Page 10 of Shards of Desire (Dragons of Sin)

Chapter Nine

SIYANA

As the warm, buttery goodness of the danish I’d chosen flooded my senses, the large double doors to the dining hall burst open, startling me. I’d had four already and was very much looking forward to a few more.

Theo stormed in, interrupting the question Lucius had been asking me about our food supply dwindling in recent years. I paused in my efforts to stuff myself painfully full of food.

“Morning, Theo!” Lucius called out, “I thought we?—”

“I told you to wait for me!” Theo yelled, his voice booming through the empty room and cutting Lucius off. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to have any staff here, or else they would probably be wishing to be in any other area of the castle right about now, just as I was.

Shrugging in response as he drew close to me, I lifted the danish back to my mouth and took a bite. In my plan, I knew this would rile him up, but I never imagined it would pull this level of animosity from him.

His chest heaved with the ragged, deep breaths that filled the air around me as he closed in on my location. As I swallowed, his hand came flying out to smack the food from my grasp, knocking it to the ground.

“Hey, I worked hard on those,” Lucius rumbled dejectedly from the other side of the oak table.

“Get out,” Theo seethed in response to Lucius, unable to look back at the other drackya. No, his venomous gaze was meant for me alone to bear the brunt of his anger.

“Real mature,” I muttered, glancing down at my fallen food. “Are you going to pick that up? Because I’m absolutely not, nor is Lucius.”

Lucius' chair scraped against the floor as he let out a sigh and left the table, muttering, “Please leave me out of this,” before the gentle groan of the doors closing sounded behind him.

A part of me felt really awful now for what I did. He hadn’t known that Theo had told me to stay and wait for him, and clearly it was going to cause a big problem. It seemed I didn’t know the depths of my husband’s anger issues like I thought I did. This should have been a harmless decision that mildly irked him and made him call me a wench.

As my eyes lifted all the way up to the towering drackya standing at my side, the war I saw in his gaze was unnerving. Not because he was angry—that I was accustomed to already. Even his annoyance was dismissible. It was the way he seemed to be looking over every inch of me that he could see with me seated, as if he was concerned for my well-being, that caused me pause.

“Theo, I?—”

He cut me off, yanking me to my feet, causing my chair to clatter to the ground behind me. I didn’t have time to breathe before his hands were on me, running the length of my arms as if the thin material of the dress sleeves covering me hid a plethora of new wounds from him.

“Theo—”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

That was the perfect time to call me a wench, yet he abstained. This didn’t bode well. He was truly furious.

His words were as harsh as his hands that traveled down to my waist and spun me around, continuing his inspection.

I whirled around, batting his hands off of me. “Stop it! I’m fine!”

His voice was thunderous as he roared, “Your well-being is my job as your husband, but how am I supposed to uphold that duty when you defy my direct orders, ones that are given to you to keep you safe in a land you don’t understand?”

The irony wasn’t lost on me, and a peel of laughter came from me as I threw my hands in the air. “That’s rich, coming from the very person who didn’t take into account my needs while traveling all day and night yesterday through the first winter storm of the season, that you supposedly knew was coming,” I paused to take in a deep breath before continuing. “No carriage, no blanket, no cloak, not even any food or water! I almost died because of you! Now all of a sudden, when I’m in the safety of the castle’s walls, with a dress lined with fur to keep me warm and food in my belly, suddenly I’m in danger enough to elicit this response?”

His lips thinned as he nodded and took a breath, seeming to deflate with my accusations.

“My actions are regrettable and showed me why none of your missing citizens ever returned. I might have made an error in judgment for your ability to survive in the wilderness alone. I will not do that again.”

His words were like the rush of cold water that had flown from the bath in my chambers, chilling me instantly.

“What do you mean why none of our missing citizens ever returned ?”

It was a hard turn in conversation, making the previous focus seem completely trivial now.

He ran a hand along his jaw, rubbing as he answered, “During our discussions for a treaty, your father mentioned none of the women my dragons stole came back. What he, and all of you don’t know, is that after they failed to complete a mating bond, if the women survived that, I ensured they were given their freedom to return.”

I stared at him, mouth agape at the stream of information hitting me all at once. Blinking rapidly, I lifted one hand for him to pause. “You’re telling me that dragons were stealing our citizens in hopes to mate, and if they failed to do so, some of them didn’t make it out alive?”

