Walking upon crushed lightning-stone gravel paths, we cross the beautiful bailey courtyard, festooned with lush French gardens, manicured topiaries, and burbling dragon fountains.
We head up a set of stairs into the towering inner bailey now, where the King’s suites are. Moving down a lofty corridor draped with banners of state featuring snarling, stylized Storm Dragons, we’re inside the central keep where the Throne Hall is.
It’s where the royal state rooms are, plus intimate quarters reserved for visiting dignitaries and family. As we head up the double-helix staircase to the third floor, then down a wide hall to our current apartments, a wall of Storm Guards greets us.
With everything happening in the Blood Dragon Lineage right now, Rhennic is taking no chances; his guards are here for our protection and nod as they bash silver and gold pikes on the flickering lightning-stone floors, admitting us to our rooms.
Rhennic enters with us, shutting the towering oak doors. As we come into the royal blue and silver French opulence of my room with Bjorn and Ström, however, I feel like everything is heightened by my intense state.
The lightning that flickers through the agate walls is too bright; the massive spread of French delicacies waiting for us on a trestle-table near the roaring fireplace smells too intense for my nostrils. The fireplace is huge, big enough to walk into. I consider it now, because something inside me feels cold to my marrow, despite the roaring fire.
A coldness that seeps into my very blood and bones—blacker than black.
“Rikyava. Tell me what’s going on.”
Rhennic’s firm words startle me, even though I know it’s finally time to talk. I’ve been here a week and my cousin and I have barelyhad ten minutes to catch up; he’s so busy with ruling his Lineage, and I’ve been so preoccupied with my shit.
He’s given me amnesty here in his home; but after that public spectacle today, it’s time to discuss what’s happening with me and my drakes. Ström comes to back me up now, stepping to my side from where he was attending Bjorn, asleep again in the massive cobalt silk canopied bed and snoring to beat the band.
But Mikkel’s presence triggers me anew as he steps too close. His old-world cocktail and aromatic bitters scent explodes across my tongue from his nearness, producing a vivid recollection of what we nearly did in the amphitheater.
That, plus my black mood from losing my memories again, suddenly mixes into a disastrous bomb inside me. As a tremendous, wrathful fury takes me, both my inner dragons riot—and a rush of Bloodwind with dark crimson, burning violet, and oilslick black droplets scalds off me in a ferocious wave.
My drakaina pours enough blood-heat through me to explode a volcano now, as my darker drake boils behind her. Mikkel’s lust for vengeance makes all that power go supernova inside me suddenly as I grip my heart, roaring with all the overtones of my dragon in my voice.
As the black void of my Bone Magic seethes like a leviathan of night, I know I’m fighting my dragon’s shift. A bad thing, if I lose my shit inside the Storm King’s palace—guards flood into the room now, from my roar and the power surge that accompanied it.
I don’t know when Bjorn woke; I only feel his massive warmth as he surges to my back, wrapping his big arms around me. Growling, he raises his dragon-aura around us in a seething tirade of gold and crimson Bloodwind as his power bites the neck of my inner drakaina, hauling her back from going Berserk.
But I’m being pushed too hard by all the wrathful Bone Magic coursing through me, courtesy of Mikkel. As Bjorn fails to get my drakaina under control, thanks to his exhaustion, I feel Ström step to me,gripping my hand and pouring his deeply calming energy through me next.
It does almost nothing now, as I go black inside with wrath. Only Mikkel getting in front of me and taking up my hands, staring me down with eyes that burn with a furious ring of copper around them, does anything.
As he arrests me with his mind, both physically and metaphysically, I feel Mikkel’s control command me. The Thorsen twins aren’t old, but whatever they’ve lived in their lives has made them hard; Mikkel’s indomitable control over his own power heaves through me like an iron battering ram now, hammering my dragon’s shift back.
I gasp as clarity returns, along with something of my memories, just from touching Mikkel’s hands. But it leaves a dark imprint on me, seething with Mikkel’s own wrath as our inner dragons coil up into a black mamba-dance together yet again. I know I’ve paid the cost for this control over my inner dragons as I stare up at Mikkel’s dark eyes.
And feel nothing but retribution, deep inside.
“Yava. Come back. Come on back,” Ström says now as he tugs me away from Mikkel. My Third Drake lets him; Mikkel watches me go with copper fire in his eyes as Ström caresses my face to look at him instead, and Bjorn wraps his big arms around me.
The combined righteousness of my First and Second Drake is barely enough to return my sense of goodness and heroism. Mikkel is just that powerful, as his dark scent like old-world cocktails and whiskey floods me, full of exotic bitters.
That bitterness devours him, I know, and gives his magic its flavor. Still, I roll it over my tongue as I breathe, calm but not happy. As Rhennic clears his throat, my eyes snap to him.
Vicious with my beast, even for me.
“Let’s all take a breath—all five of you. Rikyava… you especially. Please,” Rhennic says as I feel him note how many of his Storm Dragon guards witnessed our little shitshow. I blink as he saysfive. I had almostforgotten Mikkel’s twin sister, Lærke Thorsen, as we all struggled with our bond’s new power dynamics.
Dressed in a chic little black cocktail dress, she’s standing just behind Mikkel with an iron hand clamped on his shoulder. Lærke is holding him back with her body-paralyzing magics, so he won’t just rush in and jump me, having entered the room sometime during my little explosion from the adjacent suite she and Mikkel share.
Her restraining magic works, barely. As Rhennic waits for us all to get calm again, I see him lift his eyebrows at what our magic’s doing. All his guards do, too. Tension fills the room—the tension of good guards evaluating if our group is going to shift up and go batshit inside the palace with the need to fight, fuck, or some combination of both.
It beyond sucks that the one who can help me most is Mikkel, but that even touching him at all leaves us insane for each other as I go amok in our seething, mutual darkness. I can’t let that happen. Even now, some deep part of me knows that if I lose my sense of honor, of goodness and chivalry, there will be nothing left of me.
Nothing left at all of the Rikyava I know and love.
“Rikyava… I don’t know what’s going on, cousin, but I want you to know I’m here for you. Whatever I can do.” Watching me, Rhennic’s lavender eyes are serious as he stares me down hard. But even as he holds my gaze, storms of doubt flicker through his eyes.
