“What?” I say. “That’s insane.”
“No, it’s what we should’ve done the second this guy showed his face.” Prince Lucien starts to undo his jacket.
“You’re not fighting Arthur.”
“You’re not protecting him. If he wants to be your man, he can show us that he’s strong enough to be your man.”
“What? I–”
A loud bell chimes, and I turn to see the king has come to a stand. Everyone falls silent, and Prince Alaric grabs me and pulls me back to his side. Suddenly, I’m standing with the three princes surrounding me, space between Arthur and I. There’s tension in their bodies for a long minute before they finally seem to relax. I glance up at Prince Alaric, and his gaze softens as it lingers on me.
Is it really possible? Do they actually like me?They certainly seem happier when I’m not around other men.
“Welcome, Dravari people,” the king says, his voice booming through the room. “We have much to discuss.”
12
Gareth
It’shard to calm myself down as my father does his usual shit, drinking in the attention of everyone in the room as he waits for every eye to be solely focused on him. The thing is, I don’t care about him. I don’t care about what he has to say. I care about whether or not Harper is in love with this Arthur.
She looks at him in a way she’ll never look at me, I’m sure of that. Every time I see them together, she’s all smiles and laughter for him. This is worse than when I thought she liked Roland’s attention. This is a man she has a history with. A man she loved enough to marry. And here he is in front of us making her feel things we don’t make her feel.
How can we possibly compete with love?
If she had no one, we could earn her respect. Eventually, maybe, she’d come to like us. But love? I can never imagine getting a woman like Harper to love us. We’re too damaged. Too big of assholes.Is she going to end up marrying us and wishing she was with him?I can’t stand the thought.
My hand holds her much smaller arm, touching the soft skin. Keeping her close to us, so she won’t touch Arthur again.Fuck, I couldn’t handle it if she touched him again. I feel like I’m going to burst.And it’s not like Alaric and Lucien are keeping me calm either. I can feel rage building underneath their skin. I mean, Lucien is ready to brawl with him in the middle of a party. That’s not like him at all.
“Welcome,” my father says again, his loud voice an irritant in any setting, including this one. “Every person in this room is among the most important people in our great nation. You are the reason we are a society of wealth, privilege, and good health. And you are the people who should be the first to know of this exciting news. News that will change our nation, yet again, bringing us to an even higher level of success.”
There’s murmuring in the room. Excitement. The lords and ladies are eating right out of the palm of his hand. That’s one skill my father never passed on to me. The ability to be charismatic. To sell a pile of shit, call it gold, and have people bidding for the chance to possess it. I wonder what new shit he’s peddling today, and know in my gut that this is about us.
He did say the announcement about the Hollowborn’s offer would come tonight.
“Everyone is aware of our female dragon rider, the woman of legend. Female dragon riders have always been a symbol in our history that has brought about a peace with the Hollowborn time and time again. Even if that peace didn’t last.” He lets the whispering continue for a minute, before speaking once more. “Well, we’re already seeing that that is true. Harper has been one of the few dragon riders to ever have a conversation with a Hollowborn.”
Excitement and wonder flow through the room. The ladies only know of the Hollowborn from stories and tales whispered around the fire, but most of the men fought the Hollowborn intheir younger days. They know the creatures for what they are: merciless killing machines. They’ll be as surprised as we were when we heard about the conversation with Harper.
“Harper and the Hollowborn not only had a conversation, they had a conversation about peace.” That gets everyone’s attention. “The Hollowborn made her an offer to bring to your king. He asked that we give them access to some of our land and resources in exchange for information about how to facilitate the birthing of more male dragons, an issue that is near and dear to all our hearts. We desperately need a solution.”
He takes a deep breath. An excuse for a dramatic pause. “We have not let it be known, but the lack of male dragons is more than a small cause for concern. Our trackers have only come across six male dragons in all their searching, and none of those male dragons have settled down with mates. If we do not find a way to have more male dragons in this generation, dragons as a whole may cease to exist.”
A woman gasps. Several others fan themselves. My dad has them on the edge of their seats. I don’t fall for his ways quite so easily, but I do wonder if he’s telling the truth. We haven’t had a hatching at the academy since I’ve been a dragon rider. And the ones before that were all female. We know that male dragons still exist, not just because of Ebron, but because we still see hatchlings at the Island of Dragons. But, again, we haven’t seen a male dragon amongst any of the hatchlings.
“So,” he continues, “if the Hollowborn have a solution to the problem, it would be important for us to come to an agreement with them. Our lands are vast and plentiful. If we were to allow access to a specific corner of our continent, away from our people, and monitor their actions closely, this deal will be worth doing.”
“Even though peace hasn’t worked in the past,” Elder Thorne says loudly, stroking his long, white beard.
My father sighs, long and dramatically, but I’m paying attention now. Very little is ever said about the brief periods of peace with the Hollowborns. I’d almost begun to wonder if the knowledge was forbidden to be shared.
“In all our history books, there have only been records of three times of peace with the Hollowborns, all after the appearance of female dragon riders. These times of peace were different each time, but always ended in bloodshed.” My father hesitates. “But the Hollowborn were not always the first to end the peace agreement.”
That’s a shock to me, but apparently not to Elder Thorne, who looks absolutely horrified that my father had the nerve to say such a thing.Sometimes we were the reason peace didn’t work with our enemies?I somehow never imagined such a thing, and neither had my people, given the expressions on their faces.
My father paces in front of his throne for a moment before stopping and smiling. “I must bring up this next part for any of this to make sense. When a dragon male chooses his mates, the females he will be with for every mating period for the remainder of their lives, something incredible happens that we only know about from our history books but will be seeing soon. Ebron, our lone male dragon, has already chosen three of his mates, Sylvara, Verdraxa, and Nythera. The princes’ very dragons.”
There’s clapping and excitement. I don’t blame them. All of this is new and unexpected. We can read about dragons and their ways in history books, but seeing the actual courting and claiming of dragon mates in our lifetime is amazing. I just wish there wasn’t so much wrapped up in Ebron and his choice in mates. It fundamentally shifts my life path, and that of my brothers. It fundamentally shifts Harper's path, in a way she might not be happy with.
