Chapter One

The air was filled with birdsong, which was beautiful, and mildly raunchy travel songs, which were not. But what Milton lacked in holding a tune he made up for with enthusiasm and joy. It was one of the things Tallant loved best about him. Few people were as openly happy and joyous and cheerful as Milton. It definitely wasn't the way people behaved back home.

Tallant laughed and shook his head. "You really are excited to be going home. I don't understand it."

Milton grinned. "That's because your family is nothing like mine. If my family was as backwards and zealous as yours—"

"You'd be dead because you suck at keeping your foot out of your mouth," Tallant cut in with a matching grin.

"Probably," Milton agreed easily. "But only because you elves are so fussy about that sort of thing."

Tallant rolled his eyes, but didn't bother to deny it. There were reasons he'd left home, after all.

Milton snickered. "My little brother will positively die when he sees you, unless his obsession has faded."

"You've mentioned before he had an interest in the markings," Tallant replied, amused as ever by the obsession everyone seemed to have with his tattoos. People outside his homeland tended to gawk, like they didn't have tattoos of their own. Although he was always willing to acknowledge that nobody did tattoos even half as impressively as elves.

He was literally covered in them: what was called a rune crown across his forehead, the master mark right in the center, vaguely resembling a stylized bouquet of wildflowers. There were more along his cheeks, called guard marks, sharp and twisting. A choker wrapped around his throat, four master marks at four points starting what were called master trails—one that went straight down his chest, another down his spine, and the remaining two went down the sides of his throat, along his shoulders, and down his arms to spread across his hands and fingers. From these master trails, other runes spilled out, covering the greater portion of his body in patterns that made sense only to other elves and the few outsiders who could read them.

The master trails on his arms were only thin bands that led to the work on his hands. The rest of his right forearm was covered in an intricate pattern of rune-work that identified him as battle-bonded. A matching tattoo covered Milton's right forearm. They had met ten years ago, and had been battle-bonded, sworn brothers, for nine years.

His left forearm was bare, save for the master line; it would remain so until he was life-bonded to someone.

If his family saw him, they would wail and shriek like the world was ending. They were part of a group of zealots back home, who favored pacifism above all else. They would despair to see the eldest son of the clan chief covered head to foot in the black, blue, red, and green markings of a full-fledged battle mage. When he's first declared that was what he wanted to do, they'd been furious. And while they hadn't exactly thrown him out, they hadn't really protested when he'd said he was leaving. At first, he'd sent letters home. When no replies ever came, he'd stopped.

"I don't know how he might feel now, but yeah. We met one of you freaks when he was eight. He went home and stole ink and pen from the duke's scribe and tried to duplicate the marks." Milton sniggered. "On his left arm."

Tallant grinned. "So what you're saying is, your brother will like me lots. How pretty did you say your brother was, by the way?"

Milton punched his arm. "You are not allowed to have sex with my brother. You're not even allowed to flirt with him."

Snorting in amusement, Tallant said, "I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it's been ten years. By now I'm certain your brother has learned many things that you can't teach him."

Rolling his eyes, Milton retorted, "I bet you wouldn't be nearly so amused if we were discussing your sisters.

Tallant snickered. "My sisters were all betrothed the day they were born, or near enough. By the time I came along, any opinion I might have had was moot." He frowned slightly. "Not that it really matters, but would it really trouble you if…"

"Don't be stupid," Milton replied, reaching out to swat him on the arm. "It would be weird to see my battle brother getting amorous with my blood brother, but at least I know you'd take care of each other. I just like whining and being dramatic." He winked. "You know that."

"You just like being an ass, you mean."

"At least I'm not a disgraced elf lordling."

"Better than being any sort of human."

"Snobby elf."

"Uncouth human."

"What was it that whore the other day called you?" Milton tapped his chin, pretending to ponder. "Ah, yes. An expensive, fussy flower that—"

Tallant kicked a leg out, tripping Milton up, nearly sending him crashing to the dirt path they walked along. "Shut up."

"Heh." Milton smirked at him.

"I really can't wait until we're finally at your precious home, so you'll be inundated in people happy to see you and keep you so busy that you'll stop harassing me. Or noticing me at all." He tensed, prepared to run. "Or noticing when I take your brother to the stable for a 'riding' lesson."

He bolted as Milton roared in protest, laughing and running at the same time, something that proved to be a bad idea as it slowed him down just enough for Milton to catch up to him and grab—

—and causing them both to trip, fall, and go tumbling ass over kettle down the hill on one side of the old path. Tallant only just barely kept them from ending up in the creek. "Ass."

"Dick."

Tallant shifted on the ground and shoved lightly at Milton. "I'm not convinced—"

He forgot what he was going to say as a look of horror and fear filled Milton's face.

"Up," Milton said hoarsely, even as he scrambled to his feet and yanked Tallant with him.

It was only then that Tallant heard it, and in the very next breath he smelled it. Like copper and hot meat.

Dragon.

Tallant didn't know for certain, but he was pretty damn sure they were inside the wards. Dragons shouldn't be here; the wards made it impossible for them to get inside the kingdom.

It was on the other side of the creek, growling, grunting, six dark eyes swirling at them in ominous contemplation. To judge by its size—somewhere between massive and oh shit—and it's dark coloring, it was a mature male. Well, at least it wasn't a female. They were bigger and much, much meaner.

But to judge by the scratches along its hide, something only another dragon could manage, it had mated recently. Very recently. Always a brutal, life-risking endeavor for the males, they were never in good moods when they managed to escape being killed by the female.

