Chapter Two

“My queen.”

With a gasp she couldn’t quite contain, Meira turned to face Samael, who was standing to the side of the door. A man she should not be so painfully aware of when she was about to mate another.

How had she not felt him there?

Too locked in her own fears, and his emotional walls were impenetrable, that’s how. Now, in his eyes she found compassion. She swallowed, and suddenly a jolt of desperate protectiveness hit her. As though those walls of his had wavered, just for an instant.

Meira tightened her grip around the small gold chest she held. But she couldn’t force her gaze away from the man before her. Samael was acting as security today, not part of the ceremony. As captain, perhaps he found it more effective to project a stomach churn–inducing kind of intimidation.

Forceful.

She’d thought so the first day she’d seen him in that damn reflection. Almost painfully handsome with a strong jaw covered by dark scruff. She could see why such a man would earn a high position. The Captain of the King’s Guard, and it fit. The man had hardened warrior stamped all over him—from the wide military stance to a body honed for battle and a hard light in those eyes, as black as night, that never stopped checking the corners of the room. But she suspected there was more to him, walled away from the rest of the world.

Getting behind that wall shouldn’t be her concern. Nor a curiosity. She’d made promises. Her life was on a specific path. She couldn’t let herself want…something else. Gorgon deserved more. He deserved all of her.

“My queen,” Samael repeated.

Meira blinked at him through the haze of fear coating her own delicate emotions in a thin veneer.

“Meira,” Samael said, softer now.

A small frisson of surprise threaded through the fear hanging over her, like a sliver of sunlight breaking through dark clouds. He’d never used her first name before.

Would she be feeling the same disquiet if he were standing at the end of the aisle—

Meira cut that insidious thought off like chopping the head off a snake.

Samael seemed to press closer, though he didn’t move, ebony gaze entirely fixated on her. “You can do this.”

Shock held her immobile. How did he know she’d been trying her damnedest not to run? Was it that obvious she was terrified? Conflicted?

Meira swallowed hard and jerked her gaze forward. I can do this.

She should probably thank him for the support, acknowledge his helping her over a moment of fear and doubts, but the words just wouldn’t come. She focused instead on what she had to do.

I can do this, she repeated to herself.

With a whisper of will, she ignited her own fire. Like walking or breathing, her body just seemed to know how, and had done since the moment her mother took her last breath. As though the fuel was in her blood and all she needed was the spark of a thought to set off the firestorm. The flames started inside her and pressed through her veins and her flesh to manifest outside her in red-gold flickering glory and dance across her skin as though rejoicing their release.

She risked one last glance at Samael, who had remained close, a pillar of strength she suddenly needed there, to draw that steadiness into herself for what she was about to do.

Steeling her spine, she waved at the two women waiting to open the door for her. With a flourish, they pushed the remarkably silent doors forward, revealing the massive chamber beyond.

A hush of feet sounded as those gathered to witness and celebrate with the new mates stood and turned to observe her lonely trek over the age-worn, uneven stone floor to the dais where her future mate waited.

For her mating day, they had set up ornate golden mirrors around the circumference of the throne room. She used the magic that came from her fire, tapping into it like a well, manipulating the mirrors. Through those reflections, she allowed the Gold and Black Clans to witness this ceremony from their own mountains, rather than leaving those hard-won havens unguarded and at risk of attack. They and their allies couldn’t afford to lose even one of their strongholds.

I could jump through one of those mirrors and disappear.

After all, she was the one controlling the magic.

She could simply change the location in the nearest one and be gone before anyone could stop her.

The gargoyles would take me back.

Maybe. Notoriously closed off from the world, the protectors her dying mother had sent her to tended to not like visitors coming and going.

Not that she was seriously considering returning to them. She’d made a promise.

With a will she didn’t know she possessed until this moment, Meira pulled her shoulders back and forced her feet to move, taking one step, then another. Away from the man at her back and toward the king at the end of the aisle who was meant to be her future.

Standing at the back of the dais, Maul, their massive hellhound, watched the room, eyes glowing red, ever their protector since they’d found him as a puppy. As Brand and Ladon stepped forward to lead her sisters to their places at either side of the steps to the dais on which the throne sat, they cleared the way to Meira’s own future mate.

