Page 1 of Storm of Blood and Shadow (Merciless Dragons #3)

The troupe leader rushes into our rehearsal room as I’m applying a thin layer of tinted cream to the bruises on my right arm.

“The Queen is calling for us,” he says, breathless. “Quickly, everyone.”

“Shit,” I hiss, snatching up the strip of cloth I’ve been using to bind my ankle. I injured it a week ago, but I can’t risk taking time off from the royal dance troupe to let it heal.

The troupe leader, Avrix, hears me curse and comes over. “Do you need help with that, Jessiva?”

“Please.” I hold out my foot, and Avrix kneels and begins to wrap the bandage tightly. He’s manifesting a male aspect today, though sometimes he prefers to appear as female . Perfume wafts from his wavy hair—sandalwood and vanilla, a familiar scent that soothes my tension a little.

Avrix has been my friend ever since I auditioned for the palace troupe and secured a coveted spot, one that dozens of girls would sell their souls to possess. Perhaps I sold a few pieces of mine to obtain it.

With a final tuck and tug to secure the bandage, Avrix looks up at me, concern in his eyes. “Be honest. Can you perform tonight?”

“I can.”

“Good. She loves you.”

I don’t argue the point. He’s partly right—I’ve been one of the Queen’s favorite dancers for several years, during which time I’ve enjoyed good pay and plenty of additional benefits, like attending royal balls and parties. But since our kingdom’s conflict with Vohrain began, the pay and the parties have decreased to a mere trickle. And as my career has faltered, I have gained more responsibilities and dependents thanks to the ravages of war.

My ankle hurts, but backing out of this performance isn’t an option. If I don’t dance, I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, my family doesn’t eat. The rent for our shabby apartment is already overdue.

Avrix rises and claps his hands. “With me, everyone. Hurry, hurry.”

There’s a storm of perfume being spritzed, feet being tucked into dance slippers, ribbons being tightened, fingers driving pins deeper into hairdos. Then we’re out the door, prancing down the hallway and up the stairs as quickly and gracefully as we can, a row of pretty birds in scanty, fluttering clothes.

To look at us, one would never guess that this kingdom is at the bitter end of a long and terrible war, one that has cost countless lives and nearly all our resources. Earlier today I heard that the fortress city of Guilhorn is under attack by King Rahzien and his army from the northern kingdom of Vohrain.

Ever since Vohrain allied with the dragons from the isle of Ouroskelle, our cities have been falling to the enemy, one by one. Guilhorn won’t be the exception. It will probably fall tonight.

And while that stronghold collapses, my fellow dancers and I will be entertaining the Queen. She often calls for us while she’s eating dinner. Sometimes we’re summoned afterward, when she’s reclining in her private salon with a glass of wine. Tonight she’s in the salon, but her glass holds amber-colored rum, and she’s prowling behind the sofa instead of sitting on it.

The Queen of Elekstan is always perfectly coiffed, wearing a sumptuous gown, but as we enter, I can’t help noticing the limp state of her dress, stained under the arms as if she’s been sweating. Strands of hair straggle around her face, escaped from her upswept hairstyle. The black makeup lining her sharp eyes is smudged.

She taps ringed fingers impatiently against her glass while the other dancers and I line up. Five court musicians file into the corner of the room, tune briefly together, and then begin playing the music.

As one of the most experienced and skilled dancers in the troupe, I’m on Avrix’s left, in the front row. There are thirteen of us tonight, moving in perfect sync, limbs stretching and bodies swaying with the current of the music.

My ankle twinges sharply, and the smile on my face falters for a second. I feel the quiver of my mouth, the tension around my eyes.

At that moment, my gaze locks with the Queen’s.

She’s watching me with vicious and calculating disapproval. I force a more brilliant smile and keep dancing, but I can’t lose myself in the flow of the music like I used to. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the magic of movement in my soul. That’s what happens when you practice every day for hours, only to be summoned abruptly to entertain someone who barely pays attention and rarely allows you to finish a full performance. I can’t recall how long it’s been since I danced a full program for an actual audience.

The incandescent delight of dance is a thing of the past for me. I have no joy in it anymore.

If I’m honest, I find little joy in any part of my life.

Still eyeing me, the Queen snaps her fingers to one of her servants, then points in my direction. She speaks loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. “The redhead is getting too old. I don’t want dancers who look depressed and half-dead. I need youth, beauty, vitality. Get her out of my sight.”

