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."
him. "By having the
smirked. "You've been talking
handmaiden or
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ask
about it... more and more. Is Maya... related to you
have sharp instincts.
cousin."
blinked. "And why isn't she a
"Her mother and mine were
"I'd been banking on
meet them soon
I glanced over at him, holding back the
think such behaviors run in the family." He sounded amused.
there a way I can keep you
smirked.. "And it's the
read
able to once upon a time,
darkness."
have
and resentful of me being chosen as the next heir.
- nower:
due to the risk
be ensuring she was taking the potions necessary to keep her from becoming pregnant, but she was bribed by a concubine and
thought. "I don't think I want to know what would cause the destruction of a room during birth,
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He went still.
have no desire for
www
what answer to give him. I hadn't ever thought about it. I was a woman and Their to 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, he would essentially be head of the family. I remember telling my father
..
had a desire to
him. "Get out of my
"I cannot."
shook my head. "It
His eyes were
hands shook, suspended in the air between us as
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