Page 2 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Celestina

“Vampires are conniving creatures. They’ll charm you. They’ll lure you with their honeyed words. You’ll feel safe with them when what they are really doing is cleverly springing a trap,” I would tell the four lively young princes under my care when I was a Queen’s Lady in the Kingdom of Earst. Ronald, Rupert, Ryan, and Robert loved to listen to tales of the cunning vampires that had reportedly hunted throughout the Jayden Continent. Only the princes’ mother, Queen Beatrice, could protect us from their bloodlust.

My days spent looking after the royal tots felt like a lifetime ago, instead of only a few weeks. Little did the queen know that when she’d enslaved me to the fearsome Beast of Fein, she’d inadvertently enslaved me to a warrior who was also a vampire prince.

Or perhaps she had known…

The queen had, after all, intended to use me as a weapon to destroy the mysterious Kingdom of Fein’s army.

I used to be a Queen’s Lady, and now I was a slave…and I was also a princess. A living contradiction. One in search of answers.

I hoped to find answers in an enemy kingdom located in the southern part of the continent. A dangerous undertaking, but traveling to that perilous land would be worth the risk if it meant I could stop a prediction given to me by an old seer—a vision warning me that all my newfound friends would suffer a fiery death. I would do anything, risk anything, to keep that horror from coming true, including doing something that felt rather reckless.

As the ship we were sailing in rocked on the swaying waves, I knelt on the bed in the vampire prince’s cabin and, as instructed, obediently held out my hands.

“Soren?” My voice squeaked as worry tingled the base of my spine. Allowing myself to be restrained didn’t seem wise. Not while alone with a vampire. Sure, I trusted him. Mostly . But still, it was impossible to completely erase a lifetime of being taught how conniving and dangerous vampires could be.

The corners of Soren’s green eyes crinkled. The gold flecks in them sparkled. He gave me a wicked look while his battle-roughened fingers moved quickly, looping a smooth rope around my wrists several times, binding them tightly together.

“Soren?” I repeated, a breathy whisper. My heart started to race when he tied a Tiburnian hitch knot that looked as if it would be impossible to undo. “I’m not sure about this.”

“Protests won’t help you. Not even that adorable frown that puts those tiny creases between your pretty brows won’t sway me,” his deep voice rumbled. “If you want to escape, you’ll need to do what I taught you.” He tugged at the rope to make sure the knots were secure before stretching my arms above my head. With a sinfully playful grin, he pushed me down onto my back on the shipboard bunk we’d been sharing. He followed, laying practically on top of me.

“You have five minutes to free yourself, Princess,” he purred against my lips as he fastened the ropes to a metal loop on the headboard. “If you fail, you’ll be at the mercy of my teeth and tongue until you’re screaming for me to stop.”

His sharp fangs scraped against my neck’s tender skin. I shivered and squirmed beneath him. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to win his game.

“This-this isn’t fair, Soren. You’re distracting me.”

“If you’re being held prisoner behind enemy lines, do you expect your captors to play fair?” He nibbled on my earlobe, making me squirm even more. “Do you think they’ll put you in a ‘distraction-free’ space so you can concentrate on nothing but escaping?”

Ever since we’d boarded his brother’s sleek spy schooner, sailing toward the Tiburnian Kingdom—the same kingdom that had attacked my homeland of Earst and had lured my parents into committing treason—Soren had made it his mission to instruct me on methods of defending myself.

Although he never voiced it, I could tell—in the careful way he watched my movements when he trained me in defense maneuvers and how he obsessively gave me advice—that he was deeply concerned about what might happen when we arrived in Tiburnia. Never offer information. Never let them see fear. Show your magic only if there is no other option.

My magic.

I still had a difficult time believing I possessed any kind of magic. In the Kingdom of Earst, only the female members of the royal family had access to magic. It was because of their biology. One had to be born into magic to be able to use it.

And yet, dragons used to live in the valley below Earst’s castle. And didn’t the storytellers always go on and on about how dragons were essentially the continent’s earliest and purest forms of magic?

So maybe what I’d been taught about life and magic in Earst had been wr—

Soren shifted lower on the bed. His tongue grazed the swell of one of my breasts. And even though I wore a thick, black tunic that was the standard uniform for his army, the pressure of his hot mouth had my back arching off the bed.

“So not fair,” I repeated, more breathless than annoyed. I tugged at the ropes binding my wrists. They were impossibly tight. There was no way I could twist out of them.