Each word is a heavy stone falling onto my bones, breaking them, crushing me under a weight I’m not strong enough to lift.

I let my arms fall to my sides and stand still, facing the Queen. She’s turning away, speaking to a messenger who just entered the salon through a side door.

In a few curt sentences, she dispensed with my devoted service and soured the compliments she has paid me over the years, which I’ve hoarded in my heart like precious treasures and used as my inspiration.

She’s done with me. The kingdom is dying, she is losing the war, and I am just a reminder of that loss, that failure, that downward slope to the end of everything.

The other members of my troupe keep dancing. They have to, or they risk being dismissed as well. I don’t blame them for it… and yet it hurts when they don’t offer one look or one word of support, even though we’ve spent most of our waking hours together for years.

My head accepts the finality of it, the doleful truth. But my heart is sore, and every breath hurts.

The servant who was tasked with my dismissal beckons to me, and I follow her to the door. As I’m ushered into the hallway, I turn and grip her sleeve, desperation in my voice. “Will I be paid for today?”

“You’ve been dismissed,” says the servant tonelessly.

“Please. I need the money. There are children I’m responsible for.”

She yanks her arm away. “Should I have the guards escort you out?”

“No.” I swallow and back up a step. The servant gives me a disdainful look and re-enters the salon.

I keep my spine straight as I walk through the palace. My ankle aches, but I refuse to limp, to show weakness. Back in the rehearsal room, I tear off the scanty silk costume, shove the scraps into my bag, and pull on a simple dress with a scooped neckline. Spring is here, but the nights are still cold, so I wrap myself in the thin coat I usually wear to work.

Hitching my bag onto my shoulder, I pause in front of the wall of mirrors.

I’m too thin, my upper ribs and breastbone visible through the V-shaped opening of the coat. My red hair is thinner than it used to be, though I try to disguise the fact when I style it. Despite the makeup I’m wearing, there are shadows under my eyes, hollows in my cheeks.

I look weary, unhealthy, worn down to bones.

Too old. Depressed and half-dead, in the words of our illustrious Queen.

I peel off my dance slippers and tuck them into the bag as well. My town shoes wait on one of the low shelves by the door. They’re as worn as everything else I own.

When I first started with the royal troupe, I rented a couple of pretty rooms in a clean, spacious building not far from the palace grounds. I managed to keep those rooms for a long time, even as I sent increasingly large sums of money to my family. Eventually, their demands thinned out my compensation, and then my brother Bryon, my sister Ethalie, her mother-in-law, her husband Loram, and their two children came to the city with no advance notice, asking to live with me. Now we’re all crammed into musty quarters on the first floor of a dilapidated tenement building near the outer wall.

My ankle won’t hold up if I try walking that distance, and I don’t have money for a carriage, a cab, or even one of the barrow-carts pedaled through the city streets by grimy boys. I could wait in the rehearsal room and ask one of the other dancers for a ride home, yet my pride won’t let me linger. I don’t want to face any of them right now.

I’d rather not go home, either. Not empty-handed, anyway.

Bryon and Loram used to make half-hearted attempts to find work. They would take on odd jobs together, then spend most of what they made in a dice hall, drinking and gambling. But neither of them have tried to secure employment since the war began, claiming that they fear conscription into the Queen’s army. Instead they hide in the house, placing endless wagers on games of dice and cards, feeding each other’s obsession. Ethalie serves them meekly, giving them and her mother-in-law most of the food, barely saving enough for herself and the children.

Half of the meager pay I earned today would have gone to our landlady, to convince her to hold off on evicting us. The other half would have been spent at the market, purchasing food which, if we doled it out carefully, should’ve lasted a week —although thanks to the gluttonous adults I live with, it would have been gone much faster.

Without my pay, I’ll have nothing to stave off the landlady. Nothing to feed the little ones. And when my brother finds out there’s no money for drink, he’ll add more bruises like the ones on my arm.

Bryon doesn’t strike or beat me and Ethalie, but he still delivers the same vindictive pinches he used to inflict on us when we were children. He does it with a half-vicious, half-playful smile, and if I rebuke him for it, he pretends he was only teasing and that I’m the asshole for not being able to take a joke.

I’ve learned the hard way that yelling at him and my brother-in-law doesn’t work. They refuse to earn their keep, and I can’t physically force them out of the apartment. My sister claims that her role as a woman is to remain at home—a mindset encouraged by her useless husband. And her mother-in-law claims to be unable to work, though she has no trouble joining the men in their drink and gambling games each evening.

