Page 3 of Fortune's Blade

Only it didn’t sound polite, but not because he was being rude. But because dragon-kind were just extra about everything, and that included their transformed voices. Werewolves on Earth got hoarse and somewhat guttural when they deigned to speak to you in wolf form, but dragon voices made all my skin want to shudder off my bones and lie there in a little heap at my feet, quivering.

In fact, I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t doing that, right now.

Louis-Cesare was doing a little better. That auburn mane of his was more red than brown in the dazzling sunlight, and he had the temper to match. Not to mention that master vamps weren’t used to being intimidated. He didn’t like it, but he also wasn’t stupid despite the male model good looks, and knew he’d have to take it.

But he was damned if he was going to sit there with a lump in his throat.

“Yes,” he said, his voice a little high. “My wife was Claire’s roommate until recently. We have been guaranteed safe passage—”

“There are few things guaranteed in Faerie these days,” the dragon said, which managed to make my sore ass clench a bit more.

Any further and my sphincter was going to swallow my body like a human ouroboros, and I’d pop out of existence all together. Which didn’t sound so bad right now. Really didn’t, I thought, as a neck longer than that of three giraffes suddenly shot out so that the massive head could get in my face.

And breathe on me.

Louis-Cesare looked like his butt was doing some clenching, too, but he stayed seated. And managed to keep his hand off his rapier. All of a millimeter off, but still.

Had to give him credit, I thought, staring up into an eyeball bigger than my head.

This dragon was solid gold, like a great statue carved out of the purest ore. But the eyes were completely black, without even any white around the rims. Or maybe that was me.

My vision was starting to get hazy at the edges, so who the hell knew?

And then, out of nowhere, I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed some more, as if I’d never stop. It was probably hysterical, but there was also a note of genuine humor in it, because this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. This kind of thing didn’t happen.

And when it did, it was damned funny.

I guessed the dragon agreed, since after a moment, it huffed out what might have been a laugh, too.

The force of it blew my hair all over the place because I usually kept it short but hadn’t had time to get a trim before we left. But I laughed anyway, and then we both laughed together, and then the beast draped the tip of a wing around my shoulders, which had a thick looking barb at the end like a pterodactyl’s. If a pterodactyl’s wings were tipped with six-inch shivs, that is.

“Claire said you were fearless. Seems she was right,” the creature announced. “I’m her father, and your host for the next little while. Rathen-Den of House Eddred. Rathen in this form, Den in the other, you see?”

“Enchanté,” Louis-Cesare said, because he has flawless manners. “I am Louis-Cesare de Bourbon, and this is my wife, the Lady Dorina Basarab.”

“Dory,” I managed to gasp out, and the great head bowed slightly.

“Yes, I understand that it’s necessary to make a distinction these days,” he said, which would have been cryptic, only I guessed he’d talked to Claire about my ‘sister’ and other half at some point. “Get on.”

“Get . . . on?” I repeated, confused.

“Yes, and hurry up. We’ll be late for dinner as it is.”

Louis-Cesare and I exchanged a look, which thankfully, our host misinterpreted. “Someone will be back for your, er, horse,” he said charitably. And then hunkered down as much as that enormous body could, crouching like a cat and looking at us expectantly.

I looked back, trying to come up with words that weren’t “Oh, hell, no,” but conveyed the same message. And then Louis-Cesare stood up and started searching around for a hand hold. Because of course he did.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice calm.

“I don’t know whether you noticed,” he said, while surveying the unbroken, armored surface in front of us. “But there is no bridge to the castle. No road or path other than the one we’re on, which ends just ahead. No way up except by flight.”

“We don’t get many visitors,” Lord Rathen agreed.

“And this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Louis-Cesare added, and actually looked somewhat enthusiastic about the whole thing.

I just sat there.

It was a terrible truth that my father had approved our marriage partly because he thought I would be a steadying influence on my new hubby. A dhampir, the often insane cross between a vamp and a human, was going to be the rational one. And the problem was, he’d been mostly right.

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