Claiming the Prince: Book One (25 page)

S
HE SHOT UP,
gasping, shredding the sheets with her daggers.

“It’s all right, magpie,” Endreas said from the other side of the room where he stood before a mirror. He leaned over a bowl and washed the blood from his face.

Icy starlight poured into the room through arching glass panels, so bright that none of the wall scones had been lit. Towering rectangular alcoves built into the walls were filled with books, armor and weapons, paintings and sculptures. Double doors lurked in the shadows to her left. The dressing table, a huge halved tree trunk, cradled an asymmetrical mirror in its gnarled branches. The stone floors shone like black ice. Across from the bed, the fireplace was a corkscrewing column of smooth river stones that appeared frozen in the midst of a tornado ripping them from their streambed. A small pond trickled at the far end of the room, running under the glass wall that overlooked a vast expanse of darkness.

At the sight of the emptiness beyond the windows, memories of her fall rose up and seized her.

Her knives dug deeper into the bedding. She lowered her head between her knees, lungs grasping for breath.

A moment later, Endreas’s cool hand skimmed her neck.

A calming wave washed through her. She shuddered as the panic loosened its paralytic hold.

Too soon, Endreas’s fingers slid away from her as he stepped back.

“Where are we?” Her breathing resumed something near normal, but her pulse kicked, still frantic.

“My home.” His jaw tightened as he unfastened the buckles of his breast plate.

Slowly, she retracted her daggers. The dark silken sheets lay torn. Downy feathers and tufts of cotton poked through the holes.

He moved back across the room, buckles clinking as he freed their clasps. His bracers thunked as they hit the floor. Leaning heavily against his dressing table, he unwound the blood-soaked leather from his wrist.

Her stomach knotted. She ran her own finger under the rip in her jeans where his sword had cut her. The wound was tender, but healed. Touching her forehead, she found the abrasion from the dwarf’s manhandling also mended.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

The last of his wrappings fell away. His sleeve slid back, exposing a thick red gash across the inside of his forearm.

“Save you, you mean?” He smirked, picking up the bloody rag from the bowl again. “I didn’t intend for you to fall. I misjudged the distance to the ledge.” He scowled as if angry with himself, and then shot her an equally furious look. “Not that you should have fought me in the first place.”

“Why did you bring me here? Are you holding me prisoner?”

His smirk returned. He shook his head as he ran the rag over his arm and then squeezed the blood into the bowl. His voice fell to a low, dark register. “You should’ve told me . . . about the Prince.”

“Don’t you mean your brother?” She put her feet on the ground, testing her legs. Leaning a hand against the overlarge bed, her legs, though sore and weak, held as she stood.

One handed, he lifted the pauldrons from his shoulders, up and over his head, grimacing. She resisted the urge to help him.

“Don’t you have someone to assist you?” she asked.

The shoulder armor fell to the floor with a whoomp. “I couldn’t risk them seeing you and alerting my father to your presence. I’ve already had to shut out my counselors.” His eye twitched as if he felt the telepathic connection pushing against his brain. “But they won’t stand for it for too long.”

He lifted his other arm, where she’d cut him along the bicep. The fabric of his shirt clung to his skin. With strained concentration, he began unwrapping his other forearm.

“Why did you protect him?” His tone was so wounded her chest convulsed with guilt.

“Kaelan is innocent,” she managed finally.

“Kaelan.” His gaze held hers captive. “Is that what he’s called?” More leather massed in a coiled bundle at his feet. “And where did you find him?”

“Lavana’s dungeon. You didn’t know? He was the Prince she had locked up there.”

The blank look in his eyes told her that he hadn’t known, but then he chuckled. “Of course. He traveled the Shadow Realms once you were free of the dungeon. That’s how you moved so far so quickly.”

He checked the wound on his bicep again, gripping the edge of his breastplate, a furrow on his brow.

Teeth grinding, swearing at herself inwardly, she shuffled across the room and grasped the shoulders of the breastplate and backplate, lifting the scaled armor over his head. It was not nearly as heavy as it looked.

“I would kiss you, but my face hurts,” he said once the armor was off.