Then there was no more time for thinking, as the dragon stormed across the creek, clearly intent on venting it's ire on them before making whatever was left into an afternoon snack.

Its breath was hot as Tallant just barely avoided its jaws, and he fled for dear life across the creek, trying to force his brain to work, cobbling together a stun spell and throwing it at the damned thing—

Only for the dragon to break the spell so quickly it hardly seemed the damned thing had worked at all. Shit shit shit. Scrambling up the bank, he struggled to his feet and looked around for Milton. After a moment, Tallant found him struggling up the bank several feet away.

"Hold it still, damn it, whatever it fucking takes," Milton gasped out, obviously having managed to take in water as he struggled through the creek. "I just need a few second to get in there and bury a sword through one of its eyes."

Nodding, Tallant watched as the dragon swung back around and considered them. He obviously was weighing the merits of the back and forth creek game. That was the biggest problem with dragons: they were too damned smart.

Bracing himself, Tallant drew all his magical energy together, tattoos hot on his skin. Then he drew still more power through the battle-bond, weaving it all together into a stun spell that would hopefully hold longer than a second.

As ready as he'd ever be, seeing the dragon was about to spring, he threw the spell at it with all his might.

Even as he did so, Milton was charging, prepared to get eaten by dragon if Tallant screwed up—trusting that Tallant would not—and as the spell landed, and the dragon was stunned, Milton threw himself at the dragon, climbed up its thick, sharp hide, and drove daggers into two of its six swirling eyes.

The pain drove the dragon to break the spell, and it tossed its head, sending Milton flying into the creek, momentarily lost beneath the knee-deep water.

Tallant swore and charged down the bank, shaping his magic into a spell of blinding light, throwing it to briefly shock and slow the dragon, stooping and pulling up a choking, sputtering Milton. They ran, fleeing further down the creek, running as fast as they could in the ankle-deep portions of it. Tallant swore as he hit a spot that proved deeper, and went down with a cry, pain radiating from his ankle—

As he regained his footing, they heard the ominous sounds of a pissed off dragon far too close. Desperate, scared to death, Tallant turned around and threw all of the remaining magic he could spare without passing out in the dragon's direction, willing the stun spell to better hold this time, watching in fear as Milton charged the dragon one last time—

And drove his sword into one of its eyes, barely managing it before he was once again thrown—this time into a copse of thorn bushes.

The dragon screamed, thrashed around wildly, but Tallant knew wild death throes when he saw them. He waited, not daring to move, barely daring to breathe, as the dragon thrashed about and finally collapsed, twitching for several more agonizing minutes before at last going still.

Tallant climbed shakily to his feet, making a wide birth around the body and then hobbling up the embankment into the copse of trees and bushes. "Milton?"

A pained grunt, followed by a groan, answered his call, and then Milton half-stumbled, half-limped into view. "So that was fun."

"Shut up," Tallant said with a sigh. "Are you all right?"

"I've been better, but thankfully I'm merely battered and bruised. I think I've done worse to myself in bar rights. Though I could have done without the impromptu swim."

"Better the water than the ground, as hard as he threw you," Tallant replied, relief sweeping through him as he sat down hard on the ground, scowling at the gigantic corpse between them and the creek now. The sun was setting, and while that had been nice before, now that they were soaked to the bone it was just one more unpleasant aspect to the whole disaster. "I don't get it," he said. "I was sure we were within the wards. What in the world is a full grown dragon doing here? Worse, one who was recently mated. I hope the female isn't around here somewhere."

Milton shook his head. Like Tallant, he was soaked through, covered in grass and mud—but also in petals and leaves from the bushes he'd just climbed out of, bloody here and there were the thorns had gotten him. "I don't know. We are within the ward. Dragons shouldn't be anywhere near here. Something is very wrong." He tensed suddenly, then started to stand. "The castle, Irene and Cecil—"

Tallant yanked him back down. "Milton, it's going to be dark soon. That's dangerous enough. There are apparently dragons roaming about, which isn't dangerous but flat out stupid. On top of that, we just got our asses kicked. I've got a bad ankle and no magic, and you just lost a fight with a thorn bush, after being thrown around twice. We're not going anywhere tonight. Our best bet is to camp here for the night. So close to that corpse, nothing else with bother us, and I can suitably heal us after I've gotten some rest. Not to mention it will give our clothes time to dry."

Milton said nothing, but Tallant could tell by the slight relaxing of his shoulders that he'd conceded. Trusting he wouldn't bolt, Tallant stood up gingerly and went to go dig the blades out of the dead dragon's eyes. He groaned and immediately sat back down, ankle and lack of energy conspiring to make him dizzy and wobbly.

"Baby," Milton said with a smirk.

"Halfwit."

"Ass."

"Human."

Smirking briefly, Milton said, "I'll get the blades. You get a fire going, because we need to get dry. I'm not sleeping in wet clothes."

Grimacing in agreement, preferring not to think about what had happened the one and only time they'd been stupid enough to do that, Tallant got to work on a campfire.

Half an hour later, they were wrapped in their cloaks while their wet clothes dried on branches. Ankle bandaged, all cuts and bruises treated with ointment, they settled close to the fire and ate their less than thrilling camp food, too tired to put effort into cooking.

"A fucking dragon," Milton muttered. "I don't believe it."

"Me neither," Tallant said. "I really can't believe it almost killed us. After that thing with the thieves—" He scowled.

Milton matched the expression. "Stupid fucking dragon."

"Agreed."