Page 3 of The Dragon Queen #3

“Look…” Ged said as we walked upstairs and down the hall to the dressmakers. “This is all my fault, that’s what I’ll tell the prince… king.”

Males are protective , Glimmer said, drawing closer. It is in their nature, but it is ours to lead.

“What is your fault, exactly?” I asked, pitching my voice low as maids walked past.

Each one was dressed in perfect white dresses, mob caps covering their hair. They bobbed us small curtseys as we passed, something that had me nodding as we moved past. I wanted to be polite, but couldn’t help but search each girl’s face. Which of them were here because they were loyal to the throne and which were selling information to Marcus?

“That…” His hands rose, but he was forced to shove them down again as a footman passed by. “You walked into that situation unprepared. It makes sense that it went as badly as it did.”

I jerked back as if stung, blinking as I stared into his eyes.

“Badly…? I know I’m not exactly schooled in the art of being a queen. I assume Raina had quite the apprenticeship and moved into the position as if born to it, but?— ”

“Your Highness.” A woman in a beautiful gown appeared in the doorway, dropping a deep curtsey, but it was the pin cushion strapped to her wrist that let me know who she was. “You’re here for your fitting? Please come in.”

“I need to go and see Draven.” Ged shook his head slowly. “Let him know that the traitors weren’t the only ones stealing dragons last night. You and the little queen, you’ll be safe here.”

I didn’t get a chance to argue. He waved a couple of guards over, reassigning them to my door before striding off down the hall.

Hours later, I was perched upon a stool, my bare feet clinging to the wooden surface. It felt too small and too rickety to support my weight. This was made worse by the fact that each time I flexed my thighs to get a better grip, the seamstress hissed in disapproval. She couldn’t say anything, because her mouth was filled with the pins she was using to shape lengths of golden satin to my body. Her displeasure was plain, though. That was fine, because I was feeling similarly unhappy with this state of affairs. I’d worn dresses because I needed to when attending the queen’s ball, and again when we’d had dinner with the rebel dukes, so I could be forgiven for not finding the process of having another dress made for me a pleasant one.

“Where is she?” a masculine voice called from outside the room, the seamstress and I turning at the muffled sound. A low, feminine voice offered an explanation, but whoever he was, he wasn’t satisfied with it. The door to the room was wrenched open and a maid and Flynn stumbled inside, both of them stopping dead still to stare up at me.

We were utterly doomed.

Draven was sure we could hide the nature of our relationship from the court and the people, but one look from Flynn made a lie of that. Those bright blue eyes burned into mine with a fire that rivalled Cloudy’s. The seamstress spat out the pins and I felt every single one of them fall onto the soft carpet.

“You can’t be in here! The queen-in-waiting is not decent. ”

“Your Grace…” the maid said with a sharp look at the seamstress, and it felt like those two words stabbed into me like the pins had all morning.

Flynn was not yet confirmed in his position, but it was only a matter of time before he would be installed as Duke of Skane. Draven would not be able to resist having a sympathetic lord of one of the largest duchies in Nevermere, especially with the Duke of Harlston marshalling his forces at the border.

“I understand that you wish to speak most urgently with the queen-in-waiting, but if you’d just allow her the time to dress,” the maid said in a low but urgent tone.

He wouldn’t, I knew that, and so did he. Those blue eyes glittered with a dangerous light, those full lips twitching as he took the mess of the room in.

“Thank you for your counsel…” He turned to the maid and she bobbed a curtsey.

“Laurel, Your Grace.”

“Laurel, but before Pippin was the queen-in-waiting, she was my wingmate. There’s no need to be concerned for the queen’s welfare.” He nodded to me, a rakish smile starting to spread. “We’ve had to strip down and wash in rivers, scramble to find our uniforms when the sergeant wakes us up in the morning.” He winked at me. “There’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Laurel did not want to accept this answer, I saw that in the way her hands twisted in her apron, the seamstress looking at Flynn like he was a wild animal let loose in the castle. But if he was an animal, he was a lion, golden, beautiful, and intent on getting exactly what he wanted.

“Leave us.”

If I’d ever doubted that he was a duke’s son, I didn’t now. That note of command, used without raising his voice for a second, was one that could only come from someone raised to expect to rule over others. The two women curtseyed again, then rushed out the door. I shook my head when it shut with a click before jumping down from the stool.

“You know they’re going to go running down to the kitchens to gossip about what they’ve just seen,” I said with a sigh. “The story would’ve changed to me tearing the dress away to reveal my adulterous body to your licentious eyes before noon.”

“Mm…” Flynn prowled closer, running a hand down the line of pins on one side of my body. “I do like the sound of that.”

“Flynn…”

He plucked one pin out, tossing it aside to join the others, then another.

“You say my name like that, right before you’re about to reach your peak, you know.” His voice was a lion’s purr.

“Flynn, we can’t…”

I tried to bat his hands away, but as soon as I raised one, his fingers were wound between mine, grabbing hold as the other hand took up the work, unpinning me slowly.