The screams I’d heard last night echoed through my mind, haunting me. Could that have been Leah? Even if it wasn’t someone I knew, if they were a human, they were my citizens to protect–to stand up for.

He nodded, emotionless now, compared to just minutes before. “Yes. Sometimes dragons cannot handle the rejection from their soulmate. It blinds them with rage, because the bond can only be attempted once. If their mate denies them, they are now forced to live the rest of their days unmated. If it isn’t their true mate that denies them, the humans are simply left alone in our lands by the dragon that brought them here in hopes of mating. That is when I’m alerted and ensure they get to the border of our lands without further issue.”

Despair rolled through me as I thought of those poor women, slaughtered by the dragons that were supposed to be the ones who held them most dear, if the stories of fated mates were true. All because of this curse causing humans to be scared and repulsed. They’d stood before those beasts, torn away from their families and partners, and of no fault of their own saw the jaws of death coming for them. They’d never stood a chance.

Leah.

How could he allow them to do this, knowing many had been killed, and that surely even more would be if the dragons were permitted to continue coming to pluck them from our lands?

I took a steadying breath as tears began to prick at my eyes, fighting the rage simmering within my belly enough to speak. “And if they survived that, you just sent them on their way to make that trek back to us? With no horse, no supplies, no anything? I just want to make sure I’m understanding your level of cruelty and carelessness at the expense of these women's lives.”

He had the decency to look chagrined for a second before his head shook, clearing that from his face as he glowered. “How did you turn this into an interrogation of me ensuring other women’s safety, when you clearly don’t care about your own?”

I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down as I tried to find the words. “I’m only here in hopes that this marriage will allow me to help my people, Theo. Yet here I am, finding out I can’t help any of the women who were unjustly ripped from their lives…” My voice cracked, “They’re all gone. Hundreds of women. A woman who worked in my castle that I knew was taken just yesterday! How do I even know if she’s made it to today?”

“I want you to focus on the fact that you can still help those that remain in your lands,” he murmured softly, like he knew I was seconds away from exploding. “Think of the thousands you’ll save if you help me break this curse. I clearly can’t do it alone. The drackya are becoming harder to keep in line with each passing month–they are unsettled and distressed at the prospect of being alone while their mate is elsewhere, unclaimed.” His chest expanded as he took a deep breath and looked at the floor before blowing it out. “It doesn’t help that they hate me and the rumblings of a mutiny are beginning to stir. If we want to fix this, we have to act soon.”

I had so many questions about the information he’d revealed to me, but I couldn’t settle my racing pulse and thoughts enough to sort through it.

“I want to know about Leah,” I demanded, “and I want to put an end to this. I want to know what you are doing to seek justice for the lives of my people that have been lost.”

He stared at me, open-mouthed, as if it was preposterous to seek reparations. “What is it that you would have me do? They’re beasts, Siyana. Don’t let our human forms fool you.”

A deranged laugh peeled out of me. “You think I’m not keenly aware of that? That we are just playthings for your people to pluck from our lives and discard or kill, if they don’t achieve their desired results? This is not okay!”

His lips thinned and my nostrils flared in this standoff.

“They deserve to die,” I whispered, uncaring of how callous I sounded. “A life for a life.”

As his head reared back, I raised an eyebrow. “Tell me how else justice can be achieved, oh great king .” I all but spat the title, mocking and making clear that he was not deserving of the honorific in the slightest.

His tone was much more even than my own as he responded, “I would have you wait to make such demands until we’ve broken this curse. To let us have a chance to repair what has been damaged between our people, without spilling more blood. It is not the answer.”

There was a disgust deep within his eyes, and for some reason it hit me square in the chest. I was demanding people be killed. In such little time here, I’d suggested death as an adequate solution. Was there something in the air here that lent to such barbarous thoughts?

I hated to admit that the beastly king was more rational than me in this moment. That wasn’t me. Nor could I allow it to become who I was. I wasn't a judge, jury, and executioner. I simply wanted to be the voice for my people, to ensure I found a path to a peaceful existence between our kinds.

“I can admit my hasty suggestion may have been made from the deep well of pain within me–pain that comes from the loss of my people. I’m aware that violence, the practice of an eye-for-an-eye, isn’t the answer. I want you to promise that we will return to this conversation and seek justice for my people once the curse has been broken. I will stand for nothing less.”

