“You can’t compel me to do that. Your blood oath isn’t strong enough, Irdelron.” Lord Irrik’s eyes gleamed as he retracted his deadly talon, slowly. He lowered his arm to his side, the king’s blood dropping from the sharp tip to the stone ground.
The king slumped to the floor as blood pooled from the gaping wound. He gurgled again, attempting to speak.
I began to hyperventilate, feeling my face and body, over and over again, certain my mind was playing tricks on me.
Irdelron continued his attempt to communicate, hands gripping the floor uselessly as his lips opened and closed. Head spinning, I stared at the dying monarch, unmoving as his movements became weaker and weaker.
I knew what happened next. I’d seen it happen to my mother.
His movements stopped.
Irrik crouched next to the king, staring into his fading eyes. “You sealed your fate,” he said, jaw clenched. “With the command to kill her.”
The king’s expression slackened, and he looked past Irrik to where I was curled. Irdelron clearly understood what Irrik meant.
The life disappeared from the king’s eyes as he suffocated on his own blood, but my mind said it should be me. Why wasn’t it me? How had Irrik broken the oath?
I shifted my gaze to Lord Irrik. He shuddered, and black scales danced up his arms. He snarled a reverberating roar at the Druman, flashing his fangs. They dropped their weapons to the floor as though the swords were scalding hot.
Irrik continued to roar until every one of them was on their knees.
Dyter rushed to me and supported me with an arm behind my shoulders. “Ryn,” he said hoarsely. “Mistress Moons, Rynnie. What have they done to you?”
I heard him, but Dyter’s question didn’t seem to want an answer as he clutched me to him, stroking my silver hair with shaking hands.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Irrik, and finally, finally he met my gaze.
“How did you do that?” I managed, glancing toward the king’s blood nearly touching my extended foot.
“Not here,” he replied tersely. His hand had shifted back to human, and the king’s blood coated Irrik’s fingers.
“No!” I shouted. I extricated myself from Dyter’s arms and sprang to my feet, ignoring my shaking legs. “I want to know right now. Right now!”
Cal and Dyter gasped to my right at the way I was speaking to the king’s Drae.
Not the king’s anymore.
Irrik’s fangs appeared again, and he forced them back, the struggle evident on his face. “There are too many ears here.”
“Then get rid of them,” I ordered. “But I’m not leaving here until I get answers.”
“Ryn?” Dyter asked.
Irrik snarled an order in Drae to the Druman, who marched out of the throne room in ordered lines. He turned to Cal and Dyter, but I held up a hand. “They stay.”
We warred silently, Irrik before me. He showed all the signs of being about to lose control and shift: scales, talons, fangs, inky eyes.
“As far as I was aware,” Cal spoke for the first time, calmly—as if his father hadn’t just suffocated on his own blood. It made me like him more. “Your blood oath was absolute. If there was a threat to Irdelron’s life, you had to protect him. Him above everyone else.”
Irrik sucked in a breath between his fangs, and the black glossy scales appeared up the sides of his neck. He shook his head. “There’s always been a way to break it.”
What? Without thinking, I closed the gap between us and gripped his forearms. “Tell me. Irrik, talk to me. Whatever it is, I can handle it. You know I can.”
He turned his head, closing his black eyes and breathing thinly. “One hundred years ago, the emperor gave King Irdelron a choice. He needed to get the Drae to fight for the emperor or eliminate the risk they posed to his war plans. With the emperor’s help, Irdelron slaughtered my kind. When all the male Drae were murdered—my brothers, father, uncles, grandfathers—he took me, the youngest, to where the females were corralled, unconscious from their mates’ deaths. He then gave me a choice: I could swear an oath to him, or he would kill my female kin. I was nine and hadn’t come into my power. There was no way I would’ve said no. And so I swore to protect him. But a blood oath is not infallible. There is one thing that is more powerful to a Drae, something which supersedes a blood oath, something that is unbreakable.”
Shivers exploded down my arms.
“Irdelron had been well informed. He sent the emperor the females, and I was the only Drae left with him, so there was never any danger of the oath being broken, before now. I’ve always been the only Drae in Verald.”
“What are you saying?” I whispered.
Irrik opened his eyes, human once more, and faced me. He slid back the sleeves of my shift.
“Drae cannot kill each other. I cannot physically kill one of my own. It is not magically possible. To tell me to do so would shatter the blood oath and allow me the freedom to protect my fellow Drae.” He glanced down and, frowning in confusion, I did the same.
I gasped at the sight of the lapis lazuli gems stuck to my skin. Except . . . I stepped away from Irrik. They weren’t gems. I swallowed. I thought I was Phaetyn? I sucked in a breath. “What . . . am I?”
His answer didn’t come quickly enough.
“What am I?” I screamed at him.
He tried to get closer, but I shifted away to keep distance between us. His eyes went inky again, and when he spoke, his menacing Drae voice rumbled through the throne room. “You are Drae.”
My legs folded underneath me, and I sank to the ground, staring at my arms. My blue-scaled arms. “I can’t be,” I said. “I’m Phaetyn.”
“You are Drae, too,” Irrik said.
Dyter’s voice was incredulous. “How is that possible?”
“The emperor’s experiments,” Irrik answered tersely.
Cal and Dyter looked at each other in confusion. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.
“A female Drae can only breed with her mate,” Irrik snapped. “What he was trying to do is unnatural.” Scales rippled over his skin, and he trembled to maintain his human form.
“Do not shift on me right now,” I yelled at him, climbing to my feet. I was pushed far beyond my coping level and unable to feel fear. I grabbed his arms and shook him, though he didn’t even budge.
Irrik closed his eyes, and his black scales smoothed to skin. He rested his hands on my shoulders and took slow, deep breaths.
My breath was ragged. “So what? I’m Phaetyn and Drae?” I swallowed, and my voice shook when I said, “Apart from the scales, I don’t seem very Drae. I don’t shift. I don’t . . .”
I didn’t even know what other powers Drae had, but I didn’t have anything else besides my Phaetyn powers. And those twinkling bumps.
“When is your eighteenth birthday?” Cal asked.
Irrik asked me that same question not long ago. I had no idea how much time I’d lost recovering from my injuries, so I took a guess. “A few days. Maybe?”
“A Drae does not come into their powers until adolescence,” Irrik said. “Males come into them earlier, at age twelve.” He fidgeted then met my quelling gaze and said in a strained voice, “Females later, usually around eighteen, when they are of mating age.”