it was absolute torture not to turn around and look at him. In this moment I resented my life more than I ever had before.

  “Say my name again.” His thumb pressed hot and heavy against the base of my skull, and I did groan.

  Long and low. I was a moth to his flame, and though I knew I should not entertain this, I did anyway.

  “Ragoth.”

  The whisper of his warm breath brushed against the shell of my ear as he said, “You will say my name again, just like that, when I enter you.”

  I heard the snap of a nail as I clawed at the armrests of my wooden throne. Staring at the men still parading around the grounds, I was stunned that no one seemed to notice or care that one of their own had broken through my guards to get at me.

  I’d thought I’d known all there was to being a dragon, but it seemed they were far slyer than I’d given them credit for.

  “Please stop,” I gritted out, and that was so much the opposite of what I really meant. Because I never wanted this to end. The hurt was still there, but my desire for my dragonborne hadn’t abated in the slightest. My need for him was growing daily, each moment he remained on my grounds.

  I knew I didn’t really know him anymore. All I had were memories of what felt like another lifetime. But the old feelings were still very much alive, and each day they only intensified.

  “You know you don’t want that. Not really.”

  “You don’t know what I want,” I snapped.

  “Oh, but I do. I really do.” His fingers ran down the bare section of my arm, breaking me out in a heated wash of need.

  I whimpered, biting down on my lip so hard my canine pierced through.

  He sniffed. “Do not harm yourself, my love. For you are my greatest treasure. Only trust me, Lena, as you once did. Tell me you’ll meet me.”

  I held my tongue for the longest moment, staring guiltily before me. I did not want Ragoth as my consort...no, that wasn’t entirely true, and at least to myself, I’d not lie. I did want Ragoth. Viscerally. Deeply. Completely. In every way conceivable I wanted this male, I’d always wanted this male. But there was so much messy history between us, and pain that I’d not let go.

  I surprised myself by muttering, “Where?”

  “In the grove by the gazebo of your gardens. Midnight, when the skies are darkest.”

  “I—”

  I didn’t even get a chance to answer him, because I knew immediately he was gone. And this time I did glance behind me, but my eyes only proved what my heart had already known.

  My beast had slunk back into the shadows.

  And apparently, I now had a date.

  Gods, Dru was going to kill me for this.

  ~*~

  Ragoth

  I gnawed on my haunch of freckled boar with the fury of a rhinobear, my temper and anger increasing as I heard Midas continue to drawl on and on at the end of the table.

  “Consort.” He snorted, swishing his fingers through his golden hair, “I think not. I came here to be king, and king I shall be. And that bitch had better not—”

  Good intentions be damned. I was going to choke him, break his neck, and suck him down my gullet. My chair squeaked loudly on the stone floor as I made to move it back, but then the man with the wings spoke up.

  I believed his name to be Icarus. “If she only wishes a consort, then I would gladly be one. As I’m sure many others here would. I’ve seen a kindness in the queen recently I did not expect. Something tells me that the future of landians will—”

  “Oh, please,” Midas scoffed, “please tell me you don’t listen to the idle tittle tattle of servants. She’s the same cold-hearted bitch today as she ever was.”

  But now, instead of many males agreeing with the golden male, only one bobbed his head in agreement. Most of the others began to murmur of seeing the same as Icarus had.

  “She brought me water today, herself.” One male with different-colored eyes spoke up. I’d seen his powers today, useless so far as powers went. He could turn metal into stone, but not the other way around.

  “Same here,” another said, and then more spoke up with their own stories.

  Smirking, I forgot about my plan to eat him and resumed ripping into the fatty meat.

  Midas glowered, then his eyes immediately shot toward mine. “You say nothing, Ragoth. Well man, speak up!”

  Feeling ten times more at ease, I shrugged. “Any good soldier knows that in battle the best approach is to study one’s enemies.”

  “Ah.” He curled his fingers together, resting back on his seat. “So you’ll take the wait-and-see approach. I get it.”

  His words somehow made me think the fool still thought me on his side. Icarus on the other hand was now casting me heavy glances that I couldn’t quite decipher.

  “You did not show off your skills at the tourney today. More fool you, shifter,” Midas gently chided. “I’ve no doubt I’ll be passed through to the final cut.”

  The table grew oddly silent at that as the men lowered their heads, most of them wearing clearly worried frowns.

  I shrugged. “I’ll pass through.”

  “How? How will you pass through?”

  The question came not from Midas, but Icarus.

  There was something about the man, the easy smiles or the penetrating intelligent eyes (clearly I’d not been the only one to affect idiocy through the tests) that made me think his reasons for coming here were far different than was the norm.

  I would not let him steal Lena away from me, but I keenly recalled the way she’d now twice seemed to be entranced by the male. He was an adversary but one I couldn’t help but like, all things considered.

