2

Chapter Two

“I have given the Veraga Twins official leave to declare their suit for Consortship with you, Brianna. They will arrive soon, to allow you time to better come to know them, before the declaration is presented.”

The next afternoon, Brianna stood disbelieving before her mother and her oldest sister, Serena, within the sitting room of the Queen. Not just her mother. When you were called to the official sitting room, you faced Queen Amoria, not Mother.

“You can’t mean this,” she whispered faintly, feeling an alarming weakness that nearly brought her to her knees. “Mother, please. They assaulted me. How can you reward them in such a way?”

She was nearing hysteria. She had never imagined that confiding to her mother the night before would bring such consequences. How could this be happening? All she had asked for was protection against their harassment, their touch when she was asleep and vulnerable to their magick. Was this too much to ask of her Queen, who was also her mother?

“Brianna, I am not ordering you into this Joining,” Queen Amoria said softly. Not Mother. Mother would never do such a thing, Brianna agonized. “I am merely giving them my consent to court you. The decision ultimately rests with you.”

Brianna shook her head. Her mother’s expression was concerned, her golden eyes dark with worry. How could she make such a decision?

“I do not understand this.” She clasped her hands before her to still their shaking as she gazed at the Queen, imploring. “I have told you numerous times, I will not accept their deviant suit. This is not what I wish.”

Queen Amoria took a deep, controlled breath.

“This castle, Brianna, is not without its safeguards. Never is it undefended from unwanted magick. I do not know what your conscious mind believes, but the Veraga Wizards could not have reached out to you, within your own bed, beneath my protection, did you not somehow trust in them.” Her voice was crisp, firm.

Brianna trembled beneath her steady regard as she shook her head desperately.

“It is trickery,” she whispered. “You know the tales…”

“Unfounded gossip, Brianna. I have told you this often,” Queen Amoria chastised her. “The Wizards are many things, but rapists and destroyers of children, they are not.

“I deny their suit.” Brianna refused to address the Queen’s words. She stared at the wall over the dark auburn head of her Queen mother, fighting the fury and the fear rising inside her.

Silence ascended the sitting room for long moments. Into the tense atmosphere came a soft, mocking sound of leathery hands clapping.

“Wonderful performance, Princess,” Garron, her instructor, and known to be the last surviving dragon of magick, materialized within the room.

He wasn’t a massive dragon, perhaps eight feet in height, his large wings folded precisely on his back, his head tilted arrogantly as Brianna met his mocking gaze furiously. She flushed, remembering her last lesson under his tutelage, where he had caught her going through the pictures in the Forbidden books. Books on sexuality, intimacies that even now filled her with heated curiosity.

“As you well know,” he continued, using his best ‘instructor’s’ voice. “You may not deny the suit until as such time they address the Queen formally, within your presence. A Request to Court is no more than a form of respect, extended to your Queen, and Lady Mother, from the ruling sect of Wizard Twins. You cannot accept or deny. Only your dear mother,” he bowed to Queen Amoria with a surprisingly graceful move, “has this right.”

He tilted his head to look at her once again. Brianna frowned darkly at the arrogance in his voice, his stance. The sharp features, leathery and appearing wrinkled as he spoke, gave an impression of superiority, of wisdom. Brianna, in the course of her studies with the dragon, Garron, had often wondered if he hadn’t stood before a mirror often to perfect just that certain haughty expression.

“It makes no difference, Dragon,” she bit out. “I will not be forced into this alliance, or their perverted desires. What woman would wish this? To be shared? It is not natural.”

“Ah, but here many would disagree with you,” he instructed, his tone smoothly cultured and grating excessively on her nerves as his thin arms rose, his fingers linking together as he regarded her with an expression of superiority. “It is often debated that the unnatural, for those of the magick sect, is how it stands today. From the creation of the first Wizard Twins they have known but one Sorceress between them. And so it was from the dawn of creation upon this planet, to the time of separation, barely a millennia ago.”

“Garron, I did not call you here for a lesson in history,” Queen Amoria snapped in a rare display of frustration, her delicate brow creasing in a frown. “I have asked you here to instruct my daughter, privately if you will, on what you know of the Wizard Twins.”

Had Brianna not been watching the dragon closely, she would have missed the flare of pain in his bright, black eyes.

“A history lesson.” He shrugged negligently as he held Brianna’s gaze. “Would you not agree, Princess? I can of course, provide pictures.”

Brianna’s face flamed.

“A lesson on idiots perhaps,” Brianna bit out. “I see no reason for this.”

“Because you refuse to.” The Queen was becoming impatient now.

Brianna tightened her lips, holding back her furious flood of defense.

“I have decreed, Princess Brianna, that the Wizard Twins be allowed to this year’s Covenani Ball. There they may, if they so desire, seek official permission to present suit to you. You will, and this is no request, answer them with a request of your own, to be given a proper amount of time to make such an important decision. It is my decision, as Queen and sole ruler of Covenan, that the time of separation is past. Cauldaran Wizards will no longer be barred from our country, nor our gatherings. You alone, daughter…” she speared Brianna with a sharp, knowing look, “should know the ramifications of this decision.”

With no further ado, she stood from her throne and stalked from the room. Brianna was left shocked, surprised, staring at her sister Serena in bewilderment. How was she to know such ramifications? All she knew was that her mother, who until this point had always been loving and protective, was literally throwing her to the monsters. Or did her mother truly believe this was not true?

The elder daughter came to her feet from the elaborate chair that proclaimed her the next in the ruling line. Serena sighed tiredly.

“I would suggest, Brianna,” she said softly, “that you consider this matter a bit more than you have at this point. Should you need to talk, you know where I can be found.”

She too left the room, leaving Brianna in the company of the dragon. She glanced at him, then sighed herself in frustration. Such an expression of sarcasm. Her mother should reinstate the execution laws while she was at it. Had there ever been a living being who deserved “off with his head” it was this one.

“Do you require manuals?” he asked drolly, producing a stack of books that suddenly appeared at her feet. “Pictures included, my dear. I do remember your joy of them.”