Page 46 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 46
"Get your arses out of bed!” Soren barked.
The next morning I got up and dressed and was ready to go so I walked out into the suite to find that the others weren’t ready at all. I blinked as I was confronted by the sight of a whole lot of half-naked male flesh. Make that all-naked flesh. Ged tumbled out of bed, standing up, hard cock bobbing, then stretching, every muscle in his body standing in stark relief.
“Ged, you donkey!” Flynn hissed. “There’s a lady present.”
“The lady doesn’t mind,” I shot back, and it was true, I didn’t. I felt the persistent pressure to be modest and demure but I shrugged it off along with every other damn expectation. Glimmer and I were queens and we were going to find a way through this situation together.
Of course, we will , she said. But first, breakfast.
It was protocol that when the general entered the room, everyone stood to attention. So when the entire host of the royal riders got to their feet when we walked in to the dining room, I looked around for him.
And didn’t see him.
“Pay them no mind,” Soren said with a nudge. “The fools are one part ambition, one part desire and ten parts fools.”
“And what of you, drill sergeant?” I asked, feeling a pang at how bold I was being, but damn them, damn all of them. If I was going to get politicised offers shoved into my face, forcing me to negotiate complex court intrigues that I was entirely unprepared for, I was going to satisfy my need to cut through all of the subterfuge and just say what I thought.
Tell them what you want, not the other way around , Glimmer said.
Soren paused, the others taking a seat at a nearby table, as Nancy rushed over to fill their mugs with coffee. His dark eyes searched my face, as though looking for something, before he spoke.
“You’ve got a lot of powerful people chasing after you now, Pippin, and no man at your back. I want you to know that I’ll be that man, if you’ve a need of me.”
Some devil had me sauntering forward, putting my hand on his muscular forearm, tracing the dark blue tattoos snaking up the length of it. He tensed under my touch, a small hiss escaping his lips as I rubbed my hand up and down until he captured my fingers in his.
“I had a father. He loved me and was good to me, though his taste in women left something to be desired. But the problem with father figures is they seek to do for their daughters; they assume their daughters don’t know their own minds yet. I don’t need to replace my father with the Duke of Skane, much as he might like the idea.” Soren muttered a curse at that. “Nor do I wish to replace my father with you, Soren. Trust me to know what I want, what I need, then decide whether or not to give it to me.”
I stroked my thumb across his palm, then pulled away, taking a seat and the coffee Nancy gave to me.
“What do you want, Harlston?”
Several men had approached our table and I had a pile of flowers and sweetmeats to show for it, but none had generated a response like this man did. He was a good looking brute, with bright green eyes and dark hair. Flynn’s eyes had jerked up and then he’d frowned as the other man approached.
“Not here to talk to you, Skane,” he shot back, then turned to me with a cocky smile, holding out a massive bouquet of flowers.
These were different to the hand-picked bunches of wildflowers I’d been given, or those pilfered from some poor woman’s front garden. They were wrapped in golden paper, the roses and baby’s breath nestled into a bouquet of perfectly symmetrical selections of contrasting greenery.
“Royce, milady,” he said by way of introduction as I just stared at the offering. “Son of the Duke of Harlston.”
“Bastard son of the Duke of Harlston,” Flynn said mildly, a sly smile spreading across his face. “Emphasis on the bastard.”
“We’ll see how much of a bastard I am on the duelling grounds—” Royce started to say.
“No, he won’t.” Brom cut through the conversation, silencing both men with a steady stare. “Duelling has been illegal for some time and two riders caught fighting a duel could have their dragons stripped from them. They certainly would be scrubbing out the cadets’ latrines with a toothbrush for some weeks.” He let out a sigh, then set his mug down. “Make your offer to the lady, then be gone, Rider.”
Not him. Glimmer’s voice was not a suggestion, but an order, as definite as I’d ever heard her.
“Lady Pippa, I thought you might enjoy dinner with me tonight. There’s a fine restaurant in the central district that serves?—”
“No.”
Of course, I knew how to refuse such an invitation politely, civilly. It was a man’s burden to be the one to make an offer to a woman, it was ours to respond in a way that didn’t injure his feelings. But I was determined that I would have none of that now, and so I rejected him utterly, his very pretty face showing his response to that.
