Page 32 of Dragons' Bride
Quinton’s jaw tightens, his attention swinging back to me with obvious reluctance. "Thank you for your assistance," he says flatly, his icy words cutting through me deeper than I thought possible. “However, I no longer require a human’s help. Or your misplaced concern.”
17. KIT
Idefinitely liked Quinton more in dragon form.
As if to further dig his barb into me, Quinton allows Corvus to pat his shoulder. The healer isn’t even pack.
“Let’s get the prince to his cabin,” Corvus says. “I will see to him there.”
I hope whatever the healer does hurts. A lot. The mix of hurt and anger swirls in my chest like a growing gale. Quinton had gone out of his way to wound me after shifting to his fae form, just as he’d gone out of his way to torment me after the night we spent together. It was becoming a theme. Stars, maybe that is the most infuriating part – that I’ve dropped my guard low enough to let the jabs take me by surprise and hurt me.
I’m a slave and Quinton is a prince. He is hardly the first to take pleasure in such things.
Still brimming with my righteous indignation, I turn my attention to the rest of the pack. Tavias and Cyril are helping Quinton toward the hatch, but Cyril spares me a look. “We will discuss what happened later,” he says in clipped tones that feel like being splashed with ice.
I’d honestly expected celebration and gratitude for helping the dragon. But the tension rolling off the males is anything but.
“Those were some… bold decisions there, turnip,” Hauck says behind me. “Even I’m seldom that reckless – and I heal a great deal faster than you do.”
“W-What are you talking about?” I ask.
Hauck snorts, though his attention is already being pulled away toward a repair crew asking for help. “Publically disregarding Cyril’s orders to do something that could have ended in disaster? It isn’t something I’d do lightly. Just saying. Excuse me.”
Suddenly alone, I look around the deck to see if anyone might voice a different opinion. Instead, I mark a shift in the crew. It’s the first time I’m without the princes hovering over me, and the sailors make little effort to keep their dislike in check. It is bad luck to have humans on a ship, they inform each other. I had to be the reason the runes on the Phoenix’s hull failed to protect her in the rift. They look forward to watching me get what’s coming.
A few even wager how many lashes I might get for my defiance. Whether I’ll pass out or scream louder than someone named Grevi once had. Whether the princes might strip me naked first.
Chest tight, I move out of the sailors’ way. The rift is behind us now, the purplish mist hanging above it like a deceptively pretty cloud. The rising wind whips the hair free of my braid and I gasp slightly at the potency of the new scents filling my lungs. Now that we’ve crossed into Lunos, everything around me seems sharper and more potent. The briney scent of the ocean, the creaking of the ship’s wet timber, the brilliance of the blue sky. I scratch my brand again, which now feels like it has ants crawling beneath its surface.
Once I’m certain I won’t run into Quinton on my way, I climb down into the cabin to find Nora waiting for me. Her face lacks its usual bouncy optimism as she hurries to help get my wet dress off me.
“The Phoenix barely came out of the rift intact,” she tells me, pulling out a dressing gown. “There will be little sleep for anyone until the ship is set back to rights. Perhaps it’s best if you kept to the cabin for a bit?”
I frown, the tightness in my chest dropping to my stomach. “Did… Did you hear something?” I ask. “About me, I mean.”
Nora grabs a hair brush, looking at my braid with predatory intent. Or maybe she just wants to get behind me, where I won’t see her face. “Sailors are a superstitious lot. You can’t take anything they say to heart. I once saw a whole storm blamed on one seaman’s poor choice of socks.”
So, she had heard. I wonder how long the grumblings had been going on, the princes’ company at my side keeping them from my ears. I bite my lip, wondering if just this once, the sailors might not be right. I’m not supposed to be here, with the dragon princes. I don’t fit the prophecy. What if whatever fates had created the prophecy to begin with are taking the deception personally?
Nora clears her throat. “Did you really ignore Prince Cryil’s orders to pull spikes from a dragon?” she asks quietly.
“I did.” I open my mouth to explain the pull that I felt, but I decide against saying it aloud.
“Oh,” says Nora.
“That’s ominous.”
“It’s just that such things are not usually done,” she says carefully. “That’s all. But you and the princes have a special kind of relationship. I’m sure they will let it pass.”
She doesn’t sound sure, and the crew on deck was rather certain about how things were bound to turn out. I feel a shiver run through me. As kind as the dragon princes may seem on occasion, can be on occasion, they are dominating and brutal as hell by nature. The last time I’d crossed them, Tavias had dragged me across his knee and set my backside on fire in front of the whole pack. My howls of pain told the whole forest what was happening. And on a ship? I don’t think I’d survive the humiliation.
The slave brand on the inside of my wrist itches in response to my thoughts and I rub the raised flesh that reminds me what I am.
As Nora suggests, I stay in my quarters for the rest of the day while she goes to help healer Corvus with the wounded. When none of the males come to bring me to their bed for the night – the first such time aboard the Phoenix – I curl up in my cot and grapple for sleep that doesn’t come. But at least I manage to keep the tears that sting my eyes from spilling.
The following day, I awake determined to make myself useful. The ship is brimming with repairs, many of the seaman up on deck have to completely relace the cracked mainmast – underCyril’ssupervision. Immaculate and put together, the prince makes directing the crew and teaching younger sailors look like a simple matter. After what Cyril did in the rift and the command he has now, every seaman on the Phoenix watches him like a god. The one glance Cyril spares me before curtly suggesting that the deck is not an appropriate place to be loitering just now, tells me that there is a reckoning to come.
The coiled tension inside my chest compresses a little more.
