Bound by Blood and Fire

The Dragon Court

The dragon court did not look the way Ravenna had expected.

She'd braced herself for menace — sharp stone, banners of old wars, the kind of architecture built to remind visitors exactly how small they were. Instead, the receiving hall was almost startlingly beautiful: high windows letting in more daylight than any wolf hall would have dared, black stone shot through with veins of copper that caught the light like something alive.

She kept her spine straight anyway. Beauty didn't mean safety.

"Emissary Ashcombe." The herald's voice cut clean through the low murmur of the gathered court. "Presented under treaty, on behalf of the wolf packs of the northern territories."

She stepped forward into a hall full of strangers, and told herself the sudden unsteadiness in her chest was nerves. That was what she told herself, right up until she saw him.

He stood near the dais, dressed in severe black that made his pale eyes look almost silver. He hadn't changed the way she'd half-expected him to. He'd just gotten more of himself.

He didn't react. Not a flicker, not a missed breath, nothing a stranger watching would have caught. But she'd spent two years of her life learning exactly how Kael Drathorne held himself when he was working very hard not to feel something, and she was watching him do it right now, six feet away, in front of both their courts.

He knows, she thought. He knows exactly who I am.

"Emissary." Sovereign Aldric's voice was pleasant in the specific, careful way of a man who'd spent decades making pleasantness into a weapon. "We're glad the wolf packs sent someone of such evident composure."

"My son, Prince Kael, will be your primary contact throughout the negotiations."

"Emissary Ashcombe." Kael's voice was exactly as she remembered it and nothing like she remembered it. He inclined his head with perfect, distant courtesy, like they'd never once sat shoulder to shoulder in the mud of the border woods arguing about whether dragons or wolves made better trackers. "Welcome to the court. I hope your journey wasn't too difficult."

You know it's me, she thought. Say something. Prove I didn't imagine six years of you.

"Not at all," she said instead, matching his careful distance with careful distance of her own. "I've heard a great deal about the dragon court's hospitality. I'm looking forward to testing the reputation."

Something flickered behind his pale eyes — there and gone so fast she'd have missed it if she hadn't spent two years learning to catch exactly that kind of flicker.

There you are, she thought.

"I'll show you to your quarters personally," Kael said. "There's a great deal to discuss before the formal alliance ceremony."