Dante stared at his hands. They’d just been sandwiched between Bear’s cheeks and palms. He stared at the drops of moisture on his thumbs. Her tears.
She was gone. Gone. Just like that.
She wasn’t a perfect. She wasn’t the princess. She wasn’t his captive--she could have done that at any time. She wasn’t anything he’d thought her to be.
He had opened up to her in a way he’d never done before. He’d told her things he hadn’t even shared with Delle or Blukke.
And he didn’t even know her name. Didn’t even know that he didn’t know her name.
Blukke’s hand came down on Dante’s shoulder, breaking his stupor. Dante had his magic wrapped around his friend, pushing him away and holding him still. He’d deal with him later.
Dante faced the leopard shifter who was already staring at Dante in shock. Whether from the emotion he witnessed between the assassin and the imposter or Bear’s little trick, he didn’t know. But he was going to find out. “Who is she?”
Roan only continued his stare, his face set. Dante squeezed a phantom fist over him, knowing the guard would be able to feel the pain even through Blukke’s magic still incapacitating him. Roan didn’t cry out as he had before, only grimaced further.
Dante stalked to him, punching the guard in the face with his own fist, knowing Blukke’s magic prohibited Roan from using his pain-bringing gift. He heard the shifter’s nose crack and blood gushed out, but still Roan didn’t speak. He wasn’t so broken, after all.
“She’s one of the princess’s handmaidens,” Blukke answered from behind him. “Her name is Primrose.”
Dante kept his focus on Roan, realizing he’d called her Prim. He’d thought the guard had been calling her Prin with his Hogardian accent--a stupid nickname for the princess, but who was he to judge? He’d named her Bear, after all. “How far can she travel like that?”
Roan didn’t answer, just choked through the pain and the blood flowing over his face. But Dante saw the way his jaw clenched slightly, heard the subtle change in his heartbeat. Her gift was news to him. Roan’s Prim had kept things from him, too.
Dante didn’t know what to do. His instincts told him to go after her, but how would he find her with a gift like that? And if he did, what then? Would he still want to help her, protect her, hold her? Or would he want to hurt her, punish her, pay her back for her deception and the pain crushing his chest right now?
Emphatically the latter.
He turned to Blukke but didn’t release his grip on either man. “What else do you know? Tell me everything.”
Blukke looked at him with pity. “When you left and Sol put that price on you, I scouted the castle to see if I could figure out where you’d gone, knowing you’d been spending time there the prior weeks. I overheard that the handmaiden had gone missing the same night. I figured it must be connected. I thought maybe you’d met during your scouting and decided to run off together with that money--I know, I should have known better. But love can do weird things to people, and I can see I was at least right about that.”
Roan issued a growl that both Dante and Blukke ignored.
“I followed the cat to Sartu. Someone told him they’d seen the woman with you and a dragon whisperer. That a sky blue dragon had been seen in the area at the same time. I didn’t come here to begin with because I assumed you’d keep any trouble far from your ladies in the North. But when I heard that, I tried to get ahead of him. There were storms that had me grounded, and this fucker practically ran at full speed for days at a time. I only caught up this morning and went straight to Tamar, thinking he’d be going after the blue dragon. She wouldn’t listen when I told her to stay away, so I had to incapacitate her and Gordy.”
Dante had brought Blukke home several times over the years, and he trusted that Blukke was only trying to protect Tamar when he did it, even as he seemed comfortable in handing Dante himself over for the ten thousand golds. “Were you planning on taking care of them after you turned me in?” He fucking better have. It was the least he could do.
Blukke laughed, his blue-violet eyes sparkling. “Come on, brother. I came to warn you, not to turn you in. I just held you to make sure you hadn’t actually lost your mind first.”
Of course. Dante released his friend.
“The empire’s pretty well consumed with trying to get the princess, but once that’s taken care of, I’m sure they’ll be coming after you.”
That settled it. Dante would have to take care of Sol once and for all. He cursed himself for not doing it years ago. For not realizing sooner the truth of Roan’s words. Sol’s just a creep. A human perfect. Dante couldn’t believe he’d let himself accept that his master was untouchable for so long. This mission had nothing to do with Bear. It was to keep him and his family safe. They were what mattered. Bear didn’t even exist. She never had.
Dante roared. He screamed at the sky, releasing the betrayal, the pain, the anger--directed at Sol, Bear, and himself.
Blukke approached, putting a hand on his shoulder again. “What’s the plan, brother?”
Dante looked at the immobilized guard and Blukke followed his gaze.
“We’ll have to kill him,” Blukke said. “He knows too much.”
Dante knew Blukke was asking him to do it. His friend had always had a harder time with that particular task, his magic only being about to incapacitate, not kill. When Blukke took a life, he had to do it himself, and it certainly took more out of someone to use their own hands. Dante knew that was why Roan had made it here alive after Blukke had already gotten the information he needed in Sartu.
