Rake My Lust (Dragons of Blood and Bone #3)

3. Challenge

3

CHALLENGE

W e’re returned to our tower cells in the fortress, this time by Captain Olander Mortensen himself rather than any underlings. As Bjorn, Strom, and I are shown just to my cell now, rather than keeping us apart in separate prisons anymore, I know it’s a boon that we’re all together.

I’m stewing about our audience with the Jarl, though. We didn’t get to present our case that we were chasing something truly dangerous when we came looking for information in Magnussen lands and disturbed that underground dragon-cairn.

I didn’t get to show the Jarl my Blood Seal from the King, especially not in front of his court, using their opinion to sway him. Now, we’re stuck in prison again, our only sympathetic ear Captain Olander Mortensen as he shuts the magical ironwork door and turns away.

Before he goes, however, I growl, making him look back, though I don’t dare touch the cursed bars of the cell.

“This is bullshit.” I stare Captain Olander down now. “We need a phone call. We need to speak with our King, now.”

“I’m sorry. It’s now the Jarl’s orders that you three get no phone calls. There’s nothing I can do,” the captain says with a truly apologetic look at me, then Bjorn, as my First Drake moves forward to stand at my side.

“You know who your real Jarl is, Olander,” Bjorn says with quiet authority now as he stares his once-friend down. “Do what’s right and let us go. I can get Rikyava and Strom to the border. Just give us a chance.”

“I’m sorry, Bjorn,” Captain Olander says as a sad gaze overtakes him. “I wanted to support you when you threw down your father over a hundred years ago, but he was right; our ancient ways are law. After your battle, you walked away from dealing the final blow, so he still had the authority to Outcast you…and he did.”

As Bjorn gives a low growl, frustration simmering off him in waves, I step in towards Captain Olander. “Call the King; confirm his Blood Seal, please. Do something . Or have your Hog Skjaldm?r’s blood on your hands, along with the Jarl-Heir of a powerful neighboring clan. You know both are dangerous business. Time to choose.”

“Fuck.” As the captain heaves a hard breath, I know I’ve gotten through to him, though I still don’t know how far his help will extend. “Fine. I’ll try to get our King on the phone, but don’t get your hopes up. If I were you three, I’d be working on a back-up plan right about now. Our Jarl is in a bad mood after everything that’s happened. I wouldn’t count on him being lenient with Bjorn any more.”

“An execution judgement?” Bjorn asks now as the two once-friend’s gazes connect.

“If he can’t take all three of your heads for how deeply you pissed him off right now, he’ll just take yours, Bjorn,” Captain Olander says with a tired sadness as they watch each other. “You know I’m right.”

“He’ll get me out of the way, once and for all,” Bjorn says, terse now, as he heaves a sigh.

“I’m sorry, old friend.” Captain Olander give a wry smile. “I’d get you out of this if I could.”

“Just try to call the King. That’s all we ask, and it hasn’t been forbidden by my father yet,” Bjorn says as he stares the other man down .

“No, it hasn’t.” As the captain nods, I know he’ll do as we’ve asked. His gaze is like looking at a man destined for the gallows as he watches Bjorn one last time, then turns away.

As he moves off down the hall, no guards needed on our door since it’s magically sealed and we’re still in manacles, I feel like a death knell has gone off inside me. We escaped the craziness of the dragon-cairn to be thrust right into this new life-or-death situation.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

“Well. This is shitty.” Strom’s chuckle says it all as he sets his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “At least they decorated the place a bit, if we’ll be staying here a while.”

I follow his gaze and see that my tower cell has indeed been nicened up. Not only are Bjorn, Strom, and I allowed to see each other and room together now, albeit with our manacles still on, we’ve been given a few amenities to make our stay more comfortable, probably the captain’s doing.

We’ve got not one, but three cots with thick wool blankets and furs on them now, suitable for the cold. A massive multi-bear rug has been spread in the center of the space, a low resin-burning brazier blazing nearby. A clean, magically flushing chamber pot has been set by the far wall, and three steaming trays of food wait for us on a low table.

It’s not the Red Letter Hotel Paris, but it’s enough. Strom gestures to the food and we head over, taking the low table and moving it to the bear rug so we can sit by the fire and eat.

