Cain sighed. “Stop being so difficult. If we wanted you dead, you would be.”
“As if you could kill me.” She kept up her facade. The second she showed weakness would be the second they’d have her. Even if she was outnumbered, she wouldn’t act it. “I don’t particularly want an audience for my bath.”
Confusion marred Cain’s face.
Rusty cogs. Realization hit her with the grace of a steam engine. Dragons were not known for their modesty. Half of the people staring at her now were in what she considered various states of undress. They truly didn’t, and couldn’t, understand why she wouldn’t want guests during her ablutions.
Arianna had only been naked around two people: Eva and Florence. She had reached a level of comfort with her long-dead lover and still-living student that surpassed propriety and convention.
But this wasn’t Loom.
She had ventured above the clouds in pursuit of new opportunities, old truths, and scores still waiting to be settled. Arianna locked eyes with Cain as her hands began unclasping her harness. He didn’t even blink as the metal of her winch box and spools hit the tile floor with an echoing clang, chipping one of the ornate tiles. She started on the fastenings of her coat.
He acknowledged the silent challenge, amusement dancing with fascination in the deep gold of his eyes. She would show them all that she could rise to any occasion—on Loom, on Nova, in this world or the next. One by one, the scraps of her clothing fell and the heat of the room dotted her bare ashen skin with beads of moisture.
Cain’s eyes never left her face.
6.Yveun
The Dragon King oozed displeasure from his very pores.
He felt it seeping out of him, simmering hot, elevating the temperature of the room. He was alone, which was an unfamiliar sensation. Leona had been a figure at his side for decades and now it was as though the woman had never existed.
She’d had her faults, as they all did, but her loyalty was only matched by her ferocity. And, for the most part, she could manage to temper the fire that burned under her skin even when her frustrations struggled to get the better of her. It was a fire he’d stoked in all the right ways, until it burned white-hot and only for him. Nurturing Leona’s radical worship of him had been the rare duty that was also a delight.
Now, years of work had been lost in what seemed like a blink on his lifeline.
Yveun sheathed and unsheathed his claws, raking them against the wall of the room he’d been pacing like some lowly caged animal.
It was one of his secret habits. The Dono, the sky ruler, the overseer of the land below, chosen one of the Life-bringer, for all his sweeping palaces and grand rooms, preferred the comfort of a tiny space to think in. A space with only one way out. A space so confined that just the thought of being trapped within it set his heart to racing.
In that heightened awareness of his own mortality, he found clarity. It was as though the stone walls that surrounded him, marred from years of claws scraped against them, were the only thing solid enough to contain the torrents of his thoughts. It was a place where the feeling of lowliness growled for dominance in his stomach once more, and when he ascended, he returned to the world like a merciful god.
Leona and Coletta were the only two who knew of his secret lair. Coletta never came down; she had her spaces, he had his, and they issued the utmost respect to each other in preserving those barriers. They were three times as effective because they maintained that separation, and the world regarded them as a split entity.
Yveun smiled wide, pure delight filling him at the very thought of Coletta. He and his mate, moon and sun. They were two halves that orbited each other and only very rarely touched.
But Leona... She would wait at the top of the narrow stair that led back into his private chambers. She would grant him his privacy, and say nothing of the clawing or howling that no doubt echoed up to her from time to time. She thought herself mightier for it, for knowing the King’s secret. Yet another suggestion of Coletta’s gone well, only to be wasted by Leona throwing her life away on Loom.
Yveun snarled, his claws straining against his skin as he gouged them into the wall.Cvareh Xin. He thought only Petra would be able to elicit a raw, emotional response from him. But it seemed she’d taught her younger brother in much the same fashion. How that meager slip of a man had bested his Leona was a mystery. Seeing the Dragon-child emerge from his supposed meditation only proved the point further.
Cvareh was not a laughable specimen, but he was no exemplar of the Dragon form. Not even the will of the twenty gods should be able to sway the cards in his favor in a duel against Leona. Yveun retracted his claws and folded them over his chest, walking faster.
Sybil, Leona’s sister, had said that Cvareh had help upon Loom—a Chimera and Fenthri. Yveun had seen Leona turn Fenthri into ribbons and reduce Chimera to no more than sharpening posts for her talons. Logic told him it was highly improbable for such meager prospects to be a threat to his Master Rider.
But logic had run its course, and here he was—less several Riders, and his Leona gone well before he intended her removal. Cvareh was alive and upon Nova once more. No schematics for the Philosopher’s Box returned. An Alchemists’ guild gone rogue—or going fast. And no answer for any of it.
When the probable had been exhausted, the only explanation that remained was the impossible.
Yveun launched himself forward with wide steps. He needed more information and there was one way he knew how to get it with any measure of certainty: he needed a Dragon on the inside. Fortunately for him, he had just the blue-skinned worm for the job on retainer.
The world materialized beneath his feet as he left his unorthodox sanctuary. He envisioned that nothing existed while he was in that tiny claw-scratched room, that the gods themselves held their breath and halted everything for the sake of his thoughts. When he emerged, the world shone with their magic, pulled back together in a new shape that carved a path for him to progress.
Yveun pushed against the wall at the top of the stair. It gave and he emerged from the passage that closed to form the back of the large hearth that dominated one wall of his chambers. They were a glittering contrast to the dark, rough-hewn passage he’d just been in. A large platform bed stood adorned with silks. Pillows were tasseled with beads cut from jewels. The desk alone had taken three craftsmen four months of non-stop work to carve.
It was a collection of all his favorite things, arranged only for him and the few he deemed worthy to rest their eyes upon it. Yveun was in no mood for it. He wouldn’t soil the essence of his room with his present ferocity. He’d return when he could rest knowing that action was being taken.
Waiting for him in the hall was the man-child he’d been forced to choose as his new Master Rider. Yveun did not even lay eyes upon the boy. He was barely twenty. His age made his three beads more impressive, but all Yveun could see was how scarce they were compared to Leona’s.
