Forbidden Embers Read online

  A low murmuring started in the front of the room, but she ignored it. She had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that Julian appeared on the edge of a furious outburst.

  “I know that you are all waiting for me to choose someone to marry, someone to make the next king. That is what much of this infighting is about. But that, too, has to stop.

  “Yes, it is my duty to marry. And yes, I will fulfill that duty. But I will do it on my timetable, and I will choose the man that I want.” Every man in the room straightened, looked a little more alert—except Thierren, who was leaning against the wall, arms and legs crossed in front of him. His eyes were inscrutable, and she found herself wishing very much to know what he was thinking.

  They had been friends for decades and there was no one in the room whose opinion she valued more, save Gage’s. More important, he was one of only two dragons in the room whom she truly believed had no desire to rule.

  “But I don’t plan to marry for a long time. That does not, however, mean that I do not have a say in how this clan is run, in what we do, and how we do it. I am the last living Fournier heir, and I will not stand by and watch us fall apart. The more we fight, the more we end up hurting the clan.”

  She gestured to the lot of them. “Look at yourselves. Look at what you’re doing to the Conseil. At this time, when we should be most united, we are desperately divided, and it is getting worse every day.

  “Part of it is my fault. I take full responsibility for it. As things have gotten worse, I have done what everyone has always expected of me: absolutely nothing. I have stayed in my father’s house and watched as you fought each other for the right to be king. As you led war parties on the Dragonstars and the Shadowdrakes, war parties that seem to have no purpose other than to distinguish you as leaders. War parties that have failed abysmally, and have done nothing but weaken our clan when we can least afford it.

  “All of that stops here. All of that stops now. I have been to too many funerals in the past five months. I have watched too many of my clan mates burn. Enough is enough.”

  She paused, took a deep breath and gave her words time to register as she looked straight in the eyes of every single man in the room. Etienne and Luc both looked like they were going to have a stroke, their black eyes blazing with a fiery hatred neither even attempted to hide. Acel, Remy, Eriq, Nicolas and Blaze didn’t look like they were faring much better. But the others—Thierren, Dashiell, Dax, Gage and Garen—all looked surprisingly calm. And Wyatt looked downright gleeful. But, then, he’d always been the thorn in her father’s side, his inability to take anything seriously nearly getting him removed from the Conseil more times than any of them could keep track of through the years. He was probably reveling in the thought of total and complete anarchy.

  As for Julian, his face was such a bright pink that she couldn’t help wondering if a stroke was imminent. She should probably feel worse about that prospect—after all, he had been her father’s favorite for centuries—but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Getting him out of the way would make things run that much more smoothly.

  Besides, it felt good to know she wasn’t as alone as she’d feared when walking in here a few minutes before. But, then again, the fact that the Conseil had not condemned her out of hand didn’t mean that they supported her, either. While many of them enjoyed watching her pull Julian’s tail, she had no idea how many of them would actually back her when push came to shove. It would take a lot of work on her part to win them over.

  She couldn’t let them know that she cared about their opinions, however, not now when she really couldn’t afford to care one way or the other. If she even looked like she was backing down now, any clout she had would disappear and her clan would suffer. That was the last thing her people needed, the last thing she would allow to happen. They had already suffered more than enough.

  She cleared her throat, made sure her voice was as firm and irrevocable as her will when she started to speak again. “From this day forward, you are my Conseil and you will do my bidding. I may not be queen yet, but make no mistake, from this day forward, I am in charge. There will be no king until I say so, and if you think I’m going to choose my husband from a group that is acting like spoiled little boys, then you all have another thing coming. I will be back in the morning, and we will get to work fixing the mess you all have made.”

  Head held high, spine ramrod straight, she turned and made a beeline for the door. She may not have ever had the chance to rule while her father was alive, but she’d learned something from him. And that was how to make an entrance—and an exit.

  Voices exploded behind her in a mixture of English and French, and she fought down the smile that very much wanted to bloom across her face for the first time since she’d set her course that morning.

  Oh yes, she had given them something to think about. The next move was theirs, no doubt about it. But if they weren’t careful, they would find that she wasn’t above wresting control away from them—any way she had to.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As she swept through the club and into the street, Cecily was hyperaware that half of the men in her father’s Conseil were following her and the other half were cursing her heavily, even as they refused to join the others. She didn’t let anyone’s reaction bother her, however, even when she realized Julian was one of the shifters hot on her heels.

  Not letting their reactions bother her wasn’t the same as being stupid, though. And since Julian was only a step or two behind her, she knew if she didn’t hustle, he was going to catch her. Not that I’m afraid of him, she assured herself. Because she wasn’t. She had just proved that she could hold her own against him or any of the others.

  But at the same time, she’d pretty much used up her quota of courage for the day. Maybe even the whole week. She’d need to get some back, and quickly, but she just didn’t have anything else left in her today. The idea of another confrontation left her shaky—especially one with Julian, in front of all the other factionnaires.

