Page 8 of Foundling

Four sons and four daughters by two queens. It should’ve been more than enough for Diometrios. There was no need to take Damaris and beget another two sons. From a smaller clan that mostly kept to the edges of the archipelago, Damaris and her sons stood out from the court with their ruby-red scales.

Then there were the bastards. A motley lot, they often stood together for safety if not solidarity. The twins Damianos and Demetrios shared a mother and were lucky to inherit the gold scales—although, as Attalus had pointed out before, they were more yellow than gold. Myrastra and Nikodemos hadn’t been so lucky, instead keeping their mother’s perfectly ordinary blue. And lastly was Phiobos, the youngest of the fifteen if not the diadochos, a ruddy sort of dark orange not unlike a sunset.

Attalus could think whatever unflattering thing he liked about the bastards, but he was well aware his only advantage over them was his legitimacy, ill-gotten as it was. They might stick together out of necessity, but unfortunate as they were in their birth, they could command their own faction. They had their mothers still, their kin, friends even.

As the groups found each other, it left Attalus just as he was. Totally alone.

Folding his hands behind his back, he stepped forward to stand on his own, facing down the only other sibling standing alone.

Up upon the dais was the anax himself, Araxos, festooned with the royal wreath, a crown made of gilt scales. Besides this, though, there were few trappings of royalty. Araxos had always dressed himself more like a warlord than a prince, preferring leathers and iron to gold and silk.

He watched Attalus with an assessing gaze that gave nothing away.

The thing most terrifying about Araxos was how much he looked like their father. The likeness conjured painful memories—and fears that it wasn’t just the face he’d inherited.

Finally, with the court all gathered, the anax spoke.

Or, actually, he motioned for something to the side of the dais.

They watched in astonishment as several attendants rolled great barrels into the center of the empty space before the dais. As the barrels were propped up, they were turned to show the brand burned into the wood, denoting a winery just north of Bargarad.

The very one Attalus had recently bought a stake in.

As was his way, Araxos began without preamble. “Last night, my wine was poisoned.”

The dragons assembled didn’t gasp or cry out. No, they all knew, from centuries of terror, to hold perfectly still.

“A shipment from the mainland was intercepted and these barrels seized. All contained wine contaminated with wolfsbane.”

That did garner a few murmurs, but Attalus didn’t hear them. Couldn’t, over the sound of his own pounding heart.

“These islands will never know peace so long as traitors plot against me. Seize them.”

Elite guards, the infamous gorgoroi in their black armor, swooped down from their concealed posts onto the crowd below. The court erupted into a frenzy of buffeting wings and outraged shrieks, their terror of the silent warriors loyal only to the anax bone-deep, but Attalus wasn’t surprised to feel the clamp of hands around his arms and wings.

How could he, when all he saw in Araxos’s cold eyes was condemnation?

2

Once again, the magic remained silent, no matter how many times she called for it. Frowning into the darkness, Leita pinched her nose to contain her sneeze. She hated coming down here into the bowels of the palace; dank and muzzy, the cavernous chambers were less room and more cave. If she listened carefully, she could just hear the water rushing in from the sea somewhere below.

No one was quite sure whether the magic had retreated here during Amaranthe’s reign—horrified by her usurpation and corruption, too—or upon her death.

In that final battle against Amaranthe, Leita had known the moment the hateful hag died. Ravenna threw them both out the broken citadel window, and a moment later, Leita’s body had rushed with a power that left her breathless. It inundated every vein, soaked every pore. She wondered if she glowed, for she felt just that effervescent.

Then, just as quickly, most of the sensation snuffed out.

Was that…normal?

She didn’t know. And there was no one to ask.

Despite Lady Eilean and the other elders here to instruct her, none of them were of the royal line. A few of them had royal blood a few generations back, but no one had been raised in the palace as Leita, Lilibet, and their cousins were.

Amaranthe should have been the one to teach her chosen heir; introduce her to the magic, show her how to work with it, build her confidence before passing down the Queenship.

And, whoever she chose, it shouldn’t have been Leita to succeed her.

Growing up, she hadn’t been particularly gifted or remarkable amongst the royal family. That was all right, though. Most heirs would never become Queen. It was their duty to share in the burden; to carry the magic if needed and serve in administrative, diplomatic, and governmental roles. Leita had thought herself bound for the military, training to be a warrior and getting her own unicorn dread-mount.