Dragon's Blood (The Dragon's Gift Trilogy #2)

He managed to jump about thirty feet in the air with a powerful bound and snapped his wings out. The wind buffered them, and he coasted for a bit, relying on his instincts to read the current. His heart pounded as he pushed himself higher, his blood singing with exhilaration as cloud mist brushed over his scales. He was really doing this! He was flying!

After only a few minutes, his wings burned from the strain. He coasted to the ground, landing only a few hundred yards from where he began. Panting, he tucked his wings against his sides, then craned his neck to get a good look at himself. The moonlight shimmered over his scales, a brilliant red-orange, as if each scale held a flame within itself. Stretching, he preened a bit—he’d look magnificent to anyone who could see him.

Magnificently useless, so long as you’re in Elvenhame.

Lucyan huffed. True, he couldn’t use his wings or dragon fire to break into Castle Whitestone. But he would eventually figure out a way to worm past the castle’s defenses. And in the meantime, there was no reason he shouldn’t hone his flying skills. With that thought, Lucyan flexed his wings and launched himself into the air again.

Drystan might have been the first to shift, but Lucyan intended to be the first one to master the sky so he could carry their beloved mate home.





22





Dareena spent the next few days studying the elven books she’d taken from the library and practicing magic every second she had. Which turned out to be quite a lot, as she had nowhere special to be. Princess Basilla liked to stop in at lunch to check in on her, the servants brought Dareena her meals, and Mari, the maid, came every morning and night to dress and undress her, but aside from that, she saw no one. She half-expected Arolas to come back to her room and accost her, but the prince was nowhere to be found.

Likely bossing around his soldiers, she thought, and not without bitterness. Oh, if only Ryolas were still in charge! Dareena had never met the younger prince, but if Tariana was smitten with him he had to be a noble man. He never would have separated her from Alistair.

“My lady?” Mari knocked on the door, startling Dareena. The clock on the wall told her it was barely four, far too early for the maid to come. Hastily, she shoved the books beneath her pillows, then smoothed the bedspread.

“Come in!” she called, and Mari opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

Mari bustled in. “The royal family wishes you to dine with them tonight.”

Dareena’s eyes latched onto the shimmering teal dress hung over her maid’s arm—it wasn’t one of hers. Who had sent it?

“I’m to get you ready.”

Dareena’s palms grew sweaty at the idea of sitting down to a meal with her captors. “Is Prince Arolas back?” she asked, rising from the bed so Mari could help her out of her day dress.

“He is.” Mari hesitated. “You should try not to provoke him this time if you can help it, my lady. He was quite furious after your last…encounter.”

Dareena bit her lip. She remembered quite well how angry Arolas was after she’d slapped him and called him an insolent pig—he looked ready to strike her himself, and might have done so if Princess Basilla hadn’t come storming into the room, in a towering rage herself. The royal siblings had argued fiercely about Arolas’s decision to jail Alistair, and had taken the conversation out of Dareena’s room, to her mingled disappointment and relief. Basilla had come to her the next day and apologized for not being able to stop it—she had no power to challenge Arolas’s decisions, and he would not listen to her no matter how insistent her arguments.

Gods, would she be able to sit across the table from him and keep a pleasant smile on her face while he leered at her? She knew he wanted to bed her—apparently his hatred of dragons did not extend to her body, or perhaps it was a gesture of dominance. After all, if he could successfully bed the dragon king’s mate, that meant he was more powerful, didn’t it?

Please, a voice in her head sneered. Any one of my mates could crush him like the cockroach he is if not for this awful spell.

Dareena allowed her mind to drift as Mari dressed and coiffed her, curling her mass of dark hair and fixing it atop her head with sparkling pins. The dress fit her like a glove, and as Dareena finally looked at herself in the mirror, a shiver crawled down her spine. Had Arolas ordered it for her? Had he imagined peeling her out of it afterward? The very thought made her nearly lose her appetite, and she swallowed hard against the bile rising in her throat.

“There.” Mari smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle in her gown. “You look ready to eat.”

“Do you mean I look like I am ready to go eat, or that I look like I am ready to be eaten?” Dareena asked wryly.

Mari laughed. “Can it be both?”

Shaking her head, Dareena pushed all thoughts of Arolas out of her mind, and as the guards escorted her to the dining room, she imagined she was going to have dinner with her mates instead of the elves. The brothers would love seeing her in this dress—it flattered her figure perfectly, the bodice lifting her ample bosom and highlighting her small waist before it flared out into voluminous skirts. Her heart warmed as she imagined the hungry looks in their eyes as they debated between devouring the food on their plates or devouring her. But then, was there really a reason they couldn’t do both? A smile curved her lips at the thought.

“My lady.” The guard’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “We’re here.”

The warm tingles that had spread through Dareena’s blood vanished as the door to the dining room opened and she laid eyes on the royal family. King Andur sat at the head of the table, with Arolas and Basilla at his elbows. Relief flooded through her as she noticed the empty seat to Basilla’s left—Lady Valenhall was seated next to Arolas, and at the foot of the table sat a dark-haired man Dareena had never seen before.

“Lady Dareena,” the king said as they all rose from their seats. Dareena inclined her head, trying to be gracious even though all she wanted to do was rush out of the room. “It’s a pleasure for you to join us.”

“Indeed,” the duchess said as Dareena opened her mouth to respond. “You’re just in time—another few minutes and surely I would have fainted from hunger.”

“Perhaps if I had been given advance notice, you wouldn’t be made to suffer so, Lady Valenhall,” Dareena said coolly as she took her seat. The duchess’s eyes sparkled with annoyance, and the man at the other end of the table raised his eyebrows. But Dareena didn’t care—let them think what they would. They already believed her to be a harlot. What more damage could she do?

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” she said to the man as servants set plates of salad in front of them.

“How rude of us,” Arolas drawled. Dareena forced herself to meet his gaze even though he made her skin crawl. “Lady Dareena, this is Count Silus Kianor, envoy from Shadowhaven’s court and a trusted friend. Count Kianor, this is Lady Dareena Sellis, the Dragon’s Gift. Or should it be All Dragons’ Gift?” His lips curled into a cruel smirk.