Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

"No," she said, first to him, then to the rest. "No, she's quite right. It wasn't well-done of me." She offered a shrug and then a small, tight smile, her gaze angled downward. "I don't even like goose."

The swinging door creaked open; the maid reentered, carrying a tureen of what smelled like curried lamb. As if on cue, everyone resumed eating, even Maricara, although Kim did see her throw a subtle glance to the night beyond the window.

The maid served them in silence, the sound of the ladle tapping against the plates painfully sharp in Kim's ears. Only after the girl had curtsied and backed out of the room did Maricara break the silence, speaking very, very quietly.

"Because of the kills, because of the publicity, the sanf were able to find my last-known location. They were able to secure bait, and set the trap, and no doubt right now they're still out there waiting with another ox, or a cow or a pig. And also because of all of that, we now know they're in England, searching for our kind."

He'd been watching the princess, her downward look, the shaded contours that defined her face. But an instinct he couldn't name turned his gaze to Joan: All the blood seemed to drain from her cheeks. He didn't need to read thoughts to know what she was thinking: She had a crippled husband who could not fly, two little daughters. And Audrey—with three boys and a girl, all of them audacious and merry—looked even paler.

He'd told them. He'd told everyone. But it hadn't been real until this afternoon. Until the specter of knives and blood and the black, terrified eyes of the ox—it hadn't been real.

"Did the drakon you sent to me carry anything of you on their persons?" Maricara asked Kimber. "Bank notes, letters of introduction?"

"No." Kim took a swallow of cold, tart wine. "We didn't know what your circumstances might be, who knew of you, who would not. We don't even openly say the word for what we are here. I wasn't going to risk writing anything down. The only introduction I assumed you needed would be in realizing who—and what—these men were."

"So, these hunters, they're not there yet," said Audrey, still stricken. "Not in Darkfrith."

Kimber wanted to answer her. He drew breath for it, felt his lips shape again the solid and reassuring word no—he could speak that word with all the firm resonance of any absolute leader; he could make it sound like truth without even trying. But instead, Kim cut himself short. Like his brother and sisters, he looked back at Maricara, who once more dropped her eyes. She picked up her soup spoon, examining the curve of the bowl as it caught the dark yellow light.

"What is it? What now?" Audrey demanded.

"It's commonly known that years ago.. .not quite a decade ago, a stranger came to us, a new sort of dragon, who upset the balance of my people. It's known that she was English, from the northern aspect of your country. Your sister Lia was a guest in my castle for eight months. Her true name was openly spoken. It would be no great ordeal to discover her birthplace, I would think. All one would need is a rudimentary knowledge of English, and a map." She tapped the spoon lightly against her plate, her lips pursed. "I did come to warn you."

"Oh, God," said Audrey, even whiter than before.

"Aye," said the princess.

"Why didn't you warn us before? Why wait until now to—"

"I didn't wait. By and large they've left us alone until now. It's been almost a century since they've last hunted us, my grandparents' time. I don't even know why they've started again."

"We can return home tonight," said Joan, resolute. "We can take care of this."

"They're not there tonight." Maricara lifted her gaze to Kimber's. "They're here. The sanf have set the trap here."

Joan pressed a fist against her chest. "You can't be sure—"

"I am sure. This is the place. This is where they believe we are. At least, where they think I am. It is a most excellent distraction from Darkfrith."

"But—"

"We have a rotating contingent of our finest warriors patrolling our territory," Kim said under his breath, tensed in his chair, leaning forward to be heard over all the noises of the people dining in the next room. "We have traps of our own in place, and an entire shire of the most fearsome creatures ever to live ready to defend our home. At any given time, there are over thirty drakon in the air, and another two dozen on the ground, in the village, all of them willing, all of them eager, to safeguard our tribe. And as for all of you—remember what we are. Remember how we are. I don't give a damn what these so-called sanf think they can do to us. If they come to our shire, I very nearly pity the bastards. We're going to slit them end from end."

A new hush took the chamber. The draft from the open window sent a spiral of black smoke from the nearest candle coiling in a long, snakelike arm across the table.

Rhys stirred in his chair. "I have another question. What was it today in those places? What was that thing lurking behind the human smell?"

Maricara cocked her head. "That thing?"

"That scent. Not human, not animal. Never smelled it before."

"Yes." Joan straightened. "I caught it too, almost like perfume, but not. What was that?" "I don't understand," Maricara said.

"Didn't you sense it, Your Grace?" Audrey's voice was still not quite back to normal, a shade too brittle and bright. "Or are your Gifts not as keen as you've portrayed?"

