Chapter Text
Aretia’s thermal valley, home to Tyrrendor’s hatching grounds, was hotter than usual, and her dragons tense and temperamental. Dew should still be clinging to the grass, leaves should be rustling in the breeze, and yet, the lieutenants of Xaden Riorson’s wing were sweltering through their early morning training. If he were a more superstitious man, Xaden would have taken this as a sign.
“Remind me why we’re beating the shit out of each other instead of down there where all the action is?” Bodhi drained the last of his water and swiped Garrick’s untouched canteen.
“Solidarity,” Garrick huffed between primal grunts. He’d been going blow for blow over the last hour, and neither looked any worse for it.
A snort sounded across the field where Imogen and Glane stretched out under a canopy of trees. The runed dagger she was using to pick her nails kept the others from calling out her idling, but she’d already put today’s challengers on their backs in twenty-seven minutes before handing Bodhi his ass in thirteen, so Xaden let sleeping dragons lie.
Garrick obviously did not feel the same. “What’s that, Cardulo?”
“If this ‘solidarity’ gets us thrown in the brig for disobedience, I get the cot for being the only reasonable one who thinks we ought to be where the king told us to be.”
Xaden knew his friends were taking a risk for him, but the argument with his father had been dragging on these last two weeks with neither of them relenting on the duties of the newly-named Duke of Aretia. The choice had been made clear: announce his betrothal to Catriona Cordella to secure Poromiel as an ally or negotiate with the King of Navarre. Either way, Tyrrendor needed a working forge if they were to produce the only weapons known to kill venin, and only these two absolute assholes had them.
With one last feint that sent Garrick careening for the ground, Xaden stopped just short of skewering his best friend’s balls. “Let’s go.”
As if on cue, Sgaeyl returned from circling Aretia’s perimeter and landed within feet of Xaden.
Following their wingleader, Xaden’s inner circle mounted their dragons and flew the short distance to Riorson House, where a tense Fen Riorson, king to the sovereign nation of Tyrrendor, stood with the plump prick that was King Tauri, and his court of coddled, arrogant hypocrites.
Xaden kept his seat as Sgaeyl put on quite the show with her wet snarls and serpentine neck. Behind her, Glane and Chradh growled deep in their fiery throats, and despite his father’s earlier protests to the scene, Xaden didn’t miss the pride that flashed in his eyes. Xaden also noted that the Navarrians all stumbled back. All but one. She was the only woman among the group, the only one dressed in cream robes rather than rider black, infantry blue, or the purple dress uniforms of the royal line, including Tauri’s eldest son who looked like he might piss himself under Sgaeyl’s dramatic display. She tilted her head beneath her hood and glanced up to appraise their riot. From his vantage point, Xaden could make out the amused glint in her sparkling eyes.
Sgaeyl dipped her head low and exhaled a menacing hiss of steam over the girl, who finally relented a step and bowed her head.
“The others have dismounted, wingleader. You should, too, before I roast the little marshmallow.”
“King Tauri, you remember my son, Xaden Riorson, Crown Prince of Tyrrendor, Duke of Aretia.”
“Your majesty.” Xaden inclined his head briefly, barely a show of respect, but not enough to incite a war. That was precisely what Xaden needed to avoid in this first official visit from Navarre since the Tyrrendor secession seven years ago. As much as he didn’t want to sit across from these selfish fucks over tea and biscuits, there were greater things happening on the Continent that required him to play the role he’d been training for long before he bonded a dragon.
For the finale, Sgaeyl launched into the air with a deafening roar, daggertail just barely clearing the heads of the awestruck Navarrians, while her rider leapt from a running dismount down her foreleg. Gasps trickled throughout the audience.
The message was loud and clear: Xaden Riorson was more weapon than crown, and he bowed to no one.
⚜️••⚜️
The welcome tea had been a prelude to the talks Tyrrendor and Navarre would be having over the coming days. Here, both sides would lay out their objectives and spend the following week hashing out the terms and conditions. Xaden was given explicit orders to control his shadows and speak when spoken to. General Ulices would speak on behalf of their army. His father’s council would handle most of the finer points, and the kings would allow all of this to play out knowing that, in the end, their word would be law.
On the Tyrrish side of the table, Xaden looked almost bored. His plate remained empty, his tea untouched, and he was pretty sure Colonel Suri was reaching for her shortsword to cut off his fingers he’d been drumming next to the silverware. Of course, her mental shields were firmly intact, so he couldn’t know for sure.
