Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) (4 page)

Between one blink and
the next, Taron snatched her up into one giant fist and lifted her up to his
eye level. Feeling as though she was trapped inside an uncomfortably tight and
textured tube, rather than struggle futilely to free her arms, Briana settled
on glaring at one of his enormous eyes.

“The best thing you can
do for your friend is to stay away,” he said frankly. “Cabak will have no doubt
caught your scent from the shop. He will realize what I have found, recognize
the potential danger, and think that I have fled the city to hide you away.”

“You never did explain
why he was after me in the first place,” she said pointedly, trying to ignore
the painful way one of the book’s edges was digging into one of her boobs.

“It’s because of your
blood.”

Briana stilled. “
What
about my blood?”

“It’s very faint in you,
but I would never in all eternity forget that scent. You share a bloodline with
the witch that exiled me to this world.”

Briana’s first instinct
was to shout out “that’s insane!” The next was to stiffen as she felt a jolt of
very real fear shoot through her body. Was
that
what this was all about?
Not some old, weird book but trying to find the “witch” that possessed it to
make her pay for what her alleged ancestor did to him?

“You want revenge.” She
was shocked at how utterly matter-of-fact her tone sounded.

That giant eye that
filled her vision blinked slowly before he abruptly lowered her back to the
ground and released her onto unsteady legs.

“That’s not what I want
from you at all.”

Although every instinct within
was screaming for her to run away, Briana forced herself to remain where she
stood. Taron looked so taken aback by her accusation that she couldn’t believe
that he was lying to her. Who knew that a dragon’s face could be so expressive?

She took a deep, calming
breath. “Okay.”

Taron’s gaze sharpened
as she once again lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the ground.

After a tense moment of
silently staring at one another, Briana finally said, “Not that I’m ready to
accept just yet that one of my ancestors was a real, spell-using witch from
another world, but even if that’s true, how does dropping that bombshell on me
help you in any way? Because I can tell you right now that I don’t have
anything even remotely resembling a witchy power.”

“As I said before, the
answer to that question remains to be seen. All I ask right this moment is for
you to hear me out. Then once I explain my situation, we will open Beatrice’s
book to the drawing of the key and see what the Fates have in store for both of
us.”

Briana suddenly had a
strong urge to fling the book away. “What exactly do you think’s going to
happen?”

“What I ‘hope’ will happen,”
he corrected. “I hunted that book for nearly two centuries for the information
that it contained. I even infiltrated the Hildebrand family and offered to aid
them in their search for their lost heirloom. It was fitting, really, given
that their surname is derived from words meaning fire,
battle,
strife, and sword
. I never thought it would lead me to another of the
Ansi
blood, and make no mistake, you are of that bloodline, no matter how thin that
blood has become within you. It’s likely not a coincidence that your late
grandmother had that book in her possession.”

“My grandmother wasn’t a
witch, either, if that’s what you’re insinuating. She never would’ve kept
something that important a secret from me.”

But she didn’t tell
me about this book, did she?

Pushing that very
uncomfortable thought away for the moment, Briana asked a bit crossly, “What do
you mean, ‘
Ansi
’ blood?”

“That’s what we call
non-dragon-shifters who can wield magic in my tongue,” Taron replied. “Witch,
mage, magician, wizard, warlock—those are the closest terms you humans have in
this world. It’s all interchangeable.”

“Did the Hildebrand
family know that you could shift into a dragon?”

“Of course. How else
would I have been able to explain the fact that I don’t age? We dragons are
essentially immortal as long as we don’t fall victim to violence. We are very
hard to kill, but we still
can
be killed. I needed them completely in
the know to help me keep my secret from the rest of humanity over the long
centuries, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. You need to understand the
circumstances that led to my exile here.

“The history of my
people spans across millennia, and I couldn’t possibly explain every nuance of
our society in such a short time. I suppose the most important thing you need
to know is that there are two races of dragons in my world, the firedrakes and
the stone dragons. For the most part, our two peoples have lived together in
relative harmony along with the non-shifters, but underneath that cooperation, the
stone dragons have always resented the fact that our ruling monarchs have
always been firedrakes and only from the royal House of the Red Flame.”

Briana sighed. “That
sounds like the prologue to every attempted coup in history.”

