“You have to be kidding me,” Cadeyra breathed as she looked at the scroll spread over the table in front of her. She looked up at the small group of her advisors clustered around the table with her and saw the same surprise and concern mirrored in each face. Obviously, none of them had ever seen the document before either.

In all honesty, she hadn’t believed what Sawyer had relayed to her before they’d flown back to the palace. The idea that Henrick had a scroll signed by both her father and his, outlining an alliance between their houses to be cemented by marriage—hers to Henrick—seemed utterly preposterous. Her father had always teased her about being too picky about her potential bridegroom, so the fact that he’d taken that decision away from her while she was still in the cradle didn’t sit right.

But here they were and the heavily ornamented, official looking scroll in front of her did indeed carry her father’s signature nestled alongside that of Gustav Ebya’s. She’d never seen it before in her life, but she’d seen…signed… many like it, and they were binding.

“I assure you, Your Majesty, it is.” Henrick, standing with his retinue on the other side of the room, broke in smoothly.

She flicked him a glance. He was as proud as a peacock, outfitted in a dress uniform covered in bling and braid, and practically twirling his stupid mustache. She barely managed to restrain her sneer at the sight of the uniform. If he’d ever done a day’s training with the army he apparently held a commission with, she’d eat the stupid hat he wore.

She shuddered, looking away from him quickly. She couldn’t even begin to imagine being married to such a man for a day… never mind a lifetime. Before she could stop it, memories of her night with Sawyer, standing silently behind her, crowded into her brain. The memory of his hard body moving over hers, driving into her, the soft kisses and tender embraces… being replaced by Henrick’s groping hands and oiliness. She felt sick and swallowed to force the nausea down. No, there had to be some way out of this.

She turned her attention to her advisors, still pouring over the document. “My father would never do this, surely?” she asked, a note of desperation in her quiet voice. “This was signed before I was even a year old, surely it is not binding now I am an adult and capable of making my own decisions?”

“Ahhh well…” Lord Hoosh straightened up, a grim look on his thin face. An emerald-green, he’d been her father’s legal advisor for years before becoming Cadeyra’s. “The monarch is a slightly different case from the normal run of the mill subject, even those with noble blood. The person of the monarch is considered an extension of the crown. Hence the reason we sent several of your father’s scales to certain parties on your father’s death… to fulfill contractual obligations, you understand?”

She nodded, her heart falling. She remembered arguing with them at the time, grief-stricken at the loss of her father shortly after losing her mother. That they then wanted to prize scales from his lifeless body seemed desecration to her.

“So, he could have signed away my right to a decision over who I marry? That is ridiculous. He would never have done that.”

Another of the men at the table, Lord Geranfall, straightened up and blinked at her myopically. Ancient, his dragon hoarded old scrolls and history books like most did gold, pouring over every word within them. His word was seen as absolute.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but this is clearly your father’s signature and by all the old laws called upon, it’s binding on him and his heirs.”

Cadeyra closed her eyes as pain lanced through her heart. Binding. That meant she couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t refuse to marry Henrick without causing a huge diplomatic incident… possibly even starting a war.

She had to make a decision. Here. Now.

Love or duty.

She paused, blinking. It was love. She did love Sawyer. Like really heart filled with warmth and emotion, never wanted to live another day without him, loved Sawyer…

Duty or love. She couldn’t have both.

One would make her happy but condemn many, most probably the blacks and the man she loved, to death. The other would only cost her.

Opening her eyes, she looked at her advisors. “Make the arrangements.”

The snarl behind her made her back stiffen but she didn’t turn around.

“Cadie,” he growled, grabbing her arm to try and turn her to face him, but she held firm. Small she might be in human form, but she was a white. Which meant she was the equal or superior to any dragon she came across.

“You don’t have to do this,” he lowered his voice, the begging note in the deep timbres bringing sharp, hot tears to the backs of her eyes. “Please, little bug, you don’t have to marry him. You don’t want this. There must be another way.”

She lifted her chin, keeping her face impassive, her queen mask in place as she turned. “Please take your hand off me, General. I have made my decision.”

He shook his head, pain that almost broke her flaring across his face. “Please, you don’t have to… I–I love you.”

His heart-felt admission almost dropped her to her knees, her dragon keening deep within, but somehow she managed to hold firm.

“Duke Calan, Nikolai,” she ordered the two blacks by the door. “Please apprehend the general and confine him to the lower levels until he recovers himself and can behave with decorum.”

Her heart shattered into a million pieces as she stepped back. “When he can, assign him to the lower territories. I never wish to see him again.”

* * *

His worst nightmares had come true.

He’d lost her.

