Page 9

Chapter

Nine

Selle

L eo would have loved the ogre melee that Gildur and I dashed out into. Despite being an omega, he loved a good fight. He would have been disappointed that Gildur and I didn’t stop to find weapons and join the fray.

I wasn’t as brave as Leo. At least, I wasn’t as combative. I ducked and dodged as Gildur and I rushed across the kitchen courtyard as fast as we could. The only reason I would have wanted to pick up a weapon would have been to defend myself or Gildur and to get to the kitchen door, which stood open invitingly, as quickly as possible.

“Look out!” one of the serfs called out.

I glanced over my shoulder in time to see that one of the ogres had broken free and was charging at us. He had his club raised, and both Gildur and I had to duck as it came swinging at us.

“Are you certain your magic isn’t working again?” I asked breathlessly as we hunkered down to avoid the ogre’s second swing.

“I wish it was,” Gildur replied, squeezing my hand.

I was ready to roll to the side, but as soon as the ogre raised its cudgel above its head, one of the serfs attacked it from behind, leaping onto its back and beating it around the head with a brick that might have been from her house. It would serve the ogre right if it was.

The diversion gave Gildur and I enough time to rush on across the remaining, chaotic bit of the yard and into the kitchen.

The contrast between the roiling, noisy courtyard where the battle continued without us and the empty kitchen was jarring. The kitchen itself was large, with multiple counters, a huge hearth, and a sink with a pump in it. It was also strangely dusty and devoid of any sort of food, fresh or rotting.

“Didn’t Lady Saoirse just have a garden party?” I asked, uneasiness pooling in my stomach.

I could feel Gildur’s wariness of the kitchen as well. “She must have conjured the food with magic,” he said. “No one has cooked in this kitchen for ages.”

I didn’t like the feeling of the place, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t eaten any of the food that I’d been serving. Instinct told me that consuming food that had been created solely with magic couldn’t be good for you.

We took the largest of the corridors that led out of the kitchen, rushing deeper into the house. A second, glaring oddity struck me as our footsteps echoed off the cold stone floor and the faded, dirty paint of the walls.

“There aren’t any servants,” I said, my heart beating in my throat as we turned a corner into what should have been a bustling, busy servants’ hall. “I mean, there were people at the garden party serving with me, but there are none here now. It doesn’t look as though there have been servants here in a long time.” I wondered if the people I had interacted with at the garden party had, in fact, been conjured by magic.

Gildur hummed low, frowning. I could feel his caution as we found a set of stairs that led up into the main part of the house.

My nerves continued to prickle as we hurried through abandoned corridor after abandoned corridor, searching for Saoirse and our egg. I could feel our baby, but the sensation was indistinct. It wasn’t close to what I felt through my bond with Gildur. It was enough to keep me feeling like we were heading in the right direction as we crept down one corridor and up another, trying to stay silent as we searched room after room.

“The house is abandoned,” I whispered after we’d been searching for what felt like hours, but was probably only a matter of minutes. “I thought Lady Saoirse lived here?”

“She does,” Gildur said gravely as we looked into a conservatory filled with dust and cobwebs over ancient musical instruments. “My guess is she spends most of her time in just one part of the manor house.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said, even though, in a way, it did. “She has all this space, all this grandeur, and she isn’t making use of it? She should at least offer the bounty she has to people who need shelter and food. I know of a nobleman in my father’s realm who invites his tenants to his house once a week to listen to their concerns and provide them with food or clothing or tools if they’ve met with misfortune.”

“That is a good man indeed,” Gildur said, tightening his grip on my hand and pulling me along a wide hallway that must have run through the center of the house. “Even I think that wealth should be shared where needed, and I’m a gold.”

I grinned and was about to say something when a snapping sound from a room we were only a few feet away from stopped me in my tracks.

“Hide,” Gildur whispered, pushing me into the parlor we’d just come to.

I leapt with him into the room, but as soon as we were safe, we pivoted to press our backs against the wall on either side of the doorway so that we could still see a bit of the hall.

Footsteps rang out from the hallway, coming closer. I pushed my back even harder against the wall, so hard that I could feel my heart beating against the paper. I held my breath as someone walked right past the room where Gildur and I were concealed. Then, because I couldn’t resist an adventure and I had to know, I turned slightly and poked my head out into the hallway.

I was greeted with the sight of Lord Manfred’s retreating back. He had just lifted his hands to place some sort of necklace with a large amulet around his neck.

I had my suspicions of what the necklace was. I couldn’t resist the urge to find out if I was right, so I tip-toed silently into the hall, praying Lord Manfred wouldn’t turn around and see me, then dashed up to the room he’d just come out of.

Sure enough, I was treated to the fading sight of a door standing in the middle of the room. It was made of some sort of dark, oily wood that seemed laced with decay. It faded completely as I watched it.

“The amulet,” I whispered to myself. “Lord Manfred must be using that to create a door between this world and my father’s world.”

