Chapter 15

The Dragon King's Substitute Bride

CH15

Morgan

Worry clawed at me. "Isn't it pretty usual for people to leave instructions for their successors?"

He nodded. "In the case of the queen, your instructions are in two parts. One is the journals, but the part you are looking for is held in the Trial itself."

I scowled at him. "I'm just supposed to know because I didn't die?"

His lips twitched. "Because you were chosen by the heavens and blessed by the Phoenix."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Mystic words that mean nothing to me other than seeming important."

He tapped a journal. "Perhaps reading will educate you, then."

I met his gaze. "How can you be so sure?"

He sat on the edge of the desk and looked out the window with a wistfulness in his eyes.

"Because I knew my mother, and she told me many stories about how she came to settle in her power as queen."

I looked down at the journals. "Will you tell me about her?".

"What do you want to know?"

I considered it, trailing my fingers over the cover of the journal in front of me.

"Was she happy with your father?"

"She said she was."

"You didn't believe her?"

her

"I believe that happiness in tion was complicated," he said. "She stirred a lot of

controversy."

looked up at him. "By having

"You've been talking

my handmaiden

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not ask for someone

about it... more and more.

sharp instincts. Technically,

cousin."

"And why isn't she

"Her mother and

banking on

"You'll meet them soon

on me, then he's insulting me." I glanced over at him, holding back the words that I wanted

run in the family." He sounded amused. "To be

way I can keep you out of

I tell you?" He smirked.. "And it's the least of your

others read my

able to once upon a time, but not since his

darkness."

shook my head. "That have

of me being chosen as the next

- nower:

due to the risk

hard undertaking." Tsuneo paused. "Her handmaiden was meant to be ensuring she was taking the potions necessary to keep her from becoming pregnant, but she was bribed by a concubine and later dismissed. My father says that my mother didn't show a moment of fear until

the destruction of a room during birth, but glad to hear I won't be

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He went still.

no

www

the family. It was expected that either I'd have a child to succeed me or choose someone to do so, and if I married,

..

a desire to marry

at him. "Get out of

"I cannot."

my head. "It hardly matters now,

His eyes were

desire. His hands shook, suspended in the

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