Sawyer sighed and leaned his head back against the stone wall behind him, eyes closed. The chains on his wrists clinked slightly when he moved, reminding him where he was. As if he needed any reminder. They’d put him in the dungeons, in the ground below the palace, slapped chains on him to limit his human form and put him in a spelled cell to suppress his dragon. Not that it made any difference.

On hearing those awful words from Cadie’s mouth, hearing her banish them from her presence, the beast had given a heartbroken cry and retreated deep inside. So far down into his soul, in fact, that he could barely feel it or draw on its power.

He might as well be human.

A sigh rattled from his chest. Perhaps he would do that… become human. Leave the council and the court to live among the humans. Given the circumstances, the others of the twelve would release him from service, no questions asked. He’d have done it for any of them. It would be the kindest thing to do. To allow him to remove himself from any reminder of what he’d lost.

He could get an apartment in some city without a dragon presence. Get a job. And he had enough contacts in the human world from his days in the military. Soldiers were soldiers, regardless of what blood ran through their veins, and there were still enough wars going on that he could find work as a mercenary. If he was really lucky, he’d die quickly on some battlefield somewhere.

It would be better than living without her.

A door somewhere down the corridor opened and then closed with a clang. He didn’t do anything more than absently note the sound. He had no idea how long he’d been down here, the days and nights merging into one. Endless hours of misery and pain centered around the ragged hole in his chest where his heart had been. They’d brought him food, water, and he’d eaten mechanically but hadn’t tasted anything. Nothing registered other than one blindingly painful fact.

She never wanted to see him again.

He understood why. Didn’t hate her for it. She was the White Queen. For her, duty and honor came above all else. It always had and always would. If he’d made her choose him… if he’d even been able to… the guilt would have eaten her.

He lifted his hand to scrub at his ragged beard. What was that saying? If you loved something, let it go. If it came back to you…

A single tear tracked down his cheek. He had set her free but there was no chance she would come back to him. He wasn’t that lucky. Hell, he’d never expected to get even a night with her. Even though the memories of the heaven he’d glimpsed with her in his arms made his pain more acute, rawer, he wouldn’t swap it for the world.

That one night. Those memories he’d imprinted into his brain would have to be enough for the rest of his life. He would make them enough.

“How the mighty have fallen.”

The mocking voice made him open his eyes to find Prince Henrick on the other side of the bars. Sawyer sighed. How the fuck had the asshole gotten down here? It was a restricted section. He shouldn’t have been able to get past the guards.

“With all due respect, Your Highness,” Sawyer growled. “Fuck off. I’m not in the mood.”

He didn’t care that he might upset the prince. What else could they do to him? Flog him? He was in more pain than they could ever inflict anyway. Kill him? It would be a welcome relief from the agony of losing his mate.

“Oh, I would say not. Not after losing your delightful mate. She is your mate, isn’t she?”

Sawyer caught his gasp, looking at the foreign prince in surprise. Henrick smirked. “Oh yes, I know. I recognized the signs as soon as I saw the two of you together and realized I had to do something quick.”

Sawyer clambered to his feet, not taking his eyes off Henrick. “What do you mean? What did you do?” His voice was low and careful, a terrible suspicion forming.

Henrick smiled smugly. “Ensured that your beautiful little queen had no option but to choose me.”

Sawyer didn’t move.

“She only chose you because she had no options with the alliance her father sig…” He blinked, putting the pieces together. “Shit. It was a fake, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was. You think I was about to let my shot at the throne be ruined by a mutt like you?” He sneered, raking Sawyer with a disparaging glance. “No fucking chance. We had one of the old king’s scales. It was a short step from there for my necromancer to call the spirit of the old king and make him sign a scroll we altered. No loopholes.”

Sawyer frowned. “But why?”

“Because I should be king!” Henrick snarled, slamming his hands into the bars between them, his face purple. “Not some woman without the head for leadership or the balls to take our people where we need to be.”

Sawyer had seen some nutcases in his time, but Henrick was totally delusional.

“You’re not a white though. You can’t be king, only the queen’s consort,” he pointed out, which got another snarl from Henrick.

“I am male,” he insisted. “And once Cadeyra is my wife, she will do as I say. She will bend to my will, and if she doesn’t…” He shrugged. “Accidents are easy enough to arrange and if she dies without an heir… then as her consort, the throne will fall to me. And there’s nothing you can do about it down here, mutt… even if you managed to live long enough.”

“Wait… what?” Sawyer exclaimed as Henrick turned and walked off, but the shadows snaking into his cell cut his sentence off right there. Recognizing the same black magic that had surrounded the golems and the basilisks, he backed up into the corner.

“Shit.”

Yanking at the chains on his wrists in desperation, he tried to get them off. He needed to get out of here. Needed to warn someone, anyone, about Henrick. That he planned to seize control…

And kill the queen.