It was easy to slip inside someone’s head and rifle around their intentions as far as his second signet would allow, but there was an art to plucking out singular thoughts from a deluge of others before someone felt the prickle of an intruder. Xaden didn’t know if he was a master at it, and talking about the intricacies of mindwork could be tantamount to a confession in the wrong hands. Even in Tyrrendor, intinnsics were subject to an merciless death sentence. He’d had every reason to believe he was at least very good, seeing as his secret had never been revealed outside of his bonded.
The Navarrian’s intentions had kept Xaden occupied for the better part of the last two hours. He sifted through the infantry’s various bloodthirsty resentments and typical prejudices but otherwise found nothing overtly alarming. Even King Tauri’s thoughts were mostly learning towards getting home sooner rather than later, though there was a distinct arrogance that led him to believe he would be gaining more than he intended to give up.
Halden’s head was part brothel, part revenge fantasy. He blamed his twin brother’s early demise on losing the war with Tyrrrendor that pushed Allic into their death college known as Basgiath. Xaden had heard rumors that the would-be king didn’t make it past Threshing.
General Melgren’s shields were impenetrable, as expected, but what wasn’t expected was their scribe, the girl with the pretty eyes currently cast down at her parchment, having an equally impressive shield. Xaden made three attempts to break through before the girl’s head jerked up. He looked away before he was caught.
“How did Basgiath teach their scribes to shield?”
On the other end of his bond, Sgaeyl was distant and distracted. He called out for her again.
Her response was clipped. “What is it, wingleader?”
“The scribe from Navarre. She can shield. Have you ever heard of something like that?”
He could feel Sgaeyl’s annoyance. “I am a dragon, not a library, boy.” The bond went dim between them, signaling the end of their conversation.
There was someone else who would know, but Lieutenant Colonel Aiseraigh was currently indisposed in Poromiel, and for good reason. The former Navarrian-turned-traitor was believed to have died, by King Riorson no less, during the rebellion that gave way to Tyrrendor’s secession. Brennan had been ordered to stay out of sight until Navarre’s departure, otherwise, he was inarguably one of the better assets Tyrrendor had at this table.
Xaden tuned back into the conversation at the table, and upon learning they were only discussing food choices for this week’s dinners, he tuned right back out.
⚜️••⚜️
Dinner was a sycophantic affair that Xaden hadn’t been required to attend and thus hadn’t bothered showing up for. He’d already received a scolding from his father on his impudence and remained in such a surly mood that his friends left him brooding while they enjoyed Aretia’s nightlife.
He needed a good lay. The problem was he’d been through all of the third years worth fucking and the second years were stationed in Lewellen for a training exercise. First years were off-limits, though he was starting to rethink this self-imposed rule as he lay in bed and tried not to imagine all the ways in which he could blow off steam–or at least his load.
The dappled moonlight flickered across the room, teasing his shadows in the form of a sensuous silhouette dancing on the wall. Xaden had always considered his first signet was a corporeal extension of him; the inky black swirls listened underneath doors and saw around corners, but acknowledging their arousal as a part of him and apart from him was a mindfuck he didn’t have the balls to ask his professors at the Aretian Riding Academy.
And yet, the shadows stirred. Pooling around the window, they beckoned Xaden forward with pulsing excitement.
It should have been impossible to spot her in the night, but his eyes landed on her body immediately. Across the courtyard, four stories up from Xaden’s second-floor bedroom, the Navarrian scribe might as well have been naked for all she was wearing. Sparring pants looked to be painted on her surprisingly toned thighs and hugged the even more surprising supple curve of her ass. She’d knotted a loose tunic at her waist, which is what Xaden would do to cut the wind resistance if he…
The lust gave way to panic as Xaden took off from his bedroom and sprinted down the corridor. He took the stairs two, three at a time, shadows racing ahead of him, climbing higher and higher until he was flying up the fifth floor’s service staircase, its door propped open with—was that his fucking runes textbook?
The shadows skittered out ahead of him before he could rein them in, not only giving Xaden away, but startling the girl who walked precariously on the narrow ridgeline between where he stood at the turret across the roof.
She stilled, arms spread to keep her balance, and slowly turned an incredulous glare over her shoulder to the intruder.
“If you trip me, I will ask Malek to let me haunt you–assuming Navarre doesn’t execute you first.”
“You must think very highly of yourself that Navarre would go to war over a nameless scribe.” In fact, it annoyed Xaden that he hadn’t caught her name at the earlier briefing.
