Breath Of Destiny

Geva dozed amid the luxuriant velvet of the bed, only partly unconscious and still buzzed from the infusion of energy of his two lovers. He could taste them both as distinct as two flavors mingling in his mouth. Erika’s a rich, earthy flavor that seemed to underscore everything in his life lately, and Benjamin’s a brighter, crisper flavor. They mixed into a delicious combination that would easily arouse him again if he let it. Erika’s warm body shifted against his and he opened his eyes a crack to see her rise up, bracing one hand against his chest. She was smiling and flushed. The sparkle in her eye made his heartbeat speed up.

Her scent surrounded him like a pleasant cloud when she leaned over and pressed her lips against his. Geva parted his lips to taste her, letting her in for a deeper kiss and drifting his fingertips over her hip. His eyes opened fully when she pulled back.

“Can we keep him?” she whispered, glancing at the snoozing Benjamin on the other side of her.

“He is already ours,” Geva said. “Inherited from my mother, like all bonded humans after one of us dies.”

“Doesn’t he have a choice?” Erika asked, her brows creasing with concern.

“Of course, but most choose to keep their positions. It’s only mates that don’t have a choice.” Geva paused when another thought occurred to him. “Or did you mean to have the bond made permanent? I could, but…no, it’s too soon yet. Perhaps in time.”

Erika reached out and touched the medallion that rested in the center of Benjamin’s chest, rising and falling slowly with each of the blond’s sleeping breaths. “A talisman, huh? A stand-in for the mark?”

“It’s a less permanent bond. Not as powerful, and it doesn’t allow for full knowledge of our world, but it does provide some advantages depending on how close the bonded human was to the dragon.”

“I get the sense he was very loyal to your parents. Tell me, do you know how they died?”

“Making love, most likely.”

Erika lay down against him again, her head resting against his shoulder. Benjamin shifted in his sleep and wrapped an arm around her, nuzzled against her neck, took a deep breath, then relaxed back into slumber again. Geva knew the comfort of her scent in sleep.

“Making love killed them?”

Geva chuckled. “No, but at the end of our lives, we can choose to just let our energy fade away until we’re no more, or channel our last remaining living power into a vessel for the next generation. Most mated couples make a pact as such. There will be documentation in the lower dungeon. A letter from Mother explaining where she channeled their energy at the end.”

He glanced at Benjamin, but the younger man was still sleeping soundly, drooling slightly on the back of Erika’s shoulder. He smirked, and wondered how long the man had served his parents. It could have been decades or only a few years. Even without a mated bond, dragon magic could make a person seem ageless.

The itch to find his legacy had seeped into Geva’s blood since arriving here, and now replaced the languid buzz from the sex. As always, Erika seemed attuned to his mood and gently nudged Benjamin awake. He blinked sleepily and nodded, rising.

“This is as far as I go with you two,” Benjamin said. He gestured to a nondescript door nearby. “The loo is through there. The staircase will take you down to the lower dungeon.” He let out an involuntary snicker.

Geva raised a brow. Benjamin responded with a twitch of his shoulder. “His Lordship joked about sending your mother down to the dungeon on occasion. I always pictured leather contraptions bolted to the walls and torture devices, but was never allowed inside. Not once in thirty-five years.”

Erika cocked her head while fastening the buttons of her dress. “How old are you, Ben?”

He looked abashed and stammered for a second. He glanced between both Geva and Erika. “Ah, right, you would know about the Lord and Lady’s unique status. I took over as their body man for my mum after she passed, when I was twenty-five. That was thirty-five years ago.”

Without missing a beat, Erika said, “Well, I look forward to a long relationship. You are always welcome.” She bent over to pull on her shoes, giving both men a generous eyeful of cleavage.

Geva was grateful for Erika’s noncommittal reaction, and how deftly she managed to distract Benjamin from his embarrassment. Benjamin headed back up after explaining he would meet them in the upper tower that evening. After he departed, they headed down to the lower vault.

Like the rest of the manor Geva had seen, the lower dungeon was different from what he remembered. The walls were more polished, with electric lights at intervals. It wasn’t the dank, dreary dungeon he used to hide in as a child. Yet another secure door blocked their path at the bottom of the spiral staircase, this one with familiar old runes carved in the stone in the spot where the other doors had held an electronic lock.

“What does it say?” Erika asked, brushing her finger over the worn, recessed figures.

“Take a breath,” he said with a smile. “Something Mother used to say to me when I threw tantrums as a dragonling.”

“You mean to tell me you weren’t a perfectly behaved little angel as a child?” She batted her eyelashes at him innocently

“Dragons rarely change their colors,” he replied, with an impish smile.

He instinctively felt for the well of fresh energy from their lovemaking session above, and breathed a cloud of red smoke into the door latch. The door opened inward without a touch. Bright lights came on, illuminating sealed glass cases that displayed his family’s most valuable artifacts. Objects that had not seen un-mated human eyes for centuries and more. The walls of the room were all polished granite, the floors the same, buffed to a high shine with not a single speck of dust present. It had to have been magically sealed since his mother’s death to have remained so clean inside.

A beep and a whir sounded from the far end of the room. Geva strode with Erika by his side to an alcove amid the cases, within which rested an object similar to the modern gadgets Erika had introduced him to.

“It’s an IBM,” Erika said in amazement. “An older model. I wish Corey were here, but maybe we can make some sense of it without him. It has to be nearly thirty years old… almost before my time.”