And decide what we’re going to do next.

“Think Captain Mortensen will do as we’ve asked?” I ask Bjorn now, as we eat a hearty venison stew with plenty of buttered bread and roast bear meat on the side, plus some spicy baked carrots.

“He’s got no reason not to.” Bjorn eats stolidly, like a man having his last meal. “My father hasn’t forbidden it, and he doesn’t know about the King’s Blood Seal yet, so he has no reason to stop Olander. Hopefully, Olle can get through. ”

“Because King Huttr has lots of time to spare.” Strom chuckles as his green eyes flash in the brazier’s light, though his look is not amused. “He’s going to jump to answer a call from some random clan Captain, not even endorsed by his Jarl.”

“Olander will drop our names right away with whomever answers and say we’re in trouble, I know he will.” Bjorn argues back, as he drains his bowl. “He’s not an idiot.”

“Still.” Strom crosses his arms, scowling. “What now? Do we just sit tight while Jarl Magnussen stews? And what was all that about a sister who died, Bjorn?”

“And fighting your father in a dominance challenge over it—and winning? All the way back when you were still in your teens?” I ask now, because that’s a big deal. Most dragon dominance challenges happen as pissing matches over mates, territory, and the like, and leave the loser injured.

When it’s a dominance challenge over a prominent position, however, like moving up in rank from being a Jarl-Heir to becoming a Jarl, such things almost always end in death. Some clans have laws that such a major dominance challenge must end in death—in a final killing blow that secures the winner as the ultimate victor.

It sounds like Bjorn didn’t do that when he faced down his father over his youngest sister, long ago.

And it came back around to bite him—big time.

“We have some time while Captain Olander tries to get through to the King,” Strom says now as he finishes his meal and sets his tray aside, leaning back on his hands and stretching his long legs out towards the brazier. “Want to unburden yourself about everything between you and your father, Bjorn? It might help us.”

“Strom’s right.” I scoot in closer to Bjorn, setting my finished plate aside as I touch his thigh for support. I pour my drakaina’s heat into him as much as I can to bolster him, despite our manacles. “We need to know what happened between you and your father, if we’re ever going to figure out how to have any leverage here at the Magnussen court. Do you think you can fill us in?”

Bjorn gazes down at my hand, heaving a deep sigh. His eyes simmer pure gold as he looks up; through our bond, I feel the barest sliver of his dragon as it churns through his veins. Meeting my gaze, he caresses a stray lock of my hair back from my braid.

“Like I said about this entire trip: for you, I’ll do it—but for no one else in the world.”

Strom and I give Bjorn space now as he takes a moment to gather his thoughts. I feel his inner drake seethe inside his body like a smoldering blaze as we sit with him, waiting for him to figure out where to start.

All of us stretch our legs out to the fire now as Strom yanks blankets down from the cots, along with pelts, bundling the pelts behind us so we can lean back on them like pillows and cozying the blankets over us.

“My father and I weren’t always at odds,” Bjorn says now as he begins his tale, which starts with his birth nearly a hundred and thirty years ago, before shit with his father went down. “Back when I was a youngling, I looked up to him. He seemed so mighty; so calm and confident and able to make clear-headed decisions, when I was always such a hothead. I was his only son. My mother had no other sons, only daughters, all older than me. Most of whom are gone now, lost in battle over the centuries.”

“But you had a younger sister, too,” I say, stroking his leg beneath the blankets. “The one I saw in your vision during our Bloodbonding ceremony.”

“Astrid, yes,” Bjorn sighs, as I feel a deep sadness take him now, rather than rage. “She was ten years younger than me. She was such a little jewel… her hair so bright and golden, her eyes pure blue with a sparkling ring of gold around them that would glint in the sun.”

“What was wrong with her?” Strom asks, quiet as he listens.

