Page 10 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
“Since then,” he continued, “there’s been a bid every month at the full-moon ritual for the dragon goddess, Léas, to choose another queen. More rituals, more sacrifices, more violence and blood, and still Léas hasn’t chosen another.”
“Okay, but...” My gaze caught on the intricately folded petals of a bouquet of paper flowers on the nightstand Asa had made when he was five and a shirt that hung above them from a lampshade. “This dragon goddess didn’t choose me either. You know that, right? I’m just a human thief who’s trying to find her brother before he dies in a ritual that he should never be a part of. That’s it.”
“I don’t think that’s it.” Calhoun crossed toward me and handed me an envelope. “I found this on your coffee table.”
I took it and immediately recognized the heavy weight of it, the slight indentations on the paper, the fancy lettering of my brother’s name on the front. This was why Asa had gone outside the day after last month’s full-moon ritual, the day when everyone locked themselves inside because the dragon shifters’ surge of power from the night before spiraled them out of control—his acceptance letter from the Mechanical Achievement Center for Kids. It had lay scattered with the other mail on the sidewalk, along with one of his shoes, where he’d been snatched up.
Mechanical Achievement Center for Kids. MACK. Oh my god. I snapped my gaze to Calhoun’s, anchoring myself into his crafty dark depths because I suddenly felt like my life was being orchestrated by someone other than me. Not cool. Not cool at all.
“What does this mean?” I demanded.
“We got a similar message, but not by mail,” Calhoun said, his brown eyes softening as if he understood everything I was thinking. “The queen used to have a harem of dragons, for protection, for company, for all of her most basic needs. Her harem included our fathers.”
“Which makes you the queen’s sons?” I asked.
“That queen, yes,” Vance said, rubbing the stubble on his chin.
Come to think of it, they did have the same jawline, cheekbones, and shape to their eyes and lips, but their hair and eye colors were all different.
“Our bloodline has always been part of the queen’s harem, whoever that queen happened to be,” Vance continued. “We’re trained in battle, lovemaking, the arts, and history to please our queen. Now we just need Léas to choose one.”
“Then why hasn’t she?” I asked, taking a seat next to Tavis on the bed to throw on my jeans. “Why has it taken her a hundred years?”
Vance sat on the edge of the bed and reached between his legs for my wadded up glittery thong on the floor. A smile quirked his lips as he held it out, and I snatched it away and put it on, too caught up in my questions to feel embarrassed.
“We went to a seer about twenty-five years ago,” Vance said. “She said our mother’s dragon fire would find us and bring along our new queen. The seer’s vision was blurry, but she said the dragon fire would come by the name of Mack on a certain day in the future.”
“Today, if that wasn’t obvious,” Tavis murmured, palming my hip. “Right in the middle of dragon mating season.”
I snapped my gaze to his, and he nodded as he sat up, and then pressed a kiss to my shoulder. My heartbeat gunned at his touch, stirring my blood faster.
“The dragon fire is why you feel that hunger, that unrelenting need,” he said between kisses on my skin. “We feel it too.”
The urge to throw him back on the bed and ride him while the others joined in ignited through my body. He lifted his head from my shoulder as if sensing my thoughts, his blue eyes hooded with lust. The sheets pooled around his middle, and I knew exactly what I would find underneath. The air crackled with intensity, and two low growls that sounded like a promise hummed behind me.
But damn it,no! I had to leave here. The full-moon ritual wastonight, and Evenza was still five hundred miles away.
I shot up from the bed, yanking my jeans halfway up my thighs, to put distance between me and the three of them. “But I’m not a queen. I’m not a dragon shifter either.”
“Yet,” Tavis said gently behind me.
I whirled. “What?”
Vance picked at a loose fiber on my black-and-white-striped comforter. “The queen, our mother, wasn’t born a dragon. She was just like you, human, until our goddess Léas chose her to be queen.”
“So, what are you saying?” I asked, jamming my feet into my boots while zipping my jeans. “That I’m going to sprout some wings any second? Breathe fire down on all my enemies?” Although that would come in handy for those who had taken Asa...
Vance rose from the bed, tall and imposing and beautiful. “I think your brother’s MACK letter, your Isbon Mack vacuum—yeah, we saw the charred remains—and our seer’s vision were all Léas’s way of drawing you to your harem and then ensuring that you’re there for tonight’s full-moon ritual.”
“And then what?” I asked, shrugging as I knelt for my backpack. “Besides my rescuing Asa?”
“Léas will choose you to be queen,” Calhoun said quietly from his stance by the door.
Queen of the barbaric stovetops. Caught in a war between them that had killed the last queen so a new one could rise up. Well, sign me up for that nonsense because it sounded like a blast.
That wasn’t what I thought my place in this world would be. My place was protecting Asa. Always. And look how good I was at that? We lived in an apartment that was barely standing upright, had so little food some days that, even with thieving, I’d considered selling my body like the girls on the first floor. I wasn’t so sure I could ever do that, yet just minutes ago, I’d fucked a dragon shifter, who I was supposed to hate.
A hopeless feeling swelled in my chest, triggering a sting at the backs of my eyes.
