Page 66 of The Blade in the Ashes
My steps paused for the briefest of moments. Two wasn’t an attack.
Nikolai’s second, I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me, was already on the lawn when I arrived, my shirt, jacket, and shoes in a discarded pile behind us. He barked orders at his men, telling them to ready themselves. In perfect precision, they each slotted the arrows into their bows, readied their fingers, and lifted their weapons to the sky. The commander raised his arm, preparing to call the order, just as two dragons pushed through the cloud cover, the heavy flap of their wings an unnatural thunder that boomed across the sky.
One with scales of emerald green, so dark in places they looked as ink-splattered as my own fingertips. A crown of horns was atop his head, his eyes wider around the far edges and narrow towards his snout. A characteristic trait of Tenebrisian dragons.
The other, smaller than the first, with orange scales, searched through the crowd gathered on the lawn before his reptilian eyes locked on mine. Slowly, he bowed his head.
I launched towards Nikolai’s commander and shoved back his arm before he could give the order to fire.
“What in all of creation are you doing?” He roared, turning towards me at full height, dominance and fury burning in his gaze.
The beast inside me roared, and a deep growl tore out of my chest.
“Mind your tone when speaking to a king,” I reminded him, stepping forward.
His eyes flashed, indecision warring with loyalty before he announced, “I follow Nikolai.”
Instinct pushed me to lash out, to shift right there and show him exactly the kind of monster he was tempting.
But fuck me, I needed Nikolai as an ally, and eating his friends would not foster a good relationship between the two of us.
“I know those Dragons,” I barked, that buried rage still obvious in my tone. “They’re friends.”
He didn’t surrender an inch, not at first at least, but eventually his head bowed.
The dragons above us dipped low, aiming towards a clearing in the grass where they could land. Without hesitation, I pushed my way through the line of archers, coming to stand before the gigantic forms as they shrank, shifting into two that I recognized well.
“Oh,” Camilla gasped as she and Elaina came to stand by me. Her head tilted as she took in the naked bodies of the two men in front of us, not at all shy about where she focused her attention. “A prince.”
Elaina slapped her hand over Camilla’s eyes as I fought the urge to sigh in exasperation before turning towards our new guests.
“Friend or foe?” I asked them.
Damon gave me an exhausted sideways smile, glancing at Veric a few feet behind him.
“Technically, a friend of a friend nowadays,” Damon said. “We’re here with a message fromtheQueen, the Goddess Theadora.”
I swear my heart stopped beating. Pangs of longing, worry, and love reverberated through every inch of me until I wasn’t a king or a man or anything other thanhers.
“You—” I forced myself to swallow, to clear my throat and ground my feet. “You’ve seen her?”
It took all my strength to clamp my mouth shut and stop myself from immediately demanding every detail they had about Thea. I didn’t care if they were both naked or surrounded by armed men. I also didn’t care that whatever message she had sent was undoubtedly about the war effort and better discussed in closed quarters.
I didn’t care about anything other than hearing that she was okay.
And if they wouldn't tell me, I could force them. My magic was ready, nearly itching to be set free. My father would have insisted they drop to their knees or be taken to imprisonment.
But Iwasthe king now, and I didn't want to be anything like the monster he tried to craft me into.
I would be a better King than him. I would be a better partner to Thea than he had been to my mother.
So, I swallowed down my personal needs for reassurance and reminded myself over and over that she was alive while we sent for some clothing for them and led them into the dining room.
I sat at the head of the table, offering the seat on my right to Damon, who accepted with a tired nod. As he lowered himself into the tall-backed chair, I took him in subtly, scanning over his frame. Aside from the hollowness under his eyes, he looked unchanged from the last time I saw him, with shorn dark hair and the slightest shadow of a beard against dark chocolate eyes.
The ring of dark bruises lining the tan skin around his neck was markedly new, though.
He noticed me staring at it and tugged awkwardly at the collar of his shirt, trying to shift the fabric higher.
