Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

Tempest

"Oh, sweet Dotae!" Tempest cursed as the dragon swerved to miss a razor-sharp edge of a jutting shelf of rock. She clung to his neck with desperate, freezing hands. Every inch of Tempest's body was numb. One wrong move, and she'd fall to her death.

The dragon roared merrily. "We are almost there, lovely! You have done well so far. It's thrilling, is it not?"

"If you call almost dying half a dozen times thrilling, then yes!" Tempest screamed, burying her face against his smooth, emerald scales. Her hair whipped behind her in the wind, snapping and twisting with every turn the dragon took; it would take hours to untangle the knots it had surely gained.

Her hair should have been the last thing on her mind. It was funny how the mind latched onto inconsequential things when in a life or death situation.

It'll be a miracle if you make it to the Dark Court alive .

"Do you not risk dying every time you fight for your king… or Jester?" the dragon asked, throwing a sly look back at Tempest when she thrust up her face in shock. "Oh, come now," he chastised, in his hissing dragon voice. "Did you take me to be ignorant, Tempest of the Madrid line? I know exactly who and what you are."

Tempest did not reply. She had been foolish to assume the dragon shifter would not have found out who she was; the mere fact that she had periwinkle hair and had been heading into the mountains several weeks ago with two shifters was telling enough. Not to mention, she wasn't fond of getting any more snow plastered to her teeth.

She slid forward as the beast tilted downward, beginning the descent. Tempest clung tighter to him and focused on taking one breath at a time. Her body jerked as they touched ground. Lifting her head, she squinted through the storm, just making out a smooth stone platform that jutted out from the side of the mountain.

"Careful getting off," the dragon said.

She slid to the ground, her legs jarring as she landed—they were barely able to take the weight after the daredevil journey. Tempest lifted her head and eyed what looked to be balconies built into alcoves to protect them from the weather. Many of them were lit with lanterns, torches, and strings of lights, which fluttered and blinked in the snow.

There were floors with windows? Not just eternal darkness?

That kitsune miscreant kept you in the dark.

Tempest angrily tried and failed to smooth her wild, tangled hair away from her face.

"Thank you for allowing me to fly with you," she said, when she had finally caught her breath enough to speak .

The dragon had shifted back into a broad-shouldered man with scale-imprinted skin and had crept silently to her side. He smiled with his strange teeth.

"I thank you for the sapphire," he replied, stroking the pendant where it hung from a chain around his neck. There were several other heavy, ornate necklaces already there, along with a much plainer, silver chain upon which a lock of lilac hair had been wrapped around.

That's not creepy at all.

She shrugged. Each to their own.

Tempest returned the dragon's smile before shaking out the insuppressible shiver that had been torturing her limbs the entire journey. The cold had chilled her to the very bone.

"Shall we head in?" she asked, indicating to the ornate iron door that separated the balcony from the inside of the palace.

The dragon man moved forward, barefoot in the snow. Tempest shivered as he opened the door and held an arm out. She entered, muttering a thank you before turning to face the room.

She froze.

A hundred pairs of eyes were on them. They had walked straight into the masquerade hall, which was full of servants and shifters busily preparing it for the ball.

Tempest stiffened further as she found the Jester in his Mal persona, standing in the middle of the room like the eye of the blizzard itself. He examined her and then stalked toward them.

Be strong.

A huge hand rested at the base of her spine. "Chin up, lovely," the dragon murmured.

Tempest raised her chin, a little unnerved that the dragon could read her so well .

Mal all but ignored Tempest, barely giving her a second glance before bowing deeply to the dragon. Charming as ever.

"Damien," Mal announced, clasping hands with the man as they shared a wicked smile. "King of the dragons. It is so good to see you."

Tempest froze. The king of—what? She'd been bartering with the king of the dragons ?

Damien glanced at Tempest out of the corner of his eye, a smirk playing around his mouth. "You ought to be careful about letting your treasures wander around, you know," he murmured softly to Mal. "Otherwise anybody could steal them."

"I'm not a treasure ." Tempest scowled, all goodwill toward Damien thoroughly dissipating.

"Hush, lovely. All women are treasures… especially the interesting ones."