  Still, she didn’t shrink when his hand closed around her elbow. Instead, she stopped and looked down at where his talons had punched through his fingertips. His nails were digging into her skin, drawing blood, but she’d be damned if she let him know how much it hurt. In the game they were playing, whoever flinched first lost. And she so was not going to spend the next five hundred years bowing and scraping to Julian. She would rather be dead.

  “You’re going to want to get your hand off me,” she said in the most frigid voice she could muster.

  “And you’re going to want to be very careful about whom you challenge in public,” he answered, leaning in so close that his lips were just a hairsbreadth from her ear. To the casual eye, it looked like a lover’s embrace, and though dragons had incredible hearing, he was being very careful to keep his voice pitched so low that even she had to strain to hear him.

  “You may think you’re ready to play with the big boys, ma chérie, but you’re still just a spoiled little girl at heart.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some money, then forced her clenched fingers open enough to take the thick wad of bills. “Why don’t you go buy something pretty and leave the real work for those of us who know more than which fork we’re supposed to use at dinner?”

  His words hit far too close to home, and it was only the years of experience with her father’s cruelty that allowed her to keep her face serene as she scrambled for an answer that would not make her sound weak.

  Nothing brilliant came to her, so she had to settle for mildness. “Yes, well, I figure I’m a step above you, as from what I’ve observed of your table manners, you don’t even know that much.”

  Julian’s face flushed and his fingers tightened on her elbow until the talons pierced almost to the bone. At the same time, he angled his body so that none of the men watching from the front of the club could see the blood that had started to drip down her arm. “You need to be very careful, Cecily. People who cross me once don’t
normally get a second chance. I’m being more generous with you because I respected your father and because I believe we could be very good for each other. But don’t mistake my generosity for weakness. I will not tolerate another display like the one you just put on.”

  Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, and the pain of his attack was getting to her. But she absolutely refused to back down—not now, not in front of the others and definitely not to him. Besides, her beast wouldn’t allow it. The dragon was snapping and scratching at her insides, desperate to get out and go for Julian’s throat.

  She controlled it but just barely. It helped that instead of bowing her head in the sign of submission he and the others were so obviously waiting for, she simply smiled sweetly and said, “I’m sorry you feel you have the right to tell me anything, let alone threaten me. I’m going to assume you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything,” he all but snarled.

  “Really? Well, that’s a shame, then, because it means you really are as stupid as you look.” He had clamped his second hand around her fist, keeping her fingers closed and the money in place. Through sheer strength of will, she uncurled her fingers. As she did, she let her own talons scrape against his palm where it squeezed hers.

  Julian’s eyes widened, and she continued. “You’ll do well to remember that you aren’t the only powerful dragon in this clan. Just because I’ve been content to sit back and let the Conseil muck around for the past five months doesn’t mean that I am weak.”

  She let the money flutter to the ground, then watched as the early autumn wind caught it and blew it away. “Perhaps it’s time I remind you of just how strong I am.”

  With that, she wrenched her arm out of his grip, ignoring the tearing she felt. Knowing he wouldn’t let her go easily—and knowing that a show of strength from her was more necessary now that she stood there bleeding than it had ever been before—she started to change.

  There were at least twenty pairs of eyes on her—twenty pairs of male eyes, at that—so she didn’t bother to strip. While nudity was fairly common in the shifter world, by necessity, the absolute last thing she wanted at that moment was for Julian and the rest of the Conseil to get an eyeful of her bleeding, naked human form. The last thing she wanted to do was to flaunt the fact that she was female.

  So instead, she let the clothes simply rip away as she shifted. Normally it took even the most accomplished shifters at least a few minutes to go from human to dragon or back again, but that had never been a problem for her. From the time she had first learned to change, she had been able to do it quickly. Like, a-few-seconds quickly. Like, blink-of-an-eye quickly.

  It was not a talent she had ever bragged about—or one she’d let anyone but Gage ever see—but it was a talent she now used ruthlessly to her advantage.

  Throwing every ounce of power she had behind the change, she grew talons and a tail.

  Her skin turned purple and became thick and scaly.

  Her head grew, her nose and mouth elongating.

  Her belly turned hard as her legs and arms grew in length and width.

  Her clothes split at the seams, fell to the ground in a forgotten heap.

  The entire transformation took less than fifteen seconds, and though the pain of it lashed through her like hellfire, she ignored it. Pain was a small price to pay for the freedom to be a dragon so quickly. Conscious of the men getting closer, their murmurs louder, she launched herself straight up into the sky. It was another show of dominance and power, as most dragons, including her father’s factionnaires, required a running start to fly.

  And then she was soaring through the skies, leaving the ugly meeting and the condemnation of her father’s Conseil far behind. At least for a little while. She knew running wasn’t the answer—it couldn’t be—but right then she felt so uncivilized, so raw, that the only help for it was hanging in her dragon’s skin for a while. Somehow the beast always helped her put things in perspective. Not to mention the fact that it was about a million times braver than she was, and after spending the last few minutes going head-to-head with Julian, she could use the comfort.