Strong and tall, with wisdom in his eyes, Gorgon bore himself with a regal authority that, after ages on the throne, was probably as natural as blinking. He didn’t need to be dressed in the formal onyx suit—detailed with intricate embroidery in shimmering threads, again of all the colors of the dragon clans, matching the design of the jewels in her gown—to project an air of utter control and power.

Despite the fact that he should scare the hell out of her, over the last few months, he’d been nothing but kind. She’d come to genuinely like this man—a fact that she saw as a good start.

If Meira was honest with herself, Samael intimidated her more. Something about the way he held himself—leashed violence. Leashed emotions, more like. Then there was the way he looked at her. Only twice since she’d been here had she caught that particular look, gaze full of an emotion she couldn’t pin down—or maybe didn’t want to identify, because she suspected it too closely mirrored ones of her own that she’d cut off and buried deep. Even so, those emotions in his gaze had reached out and twisted around her. Binding. Compelling.

Stop it.

Gorgon must’ve seen her expression through her sheer veil, lips pinched with nerves and gaze perhaps a bit twitchy, because his eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile meant for her alone. He smiled easily. She’d come to like that about him. However, he held his ground, a strong dragon shifter king who waited for his prize to come to him.

Maul cocked his head, giving a doggie whine she took to mean a sort of support for her. However, he didn’t show her any images with his telepathic means of communication, merely stood quietly.

As she took those final steps to Gorgon’s side, he took her by the hands. Quickly she remembered to douse the fire on her skin there. Kasia had said Brand could touch her fire before they’d mated, but, then again, they’d mated successfully. Better not to risk it in front of all these people.

Gorgon rarely exhibited any emotion around her, not that Meira could sense, anyway, almost as though his emotions didn’t run deep enough, or were held so tightly in check none leaked out. Different from the wall his captain put up, though.

Even now, she could only make out the faint traces of power that lingered around him. And something else. An astute kind of judgment, maybe? Patience? She still wasn’t sure. All she knew was—regardless of today’s bout of nerves—around Gorgon, she personally felt calm. As though she could lay her troubles at his feet.

“You wore my color,” he murmured.

Meira managed to smile and nod. No sacrificial, virginal lamb all in white. “My color now.”

A blip of satisfaction reached her as he squeezed her hands in appreciation. “Are you still sure?” A question he’d asked her several times over these months of preparation.

Meira shored up her own mental blocks against the emotions swirling throughout the room, including her own, and smiled back, trying her best to make it appear confident. He would care for her, be gentle with her—that at least she knew. “I’m sure.”

He searched her gaze, she wasn’t sure for what, then with a nod, turned them both to face the sacra, the obsidian urn that featured in the start of an hour of various rituals, rites, and oaths.

After presenting her mate the chest of gifts, which he would open later, she and Gorgon each burned sacrifices of their old lives to the gods—a lock of hair, vials of blood, old letters from loved ones. Meira said a symbolic good-bye to her family, making eye contact with Angelika at the back of the room with the wolf shifters even as she kissed the foreheads of the two sisters allowed to stand up with her. Ladon and Brand led their mates away, no longer part of the ceremony as Meira joined her new family.

Finally, after other traditions were observed, Gorgon gently lifted the veil over her head and kissed her. Again, she doused her flames over that swath of skin. A pleasant kiss, tender, if not exciting.

At her back, a blast of darkness, like a bomb had been set off in the room and the shock waves struck only her, made Meira gasp.

As though a wall had collapsed under the onslaught, Samael’s emotions pummeled her like a hurricane that had beaten down on a tiny island where her family had lived for a short time when she was a child, whipping at her, threatening to peel away every layer of protection to expose her, raw and vulnerable, to the elements.

Confusion, rejection, need, desperation, despair, possessiveness…but also determination and resignation.

A combination that didn’t make a lick of sense.

She dared to flick him a single swift glance to the side to find neither his expression nor the set of his body showed an iota of what was going on inside him. Totally blank. Before she could shut out the emotions screaming at her, just as fast as his wall had crumbled, he shored it back up, bricking himself off from her so completely that all she felt now was the echo of her own reaction.

Holy hellfires. How could he stand the cauldron of raw, biting emotion that boiled within him under the surface where none could see?

Except her. Now. In this moment when she’d pledged herself to another man.