"Tempest, go rest," Mal ordered, once more without looking at her. "Damien, might I offer you lodgings? We were not expecting you so early, but a room has already been prepared for—"

"Oh, no," the dragon king replied with a shake of his head, his hand curling around her hip. Tempest knew Mal didn't miss the gesture, going by his icy gaze. "I shall return on the morrow. I still have previous business to attend to. This one simply distracted me enough to delay said business." Damien smiled warmly and dragged his hand along her waist until he caught hold of Tempest's wrist, bending low to place a kiss on the delicate skin there. As with the first time only weeks ago, a searing burn flared up Tempest's arm from his lips, threatening to engulf her very being. Damien locked his venomously green eyes on hers. "You're welcome for the ride. "

"I—I already thanked you!" she bit out, pulling her wrist from his grasp. "And paid handsomely for the service." Damien merely laughed, a sound so infectious that even Tempest's lips began to curl into a smile. The devilish dragon. "I'll see you soon, my lord."

"You shall, lovely."

An embarrassing blush heated her cheeks as she turned on her heel and strode from the huge chamber. She barely made it out of the hall before Mal caught up with her, firmly wiping any semblance of a smile from her face.

Both his eyes and voice were tight as he asked, "How do you always manage to get caught up in such trouble?"

Tempest ignored him.

When, finally, she descended the stairs and found her room, she barely suppressed a sigh of relief. She was tired and sore and irritated; all she wanted to do was sleep. She pushed open the door and squeaked. A couple lay intertwined with one another on the bed. She promptly shut the door again. Her face flushed scarlet. That was unexpected.

"You've been assigned a new room," Mal said from behind her, almost lazily. "If you'd acknowledged my presence, I'd have warned you about the room swap and saved you the embarrassment of seeing what you just saw. If you follow me, I can take you there."

The last thing she wanted to do was follow him, but if it meant reaching a bed upon which she could collapse, and a fire that could warm her soul, then she'd do just about anything.

Wordlessly, she trailed after him and much to her chagrin, he took her back up the stairs until they reached a set of handsomely carved, mahogany doors. With the turn of a gilded handle indented with amber, he let her inside .

She gaped in awe. It was one of the most beautiful rooms she had ever seen. A balcony took up much of one wall, protected from the bitter outside with a solid sheet of semi-opaque stone. Lights twinkled out of focus behind the stone, transforming it into something quite magical. The hearth to her left was almost as large as the balcony, a gargantuan fire burning merrily within it. But the flames weren't orange; they were purple and blue and icy and blinding white. "What sort of witchery is this?" she demanded.

Mal rolled his eyes. "It's nothing but a parlor trick. When you burn certain oils, they change the color of the flames."

"Nyx?" she asked, eyeing the painted white columns of the room—as well as the sizeable four-poster bed—in the colors of the northern sky. Her attention moved back to the curious flames. Pyre's sister was gifted when it came to concocting potions and elixirs

"You know us so well?" Mal asked. She didn't answer. "It's a nice room, isn't it?"

"I'm not going to speak to you in this form," she said through gritted teeth, for there was no way she was going to admit to being enamored with the room to such a despicable man. She threw a glare at him and noticed, in the process, that Mal was staring at her wrist.

Where the king of the dragons had kissed her.

"He marked you. Again ," he said, without inflection or emotion, though Tempest knew enough about Mal—Pyre—to tell that he was gravely unhappy.

Good. Let him be.

"Damien helped me," she said, knowing it was nowhere near close to a good enough explanation. "Now shift or get out. "

With a clench of his jaw, Mal shifted, groaning as his other human form emerged before Tempest's very eyes. It greatly unsettled her, seeing a man turn into another man entirely. It reminded her that she did not know which form was truly the Jester.

Do you even want to know? Does it matter?

"Are you happy now?" he bit out tersely.

She let out a short, humorless laugh. "Not in the least."

His golden eyes dolefully scanned Tempest's entire frame as she threw off her sodden, frozen cloak and shook out her bird-nest hair.

Eventually, he said, "Get some rest. You look like death." He began to exit the room, then turned and added, "Try not to let anyone else mark you, if you can help it."

Tempest threw a dagger at the door in response, but he'd closed it before it could reach him. It lodged in the wood with a thud. How many times would they go round after round?

"You cannot tell me what to do," she muttered, wincing as she stripped off her clothes. "I can do what I like."

But on the matter of men marking her as theirs, Tempest had to admit they were on the same page.

No more markings. She belonged to no one.

Yet.