The Dragon King's Substitute Bride

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."

up at him.

"You've been talking

my handmaiden

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ask for someone

more and more. Is Maya...

sharp instincts. Technically, she is

cousin."

I blinked. "And why isn't she a

he said. "Her mother

hummed. "I'd been banking on her

chuckled. "You'll meet them soon enough,

I glanced over

He sounded amused. "To be fair, you are not

can

smirked..

read

might have been able to once upon a time, but not

darkness."

"That have something

of my father's first consort. He is younger than me and resentful of me being chosen as the next heir. I am sure that Maya told you that it's

- nower:

due to the

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.

shuddered at the thought. "I don't think I want to know what would cause the destruction of a room during birth, but glad to hear I won't be

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He went still.

have no

www

to succeed me or choose someone to do so, and if I married, he would essentially be head of the

..

a desire to marry

him. "Get out

"I cannot."

head. "It hardly matters now,

His eyes were

up, startled by the sound. blazing with desire. His hands shook, suspended in the air between us as