Leida only glared at him and began wading to the shore, her chattering teeth making it impossible to form a coherent word. And he called her mad? What person in his right mind decided to hold a conversation in the middle of a freezing lake? Naked at that, for any passerby to witness?
She could only growl when his arms wrapped around her waist, lifting and turning her so that she faced him, her breast flattened against his taut chest. Magnus spoke softly against her ear, words that sounded strange and garbled. She gave a grateful sigh as the water around them warmed instantly, chasing away the shivers that left her quaking in his arms.
“Better?” he asked, stroking her back with one hand as the other supported her weight, holding her to him.
She was still angry, but grateful for the warmed water. “Yes, much. Thank you.”
He nodded, but offered no mercy in his hostile gaze. “Tell me, Leida. Make me understand why you would keep my daughter a secret from me.”
Leida shook her head. “I wasn’t hiding her, Magnus. I didn’t know I carried her until more than a month after I left your service.”
His face darkened again. “And still you continued to run.” She could see the muscles bunch in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “Dragon pages found you, forced you to return to me. You held your silence about her, made a fool of me by letting me believe someone else sired her. Don’t tell me you didn’t purposefully conceal her. You just did so in plain sight.” A harsh growl escaped him. “You have your cruelties, Leida. You only dress them in the finery of self-pity and imagined persecution.”
Her hand arced out of the water, for once her reactions swifter than his. The crack of her palm against his cheek bounced off the surface of the water, echoing for several seconds. Magnus’s head snapped back from the force of the blow, and he responded instantly, the hand previously pressed against her back, lashing out to shackle both of her wrists in an unrelenting grip.
Leida didn’t struggle, but she held herself stiff in his arms, panting hard and glaring at him with tear-filled eyes. “It’s not pity, nor is it persecution. But I’m a person, Magnus, not livestock. Even as your favorite, I was still no greater than any other servant in your household—easily cast off, easily replaced.” She sobbed, her words running together in a breathless sentence punctuated by sniffles. “And there was Vala. I could have returned. Life might have been easier. I wouldn’t have had to labor in the fields as I did, but I welcomed the work. My life, and that of my daughter, didn’t hinge on the whims of a dragon lord.”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “That is the most foolish thing I’ve heard in many years, Leida,” he snapped. “So you threw off some imaginary yoke I’d placed on your shoulders, found your ‘freedom’ so to speak, and placed your welfare and that of your daughter, my daughter, into the hands of nature and fate.” He shook his head, his fingers tightening on her wrists. “What if there had been crop failure? Plague? All the things that have hounded the heels of men since before dragon memory.” He squeezed her wrists hard enough to make her wince. “You and your strange, misplaced nobility. Had you any sense about you, you would have returned to me.”
Her anger drained away, leaving only a bleak melancholy “Returned to what?” She sighed. “You with your new favorite?” She shook her head when he made to interrupt. “I only acted on what I knew then. What if you greeted Vala’s arrival with celebration? Claimed her, but refused to allow me to stay? I couldn’t take that risk, Magnus. Vala is everything to me, the finest thing I ever made. My decisions may have seemed foolish to you, but my wisdom isn’t more than three hundred years in the making. And I swear, on any sacred thing you put before me, I didn’t hide her existence as some way of exacting vengeance on you. You have every reason not to believe me, but I love you too much to be that cruel.”
There, she'd said it at last, acknowledged it aloud and was glad for it. Now she would wait and see how Magnus dealt with such a declaration. At some point in her speech, he had released her hands so that they came to rest on his shoulders. His silence unnerved her, and Leida lacked the courage to raise her gaze any higher than the hollow of his throat.
“Look at me.”
His voice was soft, beguiling, as if he prepared to sing to her. Leida raised her eyes to his, stunned, then overjoyed by the expression in them. The anger was still there, the frustration and the hurt, but she saw love as well. The same love she espoused for him shone back at her, deep and abiding. Tears blurred her vision as he kissed her, a worshipful touch of his lips against hers. She kissed him back, sliding her arms across his shoulders to hold him close. The ticklish feel of his fingers at her nape made her break the kiss, and she cried out, elated to feel the weight of the choker gone from around her throat. A faint tingling of power flowed through her, weak, but still present.
Magnus dangled the choker off his fingertip, watching as sunlight glinted over the silvered links. “No more bindings, Leida. You are free to use your magic. Free to make your way in the world, without me if you so wish it.” He frowned at that. “You feared I would make you leave. I feared you wouldn’t stay unless I forced you. There’s been enough fear between us.” He tossed the necklace from him, and they both watched as it flashed once more in the sunlight before sinking below the surface.
“What say you,” he asked, a hint of urgency in his tone. “Will you stay?”
Leida hugged him, nearly strangling him in her joy. “I will stay, always, for as long as you will have me.”
Magnus’s chuckle was muffled against her newly bared throat, and he pried her arms from around his neck. “Then you will grow old in my caverns, and we will watch Vala grow up.”
