Page 51 of The Dragon Queen #3
“Looking for you, obviously,” I said, and that earned me the barest of smiles. Brom shook his head.
“You shouldn’t be out here. Someone might see?—”
“What? A queen…” I still struggled to describe myself as thus, though not necessarily from a sense of modesty. From what I’d seen of the aristocracy, titles weren’t dispensed to the most worthy. You simply inherited them or were married to someone who had them, neither being merit-based processes. “A queen can’t talk with one of her subjects?”
“Subjects?” He emerged from the shadows, the moon’s light caressing the harsh planes of his face. His beard was growing longer, thicker, the longer we spent on the land, giving him a wild appearance. “I guess that fits. Shall I kneel before you, my queen?”
For a moment, I thought we were just playing, his suggestion an amusing, or even salacious one, but that’s not what this was. The pain in his eyes, a spectre that seemed to always be haunting him, was all the more plain in the dim light.
“You never need kneel before me, Brom, you know that.”
“And if I want to?”
There was a dangerous edge to his voice, but he approached me slowly, then dropped down heavily onto one knee at my feet. A rider didn’t wrap his arms around his queen’s legs though, drawing her closer. He held me so tightly, as if that was all that kept me from pulling away. I never would. The source of that tension was revealed when I reached out to touch his hair.
Hesitation.
That was something I hadn’t felt before. We were man and wife. Society expected us to embrace, to touch, to luxuriate in each other’s company.
Then Draven had ripped that away.
I was no longer Pippin Emberly, instead becoming Your Highness, queen-in-waiting. A figure at Draven’s side. Glimmer’s rider. I sucked in a breath, not realising the weight of each one of those roles and titles, not until my fingertips touched Brom’s hair. I’d kissed him, touched him, shared a bed with him every night since, but I knew now that this was different.
“If I want to throw myself down on the ground before you, just to feel your heels grind into my back as you pass by.”
“No, Brom.”
“Something, anything, other than all of this bloody hiding.”
“Brom—”
“You should go.” He went to pull away, but I stopped him with my hand. He could’ve pushed me off, but he stopped where he was, body frozen mid-twist. “I should go.”
That amendment came out in a small voice, one that had me turning him back to face me. I hadn’t known what I was doing when I stood beside him in that chapel, but I did now. The white gold of the ring he had gifted me, one that he’d customised to represent the relationship I shared with each member of the wing. It glinted in the moonlight as I touched his face. Stroking this cheek, then the other, glorying in the soft scruff of his beard as he went still.
“Please don’t,” I breathed.
“I won’t.” He lurched to his feet, looming over me to blot out the moon’s light. “Not without your permission. I will do anything for you, Pippin, you know that. If you had any sense at all, you’d return to the tent. Drink long, drink deeply, in celebration of a victory we hope to claim. Pretend for just a night that it will all be that simple.”
“But you can’t.” I felt like I was reaching out into the abyss when I touched his face now, having to rely on feel. “That’s why you slipped away. Any victory will be ashes in your mouth.”
“Not ashes,” he corrected. “It would be a sweet thing indeed to know that my parents, my cousins, all my family and the families of every citizen of Harlston are safe from the duke. The man is a monster, made from the same mould as his bloody sister, but what happens when we win?”
People were drinking and cheering, imagining that bright future, but Brom was about to wrench mine away.
“Because I know.” I heard his step, saw the shadow move closer. “I’ve been here before, Pippin. You know Draven and I were together before.”
“Somewhat.” I shook my head. “Both of you seem so reluctant to talk about it. First, to protect me, then to keep me from rejecting you, but even now, I feel like I’m piecing things together from snippets, passing mentions.”
“I told myself it was because Draven and I have so much history. I never wanted you to feel inadequate in the face of that. But even when you seemed to accept this bizarre relationship, the words didn’t come. Not because it would hurt you. You’ve made clear that you’ve accepted the situation which is…” He shook his head. “That’s more than I’ve been able to do. I hated him for coming between us. I hated him for complicating something that was supposed to be perfect, pure. I hated him for dragging up the stinking corpse of my history with him, displaying it like a cat might the headless corpse of a mouse, but most of all…”
Brom’s breath was coming faster and faster. It felt like this was a lancing of some sort, and all the poison was pouring out of him.
“I’ve always hated and loved Draven in turns, but never more than the day he broke my heart.” Brom was always a calm, solid presence in my life, but right now it was as if he’d transformed into some kind of demon, tempting and terrorising me. “He’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear every single time and you’ll love him because of it, but… the time is coming. We will not be allowed to continue as we are.”