Taron grimaced. “Yes.
Living here in this world over the last couple of centuries has taught me that
lesson all too well, and that is, indeed, exactly what occurred. The highest
ranking noble house among the stone dragons, the House of Blue Stone, convinced
their people that they were strong enough, cunning enough, to take out the
firedrake king and secure the throne. For the most part, they were correct.”

“Wait! Don’t tell me
you
are their king!” Briana exclaimed.

Her entire body was
suddenly rocked by vibrations and gusts of hot dragon breath as Taron abruptly
burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. It was a very valid conclusion to come to, but
the look of incredulity on your face was priceless,” he said, mirth making his
eyes shimmer more brightly. “Do I not seem a king?”

His presence was
certainly intimidating enough for a man used to wielding absolute power over
his people, but he
was
a dragon after all. Her subconscious could have
just as easily been reacting to the fact that the mother of all apex predators
had been staring her down.

“Considering that you’re
the first dragon-shifter I’ve ever met, I wouldn’t know one of your society’s
kings from the regular folk,” she said with a huff. “I just couldn’t help but
think ‘of course he is.’ That the first dragon I meet is a dragon king just
seems so absurdly cliché.”

“Then you’ll be happy to
know that I am, in fact,
not
the king. I’m merely the second-born son of
His Majesty, King Lyven of the House of the Red flame. My true name is Astaron
of the House of the Red Flame. The name ‘Taron’ was the closest I found to it
in this world. At the very least, I didn’t want to completely lose that small part
of myself after having my home taken from me.”

Briana looked at him
sadly. “I can understand that. Should I call you Astaron, then?”

He shook his head.
“Taron is fine. I’ve grown so accustomed to it over the centuries that I think
of it as a true part of my name now, a nickname.”

She nodded. “So, you’re
a prince? I’m not sure that bodes better for us given that you’re still a
member of the royal house. Royals are always a magnet for trouble.”

Taron sighed, and she
was taken aback at how deeply weary it sounded. “I can’t argue with that.”

The urge to comfort him
rose up strong within her, and for a moment, Briana wished that he was in a
form that she could easily show him some physical comfort, an empathetic
squeeze on the shoulder or hand. Although she never in a million years would
have done it, an image of her hugging his very nude body in comfort after he
shifted back into a man rose unbidden in her mind. She was so startled by it,
that she couldn’t completely control the blush that briefly heated her cheeks.

What the hell was
wrong
with her?

If Taron noticed the
extra color in her cheeks, he didn’t let on with either expression or tone as
he picked up the thread of his story again, “The head of the House of Blue
Stone, Jathar, is the mastermind of the rebellion. He patiently waited for the
time when either the king or the heir to the throne, my older brother Dagon,
entered a period of Soul Sleep. Think of it like a bear entering hibernation.
Only, instead of for the survival of a brutal winter, the Soul Sleep is our
body and mind’s way of coping with our immortality. For the firedrakes, the
removal of that which helps fuel half of our life-force, our Dragon Fire, by a
trusted family member is enough to send us into hibernation.”

Suddenly, Taron rose up
until he was sitting back on his haunches. Briana’s eyes latched on to his
right hand as he raised it to hover, palm up and level with the center of his
chest.

Her eyes widened when
what looked like a blood-red fireball exited his chest and settled down into
the palm of his hand, undulating in a chaotic, pulsing pattern. She could feel
the air around her warm up at least a few degrees even though she was a good
twenty feet away from it.

“This is my brother’s
Dragon Fire. Without it, he has no hope of ever awakening.”

“How long does a Soul
Sleep last?” Briana asked, fascinated despite the grim direction his story had
started to take.

“It’s different for
everyone. It can be as short as a decade to centuries, but the median time is
usually fifty years.”

“I can see how leaving
yourself so vulnerable for so long can backfire for those in power.”

Taron shook his head. “It
may seem so to you, but those who enter their Soul Sleep are as protected by
the king’s guardsmen as the king, himself. We have a temple, a single,
four-story tower located on the highest peak of a mountain range within my
kingdom where every firedrake goes to Sleep. The stone dragons have a similar
temple of their own within a different range and equally as guarded. Even an
army would not be able to break through their defenses very easily.

“But Jathar tried,
anyway?” Briana hazarded.