He kissed her again, and they floated together, lost in each other as the world narrowed to the rhythmic lap of magically warmed water and the twine of her legs around his waist. Leida moaned as Magnus slipped inside her, gliding in and out in slow, easy strokes while she rained kisses on his neck and nibbled his earlobe. He caressed her beneath the water, cupping her buttocks when he came inside her, his grip tightening against her back when she soon followed.
A distant sound, of voices and whistles, brought Leida out of a pleasant daze. She glanced at Magnus who stood alert in her arms. He glanced at her, his smile fleeting but intimate. “It’s time to leave the water. Others have risen and started their day. I’ve no wish to provide some wandering group of drink-sick soldiers or field hands the diversion of seeing your lovely body.”
The scenario he described made her strike out immediately for the shore, the suddenly cold water spurring her to swim faster. By the time they made it back to the shelter of the willow, dried off and dressed, she was swaying on her feet with fatigue. Magnus strengthened the ward he had laid earlier around the tree and helped her spread out the blankets. Leida sighed her pleasure as he spooned around her, warming her back and legs under the blankets. This time it was he who pulled her from the edge of sleep with a question.
“Vala. She looks just like you, does she not? Except for her eyes.
They’re green, like mine.”
Leida rolled to face him, surprised. “Yes. That is amazing. How did you guess?”
Magnus smiled, that same superior expression that often drove her to distraction. “We dragons are astute, sagacious creatures, Leida.”
She rolled her eyes, turning back on her side to snuggle up against him. “She is also much like you in spirit. Considers herself the queen of all things.”
His soft laughter tickled her ear. “I look forward to meeting her.”
Leida sat on a flat rock near the entrance of Magnus’s caverns, enjoying the late afternoon sun on her face. The whispering laughter of an autumn breeze ruffled her hair and sent a swirl of red and yellow leaves fluttering over her feet. The forest seemed hushed, somnolent as the day waned. She enjoyed the quiet, finding it a respite from the usual constant chatter to which her daughter subjected her.
At seven seasons, Vala was a talkative child, inquisitive and insistent that her paren
ts have all the answers to her numerous questions. Leida often found herself hiding a smile behind her hand when the child would ask Magnus some question that would make his eyes widen before he scowled and demanded to know exactly where she’d heard such a thing. Still, he would always answer, patient with Vala’s ceaseless talking, even when Leida wanted to cover her ears and beg her to stay silent for at least three short breaths.
An echo of childish merriment, carried on the gentle breeze, drifted to her ears. Leida peered into the maze of maples and birch, catching sight of a flash of scarlet as Vala ran past her, her cloak and long black hair rippling behind her like banners. She was long-limbed and as fleet as any young doe, quickly disappearing once again into the leafy underbrush.
Leida didn’t have long to wait before Magnus appeared. He ran by as well, skidding to a halt and loping back to where she sat, watching.
He bent, wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her up against him. She welcomed his kiss, the brief teasing slide of his tongue across hers. “Wear the ruby girdle tonight,” he whispered into her ear. He released her as quickly as he’d embraced her, his teasing smile promising a long night of lovemaking. She resumed her seat, and he bowed once before following Vala’s path, hot on her heels in her favorite game of chase.
Some might say she was a poor mother, allowing Vala to run through the forest like a wild thing instead of studying deportment for that far off time when some important nobleman might court her. Such imagined admonishments didn’t concern Leida. Her daughter was a child, and should be allowed to follow the pursuits of a child. Besides, she suspected Magnus would have a difficult time accepting Vala’s maturity from child to woman. He was already grappling with the issue of her short-lived rebellions. Raising a human child was quite different than raising a dragon hatchling, and the dragon lord sometimes cast her baffled looks. Nothing in his centuries of living prepared him for the surprises Vala often tossed his way.
She smiled as Vala’s laughter floated to her once more, accompanied by Magnus’s deeper tones. Love swelled in her breast, a fierce welling of emotion that made her want to chase after them both and hug them close. “My blessings,” she whispered to herself. “My gifts from generous gods.”
~END~
About Grace
Grace Draven is a Louisiana native living in Texas with her husband, kids and a big, doofus dog. She has loved storytelling since forever and is a fan of the fictional bad boy. She is the winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice for Best Fantasy Romance of 2014 and 2016 and a USA Today Bestselling author.
Meet Grace on Facebook!
Titles by Grace Draven
THE WRAITH KINGS
Radiance
Eidolon
The Ippos King (2018)
THE FALLEN EMPIRE TRILOGY (Penguin/Ace)
Phoenix Unbound (2018)
FROM THE MASTER OF CROWS WORLD
Master of Crows
The Brush of Black Wings
The Lightning God’s Wife
The Light Within
OTHER STORIES
Entreat Me
All the Stars Look Down (Sunday’s Child)
Beneath a Waning Moon
For Crown and Kingdom
Sunday’s Child
The King of Hel
Wyvern
The Undying King
Lover of Thorns and Holy Gods
Madfall Duology (Draconus)
Connect with me:
website: gracedraven.com
Facebook: facebook.com/grace.draven
Dragon Lord by Dana Marton
Draknart is the scourge of the countryside, a dragon well accustomed to defeating and devouring all the knights and sacrificial maidens sent his way. But when another maiden turns up at his cave, he finds that she's not the easy meal he expected. Einin of Downwood is fierce and unafraid... and she's armed for battle. Intrigued, Draknart realizes that not only does his intended victim arouse more than just his appetite, her arrival is could be fortuitous in more ways than one.