Her footing wobbled ever so slightly as she turned her attention back to her feet and continued the dangerous trek.
“Any suggestions here?” he sent down the bond to his ruthless daggertail, but silence greeted him back as it had all afternoon.
He should let the girl fall to her death. It’s not like Tauri would give a shit, and he was sure his dad wouldn’t either. But it was a curious thing. A scribe outside of her robes, with a shield she had no business possessing, walking the roof of an enemy kingdom. Even if they were no longer at war, relations between the two provinces were strained at best. A dead scribe and prince within reach sounded like the makings of a setup. Either that, or the mysterious scribe was actually a spy.
Fucking great. He stepped barefoot onto the cool but otherwise dry stone, offering a rare thanks to Zihnal that tonight’s weather was in his favor.
He’d crossed this ridgeline hundreds of times and courted death a thousand times more, but arrogance was the impetus to foolishness. Risking his life these days came at a cost far greater than he cared to admit, because a kingdom without an heir was an opportunity.
“Go back to whatever it was you were doing before you decided to interrupt my evening, little prince,” the girl called out as she hopped over the ledge and onto the turret across.
Maybe he ought to throw her off after all.
Xaden crossed the distance to her in quick, confident strides. What he found on her side left him more suspicious of the hot maybe-spy who wasn’t afraid of heights. She’d obviously made a few trips from the house to the roof. He counted four books, a water canteen, and a blanket from their family library that had been imported from Devrelli carelessly tossed next to her full pack.
He crossed his arms over his chest, tempering the shadows swirling around their feet. If she was intimidated by a man twice her size, she was too stubborn to show it. “By the looks of it, you seem to be running away.”
“If that were true, why would I be on the roof? Maybe I just want to spend the night out here.”
“We have over one hundred rooms in this house.”
“One hundred and seventy-four,” she corrected.
“And the one provided to you wasn’t good enough? Doesn’t your kind sleep in the dungeons anyway?”
She raised a brow. Xaden didn’t need to be an inntinnsic to know where she took offense.
“Scribes,” he clarified.
For the second time that night, she shocked him with a throaty laugh–not a demure giggle or nasty snicker like he knew the women in other courts loved to do–but an authentic laugh that sounded so lovely on her. Gods, he was pathetic when he was horny.
“If by ‘dungeons’, you mean the Archives, then yes, the scribe quadrant at Basgiath is located underground. That’s not where I sleep, however, despite popular belief.” She laughed again, this time quietly, as though it were a private joke, and the sound tickled Xaden’s ears. Like a gnat, he assured himself, even if he didn’t entirely hate it.
He willed his annoyance into a glare that intimidated most. Except her apparently. She rolled her eyes and sighed.
“My room is fine, if not a little…too accessible by a certain king’s son.”
“I can assure you, my bedroom is nowhere near yours.”
“Do you always assume everything is about you?”
It was at that moment that Xaden decided she was insufferable and not worth another second of his time, so naturally, he sat down on the ledge.
“Ah, so the rumors about the crown prince are true.”
She grimaced before schooling her features into practiced nonchalance. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Interesting. A spurned lover, perhaps? Not that he cared, though he did wonder whether Halden would live up to his reputation by fucking every woman who breathed near him over the coming days. He’d have to warn Imogen that murdering a member of a royal family for flirting with her would not go over well.
“I can ward your door during your stay,” he offered. Again, he didn’t care. He was just improving foreign relations. Helping a damsel in distress, if you will. “Or arrange to move your room to an alternate floor, if you’d like.”
Was there an overwhelmingly lack of oxygen to his head up here that made him say these things?
She eyed him dubiously before taking a seat across from him and picking up one of books she’d clearly swiped from his family’s library.
For anyone else, that would be their cue to leave. It’s what Xaden ought to be doing, because nothing good would come from spending the night with a stranger from a country that would have seen his family and friends executed not that long ago.
But she didn’t have to be a stranger. She didn’t have to be his enemy, either. His father had hoped to form an allyship with Navarre in the coming war against the venin, and it would mean trips to their forge located in Basgiath. It would be nice to know someone there, especially a scribe. They see everything, hear everything, and certainly act like they know everything. The irony of Xaden’s comparable signets was not lost on him. Sure, a fellow rider would have been preferable, but at least she wasn’t bad to look at.
Xaden stuck out his hand before he could think better of it. “I’m Xaden.”
