BETHANY stood inside the Dragon Palace, waiting for an audience with the Dragon King and Dragon Queen.
From the outside, the Dragon Palace wasn’t so much an antique European castle as it was a beautiful Spanish mansion from the 1920s, perched on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She estimated the square footage at twenty thousand feet, with maybe ten bedrooms and a few extra bathrooms, plus the enormous ballroom and entertaining rooms.
Inside, however, it looked exactly like an antique European castle.
Enormous paintings of people wearing ball gowns and tiaras or tuxedos and royal honors filled the walls all the way up to the high ceilings. Subtle tattoos—dragonmate markings—peeked from under the glittering necklaces and starched collars of the depicted people, and the irises of their eyes held a thousand colors, as close as an oil paint artist could come to the distinctive eye characteristic of the mated dragon.
Bethany was sure that Math could have transformed into his airplane-sized dragon in the ballroom they’d walked through, and he probably could have sat up on his hind legs in this vast, cavernous waiting room. The tufted furnishings were upholstered in rich, sumptuous velvets and trimmed with thick fringe.
And now, they stood in a white hallway, waiting for the Dragon King.
Across from where they sat on a tufted couch, an enormous portrait of the two monarchs loomed, making them appear twelve feet tall. The Queen wore a gold and sapphire tiara with her cobalt blue ball gown, while the king wore a black tux. Royal honors, which looked like military ribbons, formed a solid block over the left side of the king’s chest, and he wore a glittering medal dangling beneath the many ribbons, a scarlet sash across his chest and under his coat, pinned with a five-pointed, gemstone-lined star on his hip, an eight-pointed gold and ruby star below his white bow-tie, precious-stone-encrusted buttons on his coat, an ornate livery collar that looked like a wide, flat necklace but was laid wide on his broad shoulders, three rings, and a gold watch.
Her mate, Mathonwy Draco, sat beside her, leaning back on the settee with his long legs crossed at his ankles. He must have seen that she was inventorying the king’s jewelry. “I must have mentioned that dragons like to give pretty rocks to their mates.”
“That’s a lot of pretty rocks, he’s wearing,” Bethany mused.
“It’s one of our few redeeming traits. I remember that you were wearing those shoes when we first met in the HR office. The sparkle caught my eye.”
Bethany regarded her violet witch boots, turning her ankle to let the glitter catch the sunlight. “They’re comfortable. I didn’t know that sparkly shoes were dragon bait. Wait, isn’t the king a dragon?”
“No. Queen Bronwyn is the dragon. King Llywelyn is her dragonmate. He’s a mage, I think.”
Bethany frowned. “Is that weird?”
“What?” Math asked.
“That your king isn’t a dragon?”
“Queen Bronwyn is a dragon.”
“Yeah, I know. But the king isn’t a dragon.”
“Because he’s her dragonmate.”
“Okay. Nevermind.”
Math shrugged. “It’s been pretty evenly matched, the last few centuries, as to which mate in the Royal Couple is the dragon. But the monarchs are chosen by a magical item, the Dragon Scepter. No one understands how it chooses.”
“Ah! There. That’s what I was looking for. Are dukedoms inherited the same way?”
“No. So far, at least in my generation, dukedoms and earldoms are still absolute primogeniture. Oldest kid gets it, whatever gender they are. It makes it easy that mated pairs rarely have more than one child.”
“That’s so sad,” she said.
Math shrugged. “It’s just the way it happens, I guess.”
“You should have told me you were ‘Your Grace Mathonwy, the Duke Draco’ before we walked into the palace. I almost corrected that guy who greeted us. ‘Oh, no. He’s not a duke. You must be mistaken.’ Holy magic, I would have looked like an idiot.”
“It didn’t come up,” Math said, smiling gently.
“It should have. It totally should have come up,” Bethany fretted.
“Did you like my house?”
“Well, yeah! It’s the perfect blend of a cozy residential area and a fantastic area for dinner parties. I didn’t know I’d have to deal with a staff, however. But it is nice not to have to worry about cleaning all seven bathrooms.”