“Flynn, Draven needs?—”

My lover went perfectly still then, closing his eyes and letting out his own sigh.

“You belong to me as much as you do to him,” he said. “More so. I didn’t play at hating you. I didn’t hurt you, reject you.” His eyes flicked up to bore into mine. “I’d walk away from all this for you.”

“I know.” I smiled, but it was a painful thing, because what else could I do? All this bloody longing and we still hadn’t resolved things in a way that let us love openly and that broke my heart every day. “And that’s why I love you the best.”

He scooped me up then, ignoring my yelp and carrying me over to a nearby windowsill, setting me on the window seat, disregarding the heinous cost of all this rich fabric by trying to rake up my skirts. When that failed, he yanked the fabric free of my body, leaving me naked and ready to ravish. But he didn’t, not yet and damn me, right when I was supposed to push him away and try to maintain decorum, I pulled him closer.

“You’re lying to me,” he growled, but that didn’t stop him from standing between my legs. “You shouldn’t be, but you are.” His hand slid between my thighs, his fingers finding the slickness there, slipping into it before piercing me through, right as his gaze did the same. “I’ll do anything to keep you by my side, Pippin. Anything. ”

He pulled his glistening fingers free, rubbing them over his lips until they shone too, then he licked them clean.

“To hear your voice.” I could smell myself upon his breath as he moved closer, his lips hanging over mine. “To feel you lying beside me. To hold you close.”

He jerked me nearer, my legs wrapping around his waist. I could feel the cold leather of his uniform against my most tender flesh, and somehow that strange juxtaposition seemed right. He was armoured, ready for battle, where I was naked, shivering and open to everything.

“I spend my days thinking about being inside you, because when I am, I feel like I’ve finally pinned you down, tied you to me in a way you can’t escape. Tell me you want children.”

“Children?”

I felt like someone had doused me with a bucket of cold water to wake me from the spell I was falling under.

“I dream about it sometimes, when my guard is down, of you swollen with my child. It’s a terribly selfish thing, of course, to want to have children in a time of war, but…” His hands went to the ties of his pants, but mine were there before him, delving in, the two of us hissing as we felt how achingly hard he was. “You’d never be free of me if you were the mother of my child.”

“I won’t ever be, even if I bear no child,” I whispered back.

This was madness, pure heated madness, but that’s what we were driven to by Draven’s master plan. He was used to only taking judicious sips from the cup of our relationship, maintaining control at all times, but we weren’t courtly creatures. Flynn had opted to be a dragon rider to get the hell away from court machinations, having no head for it. I kissed him then, tasting myself on his lips, remembering the way he’d woken me up this morning, my arms wrapping around his neck.

“Flynn…” I hissed.

“I know, love. I know.” There was the furtive scrabble to free his hard length, then that first blessed brush as he spread my wetness across the crown, right before he pushed inside me. “Need this.”

That’s when his smile faded, when the mask he was forced to wear at court, as a rider in the corp, was set aside. When I saw the real Flynn beneath it all. Pain, so much pain raged there, some caused by our frantic joining, but so much more besides. I knew then why he was here, why he sought me out. He could have slunk away from the war council and into a pub, drinking until he couldn’t stand. He could’ve jumped on Glacier’s back and ridden as far as his dragon could manage. Instead, he came to me. Draven had lost his parents, his brother, so he should’ve been the perfect person for Flynn to confide in, but right now my princely lover was more king than man.

“Need you, Pippin.”

That short admission revealed so much more. He stared into my eyes, willing me to understand, and I nodded, my arms wrapping around his shoulders. By clinging to him, he was allowed to do the same. Our breaths came faster and faster, in time with his strokes, until the sounds became ragged, but it was when they turned to sobs, I was forced to pull back. Tears filled his eyes, glittering in the midday sun, right as they went wide.

Would it always be like this? A great rush of pleasure so sweet it hurt. Every muscle tensed, flexed as the waves of ecstasy hit me. Over and over, they broke down everything we tried to do, to be, and just left us behind. A single tear rolled down his cheek, following the hollow of it, before dripping free, and I held him tighter.

“They’re gone… They’re fucking gone…”

This morning was an aberration. We thought we were waking up to a new world order, and, in a lot of ways, that remained true. It just wasn’t the pleasant one we expected. However, out of all of us, Flynn was hit hardest. His father, his brothers, his sisters-in-law, the children… His previous question made sense then. Something in Flynn rebelled in the face of this terrible news, grasping at life to ward away death.

But only for so long.

The first convulsion told me what was happening. Not the shudders of bliss, but of pain. My hands felt the tension in his back, the muscles locked tight, as if that would keep the tears away, but that’s not how it worked. I’d remembered the bright flames of misery that felt like they were burning me alive when my father died, and so I clung to Flynn. I couldn’t say anything, do anything to ease his pain. I knew that because no one could do that for me, but… Not going through this alone, there was some solace. I pressed my face to his shoulder, rubbed circles on his back, and made the same low crooning noise my mother made when I was small and had woken from a nightmare.