“I’m beginning to suspect I didn’t think this scenario through well enough. Goddess, Sky Girl, I want you to run out of time. I want to pleasure you while you’re helpless under me.” His voice sounded gruff. Obviously, he was feeling as affected by this game as I was. His fingers worked the knot on my legging’s ties. “And still”—his teeth pulled at my tunic’s fabric, giving my nipple a tug—“another part of me needs you to win.”

Liking the direction his lips were heading, I lifted my hips to make it easier for him to slide the leggings down to my ankles. My legs naturally dropped open.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking this training session seriously?” Soren scolded.

“Oh, I’m taking what’s about to happen very seriously…as I always do, my cruel prince.”

His grim expression lightened. He shook his head. “Sky Girl, your eagerness to have me explore your body is one of the reasons why I love you so much. But”—he playfully slapped my thigh—“I want you to focus on getting that knot loose. I need to know that you’ll be able to keep yourself safe when I’m not around.”

“I will focus. But maybe you should return your attention to distracting me, yeah?” I said, not stopping to wonder too hard why he thought he wouldn’t be around to protect me. What did he think was going to happen in Tiburnia?

Thankfully, the sight of Soren’s warrior body was enough to distract me from thinking too much about the future. Just running my gaze down the hard planes of his chest made my heart beat faster. His dark hair, slightly too long, hung loose around his face. And his eyes seemed to glow with desire. Desire for me. Being the sole focus of his intense concentration made tiny dragons flutter in my belly.

Gracious, I love him.

And I loved that he was steadily working that delicious mouth of his lower and lower on my body as he taunted and teased my sensitive skin with his lips. I needed…I needed…more.

I dug my fingers into his thick wavy hair.

He stilled.

Slowly, his head lifted, and his sultry gaze locked on to mine.

“You escaped,” his deep voice rumbled.

“Whoops.” I tried to slip my hands back into the ropes. But there wasn’t enough give in them to get both my hands secured again. “I’m still your captive.”

His gaze flipped to the impossible knot and back to me. “How?” His brows knitted. “How did you get loose so quickly? And without undoing the knot?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t really pay attention to what I was doing with my hands. My mind was on”—I sighed—“other parts of my body. I—I’ll try to get the knot undone, like you showed me, if you’ll keep up with the distractions.”

I wiggled my hips, attempting to draw his attention back down to where he had been heading.

“Magic?” he asked. “Did you use magic to free yourself?”

“I don’t have that kind of magic,” I reminded him. “My hands must be slippery from helping Patty in the kitchen.”

“It’s a galley,” he said, his eyebrows still knitted.

“What?” I wiggled my hips again, not ready to give up playing our game.

“The kitchen on a ship is called a galley,” he clarified.

“Whatever.” I wiggled more forcefully. Banging my hips against his chest. “I thought we were having a knot-untying lesson, not a lecture on nautical terms.” I’d lived my entire life within the walls of Earst’s castle. This was the first time I’d ever seen the sea or sailed on a ship. And as interesting as all that was, it wasn’t nearly as interesting as what he was about to do with those talented lips and teeth and tongue. “Sor-en,” I whined.

“Right.” His eyes darkened. “I do owe you a reward for getting your hands free, even if you didn’t untie the knot.” The timbre of his voice dipped nearly to a growl as he moved down toward the apex of my legs.

“Yesss,” I breathed with anticipation.

But before his tongue could get anywhere near where I wanted it to go, a loud knock sounded at the door.

“Go the fuck away!” Soren roared to the unlucky person on the other side of that door. Or vampire. It could have been a vampire who’d knocked.

“Can’t!” Gray shouted from the other side of the door. A human, then. Gray had been one of the King’s Guards assigned to protect Soren. He’d given up his post to follow Soren on this quest to find my parents.

A quest being undertaken without the king’s permission. In fact, the King’s Guards and Soren’s army had clashed as we’d escaped from Soren’s kingdom. Guilt over the deep rift I’d created between Soren and his father had threaded itself like a thorny vine into my soul. I owed Soren a great deal for helping me in my search for answers.

Gray banged on the door again. “Two ravens have arrived with letters for you. One of them is from the king.”

“He’s not going to go away,” I said, letting my head fall back onto the pillow.

“Sorry, Princess,” Soren whispered as Gray continued to bang his fist against the door. “He’s as tenacious as a burrowing worm.”

“Gah, I’ve heard of those. Don’t they burrow into your—?”