Roan’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t cry or beg. The only evidence of his fear was a slightly elevated heart rate. Not broken at all, it seemed.
“No.” Dante wouldn’t admit that his refusal had anything to do with Bear. That her eyes had fluttered shut and she’d sagged into Roan when he hugged her, proof of how much she cared for the guard. That as much as he hated Prim--whoever she was--he couldn’t yet shake his feelings for Bear and wouldn’t kill her friend.
Roan blinked. Blukke closed his eyes entirely.
Incoming wingbeats in his ears, Dante approached the leopard shifter. “We have common interests. We can work together to achieve our common goals.”
Roan lifted his chin defiantly. “And what goals would those be? The only common interest we share is Prim, and there’s no way we can both win her heart.”
Gods, the guard was shit at his job. “I’m not talking about a fucking woman. You can have her heart. I don’t want it.” The words tasted like ash on Dante’s tongue. “I want Somanti dead. I want his empire disbanded. You should, too. That will dissolve the mark on my head and the mark on Princess Kallia--who you serve to protect, correct?”
Roan clenched his jaw. “Why would I need your help to accomplish that?”
Dante shook his head, gesturing over the guard. “You can’t even move without our help.”
Roan licked his lips, clearing some of the blood that had begun to dry over them. “What is your proposition?”
“We will release you. The three of us will return to Hogard together to ensure the threat to the princess is handled. In return for our mercy, you will swear not to harm us or our families and not to mention what you heard here today to anyone.”
Blukke sighed from behind Dante.
Roan scoffed. “You mean that you yourself attempted to kidnap the princess? That you didn’t even realize you had the wrong person?”
Dante couldn’t hold his emotions in anymore, they were too wrecked from the events of the morning. He exploded. “I saw the princess in the castle and Bear has the exact same hair. And she came with me, pretending to be Princess Kallia. Letting me call her Princess. Letting me believe it. And I’d hardly call it kidnapping when she could have left me at any time, as we all just saw. Not to mention, she already told you she wanted to continue with me instead of return to Hogard with you.”
Roan’s mouth twitched up. “She only wanted to continue with you because she felt it was her duty--which will always come first for her. And her name is Prim. She was chosen based on her similar appearance to the princess. That’s one of the characteristics the orphans considered for the position are selected for. It had never made sense to me before, but I get it now. I suppose it’s for exactly this type of scenario. You really ought to have done more research. It’s actually impressive how little you’ve been able to glean after so much time together.”
Dante growled and Blukke approached with that comforting hand on his shoulder.
“What do you say? We let you live, you let us live? Sound fair?” Blukke asked the guard.
Roan’s smile remained. “If you release me, I swear I won’t harm you or your families or mention that you tried to kidnap the princess. In exchange, you will provide assistance in protecting the princess and your mercy. You must swear you won’t hurt me or Prim, or attempt any kind of wrongdoing against the princess, the crown, or Wassalia ever again.”
“I swear it,” Dante said immediately.
Blukke didn’t echo his words. He looked at the guard with narrowed eyes. “Why are you smiling?”
Roan let his smile fall, but he still answered. “Because you’re still going to get what you deserve. I won’t mention anything, but don’t you think the woman you abducted is going to?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Dante clenched his jaw. Bear wouldn’t.
But would Prim?
The ground shook as three dragons landed.
Tamar reached the trio first, shoving her hands into Blukke’s chest. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
Blukke only flashed his disarming smile at her. “I’m sure I can make it up to you later, darling.”
Tamar shook her head, flicking her eyes toward her dragon. “It’s not me you need to make it up to, and I’m not sure that magic cock of yours is going to work on him.”
Blukke only laughed before hollering across the field to Gordy, “Apologies, my friend!”
Gordy chuffed hot air at them as Delle and Marnie approached.
“Get in the house,” Dante commanded, his attention still on Roan. None of the dragon whisperers made to obey.
Marnie looked around. “Where’s Bear?”
Roan, to his credit, didn’t speak or reveal anything by his features. Nor did Blukke.
Dante turned to his friend. “Take his weapons. Give him his bodily faculties but keep his powers held. His gift has the ability to incapacitate as well, but through pain. He only needs to touch someone for it to work. Let him get himself cleaned up and keep him away from them.” He tilted his chin toward the dragon whisperers before focusing again on Roan. “Though you will be burned to a crisp by one of those lovely beasts over there if you even try.”
Blukke nodded and Dante turned toward the cottage before turning back around. He embraced the bowerbird shifter. “Thank you,” Dante said softly.
Blukke only nodded again, his smile gone, as Dante walked past his family without looking at them.