When people show you who they are, you have to believe them, I’d been told. I knew what Cecily was, what Arabella was back when Father was alive and, if I’d made that clear to him, perhaps I would’ve been in quite a different position today.
“No?”
“A simple word,” Ged said. “One I think even you can understand, Royce.”
“You dare—” the man spluttered.
“He dares. Flynn dares,” Brom said in a bored voice. “We all dare. Lineage matters naught.” He frowned slightly. “For some reason you’ve fallen back on some bad habits.”
“I beat that self-importance out of you when you were a cadet,” Soren growled. “I could do so again.”
“No,” I said to the rider again, for good measure, then handed the flowers back to him. He took them belatedly. “But thank you for thinking of me.”
“Run along, Harlston,” Flynn said in a dry voice.
“You’ll rethink this.”
I was aware of the possibility of a man taking rejection badly. Every mother, every older sister, cousin and aunt prepared a girl for that, trying to help them avoid the backlash that might come. Royce’s pretty face became ugly as it screwed up in anger. Glimmer let out a low growl in response, but it was the men around me who ended the exchange. Every man at my table shot to his feet, standing around me, over me, as they stared the other man down.
“Pippin has given you her answer,” Ged growled, his hand landing on my shoulder.
Royce’s eyes were drawn to this, then he snorted in amusement, that cocky smile back on this face.
“Come and find me when you’re finished with your bit of rough,” he said. “I promise not to hold it against you.”
“Pushy bastard, he is,” Nancy said, slipping a few extra pieces of bacon onto my plate. “Thought he wasn’t going to take no for an answer with some of the girls, but Rider Soren took care of that.”
“I kicked his arse when he was but a lad with no more chip than shoulder, and I’ll do it again. Now, who is Pippin going with today?”
“I thought I was going down to train with the cadets?” I asked, dropping my toast onto the plate.
“About that…” Brom started to say, as Ged let out a low hiss. But before he could answer, the room fell silent and it became immediately evident why. Draven nodded to those riders who got to their feet, indicating with a smile that they should sit back down. I watched him walk closer, disquiet curdling in my stomach.
“Morning,” the prince said, sitting down on the end bench and indicating to Nancy to bring him a coffee. “Now, Soren, about the cadets this morning?—”
“Why aren’t I joining them?” I asked. Both men stared at me. “Am I a cadet or not?”
Draven’s polite mask slipped slightly as he turned to face me, so I caught the flash of his eyes, the heat there, before his expression smoothed again.
“What you are is still being determined, likely by whoever you end up taking as husband.” He stared down the table at the collection of tributes, then smiled tightly. “There’s talk of giving the two of you a suite of your own, so you’ll have a house to keep and, later, children to care for. Second generation royal riders, I’m sure.”
What he described was inoffensive, the most likely reality I would face, so why did my hands grip my utensils harder?
“If there’s a likely candidate, or candidates, then your time is best spent with them,” Draven continued, his tone perfectly cool as he looked up and down the table at each man.
“Soren, where are you today?” I asked, following a hunch.
“I’ll be with the cadets?—”
“Soren is the most likely candidate at this point,” I replied with a tight smile, but that quickly faded. Ged stared at me, wide-eyed and strangely, as did every other man at the table. “So I’ll go and train with him today.”
They vie for your hand, as mates should a queen , Glimmer observed before burying her snout back into her bowl of food.
Draven received the news with a long stare, one which I felt impelled to meet. Looking away wasn’t an option, so each of us studied the other, but I wondered whether his eyes traced the line of my jaw as I did his? I took in the devastating structure of his face and the way his eyes seemed to glow with some kind of unearthly light for so long that some of the others began to mumble a response.
“Far be it from me to get in the way of young love.” Soren flushed as Draven shot him a knowing look. “Come down and work with the cadets. But let me be clear...”
When he leaned forward, I did the same, and Glimmer jerked her head away from her food, fluttering her wings as she shifted forward to stand at my shoulder.
“No concessions will be given to your nature or your gender. We are training the next generation of warriors in that classroom and if you want to count yourself amongst their number, you will keep up or get out.”
“Fair enough,” I said and got to my feet.