  She drew from that strength now, gave her beast its turn to spin and flip and somersault through the air. She cloaked herself, making herself invisible, as all dragons could, while she zoomed above the Black Hills that had made South Dakota so famous.

  Her dragon shuddered in delight, exulting in the freedom to flex its talons and exercise its wings. Before today, it had been far too long since she’d let herself shift, far too long since she’d given herself permission to do anything else but be the sweet, dutiful, and useless princess she had been raised to be.

  It felt good to shake off that persona. Really good. And as she spiraled lower, she reveled in her ability to be—even for a little while—the woman she had always wished to be. Flying low, she sped across the pine-covered mountains, soaking in the delightful smell and feel of the place she had called home for her entire life.

  The air rushed by her face, and she sucked it inside her, tasted it—and the liberty that came with its freshness—with a joy she had no desire to deny or hide. Not here and not now.

  But even as her beast delighted in the magnificence of the ride, she knew deep inside that her headlong flight couldn’t last. She had things to do, responsibilities back at home. And while part of her longed for nothing more than to fly away from the oppressive life she’d always led, another part of her, the part that had been raised royal, understood that she would never have that option. Now that her father and brother were dead, the Wyvernmoons were her people, her responsibility. And no matter how fractious they were, she couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves, especially under Julian’s obnoxious, perilous and self-serving leadership.

  It killed her that her father had really wanted her to marry that man. Julian was dark and dangerous, and while neither of those things bothered her particularly—show her a dragon who wasn’t—he also had a mean streak a mile wide. And that she just couldn’t tolerate.

  She didn’t think her father had ever seen it, though. Julian only messed with people he considered weaker than himself. Besides, she wasn’t sure Silus would have cared even if he had been aware of Julian’s proclivities. It wasn’t like her father had been known for his kind heart and pleasant personality.

  A spurt of guilt assailed her at the thought, ruining the last bit of pleasure she’d been taking in her flight. Her father was dead, murdered by the new Dragonstar queen, and Cecily had never been one to talk ill of the dead. At the same time, though, she’d never been a hypocrite. While she had loved her father very much, she hadn’t been blind to his faults. Silus had been arrogant in the extreme, diabolical and, more often than not, amoral.

  But he’d still been her father. And, for the most part, he’d been a hell of a king to the Wyvernmoons. She might not have agreed with everything he’d done or every decision he had made, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had the clan’s best interests at heart through it all. He had just gone about it differently than she would have.

  Not that anyone had ever asked her. Then again, why would they? She might be a member of the royal family, but she was also a woman and in some ways—many ways—the Wyvernmoons were a clan stuck hundreds of years in the past.

  It was why her father had wanted her to marry Julian, after all. Or at least one of the reasons. Julian’s family had provided factionnaires and Conseil members for the royal family for millennia. They were one of the richest, most powerful families in the clan, and they were probably the only family with strong enough magic to wrest the throne away from the Fourniers by force, if they put their minds to it. Oh, it had been a long time since they’d tried—at least four or five hundred years—but her father had had a long memory. And while he ruled with an iron fist, in the years before his death, his sovereignty had been called into question more than once. The last thing he’d wanted was a challenge from Julian’s family, so in exchange for
their loyalty, he had promised her to Julian.

  It had nearly killed her when she’d found out what he’d done, and for the first time in her life, she’d contemplated leaving the compound. Leaving the clan. Her whole life, she had longed to be useful, longed to have some sort of responsibility, the way Jacob had. To have some sort of role to play that would help her clan in a meaningful way.

  But when she’d been confronted with what her role was to be—marriage to a man she despised—she’d balked. Hugely. Had refused to even consider it. Her father had been furious, and she’d felt the considerable force of his wrath. She hated that her father was dead; hated more that he had died while they’d been completely at odds. The fact that she’d never have a chance to make things up with him haunted her.

  Shuddering at the hard truth, Cecily dropped lower and lower until her feet were on the ground. She winced when her sore front leg touched down, annoyed that Julian had managed to injure her arm so severely that a shift to dragon had not alleviated the wound.

  How could he possibly think that bullying me is going to get him what he wants? she wondered furiously as she tested the leg’s ability to bear weight. All he’d done was piss her off to the point that she could barely see straight. But, then again, Julian had watched her interact with her father for half a century, knew that intimidation was Silus’s favorite weapon to wield against her. What he hadn’t understood was that just because she’d bowed to her father didn’t mean she would ever do it for another man, and certainly not one as horrific as Julian was turning out to be.

  Cecily shifted back to human form so she could get a better look at the damage done to her elbow. What she saw made her curse. The bleeding had stopped, thanks to her first shift, but the skin was pretty torn up—as was the muscle beneath it. Though she healed quickly, she figured it would be a day or two before the arm was back to normal, especially if she didn’t get to Simone, the Wyvernmoon healer.