“Most dragon Clans have certain industries that they’re associated with, and the Opal Clan is no exception. Theyspecialize in horses and fine animal breeding, a lot of which happens in the village nearby. King Valys happens to know a lot about these topics and spends a lot of time in the village to judge livestock, to make sure that they are up to his exact standards.”
Great, so she was now a horse girl by trade. Amazing. Ashley hoped that her brother didn’t expect her to know shit about horses because to be honest ? She hadn’t exactly liked the few she had met in person and the idea of facing more of them on a day-to-day basis?
Ashley winced, and Alexander by chance noticed, making him smile. At least this guy had a sense of humor. “The princess is not expected to know about the horse breeding, of course.”
“Of course,” Ashley said, averting her eyes and trying her best not to give away that she happened to be the princess For the moment, at least. She was fairly certain that if her identity was revealed or that the servants realized that she was walking around dressed as a maid, they would undoubtedly tell her brother. Valys would undoubtedly throw a fit and go on another lecture about how princesses behaved. Since she didn’t fully trust her brother, she had to take advantage of opportunities like this one to ask all the questions she needed to know. Primarily the most pressing one.
“What exactly is the princess expected to do?” she asked and thank God that Alexander didn’t know who she was because he didn’t exactly sugarcoat things.
“Well, you see, as women can’t exactly inherit anything in our world, they’re expected to be traded off to one of the other Clans to form alliances, used for the fact that she just so happens to have a mating mark of all things.”
“But wouldn’t the mating mark mean they are meant for someone in particular?” Ashley pressed, furrowing her brows together as she posed the question, only to receive another far too charming smile in response. She wasn’t sure what a realmaid would know, but she was sure that this real butler was far too handsome for his own good and that she was feeling far too many things about him as a result.
Ashley averted her eyes as the man continued talking, swallowing heavily, and trying to will whatever the fuck her heart currently thought that it was doing at that moment to stop. Maybe the world might make sense again if she calmed down.
“Right, while mate marks are formed when someone has a fated mate in this world, they’re not actually permanent. You can fall in and out of love. And, because we’re all capable of doing that it’s possible for mate marks to fade. When the emotions are strong enough, things can change. Someone figured out how to use magic to change a mate mark to bind one to another person, essentially tying their soul with them. So, then you know where they are at all times, and they know where you are. In dragonkind, you’re far more likely to produce a child if you have a mate mark,” Alexander said, sounding very scientific at that moment, even if he said magic was real. Was it?
It must be or she wouldn’t be there, she decided. She was about to say something about that, but decided better of it. Alexander would realize she wasn’t a maid if she asked about what kind of magic brought her to Romania, to some world that had gone back in time—even if Valys hated her saying that.
But still, the realization that magic was real? It shouldn’t have shocked her because the apocalypse had just occurred, but it did. It made Ashley feel like the world she knew was slowly disappearing, and she was finding herself trapped in a fantasy novel. And Alexander? Well, Alexander made Ashley feel like she didn’t care about the world she was currently in because he had a certain charm. Especially when he reached down and grabbed her hand, moving her from a ballroom into the next room. She was pretty sure that Val had called it a foyer or somethingsimilar. She hadn’t exactly cared when he mentioned the name. But when Alexander said it, everything changed.
“The foyer,” Alexander said, his voice suddenly growing cold and somewhat distant as his eyes steadied on a painting above the mantle like he had a personal vendetta against the person in it.
Ashley was certain that the person in the painting was her grandfather. She’d heard Val say his name in reverence.
“Much of the furniture and valuables in this room were stolen from the Diamond court during the initial gem wars of the dragon Clans. Rumor has it that the Diamond King is still seeking the return of any of these items and that their relationship has been tense from the very beginning. Valys has proclaimed that they are part of his inheritance,” Alexander said, his voice heavy with criticism. Ashley silently wondered if he had some tie to the Diamond Clan.
Since Jack Tracey was a part of the staff there, it wasn’t beyond reason that there could also be dragons from other families.