In desperation, Meira focused on Gorgon. On his steady presence and his more muted emotions, hardly a whisper reaching out to her. Satisfaction and a kind sort of liking for her.

Interpreting her gasp as meant for him, Gorgon smiled. Shakily, she managed to smile back. She didn’t dare glance again at the man at the back of the room.

Your mate. Focus on your future with this good man.

What came next? Another dragon might choose this point in the ceremony to consummate their vows, both through sex and by pushing his fire into his mate, creating a made dragon for all to see, doing the deed right there in front of all and the gods to witness. Gorgon had chosen, instead, to take her to his private suite for that part. Thank heavens.

Meira hid a shadow of her fears for the next part behind a serene mask. At least, she hoped she appeared serene. Not the sex, but the possible results. When mating humans, the woman risked burning in the male dragon’s fire. However, when mating a phoenix, the dragon shifter was the one in danger if she didn’t choose him with all her heart.

Theirs was a political alignment. Hearts were secondary. She had chosen this path, this man, and she intended to put everything she had into that choice.

Gorgon must’ve caught her thoughts in her expression, because he leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Time to find out if I survive you, little firebird.”

A snort of a laugh sounded in the back of the hall, no doubt one of the wolf shifters, who had better hearing than dragons, though not by much.

Meira anchored her own chaotic emotions to his steadiness. She was horribly aware of the expectations of the people watching, but she could project outward confidence when she wanted. Put on that mask, even if she found it exhausting. As a queen, she suspected she’d have to get used to wearing that mask often.

She managed to chuckle at the ironic tone in Gorgon’s voice. “Nervous?” She cocked her head playfully but answered in an equally low voice. “I didn’t expect that of you, my king.”

Gorgon’s gaze glittered as though he were pleased with her response. “I’ve been a king for almost a millennium and you are the only thing that has ever scared me.”

Feeling emboldened by his gentle teasing, Meira patted his hand. “Don’t worry. Maul will protect you.”

A few chuckles arose now from the dragon shifters seated closest.

“Not you?”

“I’ll probably be busy cowering.” She wasn’t kidding, but he laughed like she was.

“Then I guess I’ll have to do the protecting.” He pulled her hand through the crook of his arm to escort her. “Are you ready?”

Was she ready for cheers and knowing looks to follow them down the aisle as Gorgon led Meira to the chamber where they would complete the final binding act? Not really, but she pasted what she hoped was bridal pleasure onto her face. Very deliberately, she kept her gaze away from Samael.

While she and Gorgon took this final step, everyone else in attendance would gather in the training arena, which had been transformed into a glittering ballroom where a massive feast would be provided. Once they mated, Meira and Gorgon would change into second outfits, again matching, and join the revelries as a fully mated couple.

They took one step, then a fizzing sound, like a TV set on a station of snow, cut her off, filling the chamber, louder and louder until many of the shifters around her covered their more sensitive ears.

Then, as quickly as it started, the sound ceased, leaving the gaping hole of silence in its wake. In the same instant, tiny flames appeared in the reflection of every mirror in the room, a single flame in each. In her mirrors. The ones she controlled. Deep red in color, the flames flickered and danced, glowing red embers jumping out of the mirrors and drifting to the ground to bounce across the stone flooring.

Behind her, Maul growled, the sound so menacing the hairs on her arms stood up.

“This is your High King.” The words rang out clearly, as though the speaker were standing in the room before them.

Why does his voice sound like it’s in stereo?

The thought passed through her mind just as her gaze skittered to Samael, still standing at the massive double doors on the other side of the room. Emotions pummeled her from every corner—even Gorgon’s grim concern pressed into her, chaos in her head. All except Samael. A point of calm inside the room. Calm she reached for, clung to. An oasis.

Then he pointed to the mirrors and, looking back at her, made a slashing motion across his throat.

Of course, Pytheios was using her magic. With a gasp, Meira doused her flames, and the reflections from within the gold and black strongholds disappeared, leaving only the silvery refractive surfaces of the mirrors…but the flames remained.

All around the room, hushed whispers spread like wildfire, along with a stinging fear she couldn’t entirely block. She caught a few of the comments. Most wondering how Pytheios was doing this at all.

“He has a witch,” the whispers said.

“No witch is that powerful,” came some of the replies.

