Page 18 of Undertow
5
Thorn
Losing the royal couple was a tragedy. No one with a soul would say otherwise.
But the drama it unleashed was also a fucking tragedy and I was annoyed I had to be involved in it. I was annoyed it was all anyone was focused on, especially when I had such harsh feelings for the king and royal family.
And that wasbeforeI learned my uncle had tried to mate me off to the future queen by some backhanded deal with corrupt elders. I was damn sure he lied through his teeth that I would help them or… All he knew how to do was lie.
I knew that better than anyone.
I knew better thananyonehow deep his betrayal and thirst for power were. He saw this as the next step in his greed. Not only had he stolen my position as next to be Alpha when I was too young to understand what was going on, but he saw all the perks of having me stand next to the queen.
Hell, he was so deluded he probably thought I would basically be king and let him be the boss of me as my Alpha.
We really need to just kill him already, Thorn.
As much as I agreed with my dragon, nothing was that simple, and a big part of me blamed the king for not helping me. But I hadn’t wanted him or the queen dead.
No, I wanted them to do their fucking jobs and lead.
Now we were stuck with a princess no one had faith in. She was spoiled—fine, she was a princess. However, her parents never wanted her around. At least mine had loved me even if they hadn’t protected me better in the event they died.
Princess Sagan was sent away to so much schooling and education thateveryoneI knew thought something was wrong with her. She was a dud. Her dragon was embarrassing—some reason to explain why they never had their only child at court.
The really dark whispers were that they hoped she would die in a foreign land and they would be free of having her as an heir. That one actually made me pity her because too many believed that.
And I would have as well if I was in her shoes.
But no one could deny she was beyond gorgeous.
No one with eyes.
Dragons all had dark, dark pewter/silver hair with tones of our dragons. Mine were darker blue for my water dragon. If I’d been given an ice dragon, there would be shimmers of baby blue.
As we aged, our hair lightened and those colors showed through. It was the only way to tell a dragon’s age since we didn’t show it physically like other species. I would forever look mid-twenties to early thirties if compared to other species, especially humans.
So elders normally had light silver hair with shimmers of their dragon’s colors and the rare ancients were basically white. Their hair was beyond gorgeous and it was somehow always flattering, male or female.
Princess Sagan’s was that dark pewter with shimmers of orange for her fire dragon. It was actually the shading I thought least flattering, but… She had the deep red eyes of the royal bloodline and it was stunning.
She was.
No dragon was small, but women tended to be smaller than males.
In human form. Their dragons tended to actually be bigger, which was the balance.
For a dragon, Princess Sagan was on the shorter side, only about six feet. Which fed into the rumors something was wrong with her, especially since her mother was tall for a dragon female. Both of her parents were over six and a half feet and she was probably only at six feet in the right shoes.
I was seven feet, so it amused me that I would look down on her… If we weren’t dealing with such a somber occasion.
Most were impressed she handled it with grace. She was flawless at the main temple gathering to wrap up her parents’ laying to rest there. Funerals were always on the full moon for dragons. Bodies could be preserved with magic and more, but our beliefs on this were set.
Not sending off our departed on the full moon was akin to spitting on them.
She was flawless at the funeral service besides two tiny cracks I saw. One of the royal wards who seemed to overstay her welcome from what I’d heard, Elira, was laying on the dramatics and I saw Sagan’s face twitch.
That was it. Not even… Maybe her eye or jaw? It was just an instant, but I saw it.