“To me, nothing. Nor to my mother.” Bjorn watches the fire, his dragon churning within. “She was always slight as a child; as she grew, it became clear she had a bone abnormality. Though she never grew twisted or stunted, it was clear by her seventh birthday she would never become big and strong like the rest of our clan, no matter how much nourishment she ate. She was a light of laughter in this forbidding place, though. Nothing ever troubled her, and she had a massive talent for contacting the Ancestors. I was already studying with Maryse at the time; my mother petitioned my father to let Astrid study with Maryse also, and become a spirit shaman of our clan, rather than a battle shaman like others with her skill. But he wouldn’t have it. She couldn’t take part on the battlefield; she couldn’t train with the rest of her cohort because she broke bones over and over, her structure brittle. By her eighth birthday, he had decided. He was going to remove her from our family bloodline because she would never grow to have the strength as a warrior that our clan traditions required.”

“So he offed her.” My eyebrows rise, sickened at this horrible tale.

“He gave her a week to say her goodbyes.” A rageful heat fills Bjorn now, his voice bitter. “I argued with him all that week; I cajoled my mother. I spoke with clan sages and shamans to see if there were any loopholes we could use to save her. My mother supported me; she didn’t want her youngest daughter to die. When the time came, however, my father was adamant. He would hear nothing of the older precedents we had found, where others with Astrid’s rare condition were allowed to live and become tremendous shamans of our people. Those dragons had become leaders in spirit, massive with their magic in battle, though they couldn’t physically fight. My father didn’t care. When the day came, he summoned her to him and shifted into his dragon, ready to kill her.”

“Something happened, then,” Strom says quietly as he eyeballs Bjorn.

“My mother stepped in.” Bjorn nods as he watches the fire. “She couldn’t let our Jarl kill her little girl when there was so much history of such dragons becoming distinctly valuable to the clan. She fought with him over Astrid as their dragons, but she lost; he put her in a coma for a month, recovering from the extensive damage he caused.”

“Jesus.” I breathe, shaking my head .

“He killed Astrid with a single strike to the throat,” Bjorn growls, as true fury boils off him. “The second my mother was out of the way, before I could shift up to challenge him also, he ripped a talon across Astrid’s beautiful throat… and she died. I went Berserk, then. I shifted up… and took him on in a dominance battle, right then and there.”

“You won, didn’t you?” I say, as it all makes sense. “You won that battle, but you didn’t finish him with the final blow. The last mortal blow your clan requires… to become Jarl in his place.”

“I didn’t kill him, no.” Bjorn lifts his chin as he inhales deep. “Though I was furious, lost in the Berserk nature of my drake while we fought, something inside me still knew I was battling my own father. I stopped short of tearing his throat out when I cast him down, finished and unable to move. I showed him mercy, shifting down and ending the fight because I couldn’t kill him, even after everything he had just done. That was my undoing. He shifted down in the next moment and uttered one word: Outcast . Forever sealing my fate before he passed out.”

“Since you didn’t kill him, he was still the Jarl, even though you won the fight,” Strom says as he gives a tired sigh. “He still had the authority to Outcast you, making you forever ineligible to become Jarl of your clan. Though you had technically just won the right to the title and the station.”

“He did.” Bjorn rumbles with a deep anger now. “I made my way to Stockholm then, to serve our King. I hoped someday my father would hear of my honorable deeds and forgive me, and let me come home. Though my mother worked on him for decades, he never forgave me. And then she died at the Battle of Riksfold—when you were a youngling, Rikyava. There was no one left to argue my case, and I never got to return home.”

We sit in silence a long while then, as Bjorn’s story sinks in. It’s so sad that even though I can’t feel his emotions well right now with these manacles on, I feel my heart clench. My throat is tight, my drakaina keening inside my veins as I scoot close to him, cuddling in. Bjorn throws an arm around me and hugs me to him, even as Strom scooches close on his other side.

The two drakes just sitting together, with the close contact all shapeshifters enjoy.

“Thank you for listening. Both of you.” Bjorn turns his head and kisses my temple. I feel his drake move in a less rageful coiling inside him now, though it’s still faint with our manacles on. “It feels good to talk about it, even though I still hate him. And will until the end of my days.”

“You should give up trying to impress him, then,” Strom says with a teasing smile, though it’s gentle. “Be your own drake, Bjorn. You’re more than strong enough for it. Especially with Rikyava and me behind you.”

“I know.” Bjorn sighs as he nods at Strom’s wise words. Before we can discuss our situation or Bjorn’s past any further, however, Captain Mortensen suddenly returns, stepping up to the bars.