“They do.” Soren shuddered before pushing up to his knees. “Do you want to stay here? I could come right back to reward you for slipping out of those bindings.”

“I’ll come with you.” I slipped back into my leggings. I was curious about what the king—who had tried to use force to keep us from leaving—would have to say to his two wayward sons.

Gray led the way from the front of the ship to its aft. (I did sometimes listen to Soren’s nautical lectures.) As we stepped out onto the deck, the first thing I noticed was the icy shoreline that was now visible in the not-that-far distance.

“That’s your kingdom. That’s Earst, Princess,” Soren said as if he’d read my thoughts.

“Somewhere, much farther inland, would be Queen Beatrice’s castle, then.” I wondered about her young boys. I hoped they were safe. I also wondered about the queen and what she might be plotting now.

Would she still try to use me as a weapon against the Fein? She could. No matter how much I wished for the circumstances to be different, she still held power over me.

I headed toward the railing with my gaze fixed on that shoreline. Five days ago, Soren’s younger brother, Cullen, had taken two of his men in a small boat. They’d rowed through a storm toward Earst. And still hadn’t returned. The rest of Cullen’s crew had lowered the sails and slowed the ship’s progress south as they waited for Cullen and his men to rejoin us. How would such a tiny boat find us in the middle of such a large ocean?

“Caw! Caw!”

I whirled toward the bird’s angry cry to find a pair of ravens perched on the railing.

“Terrifying, aren’t they?” Gray said. Seeing him cower away from the birds struck me as funny coming from a hulking warrior who was just as tall as Soren, and a bit bulkier.

Granted, the ravens did appear to be larger than usual. One tilted its head left and right as it turned its gaze toward me. Trained ravens were the favorite method within the elite of society to send mail. The shiny black birds were also rumored to be used as spies. Of course, the owners of the ravens would have to possess some kind of magic that allowed them to communicate with the birds if they wanted to use them as spies. I wondered if Soren’s father had that ability. Had he sent the note as an excuse to see what his sons were up to?

Probably.

Raya, another one of the King’s Guards who had defected when we’d fled the Kingdom of Fein, sat perched on a barrel at the back of the ship. She jumped to her feet when she spotted Soren.

“I told Gray not to disturb your training session. I can’t imagine there’s anything so urgent in either letter that an hour or so delay would make a difference.” She glared at Gray.

The warrior gestured toward the large black birds. “The ravens looked like they would start pecking at us if we didn’t take the letters to him. It was an act of self-preservation, Soren. I swear it!”

The vampire prince gave a half-smile that revealed one of his fangs as he shook his head. Even though Gray and Raya had once been tasked with protecting Soren, the three of them had formed a close friendship over the years. Boundaries and lines of propriety that should have been followed between a crown prince and his underlings didn’t exist with these three.

Coming from Earst, where stepping a toe out of line meant having that toe literally chopped off, I found Raya and Gray’s behavior along with Soren’s response to them both terrifying and…well…well…wonderful. If someone had banged on Queen Beatrice’s door demanding she read a message, the queen would have immediately assembled her court to make a bloody spectacle out of them. And she’d have done it by slowly chopping off body parts.

Because she was fun like that.

Yikes. I used to think that kind of behavior was normal? The queen would tell us that her actions were necessary, that her brutality proved how strong a ruler she was.

The Fein—purportedly the most violent society in all the four kingdoms—however, viewed the queen’s actions as the behavior of an immature sovereign. From what I’d witnessed, the Fein treated their people fairly. And Soren, who was supposedly the most brutal Fein of them all, tolerated his friends’ teasing without ripping off anyone’s body parts and seemed to be genuinely loved by everyone who knew him.

Including me.

Raya scoffed before handing both letters to her commander. Soren frowned at the one from his father before shoving it into his pants pocket. The other letter, the one from his brother, he tore open. He arched an eyebrow as he read. It took a while for him to reach the end. We were all hovering, anxious to hear what his brother had been up to. From what I could see, his brother had used tight, tiny handwriting to cram as many words as possible onto the pages. Once Soren got to the bottom of the third piece of paper, he looked up at us.

“And?” Gray asked before I could.

“Cullen says he’ll meet us at the dock in Tiburnia.” He crumbled the pages of the letter and, still frowning, tossed the wadded ball over the railing and into the churning waters of the Winter Sea.

“What else did he say?” I asked. An uneasy feeling sank into my stomach as I watched the letter disappear beneath the waves. Why would he toss his brother’s letter into the water? And what did the letter say that had him looking upset?

