Page 30 of The Dragon Queen #3

“What…?” Brom looked up and down the alleyway, as if answers could be found there. “I told you?—”

“I don’t care about the state of your bladder!” I hissed, then shrank back when I heard myself. “Well, I do, but…” I yanked the paperwork Marcus had given me and then handed him the divorce papers. “This.”

It was dark, but my eyes were keen, taking in every expression as he accepted the papers and then scanned them briefly. The frown smoothed away and then was replaced by…

Pain. Always pain with us. I was heartily sick of it. Hadn’t we earned the right to happiness? We were dragon riders. Couldn’t we just jump on the backs of our beasts and fly out to some remote chapel where I would marry all of my men before the priest and the gods? Better to seek forgiveness than permission. What would the people, the aristocracy, do if Draven took a harem of lovers, like the queens of old? It wouldn’t be viewed positively. I wasn’t naive enough to assume that, but what else could they do? Depose him and place someone else on the throne…? For a moment, I sat with that idea, my eyes going wide. It was a prospect I hadn’t even considered before, but now?— ?

“Where did you get these?” Brom’s short reply was not what I anticipated when I came out here. I remembered him, remembered the promises he’d wrung from Draven. He said I was his and that the king would not take me from him, and yet there was his signature. He shook his head when I didn’t answer, hissing out some curse before stuffing the documents into his jacket. “It matters not.”

“Does to me.” My voice broke on those words. My hand shook as it rose, right before I went to tug the ring he’d given me off. “I guess you’ll be wanting this back.”

“The hell I do.” My eyes jerked up to meet his as his hands closed around mine. “You’ll wear it forever, Pippin. The general wanted it replaced with a royal heirloom, but I made clear that will not stand.” The mask was slipping. His ragged tone gave voice to my own pain as well as his. “You’ll keep it on your bloody hand so I can look at it each time you’re forced to stand before the people and perform your role as queen and know… and know…”

“Know that I’m still yours?”

My voice was thin, like a little girl’s, as his hands slammed down against the wall beside my head.

“You’ll always be mine.” I needed to hear that so very much. “But you’re Soren’s and Ged’s and Flynn’s too, and there’s no legal bond to tie you to them. Instead, you have to wake up and choose them every single day. The general is aware of our situation. Doesn’t approve of it, but there’s a lot he’s turned a blind eye to in the past, so this will be no great burden for him. Sign the paperwork, when he requests an audience with you. Sign it to secure Draven’s claim to the throne. Let people believe you’re a dutiful and faithful queen.”

“I am,” I said.

“To him and him alone. That any child you bear.” I caught the shake in his hand, right before it settled on my stomach, the heat burning through the thin linen of my father’s shirt. “Is of Nithian blood, not Emberly or Skane or whatever the fuck Ged’s and Soren’s last names are. That he or she is his, not ours.”

He moved closer, a dark shadow, seductive as a night devil come to insinuate himself into my dreams .

“But we’ll know better. I can do this, Pippin, for you, for Draven, for the damned country.” His mouth hovered over mine, so close I could smell the beer on his breath. Suddenly it wasn’t so bitter, but sweet as summer wine. When his mouth moved, so did mine, caught up in some kind of spell. A small, sensible part of me was screaming something in my head, but the alcohol helped me silence it. “I think you’re strong enough to bear it, too.”

But I didn’t want to be, some part of me wanted to cry, and perhaps Brom sensed that. He was my commander, swooping in and silencing my complaints, making sure I followed orders, though I was willing to bet he didn’t try this strategy with the rest of the wing. A brush of his lips and I was following after them, wanting more.

“Brom, I?—”

“I’ll never stop wanting you, Pippin.” A kiss, another kiss, sending my head spinning. “In my heart, you will always be my wife. I swore before the gods that it would be you, only you.”

“And Draven.”

I froze in his grip, waiting for his response.

“Draven is a friend, a lover, a noose around my neck.” His words were pushed out between gritted teeth. “Sometimes I think I love and hate him in equal measure, but…” He shook his head. “The king was never going to be my husband. I never looked at him and imagined him wearing my ring one day, not like I did you.”

His hand stroked down my face.

“When the general announced to the wing commanders that the throne wanted you married off, it felt like my heart was going to leap out of my chest. When I spoke to you about this.” I remembered that now, when he’d taken me for a walk outside to inform me of the situation. He’d ended up standing in almost the same position as he did now, leaning into me. “When I dared hope you might consider me.” His brows creased, but it was due to something bittersweet rather than real pain. “I saw a future, one where you walked through the door of the chapel and towards me, where you chose me.” He shook his head. “What ended up happening was rushed, born from necessity rather than real feeling, so perhaps it's right that this marriage be dissolved. It was a ward of protection placed over you to keep Raina away.”