  Setting down my now picked-clean bone—I’d have chomped through it had I been in dragon form to suck out the marrow—I wiped my hands off on the linen napkin and gave him direct eye contact.

  Those intelligent, hawk-like eyes thinned. “You’re a reptile of some sort.”

  He did not ask this; it was simply a statement of fact. It was easy enough to spot my predatory nature merely in the foods I ate. His bowl had been brimming with nuts, berries, and a small bit of meat. A diet consistent with that of a bird. Whereas mine now held the bones of nearly an entire boar. I shrugged with him as I had with Midas when he’d asked me the same yesterday.

  “Tell me, harpy male, when you look at me, do you sense weakness? Fear?” I shrugged. “Tell me truth now.”

  His nostrils flared as he scented the air. His eyes roamed over my clothing, the same ones I’d been wearing since arriving. I’d not brought a trunk full of clothes, and being dragonborne, I did not smell. Except for my mate.
The potential mate of a dragonborne was the only being in existence to be able to scent us, and that was so that to them, we could always be found.

  Dragons, as big as we were, had the uncanny ability to hide in plain sight should we choose to.

  “No,” he gritted out, seemingly against his will. “Nor do I smell you. Just what are you, Ragoth?”

  Wiping the linen across my lips, I gave a mighty belch, swallowed the final tankard of spiced ale, and stood. The dissonant ringing of wood scraping against stone reverberated loudly through the hall, causing most to cringe in response, to include Icarus.

  “I am the queen’s future mate, and that is all you need to know.” Then tipping my head, I took my leave of the lot of them.

  I might like Icarus, but I’d be damned if I gave him an inch.

  ~*~

  The moon was a soft silvery glow in the dark black of the cloudy night sky.

  I’d been sitting in the gazebo for the past hour. Lena was late, very late. And I was growing moody. Shifting on the hard, stone seat I glowered at the dots of fairy light zipping haphazardly through the gardens.

  They were tossing fairy dust on the blooms, turning them from white to a bloody red. We did not have fairy in Olympus. Part of the appeal of Lena’s world for me had always been the stark differences between hers and mine.

  There was beauty in this madness that I could appreciate. The upside, right side uppedness of this strange place that should make no sense and yet followed a set of rules that did make sense.

  Lena belonged here, and I belonged here with her. Why couldn’t she see that?

  I should stomp back into that castle, toss her doors open, snatch her up, and steal her away.

  I sighed, swallowing my impatience. But I’d promised to behave, and for her, I’d try like hell.

  Memories came crawling back to me then. Nights just like this over a decade ago, when I’d steal away from my castle to meet her. Once, we’d swum in a dark lagoon that glowed neon green from the light of thousands of tiny merfish. She’d been so lovely in the pale moonlight, her skin aglow, and her hair hanging long. We’d laughed when we’d finally crawled clear of the water, and laid down on the grass to let the breeze dry us off.

  For hours we’d talked. She’d pointed to the stars, and I’d told her of the legends of my homeland. Of the mighty hunter Orion, who’d angered the mother Gaia for killing her children, so she’d set a scorpion upon him. One he could not kill.

  When he died, he was placed into the sky as a constellation and behind him, the monstrous scorpion who hunted him even still all these eons later. She’d laughed and had called my tales foolish and silly, that stars were naught more than the souls of dead landians.

  For years since I could never look upon the stars without thinking of that night.

  I heard a sound behind me.

  Pausing, I strained to hear the faint melody of it and grinned the moment I realized it was the scurry of slippered, dainty, feminine feet. Inhaling deeply, I smelled her sweet, golden wash of dawn and wanted to rumble with satisfaction.

  She’d come.

  I shot to my feet the moment she rounded the corner, and my jaw dropped when I saw her. For the past few days she’d been corseted and dolled up in spools and spools of fabric, but now she was dressed only in a thin slip of buttery yellow silk that hugged her lush curves extraordinarily. Her hair, rivers of that golden, sunshiny yellow stuff draped like waves across the smooth surface of her luminescent flesh.

  She’d never been quite so filled out when I’d known her before, nothing more than a thin rail of flesh and bones. My goddess, she was lovely.

  “You still glow.”

  Her full lips twitched with nerves, she caught her fingers together, and I nearly came undone. Because in that split moment I did not see the cold, aloof queen she’d become, but the shy beauty I’d once known who’d made my world spin on its axis.

  I grabbed at my chest over my heart that now beat powerfully within me.

  “Only you have ever said so,” she whispered back.

  The fae who’d been flitting about here and there had vanished. We were very much alone, and I was suddenly, achingly aware of that fact.

  Unable to remain so far from her for another moment, I neared her side and reached out. Not touching her, but running my fingers through the light that gleamed off her body in shimmering waves.

  “I could not bear to think of anyone else getting to see you as I do.”

  She stared down at her arm and frowned. Lena had never seen her glow. It was a trait only dragons possessed, one that marked something of great value to them.