Flood, famine and war has ravaged the village of Downwood, and the local priest blames Draknart's evil influence. Hoping to lift the curse on her village, Einin seeks out the dragon with the aim of being a slayer rather than a sacrifice. What she doesn't know is that Draknart is a dragon under a fairy queen's curse himself, doomed to transform to a man from midnight until dawn. To her surprise, Draknart offers her a bargain, one that might help her village—but at a high cost. With few options and even fewer resources at her command, Einin has no choice but to make a deal with a dragon...
Dragon Lord
by Dana Marton
Copyright © 2018 by Dana Marton
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
Cover design by Ilona Gordon
Chapter One
The clamoring had been going on for a while outside his ancient cave by the time the dragon finally opened an eye. Just the one. He wasn’t prone to overreacting.
The villainous noise grew only louder: flasks clanged against walking staffs, boots slapped on stone, children squealed while dogs barked. A priest droned on in that steel-scraping-over-the-whetting-stone tone his kind used to keep their congregations awake during sermons.
Draknart stirred in the back of the cave and drew musty air into his lungs. He shifted his great body on the stone ledge where he slept, then dropped heavily to the ground at last and stretched to full height, his head nearly hitting the stone ceiling.
His cave was small enough so no intruder could be hidden from his sight, yet large enough to maneuver his mountainous body in a fight—the perfect lair for a dragon. Save the neighbors. The two nearby villages seemed to compete over the title of “Biggest Pain in the Dragon’s Arse.”
His spiked tail curled and uncurled, rustling the leaves the winds had blown in. As he took a step forward, the dried bones of his past meals crackled beneath his feet, the sound downright music compared to the priest’s bleating.
Draknart blinked the sleep from his eyes, tested his stiff muscles, and then he scraped his talons over the stones for a good sharpening. The sooner he ended the disturbance, the sooner he could reclaim his peace.
He was accursed, but he was not yet vanquished—nor would he be today.
A cheer rose outside, sharp as a toothache. And before Draknart could finish thinking—Here we go again—a soft bundle tumbled down the steep slope of the cave’s entrance.
Another virgin sacrifice. He had half a mind to bat it right back out with his tail. If the villagers must disturb him, couldn’t it have been for a wee fight? At least a hired knight would have provided him with exercise.
He stifled a groan and watched, with a petulance probably unbecoming a dragon his age, as the sacrifice bounced to her feet with the agility of a forest doe and threw off her mud-colored cape. Previous sacrifices had come overwrapped in bothersome folds of skirts. This one wore precious little—all of it skintight.
Draknart narrowed his eyes and huffed, a slim trail of smoke rising from his nostrils. Smoke he hadn’t meant to release. He was old enough to know how to control his fire, dammit.
He blinked as the crown of hair on top of the lass’s head came undone from the tumbling. Her vibrant red braid swung low to a shapely arse. She was as boldly curvaceous as she was scandalously bare.
He cocked his head as he asked, “Have they run out of virgins at the village?”
She reached for her scabbard and drew a sword that suited her not—too large and heavy for a lass her size. Yet her movements were smooth and fluid, and she kept both h
ands on the hilt as if she meant to use the weapon. Her eyes were the color of amber and filled with fire. She kept her gaze on his, never removing it for a moment.
“They ran out of knights.” Her voice rang through the cave, the clear trill of the first bird greeting dawn in the forest.
Draknart had nothing against birds. He liked them just fine for a snack, enjoyed snatching them out of the air, liked how they darted this way and that, providing him with both entertainment and challenge. It’d been a while since he’d had either.
He measured up the heaps of leaves and debris stray winds had blown into the cave and wondered how long he’d been asleep this time. A few years. Not more than a decade. He smelled spring in the air, and the sweet scent of woman. The scent stirred his appetite. He licked his curved fangs. “There’s been a war, then?”
She nodded, grasping the sword hard enough to turn her small knuckles white.
“And drought?” he guessed as a raven called outside.
She shifted her gaze from him briefly to scan the terrain of the cave, much as a fighter would. “Flooding.”
Draknart gave a rumbling sigh. ’Twas only when life turned difficult in the valley that the villagers remembered the dragon in the hills. Depending on what new priest they had, they would either try to kill Draknart or appease him, convinced that once they’d done something to the dragon, everything would go back to being well fine.
“What’d be your name, then?” As the question hung in the air between them, he frowned. ’Twasn’t a question he normally asked a sacrifice.
She stalked closer, an odd thing to do for one of her kind. “I’m Einin of Downwood.”
Most maidens fainted right off at the sight of the dragon. The ones with sturdier constitutions shrieked a little first before folding. The truly extraordinary even got in a yard or two of running.