Math laughed. “You’ll like King Llywelyn. He’s a nice guy.”
“Do you have any hot, young royals like Prince Harry?”
Math gestured to the older man in the painting. “He thinks he is.”
“Maybe we should invite him to our wedding.”
Math raised an eyebrow at her. “Dragons don’t have weddings. It’s one of the benefits of magical matings. No ceremony planning.”
“Oh, wait right there, Your Grace Duke Draco. Witches do have weddings. We have huge handfastings and invite every person you’re related to or ever met, usually in a barn with animals and dangling fairy lights. My parents will kill me if I don’t throw a wedding for them.”
“But dragons marry witches all the time, and no one has weddings.”
Bethany went on, “Not to mention Willow and Ember. They will definitely kill me if I don’t have a handfasting. We all promised each other when we were ten that we’d all be co-maids-of-honor at each other’s weddings, though we really wanted to have a triple wedding for the three of us. We pinky swore. I have to throw a handfasting so they can be my maids of honor.”
The door beside them opened.
A slim woman emerged. “His Majesty will see you now, Your Graces.”
“Come on,” Math said. “We can hash this out later.”
“We will have a proper handfasting,” Bethany grumbled as they walked inside the king’s office. “I swear by all the goddesses, we will.”
Inside, King Llywelyn, the man from the painting but slightly older, was sitting behind a giant desk. California sunlight streamed in the wide windows, and the surf crashed on the rocks below. He was a good-looking older man with a full head of silver hair and craggy cheekbones.
The king poured coffee from a silver service into china cups for them. “Good morning, Duke Draco. And this is Bethany Aura, the new Duchess Draco, I presume?”
“Pleased to meet you,” Bethany said, surreptitiously swiping some dust off the edge of the king’s desk as she curtsied. She was conscious of her dragon-bait boots as she sat, so she crossed her ankles to not draw too much more attention to them.
“And you as well. I trust you’re being properly introduced to dragon society?”
“Math’s friends Arawn and Cai have come over a few times. We’re throwing a big party next week.”
“I’m sure everyone will attend any party that Mathonwy throws,” King Llywelyn said. “Has he mentioned that he’s quite popular?”
She side-eyed Math. “I think that must have slipped his mind, too.”
“Oh, yes. He’s a member of a dozen committees and boards, and the chair of a fair number of them. Everyone wants to know him better or desires an introduction. He’s a social node, one of those people who knows everyone, and everyone likes them.”
Bethany slipped her hand into Math’s. “Yeah, I can see that.”
King Llywelyn smiled at them, his fingers interlaced and resting on his belly. “Your handfasting is going to be enormous, perhaps a thousand guests. Three-quarters of the dragon clan will clamor for invitations, plus your side, of course.”
Math raised his eyebrows. He insisted, “Dragons don’t have weddings.”
Bethany grinned. “We’ll have it as soon as I can plan it.”
Llywelyn grinned. “Ah, excellent. When the Queen and I had our handfasting—”
Math interrupted, “But dragons don’t do ceremonies. We’re too solitary for such large gatherings. Mating is a private and personal ritual. Surely, you didn’t have a wedding and all that.”
“I’m a mage,” King Llywelyn said. “Of course, we had a handfasting. Witches always have handfastings to celebrate a marriage. It’ll be in your hometown, Bethany?”
“Of course,” Bethany said. “I have lots of relatives and friends who would hunt me down and burn me at the stake, otherwise.”
“Can I only suggest that it’s in two-months time? We need Mathonwy here to finish getting the Dragon’s Den Casino ready to open.”
“I figure that will be just enough time to plan the wedding,” Bethany said.
The king flicked his fingers in the air. “And by then, you should know if you and Mathonwy will be the next king and queen, too.”
Math choked on his coffee and set it aside, coughing.
Bethany gasped, “I beg your pardon?”
The king smiled at her over his coffee cup. “Didn’t Mathonwy mention that last month, the Dragon Scepter nearly chose him as the next King of New Wales?”
She turned toward Math. “No.”
Math shifted his weight away from her and stared out the window at the sunshine.