“Our queen killed his witch,” others within the Blue Clan insisted.

Suspicion filled the gazes of many turning toward Skylar, who had come back from the Red Clan’s stronghold of Everest, after being kidnapped, reporting that she had killed Pytheios’s witch, Rhiamon, in the process of escaping with Maul and another prisoner.

For her part, Skylar, up on her feet the second a threat appeared, ignored the looks, concentrating entirely on the orb, Ladon at her back, equally focused.

“Rumors have abounded of an old magic returned to us,” Pytheios continued.

Meira swallowed and looked to her new mate. “Is that what Pytheios sounds like?” she asked softly. She’d only ever heard the roar of the dragon the night her mother died, never having seen him in human form.

Lips a grim slash, Gorgon held himself as stiff as a steel rod. “That’s him.”

“Rumors that a phoenix has been discovered by some miracle after these many centuries are true.”

Every eye in the room turned away from the mirrors to assess the three women standing at the head of the room.

“Behold,” that odious voice thundered. “Tisiphone Hanyu.”

Hanyu? Their mother’s maiden name?

The flames grew in size, and an image formed at the center of each. The image of an old man, body stooped and withered with age, skin hanging from his features in a grotesque mockery of what should be a human face. Pytheios. Beside the man who’d claimed to be High King when he had no phoenix stood a gloriously lovely woman with white hair and ice-blue eyes so familiar Meira had to swallow back a guttural sound of reaction. Because this woman could easily be mistaken for one of her sisters. Especially Angelika.

As she watched in horror, Pytheios lifted the heavy fall of the woman’s hair from the back of her neck and blew a stream of red-tipped fire across her nape. Immediately, a fire-branded design glowed from her skin in bright-red swirls—delicate feathers forming over her arms. Then the flame ignited around her, forming sparkling wings behind her.

The sign of a phoenix.

Shock sliced through Meira, holding every part of her immobile as though an electric current had passed through, holding her bones in rigid formation.

That sign was supposed to be indisputable. How was this possible?

…

Samael started across the room toward Meira and Gorgon before Pytheios even got to the worst part, the need to protect driving his steps.

Instinct told him that no way would the red king pull a stunt like this unless the revelation would go nuclear, implode the new kings sitting on the gold and blue thrones along with the old king sitting on the black throne. Pytheios would see Gorgon’s actions, allying with Brand and Ladon, as those of a traitor. No better way to destroy the power of a leader than by attacking the hearts of those who gave them that power by following.

Pytheios was making every dragon shifter question the validity of the women they believed to be phoenixes, women mated to their kings.

Half an ear tuned to what the eerie orb was saying, Samael made it to Meira’s side in time to see her face drain of color, leaving her as pale as a vampire on a diet. Her hands shook visibly, clenching and unclenching at her sides in an unconscious gesture.

Deliberately, he addressed Gorgon, otherwise he’d give in to his dragon’s insistence and take the woman who was his new queen in his arms, fold her into his wings and let nothing and no one near her. “My king, we need to get both of you to your chamber. Now.”

Maul, standing practically at Meira’s back, pulled his lips back in a silent snarl that had Samael eyeing the hellhound closely. He hadn’t much experience with the beasts, but all rumors said to steer clear. But damned if that mutt was getting in the way of what Samael had to do.

“I’ve got this,” he said.

To Maul’s credit, the dog stopped snarling, cocking his head to study Samael, muscles rippling under his fur.

“What?” Meira visibly forced herself to drag her gaze from the mirrors to him, as though his words to Gorgon had taken a minute to seep into her head. “Shouldn’t we discuss this with my sisters and the other kings? Address our people?”

Did she not hear the growing buzz of doubt and even anger in the voices filling the room? As though a swarm of wasps had been disturbed by a swift kick to their nest.

Samael shot her an impatient look, though careful still to keep his features neutral. “You need to solidify this mating.”

She was shaking, reaction setting in. “But…I need to figure out if I have another sister. We have to get her away from him. We can’t just let her—”

“With what clans behind you?”

He wanted to shake some sense into her. That tender heart would only lead to trouble if she followed it so blindly.

Meira slow blinked at him, then slid her gaze around the room, landing finally on the man she had pledged her life to not minutes before. As she did, those ice-blue eyes of hers darkened to a color almost navy. Every emotion showed in those mercurial eyes, the color changing like seasons in the mountains with each thought.