Once in his room, the smell of Bear still lingering in the air, Dante stared.
He stared at his clothing chest full of her clothes mingling with his own, that sheer nightdress on top.
He stared at their traveling pack full of supplies--the blanket, the waterskin, the food.
He stared at his boot and the hilt of her dagger sticking out of it that he’d never bothered to give back and she’d never bothered to take, though she had every opportunity.
Wherever she was, she had nothing. Dante clenched his fists, his heart pounding, commanding him to find her.
Maybe she was already back at the castle. Maybe her gift allowed her to travel anywhere. His stomach twisted trying to figure out why she wouldn’t have used it before now, why she hadn’t used it in the alley. Hoping it wasn’t because she couldn’t.
Delle’s footsteps announced her arrival long before the gentle knock on Dante’s door. He didn’t answer, but she opened the door all the same. Dante stood perfectly still, not turning to greet his sister-in-law turned mother figure turned friend. His eyes remained on that fucking nightdress.
Delle slid around to stand before him, blocking his view. He still didn’t refocus his gaze.
“What is going on, Dante? I’ve turned my cheek on what you do when you’re away, but now you’ve brought it to my home. To Marnie.” She gripped his hands. “I love you and I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for us, but this is unacceptable.”
He knew. Gods, he knew. “I’m going to make it right. I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear it.”
Delle squeezed his hands tighter before releasing. “Where’s Bear?”
Finally, he dragged his attention to her. “Gone.”
Dante brushed past Delle to pluck the traveling pack from the floor. He roughly extracted Bear’s clothes from his chest, stuffing them into the pack with everything else that reminded him of her. He stalked past Delle, past Marnie and Tamar in the common room and out of the house, into the back field. Roan and Blukke were gone, but the trio of dragons remained.
Dante tossed the pack on the grass in front of them. “Burn it.”
The dragons swiveled their long scaly necks toward him and one another, but did nothing more.
“Burn it. Please.” Dante’s voice cracked on the last word.
A hand wrapped around his own, soft and delicate. He hadn’t been paying attention to the incoming footsteps and hadn’t identified them. For a moment, he let himself believe it was Bear. Then Marnie’s scent filled his nose. “They won’t. I asked them not to. She’ll want her stuff back.”
Dante squeezed Marnie’s hand. “She’s not coming back.”
Saying the words out loud broke the last bit of Dante’s control over his emotions. He released his niece’s hand and shifted into his natural form, launching into the air, needing to be somewhere else.
He couldn’t be here, where people were talking about her.
Here, where her scent clung to his sheets and the sofa and the air.
Here, where he’d walked hand and hand with her.
Here, where he’d looked into her eyes and realized just how much he cared about her and had finally decided to stop denying it, accepting she knew everything there was to know about him and seemed to care for him just as much--though he had been wrong.
Here, where she left him, taking part of his heart with her.
#
“Where the fuck have you been? I agreed to work with you, but that doesn’t mean you’re in charge. We’ve wasted hours we could have been using to find Prim!” The leopard shifter had cleaned the blood from his face, but his nose was swollen and bruised, the pupils of his marbled green feline eyes narrowed to vertical slits in the late afternoon sun shining directly at them.
Dante had landed in the fir trees beyond, shifting back into his doll form—as the girls liked to call it—and walked back to the grassy field to find Roan and Blukke had returned. Of the three dragons, only Zulas remained. He was laying down, his head propped on his stretched-out front legs, his tail wrapped around his body. Despite his relaxed pose, his eyes were pinned to the men with lethal precision.
“No part of our agreement involved looking for her.” Dante didn’t look at Roan as he spoke, just continued walking purposefully toward Blukke, clapping a hand on his arm when he reached him. “How dire is the situation? Can we spare the time to walk?” He knew Blukke would understand his unspoken question: would he have to reveal his wings to the guard?
Roan’s hand was on Dante’s shoulder, pulling him around. “I’m here for Prim. Those were my orders. I’m looking for her first. ”
Dante aimed his icy stare at the guard in an attempt to spook him into releasing his shoulder, but Roan’s grip remained. “You’re not in charge, either. And I highly doubt the king and queen would appreciate you putting a handmaiden’s welfare above the princess’s.”
Roan’s grip tightened, claws protracting to press into Dante’s leathers. “You’d let her die just because she lied to you, her would-be assassin? Because she was willing to sacrifice herself thinking it would save Kallia?”
The shifter had no way of knowing that was why she did it, and Dante didn’t care even if it was the truth. He didn’t care if the woman was brave or selfless. He didn’t want to think about any of her redeeming qualities. They were likely all an act, anyway. “She left. I’m not letting her do anything. If she dies, it is a consequence of her own actions.”