“You think I don’t still need that?” My hands went around his neck, glorying in the feel of his hair. “Raina may be dead, but countless other foes have stepped up to take her place. I don’t know if I can do this, Brom. The war, becoming queen…”

Whatever else I had to say was cut off by the alleyway door slamming open. A man and woman came stumbling out into the darkness, though they couldn’t see us, so caught up in each other as they were. She shoved him against the wall, pushing her hands up and under his leather jerkin, and I knew why.

To get to the man underneath the uniform. To strip him bare and see all of him. She made quick work of it too, undoing the toggles before making a small sound of satisfaction as she smoothed her hands across his chest, then dropped down to her knees.

“Lass…” he breathed. “Lass…”

Whatever protests he was going to make were cut off by her sucking his length in. No more verbal communication was possible beyond a low groan. His hips bucked as his hands went to her hair, bundling it up at the nape of her neck as he watched her suck him off.

“We should go,” Brom said in a low mutter.

“Why?”

If we went back inside, I’d have to pretend that signing those papers wouldn’t break my heart, that I was satisfied with our arrangement. I couldn’t see another way around it, but still. Logic didn’t rule us, just as I had told Soren, and so my heart made clear what it needed. I’d become a barmaid, serving drinks all day if in the evening they’d come to visit, pulling me onto their laps in front of everyone, if it meant they could claim me in front of everyone. I was weighed down by a crown I didn’t even want, and perhaps that’s why I did this.

His stomach muscles jumped as I slid my hand under his jerkin.

“Pippin—”

I went up on tiptoes and silenced him now with a kiss, because two could play at that game. Brom didn’t fight me all that hard. With the sounds of stranger’s love making in our ears, he plundered my mouth, forcing my lips to open, just like my heart had, and claimed all he found within.

“What would you do if you were just some soldier?” I whispered into his ear as he made a very thorough inspection of my neck with his mouth. “And I was just some lass.”

“But you’re not?—”

“Shh…”

He pulled back, his eyes rivalling the moon that shone above his shoulder, tracing the harsh lines of his face.

“Pip—”

“Just Pip.” In my head, I could see her. It was tempting to think of her as a simple serving woman, but none of our lives were easy. The barmaids here faced their own challenges, their own struggles every day, but right now, I wanted to swap mine for theirs. Brom frowned for a second, then nodded slowly.

“Just Pip then.”

Having overcome the first hurdle, I moved, ready to drop to my knees in the filthy alleyway, but Brom could never let that happen.

“Not like that.”

Instead, I was spun around, my wrists held together by one of his hands as he held them against the wall, the other working my belt free, then letting my pants fall down around my ankles. A sharp spank on my arse when I tried to wriggle free, but I was rewarded when I stilled.

“Oh…!”

I gasped that out far too loudly as fingers traced the line of my underwear, marking where it covered my most intimate of flesh. My whole body stiffened when they slid underneath. Finding the mess I’d made, his fingers slid through the wetness, a small sound of satisfaction making clear what he felt about that.

“Wet for me, lass?” I couldn’t answer, not when he shoved his fingers inside me, forcing me to stretch. “This is what’s been waiting for me the entire time?” My hips moved in time with his strokes as he sawed his fingers back and forth. “Soren had it right. We shouldn’t have let you leave that room. Flynn’s leaving, all of us will be working from dawn to dusk in preparation for war, and yet every single one of us will be yearning for this.”

A sad moan escaped my lips as he pulled his fingers free, but it was only for a moment. He needed his hands to claw his pants open, to free his member then kick my ankles wide and tilt my hips back. My face pressed against the wall as I felt him rub that swollen head across my seam, then push in.

I wasn’t quite ready, despite his ministrations, so it hurt just a little. I found myself craving the stick of our flesh, the way he was forced to shove himself inside me, because it was a perfect manifestation of how I felt. Everything about being with my men hurt, and yet I knew I’d be in agony without them, so I pushed back, no longer a passive participant, swallowing him whole.

“Gods, yes, this…” Our bodies crashed together, breaking off parts of the other, the dust mingling at our feet. “Just like that. I’ll never get used to the way you take me.” My thighs went wider, allowing him deeper. That stretch, the way it felt like he reached the depths of me and pushed past them, I craved it like air. Over and over, he made me his.

Then he had to go and say this.

“You’ll always be my wife. No piece of paper can erase this. You know that, Pippin? Tell me that you do?”

“Yes…” I sobbed, my body aching and transported by ecstasy all in the same moment.

