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.
"You've been
handmaiden or
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CH15
ask for
been thinking about it... more and more. Is Maya... related to you in
sharp instincts. Technically, she
cousin."
she a
"Her mother and mine
on her being
"You'll meet them soon enough,
me, then he's insulting me." I glanced over at him, holding back the words that I wanted to
family." He sounded amused. "To be fair, you are
a way I can keep you out of my
I tell you?" He smirked.. "And it's the least of your
others read
to once upon a time, but not since
darkness."
my head. "That have something to do
of me being chosen as
- nower:
due to the risk
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 day of my birth, My birth destroyed the
what would cause the destruction of a room during birth, but glad
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CH15
He went still.
no desire
www
me or choose someone to do so, and if I married, he would essentially be head of the family. I remember telling
..
a desire to marry
him. "Get
"I cannot."
"It hardly matters now,
His eyes were
him. I looked up, startled by the sound. blazing with desire. His hands shook, suspended in the air between us as if he wanted
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