His head tilted as he regarded me, his dragon eye’s pupil dilating with my words. “You have my word.”

Despite not knowing if his word meant anything at all, I did know I wasn’t in the position to be making demands, considering I’d been brought here as a pawn. I needed to play a long game of chess, to ensure I could truly help my people in the end.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to switch to the other issue that we should be able to settle with ease in comparison. “Lucius is clearly your friend or you would have harmed him, or at least reamed him out instead of me just now. All he did was show me the path to get food. You need to calm down. I already told you I wouldn’t be controlled by you, and that includes being sequestered in a room.”

“Calm down?” he parroted, mocking me as his voice dipped and a single brow rose. “You understand so little of my world, just as I do of yours, and you just placed a life outside of your own at risk as well. Climb down from your pedestal of superiority.”

He crowded me, making me take several steps back until my back hit the stone wall harshly. His forearms came to rest on either side of my head, caging me in with his larger frame as he stared intently into my eyes.

“I went to your room and couldn’t find you anywhere,” he bit out. “A fragile human, lost and wandering around a land that’s equipped and ready to kill her at every corner, and to make matters worse, another dragon’s scent was mixed in with your own.”

I opened my mouth, ready to argue once again that it was just Lucius, but his large hand clamped over my lips, stopping me. I let my unbridled fury shine in my eyes as I glared up at him and resisted the urge to knee him in the balls—for now.

“You had a choice,” he murmured, lowering his head to run his nose along my neck. I resisted the urge to move, feeling like prey caught in the teeth of a predator. One wrong move and they’d snap. His breath tickled my skin as he inhaled deeply and let it out. “And you didn’t choose me.”

The weight of his choice of particular words hit me.

Had I…hurt his feelings? The very drackya who seemed to despise my existence other than the fact that I lived to serve a purpose for him.

“You’re supposed to choose me .”

I floundered, my mouth opening and closing repeatedly as he straightened back to his full height and dropped his hand to his side. There was a modicum of vulnerability in that statement, but when I didn’t respond quickly enough, he whirled around, leaving me breathless with the rapid change of topic throughout this conversation.

“My dragon sees you as our wife, in every sense of the word,” he explained with a gruff tone, keeping his back to me. “Even if I know it is an empty marriage to unite our people once more, in an effort to cease rebellions from stirring on both of our sides, he doesn’t. He will kill Lucius if he continues to scent him on you.”

A small gasp escaped me as I thought of his large dragon tearing into Lucius. While I knew the latter had his own dragon form, since I hadn’t seen it yet, my mind still couldn’t picture him as anything other than a frail human against Theo’s beast.

Theo continued on, like he hadn’t just spoken of such horrific brutality against a loved one, “My focus is firmly on finding a way to break the curse, but to do that I need you to listen to me, so I don’t have to worry about you staying alive while you’re here. I’ve already had to dismiss the majority of my castle staff to aid in that.”

I was shocked to my core at everything he said since he’d stormed into this room. There was no space in my head to even be angry at his barbaric display of trying to claim me.

He walked toward the door, the soles of his boots echoing throughout the now-empty room. “Finish eating and I will be back in ten minutes to collect you and give you a tour of the castle, so that Lucius has no need to escort you anywhere, even if you don’t wish for me to be with you.”

As he left the room and let the doors thud closed behind him with a bang, I found myself slumping against the wall and sliding down until my ass hit the floor. Throwing my arms around my legs, I let my head fall onto my knees as I took deep, steadying breaths.

All of our missing women were dead.

The beast within Theo was incredibly real, and apparently thirsty for blood when it came to me.

We still had no clue how to break the curse.

Is there a way to prevent any of it?

“Yes,” Theo spoke into my mind, startling me so much that my head reared back and clipped the stone wall, making my vision swim with spots and a dull ache to throb in my ears. I groaned as his thoughts bombarded me. “But that requires us to complete the mating bond, so that my dragon no longer feels threatened by other unmated dragons being near you. Now put your shield back in place. If I can break through so easily, so can others.”

I slammed the imaginary ice wall back into place and let my head fall back to my knees as I rubbed the back of my skull.

What had I gotten myself into?