“Selle!” I felt rather than heard Gildur call my name.

With a quick gasp, I dashed back into the hall to find my furious mate standing in the doorway of the room we’d hidden in. He gestured to me to come back, then threw out his arms like I’d disobeyed him once I did.

“You cannot go wandering off like that, my darling,” he whispered, grasping my face in both hands. I felt relief, exasperation, and the deepest love radiating from him. “Now that I have found you, I do not know what I would do without you.”

I melted into a smile, warming from the inside at the genuine affection my beautiful dragon showed me. He was strong enough and brave enough to take on an army all on his own, but he wanted me with him, I could feel it.

“I would never go far without you,” I murmured in return. “I don’t know how these things happen, although Tovey did warn me, but we’re two halves of the same whole now. You are my dragon, and I am your mate.”

“You are more than just that,” Gildur said, leaning closer to me, until his lips were just a breath away from mine. “You are my soul and the light in my heart.”

My smile was taken by his kiss. It was probably foolish to stop our quest to rescue our egg with a kiss in the hallway of an eerie, abandoned manor house, but we both needed that moment of contact and affirmation. We needed to fan the flames of the fire that consumed us both so that we could forge ahead.

I kissed Gildur back, grasping onto his now smudged and filthy jacket, but I only let the kiss linger for a moment. When I pulled back, I said, “Let’s go find our baby.”

Gildur smiled, and with our energy renewed, we hurried off through the house in the direction Lord Manfred had gone.

It was easier to follow the horrible man than I’d thought it would be. His steps were so heavy and the soles of his boots so hard that we could follow the noise he made as he stomped across the wooden and stone floors of the house. We caught up to him as he reached a half-concealed staircase at the back of the house then descended.

The danger of following Lady Saoirse’s accomplice into what very well could be a dungeon trap was not lost on me, but I could feel in my core that my baby was at the bottom of those stairs.

It turned out that I was right. The stairs ended in a short hallway, and at the end of that hallway was a vast, cavernous crypt, not unlike what I would imagine a dragon’s lair would look like. Lord Manfred marched right into it, but Gildur and I hung back.

“They haven’t returned to King Freslik’s castle,” Lord Manfred said by way of announcing himself as he marched into the room.

Gildur and I slowed to a crawl, slipping into the room and hiding behind a counter while both Lord Manfred and Lady Saoirse were looking the other way.

“The ogres are battling with the serfs in the kitchen courtyard,” Lady Saoirse said as she hunched over a table, her back to us. “Gildur and his pitiful omega are probably with them.”

Gildur’s back went up, likely because of the way Lady Saoirse had insulted me.

I didn’t care what she called me. I’d been called much worse in my life by my own father. I was far more interested in what she was doing so intently at the table that she couldn’t be bothered with a battle raging just outside the house where she was now.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“Still trying to crack that egg?” Lord Manfred asked, moving to the other side of the table.

My heart jumped to my throat as Lady Saoirse straightened just enough for me to catch a flash of gold. My egg sat on the table, and to me, it felt like it was cowering and whimpering in fear.

I nearly whimpered myself and wanted desperately to go to it, hold it in my arms, and tell it everything would be alright. Gildur had to put a hand on my arm to restrain me, though I could feel that he wanted to go as well.

“If I can hatch the goose inside, it will lay more golden eggs for me,” Lady Saoirse said. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear the manic excitement in her voice. “I will want for nothing. I’ll have more gold than anyone else in this world or any other. I will be the richest person in every kingdom.”

I sucked in a breath as the deeper significance of her words struck me. I looked around. The crypt-like lair was the only place in the entire manor house that we’d seen that looked inhabited. It wasn’t furnished with comfortable chairs and tables or even a bed, though. It was packed floor to ceiling with bits of gold, most of which looked false, and everything from cauldrons to pentacles and scrying glasses, not to mention a few stacks of books. My vision was still magically improved enough that I could see the word “Alchemy” on the spines and fronts of several of those books.

The underground room where Lady Saoirse had taken my baby was an alchemist’s lair. Lady Saoirse was even more obsessed with gold than I’d thought .

“Are you certain it’s a golden goose egg?” Lord Manfred said. “With all the talk about dragons I’ve heard lately, it could be one of them.”

“It’s too small,” Lady Saoirse dismissed him. “And where would a gardener and his omega find a dragon egg?”

“Where would they find a golden goose egg?” Lord Manfred asked.

“Quiet!” Lady Saoirse snapped. “I need to find another way to coax it open.”

She stepped away from the table, and once again, I wanted to leap out of my concealment and make a dash for my baby so badly it made me shake. Gildur had to hold me still.

He had to grip me even tighter when Saoirse came back to the table with what looked like large fireplace tongs. I fought to swallow my cry as she grasped the egg in the tongs, then took it over to the burning, crackling fireplace.

Gildur had to clap a hand over my mouth and pull my body back against his completely when Lady Saoirse used the tongs to thrust our egg straight into the heart of the fire. I cried out in fear for my baby, but the sound was muffled. Tears of terror and heartache for my poor child ran down my face as she turned the egg this way and that.