Fisting his hands at his sides to keep from reaching out to…what? Comfort her? Convince her? Not his job. Samael forced his gaze to his king.

Gorgon already held one of her hands. With a small tug, he pulled her attention to him. “Samael is right. My clan trusts me. They’ll trust you more if you are my queen in every way.”

Maul let loose a low rumble of warning.

Rather than answer, Meira laid a tentative hand on the hound’s bristly, furred shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but the giant dog settled, his glowing eyes appearing to dim. Then she glanced over Gorgon’s shoulder to where Kasia and Skylar stood talking with their own mates. Almost as though they felt her gaze, both women turned their heads. Skylar even started forward a step but stopped when Meira shook her head.

“My place is with you,” she said to Gorgon, though the words came out unsteady.

“Stay with the queen,” Gorgon instructed Samael.

Jerking his chin at Ladon and Brand, Gorgon stepped into the small chamber to the side, closing the door behind the allied kings.

“What’s he doing?” she asked. “I thought time was—”

Touching her was out, but somehow his feet stepped him closer to her just the same. To keep her safe, that’s all, he tried to reason. “He’s assuring his allies of what he’s doing before you disappear.”

Could a woman of her tall grace manage to appear any smaller? “Oh,” she murmured.

A few seconds later, Brand and Ladon appeared, moving to their mates’ sides. Several seconds after, Gorgon emerged and walked directly to Meira. “Let’s go.”

She turned to her sisters again. “I have to go.” Meira mouthed the words. “I love you.”

After receiving reluctant nods, she turned to face Gorgon and Samael, though she paused and cast a quick look into the crowd. No doubt at Angelika. Did her eyes darken more?

Samael didn’t give a shit. The buzz of voices was growing louder with each passing second. How was he going to keep his king and queen safe if the room erupted?

Meira suddenly inhaled a sharp breath and seemed to steady. “We’ll never get out of this room easily.” She unconsciously echoed his own concern.

He glanced at the now-passive mirrors. “I have an idea,” he said.

Without waiting to see if they followed, he hurried to the nearest mirror and waved at it, looking to Meira expectantly.

After a small pause, she stepped forward. With a mere thought, flames feathered over her entire body, reminding Samael of coal burning on low. Her flames were still red and gold, normal everyday fire. In theory, if she was like her sisters, as soon as the mating bond snapped into place, those flames would turn black, the color of her new family.

She touched a tentative hand to the mirror and almost seemed relieved when it changed. “Go ahead.”

Both Samael and Gorgon stepped over the gilded frame of the mirror and through the reflective surface. The sensation of being dragged against, a force flattening his face and pressing against him, surrounded him and flowed with him. He’d expected it to be cold, or silent and blinding, the way teleporting when Skylar used her version of that power to send them far distances had been. But this was more immediate. Like stepping through water, or something thicker.

One second, he was in the throne room with the dissonance of voices. The next instant, they stood in the human-size hall just down from Gorgon’s suite. Though they had to climb down from the small table the receiving mirror sat over, the voices from the throne room shut off as Meira followed and doused her flames, leaving them in blessed silence.

“Don’t let anyone near the door until you have new orders,” Gorgon commanded.

Samael pretended not to notice the way Meira had paused and stared at him closely for a heartbeat, tugging against the king’s hold before following Gorgon. Then the king led his mate inside, the lock clunking as he engaged it across the thick wood door.

Samael spun, standing to post, his back to the stone wall. Closing his eyes, he rammed the back of his head against the rock. Once. Twice.

“She’s doing what she must,” he muttered to himself. “Now do your duty, soldier.”

Shoving every emotion as deep as he could, as far away from himself as he could, he straightened, senses tuned to the tunnels rather than anywhere in the suite, and prayed to every god he’d ever heard of—even the minor ones he only sort of remembered from childhood—that he didn’t have to hear the mating.

Before, his new queen stirred his dragon, something no other woman had ever managed to do. But now, knowing what was going on behind that door, his dragon was going berserk—roaring inside his head, beating against Samael’s insides. Teeth gritted, only loyalty and sheer will, developed by being the toughest son of a bitch in his clan, held Samael still.

Until Meira’s scream split the silence.