Page 23 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Re­lief surged through Gabriel, loos­en­ing the knot­ted mus­cles in his neck and shoul­ders. He broke out of the trees to see his cousin sit­ting on a rock, star­ing at the vista while his horse grazed nearby. “Thank God!”

“Gabri?” Raul jerked around. “What the hell are you do­ing here?”

“Your fa­ther sent me. He didn’t want to cre­ate an up­roar.”

“He could have just texted me,” Raul said.

“Your phone was found stashed un­der your bed.” Gabriel swung off his horse and dropped the reins on the ground. “Which scared the hell out of Tío Luis.”

Raul stuck his hands in the pock­ets of his leather jacket, com­ing up empty. “Joder! It must have fallen out of my pocket when I changed my shoes.” His mouth pulled into a grim line. “Pa­ter is go­ing to be pissed. I don’t need that right now.”

“I’ll run in­ter­fer­ence,” Gabriel said, hop­ing he could soften his un­cle’s re­ac­tion. He pulled out his phone to text his un­cle.

Lo­cated Raul in good health. He did not in­tend to leave his phone be­hind. He just needed space.

Gabriel smiled to him­self as he typed. Un­cle Luis liked to be right.

The re­sponse came back al­most im­me­di­ately. Muchas gra­cias, so­brino. I will give him his space as long as you are with him. Gabriel could prac­ti­cally feel his un­cle’s re­lief through the phone.

De nada, tío.

He meant it in the lit­eral sense. He had done noth­ing to earn the king’s grat­i­tude.

“I told him you didn’t in­tend to ditch your phone, so hope­fully that will re­duce his fury some­what,” Gabriel said. “But you know he’s more re­lieved than an­gry.”

Raul gave a mirth­less smile. “Yeah, I know.”

Gabriel folded him­self onto a rock near Raul. “So why did you dump your body­guard?”

“It was an ac­ci­dent. When I re­al­ized I’d lost him, I just kept go­ing and ended up at the sta­ble. Fresh air seemed like a good idea. And I fig­ured they could track my cell phone, so no one would worry much.” Raul’s shoul­ders sagged, and he skimmed his palm over his face.

The king had kept Raul on a tight leash ever since the ab­duc­tion. No won­der his cousin chafed at the con­straints.

“There was a dragon here when I rode up,” Raul said. “A big, bright green guy, maybe three feet long, sun­ning him­self on the rock where you’re sit­ting. His frill must have been at least eigh­teen inches across.”

“Now you have the luck of el dragón for the day. Con­grat­u­la­tions,” Gabriel said, quot­ing the old folk­lore.

Once, the large lizards had been com­mon in the moun­tains, but their vi­brant col­ors and spec­tac­u­lar neck frills had made them tar­gets for tro­phy hunters and ex­otic-an­i­mal col­lec­tors. Now they were pro­tected, but their pop­u­la­tion had been slow to in­crease.

“In­ter­est­ing that no one spec­i­fies if it’s good luck or bad luck when you see a dragon,” Raul said. “Be­ing a dragon cer­tainly wasn’t lucky in the old days.”

“Are you re­fer­ring to the lizard or the fam­ily?” The first King of Cal­eva had taken Dragón as the royal sur­name.

Raul snorted. The moun­tain breeze set the ev­er­green nee­dles whis­per­ing against each other while a clink of metal buck­les and the creak of a sad­dle sig­naled that one of the horses had shifted. “I un­der­stand that I owe you an­other debt of grat­i­tude.”

“For what?” Gabriel asked.

“Tak­ing on the thank­less task of meet­ing with the lily-grub­bing del­e­ga­tion. That was go­ing to be my job be­fore you laid your head on the chop­ping block of civic duty. What the hell pos­sessed you?”

“I asked to be as­signed a job,” Gabriel said. “To ease into my civic duty. But you are wel­come to it.”

Raul eyed him like a strange spec­i­men of Cal­e­van fauna be­fore guilt flashed across his face. “You’re do­ing this be­cause you’ve given up your gui­tars.”

“I’m do­ing this be­cause it’s time I took up my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a royal duke. I’ve pushed them onto other peo­ple’s shoul­ders for too long.”

“You had good rea­sons.” Raul picked up the wa­ter bot­tle sit­ting on the rock be­side him and twisted it in his hands be­fore he said, “I was there that night too. I saw the kid­nap­pers. I heard them. I might re­mem­ber some­thing you don’t. Or I might have seen some­one from an an­gle you didn’t.”

Gabriel nod­ded.

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