Roan snarled. “You can’t mean that. I might not have been able to smell your fear when you thought she was in danger, but I didn’t need access to my gift to see it on your face. We all saw how you touched her and heard the desperation in your voice.”
Dante shoved the shifter away with his phantom hands, Roan stumbling back at the impact but not falling. He turned his attention to Blukke, who was looking at him with a disapproving frown. “What?”
Blukke glanced at Roan, then back to Dante. “I think we should discuss our course of action in private.”
Roan’s body stiffened as Blukke’s magic took hold. The leopard shifter growled. “You can’t just immobilize me whenever you feel like it. You’ve already taken my gift and I’ve sworn not to hurt you anyway.”
As if he could. But he had a point. They were working together now. They’d have to trust him eventually, and it was better to test it with a dragon nearby. “Release him,” Dante said.
Blukke clenched his jaw, hesitating. Roan’s body slackened a moment later.
The bowerbird shifter took a deep breath. “The empire has already been trying to get at the princess. Clumsy attempts that haven’t amounted to anything, but it’s only a matter of time before they get more reckless. Or join forces. Or maybe even stumble upon a decent idea that allows them success. We need to get back as soon as possible if you want to stop them before that happens.” He placed a hand on Dante’s shoulder, but not at all in the way Roan had. “But we can do both. If what he said was true—she went along with it to keep Princess Kallia safe—she’s obviously going to Hogard to continue that goal. We’ll head south and look for her along the way.”
“I don’t care about her,” Dante seethed.
His friend squeezed his shoulder, knowing the lie for what it was.
Dante didn’t shrug off the touch. “Fine. We’ll leave now and head straight to Hogard. If we come across her, we come across her. But we will not go out of our way to look for her.”
Dante heard the cottage door open and turned to find Marnie walking quickly toward them, Delle at her heels with her mouth a thin line. Dante didn’t wait until they were close before yelling at them to get back in the house. Neither’s strides slowed. He shook his head at the futility of trying to get them to do anything he asked.
Marnie stopped just in front of him, far too close to the guard for Dante’s liking, and crossed her arms over her chest authoritatively. “Zulas said he will be taking you to Hogard. That he is the fastest possible form of transportation. And that if he passes over Bear on the way, he’ll be able to spot her.”
Delle stood behind her daughter, her arms crossed as well, shaking her head subtlety at Dante. He raised a brow. “He’d let us ride him without you?”
“Of course not. I’m coming, too.”
Dante scoffed. “Absolutely not.”
Zulas loosed a low growl.
Delle pursued her lips even tighter. “It’s not up to us. She’s dragon-claimed.”
Dante wasn’t a dragon whisperer and didn’t give a shit about their customs. “No.”
Zulas slowly rose to his full height before releasing that deafening roar again.
“Why does he care so much?” Dante asked when the roar ended, still wincing from the noise. At least he knew his face hadn’t gone as pale as Roan’s had.
Marnie smiled. “He knows whatever you’re doing in Hogard is to protect me. Plus, the dragons like Bear. They want to make sure she’s okay, too.”
Dante clenched his fists. “There is no Bear. She…” He let his words trail off. He didn’t need to explain her deceit to Marnie. He didn’t need to admit his own. “No. I won’t accept Zulas’s offer, so there’s no reason for you to go.”
“There is,” Roan objected, taking a step toward Marnie that had Dante angling himself between the two. “I accept. I’ll ride him. Let’s go.”
Dante fisted the guard’s navy uniform shirt in his hand, pulling Roan close to him. “You will not.”
Roan pushed Dante’s arm away with impressive strength. “This is between me, the dragon, and his rider.”
“She’s a child.”
Marnie pushed past Dante to stand between the two men, but faced her uncle. She had a fire in her eyes that rivaled Bear’s. “I’m older than you were when you abandoned us to go live there alone. I think I can handle simply giving you a lift with my dragon there to protect me.”
A sharp pain struck Dante’s heart. She couldn’t possibly think that. He had left when she was a baby, but only to find work. To provide for her the way Carson had provided for him. By the time she was old enough to know better--five or six--he’d figured out how to spend most of his time in Pregg and only traveled south when the money was low. He hadn’t even realized she’d remembered those years he was absent. He lifted a hand to her neck. “I didn’t abandon you to live there. I would never leave you, Marn.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You leave all the time. You weren’t even here when I was claimed.”
Dante swallowed then looked at Delle so she could refute that this was how Marnie really felt, but his sister-in-law was avoiding his gaze. Dante sighed, looking at Zulas. The emerald beast was monstrous and wildly protective of his rider, as all dragons were. Dante flicked his gaze to Blukke, who just shrugged with raised brows, then Roan, whose expression had turned completely blank as he watched their interaction.
Dante cursed to himself. Marnie was right. “Okay. We’ll take Zulas.”