“No—”
“A queen cannot be allowed to cavort with four of the Royal Riders, not if she wants to keep her position.”
“No, Draven said?—”
“That’s what he does.” Brom lunged forward, his teeth gleaming. “That’s what’s so beautiful and seductive about him. He has you believing things you’ve got no right to, but then when it comes time to pay the piper? You’re left alone, standing in the general’s office, being told that our ‘friendship’ needed to come to an end. That everyone turned a blind eye when Draven was only the spare, but when Felix died, things changed.”
His fingertips were featherlight as they brushed the line of my jaw.
“I had my orders and I fulfilled them as best I could. Every day was like a stab to the chest, each time I saw him, agony, but after a while, that began to fade. I could ride beside him, be the boyhood friend I was always supposed to be. It was better that way, I could see it. I thought I was on the right track, making the sacrifice the country needed, right up until the moment we landed at your estate.”
A stray beam of moonlight fell across his face, and I knew that look. It was the same intense stare I’d caught the first time Brom saw me. I’d herded pigs over to the paddock, lurking in the shadows to spy on the dragons, only to see him. He’d looked up and the whole world felt like it went still.
“I saw you and felt something I’d never felt before. Draven and I grew together like a pair of ficus growing in the same pot, but you…” His grip on my face tightened. “I saw a lad, I saw a girl, I saw someone beautiful, and I took a step forward, wanting to demand you tell me your name. I saw someone completely outside the court and politics and the awful web of obligation and duty we were all bound up in.”
He was close enough to touch now, my hands locking tightly to stop myself from doing just that .
“I saw someone that would allow me to stop pretending. When the general announced that you were to be married to one of the riders, my heart went still. This was it, the one thing I’d prayed for all my life. Someone to love in the open. Someone I could claim as mine before the world.” He raised my hand, brushing his lips across my ring. “Who would take my name, wear my ring, become mine in a way that none but the gods could tear asunder.”
“Brom…”
I croaked that out, the pain I’d been keeping stuffed down so very thoroughly summoned out. My eyes burned, my head ached, and yet I could not step away from him.
“My partner, my wife?—”
“That’s what I am,” I insisted, but right as I raised my voice, a ragged cheer from the crowds had us both stepping backwards, something Brom acknowledged with a sad smile.
“No, not anymore. We’ll ride to Blackreach and we’ll save the day, that I’m sure of, but Pippin, when we return to the capital everything will start to move very fast. You’ll be forced to sign the divorce papers?—”
“No.”
“You’ll have to or they won’t let you stand in the royal chapel and become queen.”
“So we’ll leave!” I hissed, suddenly angry. Everyone was ready to fight the duke, but who was ready to fight for us? “We can retire to my estate. Draven can…”
That pause was my mistake. Brom noted it, staring into my eyes and then nodding.
“Draven needs a queen, and a queen must be bonded to a queen dragon. He’ll either marry you or be forced to marry whoever the little queen hatchling takes as a bondmate.”
No one! I wanted to shriek. I’d promised that she would not be forced into bondage as they tried to do to Glimmer, but gods, the duke, Beatrice, they might’ve already done so. Glimmer had considerable resources to draw upon to resist their coercion, but the hatchling queen… I sucked in a breath, not seeing myself walking down the aisle, but Beatrice did in my stead. Draven stood at the altar, wo oden eyed, but compliant, taking her hand when she got close and saying the words.
“No…”
That was the weak kind of denial a recalcitrant child might make, not a grown woman, and my head hung with the shame of it. Brom was there, tilting it back up.
“I love you.” Why did it feel so good to hear that, even as he ripped my heart from my chest. “I’ll always love you, no matter what happens. There will be no one else for me until the day I die. I will always, always be your husband.”
He was saying goodbye, I realised. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t followed him out here? Would he have taken off on some suicide mission, going out in a blaze of glory?
“I love you,” I said, unashamed now. Openly, I was begging him to put it all back. The optimism, the belief in a bright future.
The lies.
Because none of this would’ve hurt this much if it wasn’t true.
“I love you, Brom.” I gripped his wrists, not letting him pull away. “I never wanted this. I just wanted to be your wife, their lover. I thought we could make it work, that no one would care what we did, not when Draven had a queen that was far more suited to the role. I never intended to get us in this situation.” My fingers wrapped tighter. “I never meant to let him get between us.”
“But he did.”
There was no heat, no hint of accusation in his voice. Brom merely leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead before pulling free and walking off into the darkness. That was when the tears finally began to roll down my cheeks, when I lost sight of him completely.