Page 13 of Enchanted Crown
I read between the lines. Things would go as far as I deemed. “Es, you were the one who was attacked. Why areyoudistractingme?”
“Aren’t I distracting both of us? Reminding both of us why it’s all worth it? What we are fighting for?”
She had a point. And with her body this close to mine, I was forgetting why I should be arguing with her anyway.
She took my silence as agreement as she said, “The clock starts now.”
“Can you just help me understand where the tension is in your family,” I began.
She moved her hand down to touch my collar bone. “It’s a royal family. There is always tension. My personal tension with them started when I turned ten and they blindfolded me, dropped me in the middle of Dra Skor, and told me to make my way back.”
“I—” I cut off. That was before their magic settled around the age of puberty. “That was before you could shift. Or fly.”
“Correct. It’s some sort of messed up rite of passage all the previous kings had done that I am never going to force my own children to do.”
My Enchantment flared, sensing how painful and terrifyingthat must have been. How brutal it must have been to be forged into a proper queen of Dra Skor.
She moved to trace the magic swirling under my arms.
“Would you like to feel it?”
“Please.”
I sent two tendrils out slowly to caress and warm her skin, a warm breeze which traveled up one arm, another up the other, only for them to meet down her back.
The soft sigh that escaped her lips made me forget every thought in my brain.
She leaned down so we were eye to eye. “Other than that, my uncle Lennix and my father do not like one another, nor have they ever. Their animosity is the reason I took the throne so young. My grandmother demanded it because of them.”
I knew Reyald had two siblings though. “And what about your aunt?”
She moved closer, her hands moving to gently tug on my hair. “She was the youngest of the three siblings. She’s always been their peacekeeper.”
She leaned in again, the smell of her, every inch of her body overpowering all of my senses.
“Has it been three minutes?” I sent another tendril of my magic to trail along her skin.
“I hope so.”
I didn’t give her the option of checking the time.
She was the dragon queen, and I was the enemy prince, but when we touched, it wasn’t about alliances or treaties or crowns. It was very simply about two bruised souls which found solace in one another.
CHAPTER 7
Malachi and I stood before Esta in the war room, the morning meeting with the advisors freshly over.
“What is it?” she asked as she and Amory were about to leave for a patrol. Amory loved running around now that she could shift again, and Esta believed the more people who saw them both healed would help with morale, so they went on patrols often. Land and sky together.
I felt they also needed time for talking together. Just the two of them.
“We have an idea,” I started.
A smirk played on Esta’s lips. “One treaty will suffice.”
“It’s about Enoch,” Malachi blurted out.
“And what about him?” the queen asked coolly at the mention of the dragon who was imprisoned for his involvement in an attack on a young land dragon, Kian.
