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.
been
my handmaiden or
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CH15
not ask for someone more
about it... more and more. Is Maya... related to you in some
"You have sharp instincts. Technically, she is
cousin."
she a lady instead
"Her mother and
on
meet them soon
then he's insulting me." I glanced over at him, holding back
He sounded
a way I can keep
He smirked.. "And it's
read my
to once upon a time, but not since his scales
darkness."
shook my head. "That have something to do with his
resentful of me being chosen as the next heir. I
- nower:
due to the
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
would cause the destruction of a room during birth, but glad to hear I won't be expected
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CH15
He went still.
no
www
child to succeed me or choose someone to do so, and if I married, he would essentially be head of the family. I remember telling my father that I'd pass the successorship to Hiro when I wanted
..
had a
"Get out of
"I cannot."
"It hardly
His eyes were
up, startled by the sound. blazing with desire. His hands shook, suspended in
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