The king said, “Why, yes. The Dragon Scepter illuminated for three dragons but did not complete the selection process: Arawn, the Duke of Tiamat; Cai, the Duke of Wyvern; and your mate, here.”
Bethany turned to Math, but he was staring out of the window and wouldn’t look at her. “Dude. Seriously.”
Math looked back sharply at the king. “I thought there were others, too.”
“Not particularly. You three all had a strong showing, and everyone else had a little fizzly spark or two, at best. I checked the scepter for malfunctions three times during the ceremony. It was astonishing that there are only three front-runners after only one selection process. My year, eight couples gained a response from the scepter during the first round. Didn’t you watch the rest of the ceremony?”
Math flipped his fingers in the air. “I was talking to people.”
The king smiled. “Of course, you were.”
Yes, Math was popular, Bethany surmised.
Math continued, “People needed to plan committee meetings and discuss board business. My calendar is tight.”
“Yes,” the king said, his smile pointedly serious, “I can see where you would be too busy running the kingdom to notice whether or not you were made the king.”
“I don’t run the kingdom,” Math said, frowning. “I just happen to be on a few committees and boards.”
“And the board of Dragons Den, Inc.”
“I’m not on the corporate board,” Math told him.
“Oops,” the king said, still grinning. “I thought they had already notified you of the position. Finding the embezzler and securing the first round of financing from the angel investors impressed the board. They plan to offer you a seat. You must have been too busy with your new duchess to receive them and allow them to make the offer.”
Math frowned harder. “Gareth Terrwyn,” the CEO of Dragons Den, Inc., “did text yesterday to arrange an urgent meeting.”
“Well, let me be the first to congratulate you, then, on your promotion as well as your mating. I assume you’ll be heading back to Las Vegas soon to oversee the soft opening of the casino, which happens in one month.”
“Um—” Math dithered.
Bethany cleared her throat. They had discussed this, extensively.
The king raised one white eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”
Bethany cleared her throat again, so hard that she might have been preparing to hawk up a loogie.
Math looked at the floor. “Duchess Draco and I have planned a honeymoon to Wales and Europe. We will be traveling for at least a month, perhaps two.”
Bethany sat back in her chair, satisfied. She would have a wedding eventually, but she was not giving up her honeymoon.
“We’ll have to find someone else to oversee the casino, then.”
Math said, “Might I suggest Arawn Tiamat? The whole place should have a thorough security analysis before the soft open. Tiamat would be excellent in that role.”
King Llywelyn nodded. “And we’ll have to retain a Master Mage to take care of those sea serpents in the fountain.”
Bethany gulped, mortified.
“I asked around my old coven,” the king continued, “but no one seems to have any experience with dispelling legendary-class apparitions. It’s very rare that anyone is ever able to summon them. It is Master-Mage-level magic.” He smiled at her. “Very impressive.”
Bethany needed to speak up for her serpents. It was her duty as the idiot who had summoned them. “King Llywelyn, Your Majesty? Permission to speak?”
Math snorted a little.
The king chuckled kindly. “You don’t have to observe formal protocol during an office meeting.”
“Okay, well, the sea monster apparitions were looking a little sickly. I don’t think they’re supposed to eat algae. I think they need some vitamins and maybe some fish.”
The king nodded. “Noted. I don’t know who could look at it.”
“A friend of mine, Willow Sage, is really good with healing potions and with animals.” Healing potions were one of few things Willow could reliably produce, and Willow needed a job. She hadn’t found one after she’d gotten home from her Parisian remedial potions course. “She could take care of the sea serpents, maybe whip up some vitamin potions and throw in some fish, until you can find someone who can dispel them.”
King Llywelyn nodded. “Excellent. Have her report to the HR office tomorrow. I’ll alert them that she’s coming in to be the official Serpent Wrangler until we can figure out what to do with them. And now, if you don’t mind,” he checked his phone screen, “my next appointment is waiting outside.”
Bethany stood. “Absolutely lovely to meet you, King Llywelyn. I’ve learned a lot today.”
The king chuckled. “Yes, well, you’ll get used to it. Everyone does.”