Chapter 4 Untitled Chapter

VIENNA

They gave me a room.

Not a cell, not the corner of a kitchen floor the way mother used to make me sleep when she was particularly angry. A room. High ceilings, a window that looked out over a garden of black-leafed trees, a writing desk, a bed with four posts carved from dark wood.

I sat on the edge of it and stared at the wall.

I was alive. I was trapped in a dragon castle with a king who had seen my face in candlelight and heard me moan his name without knowing it was not the name I was born with.

And somewhere back in Medalicia, my sister was probably standing in front of a mirror right now, admiring herself, believing she had won.

The rage that moved through me was so clean and cold it almost felt like calm.

I lay back on the bed and pressed my arm over my eyes. I needed to think. If Draven, the dragon king, confirmed the bonding had held, then he had no legal reason to send me back. But the maids knew I was not Vianne. If that information reached him through the right ears, framed the right way, I would not simply be sent home.

I would be executed for deception.

I had to know what he knew and I had to know it before anyone else could reach him first.

The knock on my door came at dusk. I had not slept.

The silver-haired woman, whose name I still did not know, entered carrying a tray. Real food. Roasted something, bread, a cup of something warm that smelled like spiced fruit. My stomach twisted with want. I had not eaten since yesterday morning.

"His Majesty requests your presence at dinner." She set the tray on the desk. "This is to tide you over until then."

I looked at the food and then at her. "Is it safe to eat?"

Her expression did not change but something flickered in it. "The king's personal cook prepared it. On the king's specific instruction."

I crossed the room and picked up the bread without sitting down, eating it standing up because some part of me refused to be comfortable. "What is your name?"

She paused. "Maren."

"Maren." I met her eyes. "Who told the king that I might not be who I claimed to be?"

A long silence. Then, "No one has made that claim to His Majesty."

Yet. She did not say the word but it sat in the air between us like smoke.

"But someone will."

She picked up the empty tray. "I would recommend, my lady, that you use tonight's dinner wisely."

She left.

I looked down at my hands. The mark on my neck pulsed faintly, like a second heartbeat. I pressed two fingers to it and felt the warmth radiating from my own skin.

I dressed carefully. Whatever they had brought me, it was all in that deep burgundy and gold, like he had already decided what color I was supposed to be. I pulled my hair back, looked at myself in the narrow mirror above the washbasin, and did not recognize the girl looking back.

She had chestnut hair and periwinkle eyes and a brand on her throat that did not belong to her.

She had survived a dragon's mating night.

She had survived her mother's hands, her sister's cruelty, twenty-one years of being the family's designated sacrifice.

She was still standing.

I straightened my spine and walked to the door.

The dining room was not what I expected. I had braced for a throne room, a long table with a hundred eyes watching me perform. Instead it was small. Intimate. One oval table, two chairs, candles, and him.

Draven Saltore stood when I entered. I did not know why that surprised me.

"Sit." He gestured to the chair across from him. I sat. A servant appeared, filled both our cups, and vanished.

We looked at each other across the table.

"You are not afraid of me tonight either," he said finally.

"I was afraid last night," I told him honestly. "I was terrified."

"But not now."

I picked up my cup. "I am saving it. Fear takes energy and I am very tired."

Something shifted in his face. Not quite a smile. Something quieter than that. He lifted his own cup and said nothing for a moment.

Then, "The maids who attacked you. They claimed you were an imposter." His eyes held mine, steady as stone. "They claimed the real chosen bride has a twin."

Every nerve in my body went still.

"What did you tell them?" My voice did not shake. I was proud of that.

"I told them," he said slowly, watching me with those glowing purple eyes, "that the bonding does not lie. That my dragon recognized his mate." He set his cup down. "But I think you and I both know there is more to say on the subject."

I said nothing.

He leaned forward slightly. "So I am going to ask you once, and I am asking because I want the truth, not because I need it to make my next move. I already know my next move." The candlelight caught his face and made him look carved from shadow. "What is your real name?"

The silence stretched between us like a wire pulled too tight.

And somewhere beneath the floor, deep in the belly of the castle, I heard a sound that did not belong there.

A child's cry.

No. Not a child. Something older and stranger, something that made the mark on my neck flare hot enough to burn.

Draven's eyes snapped toward the sound. Every trace of calm left his face.

Whatever it was, it had just found its way inside the walls.