Page 3 of Consorting with Dragons

“There is no need to speak to them or involve them in any way. This is only about Moravia, and I’m still the king here, I might remind you. I think it’s a good idea, and both Tallon and Bryos agree.”

He was referring to his oldest friend and aide, General Tallon and my eldest brother, Prince Bryos, both of whom wouldno doubt agree with pretty much anything my father said. Bryos was also totally available to make this trip to Lycanus 3 that my father wanted to send me on, for example, but he was the heir, so maybe that explained why I had been picked to waste my time instead. His time was no doubt far too valuable. I brought it up anyway, of course.

“WhataboutBryos? Why isn’t he going to Lycanus 3 to pick up this bauxite for you?”

“Because I need him here, and I don’t want Bryos to go. I want you to do it.”

“But Bryos is…”

“You’re going, Rylan. It’s time you learned how to do things. It’s time you grew up.”

“I’d like to go on record as saying I don’t think that any of this is fair.”

My father had huffed with impatience. “Enough. You’re going and that’s an end to it.”

“Well, why do we need this stuff anyway?”

“I told you. Bauxite is becoming a very scarce commodity.”

“Just offer more money for them to deliver it to us. If this is about not having enough for the delivery fee, then I’m sure Grandfather would loan you…”

“Do you think I need Tygerian gold, Rylan? I don’t. We need spacecraft, or we will eventually, and I can’t believe you don’t know this. Did you learn nothing from your tutors? These ships are an investment in the future of my children and grandchildren, and I can’t let the opportunity to purchase material pass when it’s bound to sell out.”

Of course, I knew all this—kind of. I was just a little slow that morning, which is what mixing Rother, a Moravian rum, and Tygerian visu punch would do to a person. And my tutors had been very good, actually. Bauxite was used to make parts ofspacecraft…I knew that. And that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge, actually.

“I understand all that, sir, but if we need it so badly, can’t we just buy it somewhere closer? Or get someone to bring it here?”

“The deal has been made. Besides, I think it would be a good idea for you to get off-planet more and learn how to do things. If we ever hope to attract a suitable spouse for you, people have to see you. And though you’re not exactly on the market just yet, you’re notnoton the market. If someone suitable made us an offer, I’d certainly consider it.”

“Like you’re considering King Travon’s offer?” Omak asked.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, he’s a perfectly suitable candidate, Vannos. An older, more mature man might settle this son of yours down a little.”

I sighed deeply. “I don’t need settling. And besides, people have seen me. People know me.”

“Some do, but not many. They obviously know you’re my son and the grandson of King Davos, but Davos has a lot of grandsons. You come from a long, distinguished line of royalty on both sides, and you’ll be able to make a good match when the right offer comes along. In the meantime, it could be to your advantage to let yourself be seen around the other planets close by. Your face is almost the image of your omak’s when I first saw him, and he was easily one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. He still is,” he said, glancing over at him. He reached for his hand too, probably in an attempt to smooth things over from the cross words they’d exchanged earlier, but my omak had a long memory and was having none of it. He deftly pulled his hand away, reaching for a pastry.

The king cleared his throat and tried again. “The kind of beauty my consort has and that you have is a highly prized commodity. It could lead to a high marriage price when the time comes.”

A marriage price was, I knew, theexchange of valuables, money, or property from the groom or his family to me and my family as a form of compensation for the loss of my “services,” or whatever. It was all pretty old fashioned, just like a dowry for a bride and nothing I valued. It was still a popular thing to do in royal families though.

“Oh, really?” Vannos said, his tone deceivingly casual. “My son is for sale now, I suppose, like some kind of commodity? Is that what he is?”

My father glared at him, and he glared right back. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought they were fighting, but they had bickered this way all my life, and it was a kind of dance they did before they chose to excuse themselves and disappear into their bedroom. My brothers and I pretended not to notice, and we didn’t like to think about it anyway.

My face did resemble my omak’s—minus the faint, exotic striping under the skin that he had. He was Tygerian, after all, and though I definitely had his classic bone structure and his golden-red hair color, I didn’t have the beautiful markings he had. Though in my mind that was a good thing, because I was already way too different looking from other Moravians as it was. Other men my age were dark-haired and brown-eyed, and my hair color and my odd, turquoise-blue eyes that were like my human grandfather’s had been an embarrassment to me for as long as I could remember. I could only imagine what the teasing would have been like if I’d had stripes too, even if they were under my skin and barely noticeable, like my omak’s.

What I hadn’t inherited from either of my parents was the thing I would have loved the most—their tall, well-built, muscular bodies. Both of them were powerful, handsome warriors. Still in their early forties, they were pretty much in their prime, and they were frankly a lot to live up to.

I was just under six feet tall, if I stretched it an inch. Or maybe two. And though I did have muscles, and I worked hard to keep them, I didn’t have the bulky, bulging muscles of either of my fathers or of my brother Bryos. I had a brother younger than I was named Tilar, and so far, he appeared to have taken after our grandfather Blake, too. We called Blake our omak-ahn, which was kind of like omak-once-removed, and he was the human royal consort of King Davos. Tilar and I both had much leaner frames that I blamed directly on Blake as well.

Not that I didn’t love Blake dearly. He was funny and smart and sarcastic and still handsome—beautiful really, in a human way, because that’s what he was, after all. We all thought that King Davos was dosing him with something to keep him young looking, since Tygerians lived so much longer than humans, and Davos had made it clear he didn’t want to outlive Blake, who had come to Tygeria years ago as an Alliance captive from Earth and had wound up married to Davos, the leader of the Axis and now the most powerful man in the galaxy. Blake had spoiled all of his children—all seven of them. Quite shamelessly, to be honest. And his grandchildren too as they came along. But he was undeniably human with human DNA that had obviously been passed down to me.

Only my eldest brother had been genetically altered before birth. Our father had insisted that Tilar and I had to take our chances with genetics, because he wanted more Moravian looking children. In my case, that experiment didn’t work.

I made one more attempt to get out of going to Lycanus 3.

“Father, I feel like it’s unreasonable of you to pressure me like this!” The second those words left my mouth, I knew I’d made the fatal mistake of yelling it at him—I blamed that on my hangover—but that was pretty much the end of the argument, because he wasnotthe kind of father whose children—no matter how old they might be—were allowed to shout back in his face.

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