He watched the conflict flicker behind her eyes–colors of hazel, blue, and amber he’d never seen apart from the Arctille Ocean at sunset. Her mind was made up a moment later, and judging by their darkening, her next words looked to have cost her something she hadn’t wanted to give. “Violet.”
“I didn’t know they taught Tyrrish in Navarre,” he said, gesturing to the book sitting in her lap. A large black dragon overtook the front. The title beneath read The Dubhmadinn Den.
She ran her hand over the embossed leather cover almost reverently. “They don’t. It’s considered a dead language.”
“Not to Tyrrendor.”
The silence lingered for only half a breath, but it was acknowledgement enough. “My father taught me. He taught me most languages before my Conscription Day. Morranian is the only one we didn’t…get to,” she trailed off quietly, shaking her head.
Xaden recognized the reflex; he’d always done the same for his mother.
In her familiar movement, he caught a shimmer spiraling through the braided coronet of her hair. He hadn’t noticed it until now, and now it was impossible not to. The dark brunette roots faded into a color that looked almost otherworldly on her. He wondered if she dyed it like Imogen, though the coloring and placement was a strange choice. Even then, he’d never seen it like this, like the ends had been dipped into a tub of molten silver before stopping at her shoulders.
“Careful, prince. Your staring is beginning to reach a level of awkwardness that you might not recover from.”
Xaden smirked. “Well, Violet, are you planning to sleep out here?”
“I’ve slept in worse places,” as if that was all the explanation he needed. There wasn’t enough moonlight to see the smile on her lips, the way her eyes crinkled playfully in the darkness. For some inexplicable reason, Xaden felt those details all the same.
“And with worse princes,” he surmised. He just needed one night with her. One quick romp to get it out of his system, a few more rounds if the sex was decent enough, and then she’d be back to that shithole war college next week, saving him the trouble of breaking things off before it became messy.
She tilted her head as she considered him. “Is that an offer?”
Xaden stepped forward, boldly leaning into her personal space, appreciating the hitch in her breathing, the gorgeous little pout of her lips that he wanted painted with his cum.
Violet closed the inches between them, wrapping her body around his as a fire flared inside him. He accepted the invitation with a fervent kiss that he would later swear she started, though he quickly took over, tongue teasing along the roof of her mouth and eliciting delicious shivers that had her writhing against him like an animal in heat.
When she broke their kiss to breathe, Xaden selfishly pulled her right back. He had never been so hungry, had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted to claim her, for her to claim him. It was primal, it was instinctual, it was–
It was Sgaeyl. All this fervor, all this need. It was coming from his dragon, burning down their bond, clouding his head and fueling his lust.
Fuck. When Sgaeyl was like this, she could go for hours. He doubted the little bookworm in his arms could last that long, even if she was incredibly responsive. And he found himself enjoying finding all her sensitive spots, caring about what made her squirm. The delicate skin behind her ear earned him a whimper when he brushed it over with his lips. Nibbling her earlobe got her to whine incoherently. He especially loved the mewling between the kisses he scattered down her neck, and she was rendered speechless as he sucked the hollow of her neck and shoulder.
When the bulge in his sleep pants met the junction of her thighs, she didn’t hesitate to rub herself along his thick, hard length, soaking the fabrics between them.
He chuckled darkly in her ear. “I bet you could get yourself off just like this.”
Her pace quickened. “Yes,” she hissed. “Let me.”
“Mmmm. And what do I get in return?”
“You get to watch me come.” Violet leaned back on her palms, but her thighs stayed firmly clasped around his hips while she adeptly moved against him. Xaden wasn’t entirely useless; he met her thrust for thrust, white-knuckle promising himself that he wouldn’t blow his load in his pants no matter how good the wet friction was.
He needed to taste her. The thought burned clearly through his mind, and though he was sure it wasn’t entirely his own, he couldn’t deny it was an incredible idea.
“Change of plans.” Xaden sat her on the ledge and toyed with all her previously discovered sensitive spots while his shadows did the logistical work of removing her pants and maneuvering her hips, lifting her just enough to pull the luxury blanket under her ass. “Don’t fall off.”
It was all the warning he gave before he dropped to his knees and latched onto her swollen clit.
Violet jerked her hips against his face, cursing colorfully and loudly, as Xaden licked and sucked her to the very edge of her sanity. He thought she may have said his name a time or two, but it was hard to hear with her thighs squeezing his head.
Xaden pushed her legs apart and laid them one over each shoulder, and slowly, gently, pulled her ass off the parapet. Her hands gripped the stone while his hands gripped her hips, leaving her lower half suspended mid-air.