With the Diamond Clan being brought up, Ashley saw an opportunity to ask a question that had been plaguing her for a few minutes now.
“And the Diamond King, why is he here now?” Ashley couldn’t help but ask, allowing her eyes to slowly move down and away, willing his answer not to be the one that she was the most afraid of, the fact that the Diamond King might have been coming there to collect her. After all, she was meant to be his mate. That would be the only reason why he was coming. She hadn’t heard any other gem suitors mentioned. Outside of Jack Tracey, she didn’t know of any other dragon princes, though.
Alexander seemed to take extra time looking at her, allowing his eyes to linger on her features, almost like he was tryingto read her response to saying that man’s name. Or, more accurately the man’s title.
Alexander didn’t answer her. In fact, he went completely silent. Ashley had to actually prod to get him to say something.
“I heard he’s handsome,” she said, and the man laughed. It was a wonderful sound.
“Oh, well, at least there’s that. The Princess needn’t worry about whether or not he’s ugly,” Alexander said with good humor, the smile on his face growing wider as he looked at her, a sort of twinkle in his eyes that made her stomach knot.
But it wasn’t a bad kind of knot. In fact, she was certain it was the kind she shouldn’t be having at all. Men you weren’t going to be stuck with for the rest of your life weren’t supposed to make you feel like your stomach was in knots.
“I’m sure that whoever he is, whatever type of man he is, he’ll do his best to make her happy if that’s your question. But if you’re asking about his relationship with the Opal Kingdom, I can say that Val and he aren’t exactly friends. Nobles often like to pretend they are.” he continued, and it was only then that she realized that he had said Val and not the king, which was strange, to say the least, but she held her tongue.
The very last thing that Ashley needed to do at that moment was hint that she actually happened to know the king personally, much less that she was who she was. Asking too many questions would probably lead to Alexander getting a little bit suspicious. She held her tongue, following him as he moved into the next room. But Ashley couldn’t help but see that her steps slowed as she neared the corner of the sitting room. She took in the sight of what was supposed to be one of her ancestors.
Whoever they were, they probably wouldn’t like Ashley all that much. They looked like they loved all this ‘women are chattel’ bullshit making her want to flip the portrait off, even if that was a childish thing to do. Ashley couldn’t help but hopethat whoever her mate was, he would see her as an actual person rather than a tool.
At the same time, she couldn’t help but hope that whoever her mate was, he was half as handsome as Alexander was. Just about everything about that man drew her in, making her want to do nothing more than trace her fingers up and down his forearms, taking in the silky skin there. She could see that he was decently built, far better than half the guys she had seen in Tennessee. A part of her wondered how the maids had managed to ignore him. If Ashley had bee nothing more than a maid, the second that she caught sight of that man, she would have done her best to find him every day. But the maids acted like he was a stranger, like they hadn’t yet realized that he was there, which was kind of concerning.
But it was not concerning enough to get Ashley to stop following him. Ashley trailed obediently behind Alexander without a single complaint, allowing him to lead her through the halls and outside. Val had barely touched on the world outside their castle, and she couldn’t help but blink in interest the moment they stepped onto the castle grounds, just how much her brother had hidden from her became apparent.
Ashley took in a deep, fresh breath of air and looked around in awe. From outside she could see that the castle was much larger than she could have imagined. When she finally turned to look beyond the castle, she saw miles and miles of forest.
A part of her that hoped that her brother didn’t own that much land. If he did, it was likely an inheritance from their father, which Ashley assured herself was probably the case for many of the kingdoms here. Because her father was known to be a bastard, it was more than believable that he had decided to hoard way too many resources.
And then it dawned on Ashley what had happened. She’d been so busy trying to come to terms with her new reality thateverything she’d been told hadn’t truly sunk in. She bent double as it hit, the truth of just what kind of man her father must have been. The mental anguish manifested as physical pain in her stomach. Her father ripped her away from her mother and threw her away.
