Bride Of The Dragon King

Chapter Four: THE KING'S BURDEN

AGNARR'S POV:

The border assault came without warning, as these things often did. My general, a man named Krath who I had begun to suspect harbored ambitions of his own, arrived at my chambers just before dawn with news that sent a chill through my careful plans.

The werewolf kingdom's forces had breached our northern garrison. Soldiers were dead. Supplies were burning. And the wolves were moving deeper into our territory with each passing hour.

I had thought the marriage agreement would stop this. I had thought binding myself to one of their princesses would be enough to secure the fragile peace that had begun to crumble the moment I took the throne.

I had been a fool.

I dressed rapidly, pulling on armor that had become as much a part of me as my own skin. In the mirror, I saw the man I had learned to be, hard, unyielding, cold. The man my father had taught me to be before poison had ended his reign and left me king at the age of twenty-three.

The throne room was chaos when I arrived. Generals shouted over one another. Maps were spread across every surface. Blood—literal from the wounded soldiers who had ridden through the night to bring news, stained the marble floors.

"How many dead?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the noise like a blade.

"Three hundred," Krath said. "Perhaps more. The wolves came in the night. They were organized, strategic. This wasn't a simple raid."

I looked at him carefully, reading his expression. There was something in his eyes, it shows a sign of excitement, perhaps, or satisfaction. He wanted war. I could see it written across his scarred face as clearly as ink on parchment.

"Send word to the werewolf princess," I commanded. "Tell her that her kingdom has just broken the marriage agreement.

As I strode toward the war room to begin the process of mobilization, I felt the weight of destiny settling onto my shoulders. This was what I had been born for, this endless cycle of violence and death. This was the only language I truly understood.

It was what everyone expected of me.

My father had ensured that.

The memories came unbidden as I studied the maps of our border territories. I had been five years old the first time my father brought me to watch an execution. A man who had stolen from the royal treasury, he had said. A man who deserved no mercy. I had watched the executioner's axe fall, had felt the spray of blood on my small face, and I had understood that this was the world I inhabited. A world of power and submission. Of control or being controlled.

My brother Draxis had been the favorite, kind and gentle, beloved by the people. He would have been a good king. A just king. But he had been weak, and in our kingdom, weakness was a death sentence.

When he died at age nineteen, poisoned slowly over months, everyone had assumed it was an enemy of the crown. No one had suspected my father.

And I had been trained to suspect nothing but to obey.

By the time I was sixteen, I was a killer. By twenty, I was a weapon. And at twenty-three, when my father finally died or murdered, I would later discover, by his own generals who had grown tired of his increasingly erratic violence.

I had thought I could be different. For a brief moment, in the privacy of my chambers, I had harbored that foolish hope.

But Morgath had shown me the truth.

She had come to me a week after my coronation, and she had been beautiful and brilliant and utterly ruthless. She had promised me power beyond what I had ever imagined. She had shown me how to manipulate the generals, how to maintain control through fear, how to ensure that no one could ever challenge my authority. And I had believed her because I have never known anything else.

The marriage agreement to a werewolf princess had been Morgath's idea. She had suggested it during one of our private meetings, meetings that I had convinced myself were purely strategic in nature, though I had never been entirely successful in that delusion.

"A princess from the werewolf kingdom," she had said, running her fingers along my jawline. "Someone young, malleable, easy to control. Someone who will give you an heir and nothing more."

"And if she proves troublesome?" I had asked.

"Then you dispose of her," Morgath had said simply. "Kings do not keep problematic queens, Agnarr. You should know that better than anyone."

I had nodded, understanding the truth of it even as some small part of me, a part I had learned to suppress years ago,had recoiled from the casualness of the statement.

When the princess had arrived, I had been prepared for a frightened, obedient girl. What I had gotten instead was Xendaya.

I had not expected her to be beautiful. That had been my first mistake.

I had not expected her to defy me. That had been my second.

And I had certainly not expected to be able to read the truth in her eyes the way she seemed to read the truth in mine.

The moment she had looked at me in that throne room, I had felt something shift. It was as if a door I had locked long ago had suddenly developed a crack, and light, though painful, but I feel a terrible light had begun to seep through. She saw me. Not the King. Not the weapon. Not the ruthless warrior-king that everyone else saw.

She saw Agnarr.

And in that moment, I had felt both hope and terror in equal measure.