Page 198 of The Forbidden Dragon King
Iwillfeel.
A group of young cadets pass me. Even the academy are given the night off to celebrate on the Night of Shadows.
The cadets are laughing in a way that I never heard anyone in the academy laugh, despite the fact that their homemade costumes show that they have little money.
One waves at me, and the rest smile.
Awkwardly, I raise my hand.
Has anyone within the court, aside from my Golden Family, ever smiled at me and meant it? Met my gaze with anything but lurking fear or contempt?
“Stop waving at your adoring public and come and look at this, boss,” Daire calls.
Well, apart from my Kitten, of course.
Plus, my Spark
My Goddess.
I walk faster to catch up with Daire and Freya, which is difficult because they’ve both been excitedly rushing between everything in the carnival from the moment that we stepped out of the palace gates.
They’re the most alive things here tonight. The brightest, most vibrant things.
It burns me to look at them together.
My dragon riders.
Finally, after years of never believing that I would be blessed with a dragon rider like War’s Lucius, now I have two.
I stroll to where Freya and Daire have joined a crowd in front of a lively shadow puppet theater.
Freya and Daire are dressed in costumes that I had designed for this carnival. They match my own. A flowing, diaphanous black cloak like falling shadows over sparkling robes in ash gray with my Golden Dragon emblem over our hearts.
When they both look up at me, my breath catches.
Dressed in my wealthy clothes along with my emblem, they look like mine.
Pack.
Wearing clothes that are as expensive as my own, unshackled and free in my capital on this public date with me, do they understand what I am offering them?
What they now are? My honored dragon riders?Mates?
My consorts? Queen and King in everything but official title?
The Council will realize it, which is why I have spent the last two weeks relentlessly strengthening my position at court.
Lucius has exhausted himself helping me. He is a genius at these types of political maneuvers, undermining Maximinus, winning over the Guilds via Vicious and Wraith, and working on ensuring the army’s backing with War.
I haven’t slept, barely eaten.
The sight of Daire swinging from that whipping post from his dislocated wrist and wings, barely conscious, with his back a bloody ruin, nearly undid me.
He’s a king,myking.
Nobody can hurt him but me. I saved his life, and his blood belongs to me alone.
The only way that any pet will be safe in this court, however, is if I finally wrench the power from my uncle’s greedy hands.