“Shh,” Gildur cautioned me. “Don’t worry.”

I made a different sort of sound and twisted to stare incredulously at him.

Of all things, Gildur smiled. “It’s a dragon egg,” he whispered. “Fire is nothing to a dragon egg. It probably tickles. Listen. Feel it.”

I had no idea what Gildur meant, but when I forced myself to stop panicking and reach out for my baby, I felt a distinct hint of…laughing?

I whipped to face forward again, eyes wide. The feeling that my egg was giggling as Lady Saoirse turned it this way and that in the fire intensified.

“It’s not melting,” Lord Manfred pointed out in a flat voice. “It’s a dragon’s egg.”

Lady Saoirse pulled my egg out of the fire again and looked at it. She took it to the table, standing so that Gildur and I could see her face, and let go of it with the tongs. Gingerly, she reached out and touched it. The egg must have been cool to the touch, despite being in the fire, because she laid her whole hand on it.

“A dragon’s egg!” she hissed with excitement. “This changes everything.”

“In what way?” Lord Manfred asked.

“Dragon eggs are filled with magic,” Lady Saoirse said. “King Freslik could raise the largest army his kingdom has ever seen and I could still knock them all over like matchsticks if I had the power of this dragon’s egg.”

“I thought you wanted the men of King Freslik’s army and his kingdom in order to do battle against Queen Gaia,” Lord Manfred said.

“Why stop there?” Saoirse said, standing straighter, her hand still on my egg. “First, I’ll defeat King Freslik, then I’ll vanquish Queen Gaia, and then I’ll wage war against all of the worlds in the universe.”

“ We’ll defeat King Freslik and Queen Gaia, you mean,” Lord Manfred said with a frown. “Won’t that be enough? Why spend your entire life at war when two worlds is more than enough.”

“It is never enough!” Saoirse bellowed. “Everything in all the universes will never be enough!”

My heart sank to my stomach with her words. She was right. Greed like that of Lady Saoirse knew no bounds. Nothing would ever be enough to make her feel full and satisfied.

That made me think about her abandoned manor and its lack of servants. Lady Saoirse surrounded herself with no one and had made no friends. She grasped and battled, gathering more and more to herself, but she shared none of it. All the wealth in the world was nothing without people to share it with, without love.

I reached back for Gildur’s hand. I could have lived in one of the serf’s hovels and still considered myself the luckiest omega alive as long as I still had him and our child.

As I reached back, I bumped the table slightly. It was enough to upset something sitting on the surface, which fell and shattered. Slippery potion dripped off the edge of the table beside me and Gildur, but that wasn’t the worst of our problems.

“Who’s there?” Lady Saoirse demanded as she and Lord Manfred both turned to face it.

I caught my breath. We’d been discovered. There was no getting around it.

The only thing I could do was save my alpha by sacrificing myself.

“It’s me,” I said, leaping out of our hiding place and willing Gildur, through our bond, to stay where he was.

He didn’t listen, of course.

“It’s us,” he said, standing and joining me.

“I’m not going to let you do this,” I said, speaking both to Lady Saoirse and Gildur. I faced lady Saoirse in particular and said, “Give me back my egg.”

“ Your egg?” Lady Saoirse laughed. “It’s my egg now, you fool.” She picked it up and hugged it close as if to prove her point .

“Selle, don’t,” Gildur said, moving as if he would shield me.

“He’s not a fool,” Lord Manfred said, his expression bright with understanding. “He’s Prince Selle. I knew it! He’s King Freslik’s omega son.”

Lady Saoirse screwed up her face and looked at me. “That tiny omega is a prince?”

“Yes,” Lord Manfred said, a different sort of spark lighting his expression. “He’s King Freslik’s son. If you want the king to hand over everything to you without having to raise a finger to fight for it, all you need to do is show that you have Prince Selle as your hostage. He’ll give you anything you want to get the boy back.”

Clearly, Lord Manfred didn’t know my father well.

“Is that so?” Saoirse said, stepping closer to me.

“Don’t touch him,” Gildur said, moving his entire body in front of me.

Lady Saoirse raised her hand that wasn’t holding the egg and sliced it through the air, pushing Gildur aside. Gildur fell like he was made of paper. His magic must still have been blocked.

Lady Saoirse’s eyes never left me as she advanced until she was standing right in front of me. “Well, well,” she said, avarice and cunning glittering in her eyes and making her look ugly despite her outward beauty. “It seems as though I have both a source of power and a weapon to wield against King Freslik.”

“So help me, Saoirse, if you hurt either of them,” Gildur said from the floor, where he was struggling against the binding magic to stand.

Saoirse ignored him. “You’re coming with me,” she said.

I opened my mouth to tell her I would never go anywhere with her, but as soon as she clamped a hand around my arm, everything went black, and it felt as though I was pulled through an impossibly small hole.