Only to find I wasn’t the only one.

Glimmer had curled up in a corner and was sleeping through my fitting. The bright fabrics interested her initially, but when she found the cloth of gold wasn’t actually made from gold, she got bored. Now her head rose, her eyes heavily lidded. Those golden motes that hung in the air during the heat of the day appeared to shine brighter, and that’s when I realised what she was trying to do. Her scales grew brighter and brighter still, until I reached out to her.

No, dear heart. This is a pain you cannot heal.

He hurts , she replied obstinately. Glacier hurts . Dimly I could hear the far deeper, far more resonant croon of dragons outside the palace walls. We all hurt.

We did, and we would for some time. I closed my eyes, leaning into that, feeling the slow leak of Flynn’s seed, but I made no move to clean myself up. Just here, just now, my lover needed me and I would be here for him.

“Gods, what a mess.” When he couldn’t cry anymore and a terrible stillness filled the gap, Flynn pulled back. He blinked, eyes red rimmed and sore looking, seeing the room as if for the first time. It wasn’t just the mess of fabric and pins, but us. “Let’s clean you up.”

A kerchief was produced from somewhere, but when he went to clean the mess between my legs, I stopped him with a hand to his wrist.

“Flynn—”

“Draven is going to bloody kill me.” A shaking hand raked his hair back from his brow. “I walked out of the war council to despoil his wing commander’s wife, his soon to be queen. I?—”

“Am hurting,” I told him, taking the square of fabric and cleaning myself up. “Understandably so.”

“We don’t have time to hurt.” Apparently we did, because that’s what I felt as I watched Flynn put the mask back on. “We’re preparing for war. The Harlstonians and the wild dragons and?—”

“Did we have time for pain when you held me as we stood beside my father’s grave?” I asked, remembering his attempt to console me just after the execution of my step-family. “Did you have time to hold a scared girl through her tears?”

“I felt completely out of my depth.” A shaky smile formed and disappeared in seconds. “We were supposed to be protecting the next queen-in-waiting, Draven’s intended, but then…” He let out a sigh. “You weren’t a queen, but someone in pain, and it felt like the least I could do was to try and console you, however inadequately.”

“I think that’s an instinct we all need to honour,” I replied, smiling back. “To console each other, however inadequately, through any pain, in whichever form the other person needs.”

“Just like that, huh?” When he moved closer, I felt like I could take a full breath again. His kiss, when pressed to my forehead, was a gentle one. “You’re going to absolve me from the sin of threatening Draven’s already shaky hold on the throne.”

“I’m going to acknowledge that you’re human,” I corrected. “One that’s been through a massive loss.”

“Gods above, Flynn! What the hell are you up to?”

The door slammed open and Soren and Ged came stumbling in. Ged’s eyes went wide, then a rakish smile made clear how he felt about this, right as Soren scowled.

“What does it bloody look like?” He wasn’t my Flynn, the secret one who sobbed like a boy, as he whirled around and snapped at the others. “If you’re very nice to Pippin, you might get your turn too.”

But we wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. I felt that sharp pang of disappointment, but forced myself to let my lover go. I pressed a kiss to the top of his cheekbone, sucking in his scent of soap and sweat and man, right before I pulled free and scrambled to put my uniform back on. I was hopping around, trying to work one boot back on again, before Ged handed me the other.

“Did everything Draven say go in one ear and out the other this morning?” Soren snapped. “Did you pay the slightest attention to any of your orders, or did you spend the entire time staring at Pippin’s tits?”

“They are glorious,” Ged said, pulling me closer once I was dressed again and then pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Was the fitting completely terrible?”

“If spending my time being plucked and pricked and pinned into a golden shroud, then yes, it was terrible,” I replied, resting my head against his chest. “This is not what I wanted.”

“No?” All the heat seemed to go out of Soren then, as he spun around and stalked closer. “If this isn’t what you want, we’ll get you and Glimmer clear of this place.” His words came out in a great tumble, making clear he’d thought long and hard about this. “There’s some of the smaller isles, right on the outer edge of Nevermere. The dragons could hide out easily there and?—”

“And Lance, Jenkins?” I named two of my fellow students who’d become victims of the dead queen. “Kay and Bernard?” Brom’s parents were trapped now in Harlstonian territory, either loyal to their rebel duke or about to face a sword point if they weren’t. “The entire keep?”

I knew Soren’s heart, just like I knew mine, those twin loyalties, one to me and one to his fellow riders, at war with each other. It was why women were never brought into the corps before this. We were a potential conflict of interest that the crown could not bear then.

Or now.

“None of this is what any of us wanted, but we need to see things through to the end,” I said in a low whisper, “and hope we come out on top when it does.”

Soren pressed a kiss to my lips, slow, sad, and sensual, but when he pulled back, he nodded.

“If that’s the plan, then we better get to the prince’s chambers. He wants to have words.”