“Mine, Pippin, always mine.” His body pressed mine into the walls, our rutting taking on a furtive, truncated form now. I felt the sting of his teeth as he nipped at my neck. “Just as I will always, always be yours.”

That was all it took. My body stiffened and I cried out, tears running down my cheeks, because I saw the sense in what he was saying, all of it. I loved him, I told him that, between panted breaths. I told him and the alleyway, the rats that lurked in the shadows, and the moon. I told him that he was the husband of my heart.

They all were.

As if summoned by my thoughts, the door opened again and they spilled out, stiff legged and prowling like angry dragons .

Or ones on the hunt.

“Thought you’d fallen into the privy.”

Ged tilted my head up, sucking down my cries of pleasure, right as my whole body shook. He kissed me hard, bruising my lips, as I clamped down hard around Brom’s length. I felt him spill over with me, jetting his seed deep inside me, marking me in a hidden way I’d feel the next day.

“What brought this on?” Draven’s question was delivered carefully, the last vestiges of the king clinging to him, even as the man took the two of us in with hungry eyes. “There’s no dragons rising tonight, is there?”

“You win.” Brom ground that out between panting breaths. “The general brought me the papers.”

“He didn’t.”

I broke away from Ged to see Draven’s expression transformed. He was like an idol cast from silver with sapphires for eyes.

“It’s the only way, Draven,” Brom replied.

“I told Rex no. You said… I said…”

“We said what our hearts forced us to under the influence of a dragon’s mating frenzy, but when we got up the next day, the reality remained,” Brom snapped. Ged pulled me close, his arms going around me, his mouth on my neck as I watched this all transpire. “Only one of us can be married to Pippin in the eyes of the country, and that’s you.”

Draven sucked in a breath to argue, then stopped himself.

“And some of us didn’t even get the chance to ask for Pippin’s hand.” All eyes were on Flynn, who bore that attention with equanimity. “Seems like the two of you quarrel over her like two dogs and a bone.”

“Steady…” Soren growled.

“Whereas you don’t even dare put yourself forward, so sure you are of being rejected,” Flynn added.

I was hot and cold, all at once. Sweat prickled across my skin, Brom’s seed slid down my inner thigh, and yet all I could focus on was them .

“A rider gives up on the hope of marriage when he signs up,” Soren grumbled. “It was an oath we swore.”

“So what do you call this, then?” Ged’s grip on me tightened and his nose nuzzled into my neck. “Common born people often can’t afford a church wedding or a fancy ring, so they just shack up together and call each other wife and husband.” I looked back at him, warmed by his smile. “It’s what you’ve always been to me, Pippin. I know we can’t tell the world, but what do I care about what the fishmonger or the night soil man thinks about our relationship?” My breath caught in my chest as I watched his lips twist. “You’re all I could ever want, all I think about, and that’s been the case since the moment I laid eyes on you. Was a bloody uncomfortable thing as back then I thought you were a pig boy…”

I snorted at that and so did he, his smile infectious. I turned around and threw my arms around him.

“Of course, when I worked out what lay beneath those bloody clothes…” His hand snaked down to cup my arse. “I admit I was more than a little relieved.”

“I’m working on it.” Draven blurted that out. “I didn’t want to say anything, give anyone hope, not until the royal lawyers were sure of it. The queens took several consorts before. Why couldn’t I do the same?”

“I am not pretending to be your lover for the people,” Flynn said. “No offence, Brom.”

“None taken.”

“Make Pippin queen then.” I turned to stare at Soren, taking in his wry smile in my confusion. “Return to the old ways. It’s not as if this doesn’t have precedent.”

“I don’t want to be queen.” My hands were up, ready to ward off that honour. “I don’t.”

But of course, no matter what anyone said, someone got hurt. This time it was Draven, his faint smile pure agony. He stared at me in the darkness, as if he could see beyond the shadows, both in the alleyway and inside me.

“Let’s get everyone back to the palace,” Brom suggested. “If we’re going to discuss sedition, I’d prefer far fewer witnesses. ”

The rider and his barmaid had long disappeared thankfully, and so we hailed a carriage, piling in and enduring a long, silent ride back. It felt like we had resolved nothing, which left everyone sitting with their own thoughts, not willing to share them. I feared we would go to bed like that, but everyone stripped down and washed up, Soren patting me dry and then carrying me to bed like I was his bride in truth. When he laid me down on the bed, the others came with him, clustering around me like Cynane’s mates did the queen.

As they should… Glimmer’s thoughts were sleepy, sluggish, as if I’d roused her from her rest. Males protect and queens let them.

I couldn’t find it in me to argue. It was the end of a long, hard day, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open for one second longer. I fell into sleep, dimly aware of the weight of their bodies pinning me to the mattress.