“Nothing worth repeating.” Soren’s answer came with a shrug. “Cullen loves talking about his books and research.”

The clenching in my stomach eased…a bit. “I suppose,” I agreed.

“That boy is an even bigger bookworm than you are, Sky Girl,” Gray said, giving me a nudge.

A member of Cullen’s crew, who happened to be walking by at that moment, slowed his step. Besides being a scholar, Prince Cullen also ran his father’s spy network. All the members of this ship’s crew worked for Cullen. The crew, unlike Soren’s band of warrior friends, kept to themselves and only spoke with us when absolutely necessary.

To say they made me uneasy would be an understatement. Spending time in the company of those silent shipmen, with their ever-watching eyes, chilled me more than the frigid wind blowing off the icy waters.

The collar at my throat started to burn as the man continued to glare at Gray. Something bad was going to happen. Something the collar Queen Beatrice had secured around my neck seemed to blame me for.

“He was joking,” I said quietly to the collar, not nearly loud enough for anyone to hear me.

But even so, the crewman’s angry eyes jerked my direction. His lips tightened as he looked me over from head to toe.

I shivered even harder, before mentally giving myself a stern shake. I couldn’t let the crewmen intimidate me.

I was a princess now. Their princess.

With that in mind, I drew a slow, steady breath, lifted my chin, and glared right back at him.

“Is there something wrong?” Soren asked. He’d moved closer to me. His hand already on the hilt of the dagger he’d taken to wearing on his hip. We’d had too many close calls with Soren’s own warriors trying to break the unnatural hold they thought I held over Soren.

“I don’t know,” I answered, keeping my gaze locked on to the crewman. “Is there?”

“Driscoll?” Soren stepped in front of me. I didn’t mind his overprotectiveness. I had no desire to be the victim of another attack or spill any more of my blood. “ Is there a problem here?”

“No, General Kitmun.” Driscoll’s voice sounded oily. When we weren’t on Fein soil, everyone dropped Soren’s title of prince. Even when we were out to sea with no one within shouting distance, he was General Kitmun or simply Soren. “We should reach Tiburnia in two days. You may want to prepare your…bonded one…on what she might expect.”

“What might I expect?” I demanded of Driscoll as I brushed away a lizard that had been trying to crawl up my boot. Hordes of the little, green creatures had somehow sneaked on to the ship with us.

“We shouldn’t expect anything different than what we’ve encountered anywhere else we’ve been,” Soren was quick to answer.

“Violence and deceit, then.” Oh, goodie .

Still, something didn’t sit right. Why would Driscoll think I needed to know something specific about the Tiburnians? A sinking feeling of dread returned. Soren was keeping secrets from me.

He’d done it before. More than once.

I fisted my hands on my hips and put myself in front of my stubborn vampire prince, which meant I stood with my back to Driscoll. Not the smartest move. But I admit I don’t always make the best decisions when I’m about to lose my shit.

The collar around my neck sent a punishing pain down my spine. “Dammit.” I gritted through the pain. “What. Exactly . Should. I. Expect?” I managed to get out the words despite the metal collar threatening to cut off my air supply.

Soren put his hand on my shoulder. “Be calm, Celestina.”

His order struck like a thunderbolt. I jerked from its impact. My lips pressed together, and my gaze turned submissively down. At the same time, a large wave hit the side of the ship, sending me stumbling. My knees were on the verge of slamming against the ship’s wooden decking when Soren caught me around the waist.

“I didn’t mean that as an order!” Soren lifted me and made sure I had my feet under me. And even though I was no longer in danger of falling on my face, he kept his arms protectively wrapped around me as I reeled from the aftereffects of the collar’s agony. “Fuck!”

Driscoll, I noticed, had moved closer. He prodded the metal collar I wore with his slender forefinger. “So, this is Queen Beatrice’s magical slave collar? It appears quite effective at controlling your dr—”

“Celestina is not my slave nor mine to control through magical means. Queen Beatrice shouldn’t have punished her for crimes her parents committed. She’s my bonded partner. She’s my forever, and I’ll thank you not to go poking at her like she’s a thing,” Soren growled at the crewman.

Driscoll held up his hands. “I meant no disrespect. I was merely curious about the royal magic coming out of Earst.”

“You can assuage your curiosity without putting your hands on what’s mine.” Soren tightened his arms around me until my face was pressed up against his chest. His warm, solid chest. A splendid place to be.