I’d have left them all behind long ago if it weren’t for the children—my nephew Lark and my niece Miri. I have to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. No one else will.

I can’t return with nothing. Yet in a city beaten down by the terrors and sorrows of war, few people have a coin to spare; and with my limited skill set, I can only think of one way to secure money quickly.

Lord Neran lives near the palace, not far from the building where I used to live in happier days. I can manage to walk there.

I hunch into my coat as I leave the palace, avoiding the torchlight in the courtyard, slinking out through the gate after showing the guards my papers. During the walk to Lord Neran’s house, I favor my ankle as much as I can. Tomorrow I’ll need to look for other work, and I need to appear as healthy as possible to any potential employers.

I put myself in this situation. I believed the living arrangements with my family would be temporary, believed the war would be over quickly and the good times would return, believed Bryon and Loram would stop feeding off each other’s bad habits and become useful, hard-working adults. I believed my sister would find the strength to stand up for herself and her children. I believed in the innate goodness of people. A ridiculously naive kind of faith.

And now I’m trapped in a cycle of endless, devastating disappointment, going through the motions with the troupe, fighting to keep a roof over my family’s heads and food in the mouths of two children who lack a proper education and seem to grow out of their clothes weekly.

I’m exhausted. I’m twenty-eight, but I feel twenty years older than that.

Approaching the gated courtyard of Lord Neran’s house, I’m painfully conscious of how worn and thin my once-fine coat is, wretchedly aware that I don’t look like the healthy, glowing dancer he has tried to seduce on multiple occasions.

Setting down my bag, I take the pins out of my hair and shake out the scarlet locks, hoping they don’t look too flat or too greasy at the roots. Water is something we have to ration at home. I can’t remember the last time I had a hot bath all to myself, rather than reusing the tepid bathwater in which least three family members have already bathed.

I ring the bell on the gate, and within moments Lord Neran’s butler appears.

“I’m Jessiva, of the Queen’s dance troupe,” I tell him. “I’m here to see Lord Neran. He gave me an open invitation.”

“Of course. Do come in.” The butler opens the gate and leads the way into the house, guiding me into a richly furnished library with a low, cracking fire and plush, velvety couches. “Wait here, please.”

When he leaves, I drop my bag behind a chair and sink onto one of the couches, sighing with relief as I take the weight off my ankle. I lay my coat aside and drape myself across the sofa, tugging my neckline lower to reveal more cleavage.

Lord Neran has made it clear on several occasions that he would pay well for the pleasure of my company. I only hope he hasn’t changed his mind.

Footsteps come from outside the room, and he enters, his ponderous frame shrouded in a purple robe. Watery eyes blink at me from a face rendered puffy and florid by a life of overindulgence.

“Miss Jessiva!” He grins, showing stained, crooked teeth. “This is a delightful surprise.”

I rise, smiling, and bend low to kiss his plump hand. “Are you well, my lord?”

“Well enough, well enough. If anyone can be well in these troubled times.” A shadow crosses his face. “Please tell me that I’ve had one piece of luck, and that you are finally ready to dance for me.”

“Yes, my lord.” I dip a curtsy. “I will dance… and more.”

He looks at me shrewdly. “For a price, I assume.”

“My lord…” I hesitate, unsure how to proceed, what to say. Blood burns in my cheeks.

“Don’t be embarrassed, my dear,” says Lord Neran. “As a beautiful and talented royal dancer, I recognize that your time and services are valuable. You could spend your evening with any number of wealthy men, and I’m honored that you’ve chosen me.”

It’s part truth, part flattery. Some of the nobility have already fled south, while others have gone off to war. Some, like him, have remained close to the Queen and fortified their homes, hoping to ride out the conflict. When it comes to rich men willing to pay for sex, my options are more limited than they once were.

I used to get such offers frequently, but I refused them all. I accepted gifts from my admirers, but I never yielded my body to them in exchange. When I did sleep with someone, it was always a man I sought out myself, not someone who craved me as a trophy.

Back then, life was an open market, a colorful array of dazzling possibilities. I had power and choices.

I lick my dry lips and smile at Lord Neran again. “The honor is mine, my lord.”

A lecherous hunger shines in his eyes. “Come, my dear. We’ll go upstairs and discuss the details. Tell me, are you willing to… swallow?”

I reply without hesitation. “For an extra fee, yes.”