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DRAGONS & MAGIC
PROLOGUE
Duke Mathonwy Areleous Draco wore the stiff ducal robe he had inherited from his father when he’d assumed the noble title. He wove his way from the center of the crowd toward the far edge, hoping to escape from the people who wanted to talk to him.
The throng milled about the wide throne room, waiting for the Queen and King to enter.
Most of the people in the crowd appeared to be human, though exceedingly few actually were.
A woman’s voice called above the din, “Mathonwy!Mathonwy Draco!I need to talk to you!”
He turned. “Yes, good to see you, Derryth,” Mathonwy greeted the other member of the Palace Finance Committee, even though they’d seen each other at the meeting the day before. He shook her hand, smiling down at the tall woman. “Have you heard anything about the service workers’ labor contract?”
“Not yet,” she said, nodding such that her flaming red hair caught the sunlight.
They conversed for a few minutes until Math was dragged away by Siriol Draugar, who needed to confer about when the Nobles Council Ethics Committee could meet next week for an emergency session to deal with a spate of embezzlements. They decided Thursday at six o’clock would work in their schedules, and Mathonwy was just typing it into his phone when Dyl, the Earl of Ladon, accosted him and insisted on introducing Mathonwy to his daughter Nerys who was home from university for just a few days. Dyl proudly rambled that Nerys was majoring in English Literature and French, was a member of the university speech and debate team, and also ran track.
Mathonwy said to her, “Yes, lovely to meet you.”
He extricated himself from the Ladons and had almost reached the crowd’s edge when the imperious Abertha Deryn found him. She demanded an appointment to discuss the concern that the City of Los Angeles was insisting that the local school for their children integrate with the naturals’ school just a few miles down the coast, which might make it somewhat more difficult to hide what they were. He checked his phone and found a time for her and the school board to have a conference two days later, and then Abertha demanded that Math introduce her to Dewydd Hydra, whom Mathonwy knew from their several shared Nobles Council committees.
He made the introduction and slipped back into the crowd, trying to make for the wall so he could watch the eddying people and gauge their mood.
The voluminous, traditional robe Mathonwy wore itched the back of his neck above his fine suit and white dress shirt. Gold-thread embroidery and small crystals encrusted the hem and wide sleeves of the dark silk velvet. The regalia weighed over seventy pounds, though he carried the weight without strain over his broad shoulders.
Indeed, though the robe had been intended to be floor-length, the hem barely cleared Mathonwy’s knees because he was nearly,almostsix and a half feet tall, just a fraction of an inch shy of six feet and six inches of powerful, muscular, not-exactly-human male.
His friends, who called him Math rather than his given name, teased him incessantly about his extravagant height. Yeah, he was a freakish giant with oversized hands and feet but not enough basketball aptitude to play past high school varsity, so he could do nothing about their taunts except palm their skulls and shrug while they struggled in his grip, eventually pretending to notice their flailing and release them. He towered over most other people, and though he didn’t slouch, Math was careful to bend at the waist if people needed him to during conversation. It was disconcerting to literally talk over people’s heads, so ten years ago when he’d taken possession of the ducal residence—a mansion on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean—he’d had it redecorated with many seating areas, the first just steps inside the front door.
The front door was on the roof, of course.
The front door of the mansion where he now stood was also on the roof, though this mansion was officially called the Royal Palace.
Many of the people in the crowd of hundreds were notable for their tall statures, toned and muscled forms, the dragon souls slumbering in their hearts, and real flames curling from the corners of their mouths when a conversation became, shall we say,heated.
And their eyes were remarkable, of course.
Mature dragons have glittering, fluid irises, sometimes matching the shifter’s dragon in color, sometimes matching their temperament. Other supernatural beings could see the unusual eye characteristic of the mature dragon, but natural humans hardly noticed. Natural humans often described a mature dragon’s eyes as “piercing” or “striking,” not allowing themselves to see the magic that filled the world around them.
Indeed, think of celebrities and important persons with “striking, piercing” eyes, and consider how many of them may harbor dragon souls who must, occasionally, be allowed to fly.
About half of the guests fit that definition.
The other half of the crowd in the throne room that thundered with voices and laughter were dragonmates who bore the dragon mating-mark on their shoulders. Tattoos of claws or tails were often visible above the dress necklines or suit collars that the mates wore, though no one actively tried to hide a dragon’s mating-mark. Fashion must be observed, however. Some of the dragonmates were natural humans, though many were witches or mages, fae, or other varieties of shifters. All the women dragonmates and most of the men wore heavy jewelry, necklaces, chains, rings, earrings, and clips in their hair that shone with polished gold and platinum and glittered with precious jewels.
Dragonmates also acquired the eye characteristic of the mature dragon after mating somehow, even if they weren’t dragon shifters.
Mathonwy had no idea how that happened.
Magic, he assumed.
Math’s eyes were more human-normal than many of the others’ in the room, just an ordinary hazel-brown. He was just out of his teenhood, in dragon years. His eyes probably wouldn’t change for several years, yet. He wasn’t even sure how it happened, whether it was a kind of second puberty or a magical ceremony.
Eh, it would happen when it was time, he was confident.
Whenever Math went on the naturals’ social media, jewelry-store ads glittered at him, offering him baubles even though he had no mate and had never had time to search for and find someone suitable. He had been busy with university and his MBA, and then Dragons Den, Inc. had snapped him up and made him a division head so fast, it had made his head spin. He’d just never been in the mating mood.
He assumed it was a mood. Or maybe one’s friends told you when your hair was thinning and your scales were getting dull, and that you’d better find a mate before you became a limp lizard.