Driscoll didn’t appear put off by Soren’s warnings, though he did keep his hands to himself. Wise man. “How much control do you think Queen Beatrice has over her actions? Can she send commands from afar?”

“We don’t know,” Gray said, easing himself between Driscoll and me. “All we know is that the damned collar sometimes acts on its own to punish our Sky Girl.”

“And there’s really no way of removing it?” Driscoll seemed determined to peer at me like I was an exhibit in a traveling menagerie. “Good god, the metal appears embedded in her skin.”

Raya, I noticed, had joined Gray. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the nosy crewman. “Anything involving the princess is on a need-to-know basis. And you, little man, do not need to know any of this. So, shoo.”

Raya, with her high cheekbones, dark skin, toned body, and long braided hair was equal parts stunningly beautiful and terrifying. Even so, Driscoll didn’t immediately leave. He seemed transfixed by the slave collar the queen had placed on me as a punishment. Raya took a menacing step toward him.

“I’m going,” Driscoll muttered before turning around and hurrying back the way he’d come.

Soren rubbed his hand up and down my back. “Forgive me?” he whispered.

“Always,” I said. I knew he hadn’t meant to trigger the collar. He hadn’t meant to command me to be calm. As the general of the entire Fein forces, giving orders was what came naturally to him. Thankfully, the effects of the collar’s punishment had already started to subside. My spine no longer felt like it needed to bow. And I could take a breath without my lungs burning as if they’d been stuffed with broken glass.

I wiggled out of the cradle of his arms. The cold sea air instantly chilled me. I hugged myself, while the rough waters drew me toward the ship’s railing. This was the Winter Sea. Thanks to strange currents swirling around the shore—currents that may have been influenced by magic—ice floated in the water beside our boat.

“There will be no reply to either letter,” Soren informed the ravens still perched on the opposite railing. I turned and watched as the large black birds seemed to nod in understanding. The larger of the two then glared at me with its eerie yellow eyes for several more moments before launching itself into the air. With its wings beating a quick tattoo and circling the ship, it gained enough height that it was not much more than a dark speck against the bright blue sky and then headed off toward the coast, toward Earst. I could see why Gray was wary around those winged beasts. They were creepy.

“Now, princess, should we get back to that reward I owe you?” Soren asked. He’d wrapped his arms around my shoulders and started walking back toward the cabins.

Part of me wanted to say no, wanted to deny him, wanted to stand my ground and urge my prince to talk about what else Cullen had written in his long letter and to also demand he tell me about what Driscoll thought I needed to know before we reached Tiburnia. I was tired of pretending that the secrets he kept placing between us didn’t matter.

But, heavens, denying him would also mean denying myself. And Soren knew how to tease pleasure from my body in a way that made my toes curl and my eyes roll back into my head. He nuzzled my neck.

Hmm…I liked that. I liked how he softened around me, how he snuggled against my body, reminding me of the furry little nennix monkeys huddling together in their cages at the traveling menagerie that would visit Earst every spring.

At the same time, Soren was still my dark, scary vampire that sent shivers down my spine. A vampire with fangs. Sure, being tied up and at a vampire’s mercy had terrified me. And yet, a twisted part of me liked the fear. Liked it perhaps too much.

“I wouldn’t mind feeling your fangs on my neck,” I murmured my confession.

He lifted his lips from where he’d been nuzzling me. His sultry green eyes searched mine for a moment. “Really?”

Ever since I’d learned that I’d been attacked and had nearly died because of a deceit he’d orchestrated, he’d stopped taking my blood. He hadn’t meant for me to be harmed. And he felt terribly guilty for it. So much so, he denied himself the power of my blood. “I’ve kind of missed it,” I wasn’t too proud to admit.

By the way he looked at me, you would have thought I’d just presented him with all the treasures on the continent. “I—” He framed my face with his strong hands and kissed me with enough passion that it took my breath away. “You, Sky Girl, make me want to slay wild beasts for you.” He gave me another long, drugging kiss. “I thank all the bad circumstances that sent me to Earst. Because without them, you would have never ended up in my life.”

He scooped me up into his arms and started running toward our cabin. Laughing, I let him.

Still, no matter how well his skills in the bedroom distracted me, I knew I’d no longer let him keep his secrets. Not anymore. There were too many now. Like termites in wood, they were starting to break down our relationship.

But…

After…

I’d ask him all the hard questions after he fulfilled his part of the bargain. For now, though, I simply wanted him hard.