  She glowed brighter than any bauble in my nest.

  We stood there for what felt like hours but could only have been moments.

  “Ragoth, why did you ask me out here tonight?” She wrapped her arms around herself, and I quickly whipped off my cloak, draping it snugly around her slim shoulders.

  “Because I need to see you, without the grandeur that surrounds you now. I needed you to know that I was sorry for what I’ve done, for the things I said that day.”

  “You’ve already said as much.” Her big, beautiful lambent eyes felt as though they were swallowing me whole.

  It was a death I’d gladly subject myself to.

  “Yes, but I don’t think you really believed me. I need you. I’ve always needed you. But I failed to take into account in my youth that you were not your own, and never were. I treated you poorly; I did things in the hopes that you would learn about them. That you would hear and—”

  Tears pooled in her eyes, and my heart felt as though it’d just fractured down the center.

  “You hurt me.”

  Her bottom lip quivered, and I could no longer deny my need to touch her. Brushing my thumb against her bottom lip with the barest of brushstrokes, I leaned in, until we shared breath and oxygen.

  “I’m sorry. Utterly. I was an ass. I came for you that day with no thoughts in my head. I was excited, terrified, and hurt from our past. You have no idea how much I wish I could take that day back, make it right again. If I could, I would. I vow it. And I do not care how many lovers you’ve had, so long as I am your last one. That is all that matters to me. All I want is a chance at winning you back.”

  “How can I believe you now? Why should I believe this sudden about-face after the things you said to me?”

  She quivered beneath my touch, and though I knew there was a very real chance I stood to lose her again, I also knew there was still hope for us.

  “Because I do not want to live in this world without you by my side. Not anymore. You’re achingly vital to me. And if it takes an eternity to prove myself to you, I will.”

  Her lashes fluttered, and the first tear dropped.

  Groaning, I framed her face and pulled her to me. The last time we’d done this, I’d nearly ruined her for life. But she was royal blood now.

  I wanted to sample her, linger on the corners of her mouth, before dragging my tongue across the seam of her lips and slip inside her wet warmth. I wanted to make love to her lips, but I was here to prove one thing to Lena. That I could play fair.

  So I pulled away after barely a soft stroke. And was rewarded when her body pressed pliantly to mine, her fingers curled into my shirt, and she breathed airily, “Ragoth.”

  Smiling, because I would never tire of hearing my name fall from her lips, I nodded as I feathered my knuckles across the softness of her flesh. I’d grown up seeing her dirty, and tiny, and what the rest of the world would consider worthless and ugly. But to me, Lena had always been beautiful. And nothing had changed.

  “Get me through to the next set of names.”

  She looked up at me, and those piercing clear eyes had me trembling.

  “I do not pick my choices. Druscella does. And I’m not sure how she’s doing it, only that I believe she’s picking with an eye toward who’ll bring prosperity and goodwill to wonderland. Ragoth, you’re a dragon.”

  I heard t
he fear for me in her words, and I smiled softly. “If I changed your mind on my species, I can certainly change the minds of your people. Only give me the chance to do that. I would make you a partner to be proud of.”

  Her look turned pensive, and I knew she was thinking things through. I wanted to scream at her not to think too hard or long. Zelena had always had a propensity toward overthinking a matter; she’d talk herself out of this. Out of us. And I could not let her. But I also knew that she’d rarely been given the opportunity in life to choose her own path. And I wanted that desperately for her. It just so happened that I wanted her to do it with me by her side forever. That wasn’t too much to ask for, right?

  Her fingers curled into my shirt. “I need to return to my chambers before I’m discovered.”

  She stepped back, and my arms felt strangely heavy without her comforting weight resting upon them. Words clogged my throat. I would not beg her. Dragonborne never begged.

  But I’d laid the cards down on the table, and I knew now, that was all I could do. The choice was hers.

  Desperate she not leave just yet, I latched onto her elbow as she turned. “Lena?”

  Startled, she looked down at my hand. My skin was so dark compared to hers; I rubbed my thumb along her delicate, luminescent flesh.

  “I once wondered how it was that you could escape to me near every night back then.”

  She frowned prettily, and I moved my hand to stroke at the stone pendant around her neck. I’d not known then what the simple adornment was, the powerful magic laced behind it. I’d been merely a boy, a hatchling; I’d not been a full-fledged dragonborne male that could see beyond the mundane to the magical beneath. But I felt the heated spark of powerful magic sizzle from inside it.

  She fisted her hand over mine, her breathing hitching just slightly as her fingers shook.

  “Why did Nyx give you this?” I asked softly.

  For a moment she didn’t speak, but finally she whispered back, “I don’t know. I found it on my sill one night. I’ve never take it off since.”

  Lena was so receptive to my touch that I couldn’t help but delicately run my knuckles along the petal-soft smoothness of her cheek. “The gods have you made a favored of theirs, my treasure.”