“Go on, I’ve got you. Fuck me like you want to.”
She looked down her heaving chest at him, where she found his eyes feral and waiting. He vowed to suck her tits next.
“C’mon, brave girl,” he goaded. Take what you want.”
To emphasize his point, Xaden shook his face against her wet cunt, smearing her glistening heat from cheek to cheek. Wild with desire, he did it again and again, the sounds of his feasting on her vulgar and sinful.
Violet threw her head back, letting out a deep raspy groan, then set to work engaging her core and fucking his face like her life depended on it. There was something raw and tinged with reckless abandon that Xaden recognized in her, like recognizing like. How could once ever be enough for him?
When she shattered above him, the sky seemed to crackle around them in kind. In a matter of what could have only been mere seconds, Violet had freed his cock from his pants, palmed him just enough to gauge the length and girth of him, then turned around and bent over the low stone wall, offering herself like the prize she knew she was.
Xaden kicked her feet wider and teased the head of his cock along the seam of her folds. When he pushed against her clit, he swore he felt the erratic pulse of her heartbeat.
Violet cried out loud enough that for the first time that night, Xaden worried they would be overheard. His shadows gently caressed her neck, swirling around her throat like a necklace. Like a collar. Pre-cum spilled from his tip and christened her entrance.
“Please,” she panted. “Need…it-ah-this…now. Now.”
He moved inch by inch, bewitched by the way her legs trembled. She stood perfectly still, taking what he gave her, exactly how he gave it. Slow and sensual, savoring the stretch of her around him, the suck of her cunt as he reached the hilt. He dug his fingers into her hip bones to keep her there while they both breathed through this connection. Did she feel it too? Was he drunk on Sgaeyl’s passion or his own? What was her excuse?
The intensity was too much, the spiral of whatever this was coming undone and threatening to overwhelm him. Xaden bucked his hips, fighting against the feeling, fucking his way out of it, until he was once more himself again.
Her moans punctuated each slap of their bodies, her keening growing frenzied as he drove into her.
“You have to be quiet,” Xaden demanded more roughly than he meant.
Violet rose to her tiptoes and laced her fingers together to rest on the back of his neck. “Make me.”
She was too short to keep his length inside her standing like this, so in one motion, Xaden lifted her off the ground and spun her around. “How flexible are you?”
“Incredibly.”
“Arms around my neck,” he instructed. “Ankles over my shoulders.”
She wasn’t lying. Xaden had her folded in half against him and buried deep enough that she would be sore tomorrow. The idea of her sitting across from him in another arduous meeting, an ache throbbing between her legs as a reminder of what they did tonight…
While he was lost in tomorrow’s fantasy, Violet helped herself to bouncing on his cock.
“Holy fuck.”
“I-told-you.”
“Good girl,” he growled. With her returning whimper, Xaden knew he had her.
“Such a good girl fucking my cock. A pretty little thing, aren’t you?”
“I–I’m–” She kissed him roughly, dragging her teeth along his bottom lip, fighting to stroke her tongue along the relentless flick of his.
It should have been damn impossible for a pussy as slick as hers to tighten around him with a vice-like grip. In a split second, all semblance of his control vanished, his jaw practically unhinged as her orgasm milked his before he was ready. He regained it half a heartbeat later, just in time to pull out and spill his seed onto the blanket below.
“Holy fuck.”
She laughed, breathless. “You said that already.”
Gently, he set her down. The air felt charged around them, erupting along his body as goosebumps.
Xaden stood there boneless and half-mast, trying to make sense of what just happened, while Violet redressed around him. Once she started repacking her books, Xaden pulled it together–including the pants around his ankles.
She was halfway across the roofline back to the fifth floor service door when she turned her head over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
Xaden shook his head. He needed as much distance from her as he could get, as much space as only flight would allow. He lifted his shield to test the bond with Sgaeyl and found her half-asleep and sated. That made one of them.
“I need you. East wing turret.”
His dragon of five years knew him well enough to know this was not a time to castigate his vulnerability.
“I am on my way.”
“You should get back to your room before my father or his court finds you wandering the halls in the middle of the night.”
For a moment, Violet–the girl, the scribe, the Navarrian–seemed disappointed in his withdrawal, but she quickly replaced it with a cool distancing of her own.
“Next time, don’t ruin what I’m sure was expensive bedding on my account.” She glanced at the soiled blanket at his feet. “I’m on the tonic.”
Xaden waited for her to close the service door firmly shut behind her before he smiled.