We rise at once, throwing off the blankets and moving to the ironwork door to hear his news. One look at his crestfallen face, however, and I know it’s not the news we want to hear.

Bad news all around.

“I’m afraid the Jarl heard about my call to the King,” the captain says with regret as he watches us. “He stormed in and interrupted it before I could be put through to King Huttr. I’m sorry; he’s now forbidden me from contacting anyone for you, including trying to reach our King again…”

“And there goes our one shot at freedom,” Strom says, as he punches his fist into the wall beside the door. “Fuck!”

Strom is cradling his hand now, because without our natural dragon power flowing through our veins thanks to these manacles, we can’t punch through stone like we usually can. I move to him, helping him examine it, but thankfully nothing’s broken, though it’ll bruise like a motherfucker.

Glancing back to Captain Mortensen, I am firm, even as I pour as much of my drakaina’s power as I can through our Bloodbond to help Strom heal. “We need to get an audience with the Jarl again. We need to explain to him that something dangerous is out there, rampaging right now because of everything that’s happened. It cast down Seerselen five thousand years ago, and it’s going to do it again with all our clans, if Bjorn, Strom, and I are not set free to hunt it.”

“The creature you’re hunting was the Black Demon of Unhaemmerten ?” Captain Olander’s eyes go enormous now as he takes us all in. “The fabled creature that killed Seerselen—rather than just some monstrous, black-colored dragon?”

“The very same,” Bjorn says as he stares the captain down. “If my father knows what’s best for his people, he’ll set us free to go kill it before it can do what it did to Seerselen all over again.”

“Fucking hells…” Captain Olander swallows hard now as I see a deep accord pass between him and Bjorn. He’s finally understood that the creature we hunt isn’t just some crazy mortal dragon—but a creation of the ancients, which wrecked terrible ruin upon the Magnussen Clan, long ago.

Not to mention all of Blood Dragondom, before it was finally stopped.

Glancing around us all, Captain Olander inhales.

And I know our salvation is coming.

“Challenge the Jarl to a Trial of Truth,” he says as his face firms, decided. “By our ancient laws, he cannot ignore a prisoner who has called for the Trial or kill them outright. The Trial will prove, before an audience of one hundred shamans, generals, and leaders of our clan—as is our ancient law—that you either speak true or you speak false. If you are found to have spoken true before these witnesses, our Jarl must release you. If you speak false, however?—”

“Our suffering will have no end.” Bjorn’s words are dire as they come out with a terrible growl. I don’t know what this Trial of Truth thing is, but I am quick to turn to Captain Mortensen, knowing it’s our only hope .

“We’ll do it. I, Hog Skjaldm?r Rikyava Andersen, challenge Jarl Oggi Magnussen to the Trial of Truth. Immediately.”

“Rikyava! You don’t know what you’re saying—!” Bjorn turns to me with horror, his face shocked.

Before he can say more, Strom steps in, placing a hand on his heart. “I, Jarl-Heir Strom Eriksson of the Eriksson Clan, challenge Jarl Oggi Magnussen to the Trial of Truth. Fucker is going to hear it from me, or I’ll die trying.”

As we both look at Bjorn, I see him pale as he hesitates. Because of all of us, only he knows about whatever this Trial entails.

Setting a hand to his heart with a hard sigh, Bjorn nods, with us to the end.

“I, Bef?lhavare Bjorn Magnussen of the Blood Dragon Kingsguard, challenge Jarl Oggi Magnussen to the Trial of Truth,” he says with a growl. “For whoever is watching us in this cell right now, because I feel our clan’s surveillance magic prickling my neck like an army of ants, take my words to my father. He will see us, even if we have to invoke the Truth to do it.”

“So be it,” Captain Olander Mortensen says, with a dire nod. He surveys the three of us. “Sit tight. I’ll return with the scheduled time of your Trial, though by our laws it has to happen within twenty-four hours, now that it’s been requested. I’ll be back soon.”

As the captain rushes off to make the arrangements for our Trial, I feel somehow like this solution isn’t a win. Because as Bjorn, Strom, and I turn back to the rug and brazier with its crackling fire, Bjorn is dark as the Void.

Stewing, as I feel him prepare for something only he understands.