“So I heard you stirred up more trouble,” he remarked sardonically, after Ari and Jalli had left.
“No, I didn’t!” I denied at once. “It was that old lady—the Blind Crone. She was the one who made the trouble by claiming I have a Drake inside me.”
“Do you?” He raised an eyebrow at me, as though it was a real possibility.
“Of course not!” I exclaimed impatiently. “How could such a thing even be possible?”
He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. How did men and dragons merge in the first place to become Drakes?”
“Well, I didn’t merge with anybody,” I told him. “I don’t know why that woman said what she did.”
“Whatever the reason for the prophecy, speaking it seems to have killed her,” he pointed out. “Which unfortunately doesn’t allow anyone to question her word or ask why she would make such a claim on your behalf in the first place.”
“I don’t know what to do.” I sat down on the bed and put my head in my hands. “I never wanted this—any of this.” I made a motion, indicating the whole of the Sky Lands. “I mean the power of being a Drake’s L’lorna or becoming queen someday—that all seems crazy to me. I only wanted Ari and his Drake—that’s all.”
Saint laughed bitterly.
“Don’t you know, L’lorna of my cousin, that having a Drake—in whatever capacity you have him—never comes without complications?”
“Are you talking about your own Drake?” I asked, glad to get off the subject of my own crazy situation. “Having him is complicated?”
“Being tied to a Blood Drake? Hell yes, it’s complicated.” He raked a hand through his thick black hair, the black and red scales on the back of his arm glinting in the golden lamp light with the motion.
“Because it’s considered bad luck?” I asked timidly. That seemed to be the prevailing superstition about anything out of the ordinary here in the Sky Lands. Born with a birth defect? You’ll cause bad luck. Disfigured by some horrible accident? Again, bad luck. Anything strange or unusual about you at all? Bad luck.
But Saint only shrugged.
“That’s only part of it. You’re not the only one with a prophecy about you, you know.”
“What? Did the Blind Crone say something about you too?” I asked excitedly.
Saint shook his head. “Not her. But someone who matters did. Look, I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”
“Well I don’t want to talk about my situation either,” I pointed out. “But you know all about it, even though you weren’t in the Feasting Hall.”
He nodded.
“Yes, I try to make myself scarce at public banquets and the like. Especially happy occasions like ones to welcome the Alpha-to-be’s new L’lorna. I don’t want to cast a pall over the celebration by tainting it with my presence.”
I didn’t think that he could have done much worse than the Blind Crone, who had shouted a totally untrue prophecy about me and then capped it off by dying dramatically in the middle of the floor. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I was sorry she was dead. But dead or not, it really seemed like she could have been more careful with her predictions.
“Well, the ‘festivities’ weren’t very festive anyway,” I told Saint. “I don’t think anyone liked the idea of me being Ari’s L’lorna. I know Pedro Sanchez’s mother didn’t. She absolutely hates me.”
“Oh, yes—I heard about that.” He leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You got her son shame-marked and thrown out of the Nocturne Academy, right?”
“I didn’t do any of that on purpose!” I protested. “What happened was, he hit me and then my friend, who’s a Sister—a witch, I mean—slapped him and marked him by accident because she was so angry and just learning to control her magic. When he went to complain to the Headmistress about it, she found out what he’d done and expelled him. I didn’t ask for any of that to happen, really.”
“Well, sometimes we get things we don’t ask for, whether we want them or not,” Saint said darkly. “I didn’t ask to be cursed with a Blood Drake inside me, after all.”
“What’s so bad about a Blood Drake, though?” I asked, glad once more to switch the conversation away from my own past and current predicament. “You never told me. Is it just that he’s unusual looking so people think he’s bad luck?”
Saint shook his head and sighed.
“You might as well know—Ari will tell you anyway. My Drake is completely savage—he can’t be tamed by any female. Though that’s not to say none have tried,” he added darkly.
“They did? Why? How?” Despite the situation I found myself in, I was fascinated. Or maybe I was just desperate to focus on anything else but what was happening at the moment. Either way, I wanted to know more.
Saint sighed again.
“To understand you have to know the whole story. A Blood Drake never comes about by accident, you see—it is the result of a curse—a Blood Curse laid upon the Sire of the one who bears it. For the sins of the Sires shall be visited upon their sons,” he said, which sounded like a quote from the Bible, I thought.
“Before I was born, my Sire killed one of his lieutenants in cold blood.” Saint began to pace again as he spoke. “The man committed a minor infraction but my Sire—whose temper has always been quick—killed him for it unjustly. Now, it just so happened that the man’s L’lorna was a bruja.”
I didn’t have much Spanish but I knew that word.
“A witch,” I whispered.
Saint nodded.
“But not like the Sisters and Warlocks you