"It was drakon, " Kimber realized, when Maricara only continued to stare at his sister. He had been watching her, the changing light over her face, the shadows hollowing her cheeks, the uncharted depths of her eyes. When she blinked and angled them back to his, he felt the truth of his words strike like a punch to his gut: drakon.

So Kimber held very still. He kept his features composed, as if he'd known all along, as if the new and awful comprehension rising through him didn't exist; he was the Alpha; he was his father's son; so of course he had known. But the wine burned sour in the back of his throat.

He swallowed the sour. "It was the scent of drakon, wasn't it?"

"Yes." She lifted a shoulder, almost helpless. "Of course it was. That's how I knew it was the sanf, and not merely people. You've never encountered such a scent before?"

"Not like that."

"How can that be?" said Audrey. "It wasn't anything like us!"

"It was something like you. A small something, not a full-blooded dragon, but someone lesser. Didn't you know? It's how they find us. They're only Others. So they use someone of dragon blood, not too powerful, just enough to track us. Just enough for the kill. It's how they've always done it."

"A victim," Kimber asked. "Or a collaborator?"

"Both. Either. The sanf inimicus don't care."

Joan had her hand back at her throat. "But—who has blood like that? There's no one of the shire so diluted that we couldn't tell what they were."

"None of you are like that?"

"No," said Kim. "Some of us are stronger than others, but everyone has Gifts of varying degrees. It's—it's how we breed. Our lines are carefully kept."

"Ah." The princess picked up her spoon again, rolling the edge back and forth against her plate. She spoke with that small, tight smile that sharpened the curves of her face. "Yet where I come from, I assure you, there are bastards aplenty."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was going to rain. She could feel it in her bones, most particularly the smallest finger of her right hand. It had been broken when she was ten, and had healed before the human physician could even make the trip up to the castle from his hamlet three days away. It had healed straight, of course. There was hardly a bump at all from the fracture. But it still ached occasionally, a phantom pain to remind her of what it had once been like to be ten, a newlywed alone in an echoing palace, in a chamber leafed with gold and studded with diamonds, and a husband who chided her for trying to lock the door to her room against him.

The dark English clouds were seething over the dark English sea. The moisture saturating the air was enough to feel like slime clinging to her hair and skin. Maricara was a creature of the cool, arid alps. Rain was not her element.

"You should stay here tonight," she said to the earl. He had followed her nearly into the hotel bedchamber, was standing silently near the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. Sconces of candles behind cut glass adorned the walls, their flames burning dim but steady.

Kimber's position kept him from the light. She wondered if he did it deliberately, if he had begun to realize how much she could fathom from his eyes.

She crossed to the nightstand, holding on to a corner as she removed her heels. She could hear Rhys and the sisters in the parlor beyond, the three of them caught in an unspeaking circle, everyone waiting, it seemed, for the rainclouds to rupture, for the weight of the water to fall.

"You're most generous," said Kimber. He spoke his native language exactly the same way he had spoken French: with effortless elegance, as if the words themselves were made just to be shaped by his lips, to resonate with his low, agreeable voice.

"The roads will be too muddy tonight to return, in any case." Mari stripped off the right pump, balancing a moment with her arm out, then the left. "The bed is large and comfortable. If you try, the four of you might fit."

His brows lifted. "That's not quite how I envisioned it."

"Well, I suppose a gentleman would offer it first to his sisters, but they seem hardy enough." The looking glass on the nightstand caught her face in a square of pewter; she began to remove the diamonds from her hair. "Frankly, were it a matter between me and the brown-eyed one—"

"Audrey."

"Yes. She'd be on the floor."

The glass was small. She couldn't see his face in it, so she couldn't see if he smiled. She felt him though, felt him as clearly as ever, even through the stifling humidity.

He was anticipating a thousand outcomes to this moment. The rainstorm boiling off the sea only heightened his awareness; he would be like her in that way. They could not help but feed off the energy of the air.

The sconcelight, the shape of the room, the downy bed. The bright, heavy stones she'd used for adornment: all factors into this instant, into what she might do next.

Without her heels, the hem of the cocoa gown rumpled against her feet, an accidental train bunched at her ankles. She turned around and walked carefully back to Kimber, holding out her hand. He accepted the diamond clips she poured into his palm without comment, a baron's fortune singing and sparkling against his cupped fingers.

Thunder began a long, distant rumble. She removed her bracelets, one by one, never looking away from his face.

"And where," asked the earl, "are you planning to sleep, Your Grace?"

She smiled. She tilted her head and dropped the bracelets into his other palm. "You feel where I hid the key to the safe, don't you? It's a fairly simple lock. I have faith you'll manage it."