“Dagon was ten years
into his Sleep when the stone dragons made their play.” She could hear the
festering rage of that long-ago betrayal within those words. “We were led to
believe by what we thought were several reliable sources deep within the heart
of the House of Blue Stone that the plot involved the abduction of the Sleeping
heir. While we scrambled to send a second army to supplement the army of troops
already stationed at the tower, we were completely blindsided by the lone
assassin that had slipped into the castle and succeeded in murdering the king.
We have been at a stalemate ever since—trapped in an unending civil war, or at
least that was the status before I was banished to this world.”

“But you said your
brother couldn’t be woken up without his Dragon Fire and that he entrusted it
to you,” Briana said slowly. “With Dagon out of commission indefinitely and you
trapped here, I can’t imagine that the situation remained so black and white,
us against them, that there wasn’t at least a bit of infighting on your side
about who would take up the seat of power in your absence. Would that have been
enough to weaken the firedrakes’ efforts to the point of losing?”

“This is where our own
ancient laws of succession work against us even worse than you’ve guessed.
There is a clause that covers even what was once the very unlikelihood of a coup
during a ruling monarch’s Soul Sleep. The usurper can legally claim the Dragon
Throne as the de-facto king until the rightful ruler awakens and challenges the
usurper king’s authority in a fight to the death. He or she needs only to
physically sit on the dragon throne before the true heir. The firedrakes must
honor this or by law, risk losing the kingdom to the usurper forever.
Fortunately, Jathar had yet to step foot within the palace at the time of my
exile, and I pray that it has remained so.”

“And I thought we had
some bad laws…”

“It
is
forbidden
to kill a dragon during the Soul Sleep,” Taron said. “That’s why the stone
dragons’ attempt to abduct the heir wasn’t just a red herring to hide the fact
that my father was the true target. With Dagon in their clutches and me, the
holder of his Dragon Flame, banished to another realm with no real hope of ever
returning, the only way to unseat the usurper from rule once he physically
claimed the throne would be to kill not only Jathar, but every last dragon from
the House of Blue Stone and retrieve Dagon before the stone dragons can kill
him.”

“How in the world did
you get banished here in the first place?” Briana asked. “I know you said it
was a witch, an
Ansi
, that did it, but I have a hard time wrapping my head
around the concept. Did she open up a portal between worlds with a spell or
something and push you through?”

Taron growled. “Yes.
That’s exactly what happened. I was in the form of a man when I was betrayed by
a once-trusted
Ansi
within the tower while trying to return my brother’s
Dragon Fire to him after the king was assassinated.”

“Obviously, a witch came
to this world since you insist that I have witch blood. Was it her? The one who
betrayed you?”

“No. The bloodline
within you smells ancient. Although long-lived, the
Ansi
aren’t
immortal. Perhaps your ancestor was also exiled to your world long ago, though
I suppose we’ll never learn the truth. No, that witch is very much dead given
that I managed to fry her to a crisp before I fell completely into the portal
she had created.”

“You said you were in
your human form when you fell through the portal. You can breathe fire without
being in your dragon form?”

“I’m not sure if ‘human’
is the correct way to describe my other form, but yes, I can very easily breathe
fire in that form, too.”

Briana shrugged. “If it
looks like a human and walks like a human…”

“The people in this
world
do
smell very much like the non-shifters of my world, so who’s to
say we all don’t share a common ancestry? However, that’s a discussion for
another time.”

“I can’t imagine what it
must’ve been like to pop up into an alien world, not able to communicate with
anyone.”

“The portal was connected
to an actual, physical doorway in this world located inside an English castle.
The moment I stumbled across the threshold and turned around to see not the
portal, but a darkened bedchamber with strange furnishings, I knew I was well
and truly trapped here. The ability of some of the more powerful
Ansi
to
cross into other realms was well known, so I damned well knew what had just
happened to me.

“However, instead of
wallowing in despair or rage, I immediately set out to learn the customs and
language of the people I now found myself living among in the hopes of trying
to discover a way to reconnect that door to my realm. I searched out every
whisper, every whiff of magic, but for years, I found nothing even remotely
close to what I needed. Then sometime in the mid-eighteen hundreds, I heard
talk of a legend in a small English village in the north.