Geva blinked at the string of characters that flashed green across the dark screen. He smiled. “Mother’s color,” he said.

Erika glanced at him and shook her head. “Most of these things came in green back then,” she said. “Green or gold on black. Sometimes white or even blue. This is all gibberish, though.”

Geva nudged her aside. “It’s perfectly legible. Mother always insisted on having the most modern contraptions. You would have loved her.”

“What does it say?”

“Dragon secrets,” he said with a smirk, earning him an elbow to the ribs. “It’s mostly a recounting of their lives since my hibernation. This isn’t the only vault of treasures, just the most valuable ones.” He rested his finger on one of the keys and the text began to flow slowly up the screen. The flow of words paused when he lifted his finger off the button. “Here she talks about a Benjamin—brilliant inventor—she says. Do you think she means our Benjamin?”

Erika gave him a quizzical look. “It sounded like our Ben was born in fifty-five—definitely proof that humans age well around you guys. Does she give a timeline?”

“Hmm, met in seventeen fifty-three. I guess that was a few years early.”

“Geva, that’s about two centuries too early. She’s talking about Benjamin Franklin. You have a lot of reading to do on the last five centuries, sweetie.”

He laughed, but resolved to spend some more time hunting for collections of the videos and books she had shown him so far to catch up on all he’d missed. At least he’d focus on the things his parents had lived through so he would have some frame of reference.

He kept skimming, pausing every few lines to read off a name for Erika. Each one impressed him more than the last. He paused and swallowed harshly at the emotions that welled up. Partly lingering sadness at not being able to introduce his mother to the amazing woman who stood at his side, and partly profound irritation that every generation still had to follow the Council’s ridiculous laws of hibernation.

“What is it?” Erika asked, tracing gentle fingertips through the hair at his temple.

He shook his head, blinking back tears and clearing his throat.

She moved closer and urged his arm around her, embracing him and resting her cheek against his chest. He lowered his nose to the top of her head and took a deep breath, letting the scent of her ease his brief anguish.

“My father would have loved you,” Erika whispered in the middle of his silence. “I miss him so much now. I’d never be able to keep you a secret from him, either, I don’t care if we would’ve broken laws to tell him.”

Geva kissed the top of her head and moved on, scrolling further. Judging by the date at the top of each entry he was close to reaching the current year. Only a few decades to go.

A few lines made him stop abruptly and backtrack. His stomach clenched at what he’d read. He scrolled forward quickly to the very end of the entries, then back again. He pushed Erika gently away so he could look more closely.

“Sweet Mother,” he whispered, and began reading out loud to Erika.

“Your father brought a new friend to the Manor tonight. Or, rather, a very, very old friend. I had not seen Warik since my youth in Greenland where we were raised together as dragonlings. After all the centuries he has never mated. Eternally alone, he promised he would stay after we parted, but as the Queen my responsibilities were to the Brood. I had to take a human mate. I pray that will change in your time. I love your father, but would have chosen differently had I had the option. In a perfect world perhaps I could have even had them both.

“Your father is thick as thieves with Warik, even after a few days and knowing my history with him. Your father was never a jealous man, which is an excellent quality in a mate. We have enjoyed the centuries largely in each other’s exclusive company, except for the occasional diversion—Benjamin being the latest. Do take good care of Benjamin, he is dear to us.”

“Wow,” Erika breathed when Geva paused.

His mind reeled at what he’d already read. He had to have her hear it all before he would believe it, however.

“Can you re-read his name?” Erika asked.

Geva did, pronouncing all five syllables for her, rather than the shortened version as he’d read it. Aiwarikar. He watched her brow crease the way it always did when she was reaching back into the wellspring of history she kept locked away in her mind. “Is it familiar to you? I suppose it does sound like your own name a bit. ~Erika~.”

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s important to the story. Just an interesting tidbit, considering the timing. He was pretty damn famous figure if he is who I believe.”

“She skips ahead several years here,” he said, and continued reading. Erika’s fingernails began to dig into his arm before he was finished.

“I am the example held up by the Council for the rest of the Brood to follow. I have failed in my duty but do not regret it. Warik and Bertram are beside me in this as well. When the child—your half-sister—is born, Warik and I have resolved to spend our last remaining power to bind her magic, then hide her from the Council. If they find her and take her, they will execute us and she will be forced to live as an Unbound. We will not relegate her to slavery. It is near time for the Awakening, but there is no more time for us. Please, my dearest son, find your sister and help her learn her heritage. Keep her safe and perhaps appeal to the Council to change their laws. Warik and I had no blood relations in common, and we will give her every last drop of our love and passion upon her birth. It will be with your father’s last breath that he sees her safe somewhere far from here, where the Council will not look. He hasn’t told me where that will be, but the Verdanith can find her. Just find a way to make the Council let you use it without betraying your sister’s existence. We mean to name her Rowan, a name that is as much a human name as it represents her dragon legacy, and that is all that I can tell you.”

“Is that the end?”

“She says she loves me and to never compromise destiny for someone else’s rules.”

Geva’s head spun. He looked around the room but there was nowhere to sit. Then he remembered one of the last things he had read. He rushed to the glass cases, frantically looking for it.

“Tell me what it is, I can help,” Erika said.

Geva shot the words over his shoulder. “The Verdanith, it’s a wedge-shaped piece of a disc carved from jade, about the size of my hand. Green like those characters on the screen.”

“Here!” Erika tapped at the latch of a case near the center of the room. “What is it?”

“My sister’s salvation.”