Broken trust? I barely knew him.
I scowled at him. “Why don’t you tell me all of your hidden secrets as well, so that you can earn my trust.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t need your trust.”
I tipped my head back and laughed. “You do if you want to put a child in my belly.” I grabbed my womb and his eyes flared like the sun, a slight pink going to his cheeks.
He cleared his throat and a small part of me felt triumph for making him blush.
“How long have you known you can transform into a dragon?” he asked, ignoring everything I’d said.
I rolled my eyes. “Last night was the first time.”
His eyes narrowed as if trying to sense a lie.
“Truth,” I said smugly.
That made his nostrils flare.
“Are you an assassin here to kill me?” he asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The look on his face wiped the smile from mine.
“No,” I told him honestly.
He frowned, as if frustrated I was telling the truth.
“Is the woman who raised you your real mother?” he suddenly said, and my heart stopped beating for a moment.
He’d gone right for the kill and my lips turned into a frown. My real mother. What the Hades did that mean? I knew what he meant, but to me she was my real mother. I knew I couldn’t lie to him anymore or he would kill me, but out of respect for my mother I would speak my truth.
“Yes, she will always be my real mother, but… she did not give birth to me.” I tipped my chin high, cursing the stupid tear that rolled down my cheek.
He looked conflicted, no doubt weighing my answer. “How long have you known?”
“She just told me the day you came to take Kendal and I away,” I said flatly.
His face softened with each truth I divulged and I realized then that I did need to earn his trust. What life would I have if my own king didn’t trust me?
“Did she tell you what you are?” he asked, and there was a hint of compassion in his voice.
What did that mean?
“What am I?” I asked, suddenly scared of what that answer would be.
His stern look was back. “What did your mother tell you on the day that I came to get you?”
I chewed the inside of my lip. My mother said not to trust him, but my cover was blown so now it was Plan B: make him fall in love with me, which was going amazingly.
Not.
I was on to Plan C, which was: Don’t get killed.
I released the air I was holding. “First, tell me something to help me trust you. I can’t smell a lie, but I do wonder why you are so desperate for an heir when you just barely lost your beloved wife.”
His face took on a pained expression and he rubbed the side of his jaw, assessing me. “My magic is linked to the dragon-folk people,” he said, and I nodded. This was well known. “With each passing day that I do not produce an heir to strengthen and double the magic, our people get weaker, and I get weaker.”
I gasped.
“Pretty soon, I won’t be able to transform at all, and the people connected to me will lose their magic.”
His truth hit me like a ton of bricks. Dragon-folk without their magic died. There was a well-known story about one dragon-folk woman who had her magic sucked away by the fae king, and instead of just becoming human, she shriveled into a husk of death. We were nothing without our magic… it kept our entire human form alive. Even as a hybrid one could not just live with their human half.
“I…” I didn’t know what to say.
“Your turn.” He assessed me with those cool green eyes and I nodded. He’d shared something with me, something very personal, now it was my turn.
“The woman who gave birth to me was passing through town. My mother said she arrived heavily pregnant, a highborn, covered in blood, and spoke of a battle where her entire family was slaughtered for a magic they held.”
He frowned. “Eighteen winters ago? There were no Eclipse Dragons left then, unless…” Something dawned on his face and he fell against the wall, his back hitting it hard. “My grandfather died eighteen winters ago. Fighting a threat to the crown, my father said.”
A silence descended over the both of us. Was he saying that his grandfather killed my birth mother’s entire family and made her go into early labor with me?
So Narine’s story was true? The Eclipse Dragons? The Lost Royal?
I cleared my throat. “The woman told my mother that her family was murdered for the magic they held, and that if anyone ever detected this magic in her child… in me, that I would be killed. Then she died of blood loss.”