She smiled thinly at the swollen and bruised state of his nose. “It’s an improvement. Gives you character.”

Her thumbs ran over the black scales. She gazed at her warped reflection in the shining plates.

“What kind of scale is this?” she asked, placing the armor on the form by the dressing table.

With more pained expressions, he peeled off his shirt. “Dragon,” he said. “Kura sheds them. She allows us to collect and use them.”

“Kura? The dragon you set upon Froenz?”

Bruises and welts spoiled the length of his lean torso, but it was the tattoo on his back that captured her attention—a mighty tree rendered in clean, black lines, a dragon wound about the trunk, shooting fire up over Endreas’s shoulder, spilling it down his chest and arm.

“The dwarf lord made his choice.” His head turned away.

As he tended his wound, she studied his tattoo, the muscles of his broad shoulders, the curve of his back, the jutting edge of his hipbone . . . the hollow inside of it.

Her throat went dry. She tore her gaze away.

But the bed filled the space beside her, and that was no good. The emptiness beyond the glass wall didn’t help either. She couldn’t think about how high up they were. When she looked back, he was watching her in the mirror again.

“Did you know?” he asked.

She found it hard to get her voice working through the heat gushing up her neck, into her cheeks.

“About Kaelan?” he clarified.

Her heart slowed. “That he was your brother? That your father tried to murder him? No. Not until I was dragged before Froenz. Kaelan doesn’t even know—”

She tensed. What had happened to Kaelan? Was he still on that ledge? Did he think her dead? Had Python helped him escape? If so, to where? Or had they both become dragon-dinner?

In the frantic flurry of her thoughts, her hand flew to her pocket. The Enneahedron was still there. Her fingers closed around it.

Endreas watched her closely, causing the heat to spread through her. “It’s good you’ve found the Enneahedron. You’ll need it.”

“You’re going to let me go?”

“No.” He picked up a silver pitcher, pouring water into a simple silver cup. “I’m going to take you back to your Lands, so you can finish this.”

He set the pitcher down, picked up the cup, and held it out to her.

She took it, careful not to touch him—because she wanted to so very badly. The metal pressed cool against her palms and clacked against her sheaths. She drank.

Clear and clean, the water slaked her thirst and refreshed her almost as much as a Prince’s touch.

“But you will have to challenge Lavana without a Prince,” he said.

She set the cup down harder than she’d meant to. “He’s your brother.”

“He is no one to me,” he said. “Except a threat to the peace that we might make.”

She moved away from him towards the dark planes of glass, though she kept her eyes unfocused in an attempt to forget about the heights . . . about falling, about that recent moment of near certain death.

“What does peace mean to you, Endreas?” she asked, turning back to face him once she’d put a greater distance between them. “If you had jurisdiction over all of Alfheim, what would you do to those who have fled your Realms into Pixie Lands?”

His gaze darkened. “Those who are criminals will be punished.”

“They’re not criminals in the Lands, not by Pixie laws.”

His chest rose and fell visibly as he heaved a deep breath. His jaw hardened as he glared at her.

“And those in exile?” she asked. “Would you pursue them too?” Her skin started to burn again, but not because of her desire for him. “Does your peace come by exterminating everyone who defied your family in the past, who broke your laws? How is killing the oracles, the semargl, driving brownies and imps and fairies from their homes, any less of a crime than killing dragons?”

“The oracles trained the wolf breed of the semargl to hunt dragon eggs,” he growled. “They stole the eggs and raised the young in captivity, cutting off their wings so they could not escape. They chained their mouths so they could not breathe fire. The oracles had to do so, in order to sustain themselves, but they could not force the dragons to breed.” He took another deep breath and poured himself a cup of water. “There are races of small folk who believe they are above others and feel it is their duty to hunt and kill those races they do not like. My family did nothing but cease the slaughter. At least the oracles had a reason for killing dragons. What reason did the dwarfs have for hunting the chimera, or the lion-breed of semargl? None but vanity and pride.”

Her voice was tight in throat. “I hear your reasoning, Endreas. But I don’t think you hear mine. Your laws aren’t ours. Pixies will not simply stand by and allow you to hunt down the small folk, even if they were willing to accept you as a ruler, which they won’t be. I’m beginning to think that your peace only comes by a great deal of slaughter and oppression. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He didn’t though. He just gazed levelly at her. And then, he strode past her. Her frame wavered when he moved by, as if she were a dingy rocking in the wake of his ship.

Pushing open one of the glass doors, he let out a pitched series of whistles. The air outside was cold. It slipped in and brought goose bumps out all over her. She chafed her arms to warm them.

A moment later, a giant tawny-hued lion with gold-edged wings alit on the squat balustrade and then leapt gracefully down onto the wide balcony.

“Good evening, Gur,” Endreas said, leaning against the glass door, holding it open.

Magda shivered as she moved closer, in spite of her dread, and peered around the threshold.

The lion shook out the thick ruff of his mane and let out a low rumble.

“It’s nothing,” Endreas said. “See.” He held out his wounded bicep. “Already healing.” And it was, although the skin around the wound glowed angry red.

The lion’s dark brown eyes roved over to Magda, intelligence gleaming in them.

“This is Magdalena,” Endreas said. “She’s causing me a lot of trouble.”

She made a face at him, even though he wasn’t looking at her.

Endreas leaned back against the door, so casually, so easily, a part of her sparked with need. Need to see him like that all of the time. Less the Prince. More . . . Endreas.

The lion growled deep in his chest and lashed his tail, eyes fixed on Magda.

“No, that’s all right,” he said to Gur. “But I have a favor to ask. Take her where she needs to go.”

Magda stiffened. “What? No—”

Endreas’s finger pressed to her lips. She hadn’t realized how close she’d drawn to him until he was touching her, inspiring more goose bumps.

“Wait, will you, friend?” he said to Gur.

The lion-semargl yawned, stretched his wings, and dropped down to his belly, immediately closing his eyes.

Endreas moved away from the door, allowing it close, and stepped into her.

In spite of all her misgivings, her lips met his, drinking in his warmth and his breath and his scent.

He broke away, too soon.

She bit her lip to keep from going after him.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Kiss you?”

“No. Defend him.”

She edged back, aching for the lack of his body against hers. “I told you. Kaelan is innocent.”

His jaw hardened. He leaned away.

She moved back into him, not allowing him to escape the conversation. “He knew nothing of who he was until he came of age. Even now, he has no idea. He was unconscious in Froenz’s hall. He still thinks he’s a Pixie Prince. Why should he be killed for a prophecy he knows nothing about and that might not even come true? It’s no more right for you to kill him now than it was for your father to try to do so when he was only a baby.” She hardened against him, even though it took all her willpower to keep from wrapping herself around him. “And if you think I’m going to stand aside and watch you slaughter an innocent person, or any innocent persons, then I’m prepared to disabuse you of that erroneous notion, Your Highness.”

“It’s too late, magpie. I know who he is now, which means my counselors know. And besides, your oracle gave a speech announcing him as the Resistance’s salvation. I will not have to kill him. My father will send his mercenaries. If you get in their way, they will kill you too.”

“What kind of mercenaries?” she asked.

He lifted his hand like he might throttle her, but the wound on his bicep halted him. His lips twisted in pain. His arm dropped to his side again.

“Why are you willing to fight for him? Because he is a Prince? Or is it something more?”

“I defend him because he hasn’t done anything wrong! He doesn’t deserve this death sentence.”

“Then send him away to the mortal world. There, he might have a chance to evade capture.”

“He’s in love with a nymph,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Nymphs can’t cross over. The mortal world is too polluted. And I don’t think he’ll leave without her.”

He gave his head a little shake as if he couldn’t get the idea that Kaelan was in love with a nymph to settle in his brain. A feeling she shared. Finally, he seemed to give up, running his fingers over his brow as if wiping the thought away.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop my father,” he stated. “So I would prefer it if you stayed away from . . .
him
.”

“His name is Kaelan. And he’s your brother. And now that I know your father is going to send all manner of dire creatures after him, I have all the more reason to stay with him and help him as he has helped me.”