The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 32

MINTH

She enjoys the way her words shock the so called princess of Averia.

The way hurt creeps into those crystal blue eyes and steals the blood from her cheeks.

The poor, poor human simpleton had probably thought she was going to have Midas all to herself.

Maybe, somewhere in her tiny brain, she has even managed to convince herself that she could come to love the devastatingly handsome king irrespective of his cruelty and what the dragon realm has done to her kind.

Ah! Minth wants to laugh in her face and spit all over whatever fantasies she may be harboring.

Midas' new bride.

Just thinking the words is enough to send her into a fit of blind rage and she struggles to keep the smile on her face.

When in truth, she wants to pick her cup of freshly pressed red wine and dump it all over the head of this...this... human w***e and afterwards, drag her kicking and screaming out of the castle and back to whatever wretched hole she may have crawled out from. Before this night, Minth had heard the rumors like everyone else, curtsey of her handmaid Anith who would always bring the day's gossips to her door.

Eagerly telling tales of this noble and that Ryder as she washed Minth's hair and tended to her needs.

She would bring news of who had done this and who had said that and did her mistress know the chamber maid to lord so and so was now with child?

Minth did not out rightly encourage her maid's daily reports to her but she did nothing to discourage her either.

Her position as King's Mistress in the palace is a precarious one.

One she had gotten by staying ahead of all the other maids.

By shifting through their constant gossip; discarding the meaningless chatter and picking the bits and pieces of information that best situated her purposes and that had ultimately given her the life she now led.

And only a fool discards the ways that have proved beneficial to them in the past.

Yet when on the day of the king's return from battle in the human realm of Averia, Anith had come to her chambers bearing the rumor that while the King had indeed returned in good health, he had also brought with him a woman who would be his bride, Minth had slapped her.

Knocking the maid to the ground and splitting the poor girl's cheek open with her sharp nails.

"How dare you?"

Minth yelled till she turned red in the face, standing and spitting over the cowering girl, not caring that she herself was almost practically naked from just having taken her bath.

"How dare you peddle such foolish lies about the king?" "But...but..."

"Another word from you and I will have you flogged and run out of the castle. If the king were ever...ever...to take a wife, it would be me..." She stabbed at her chest furiously and repeatedly with one finger "No one but me! Do you understand?"

The girl had been too scared to even respond and this had only angered her further.

Her eyes had darkened dangerously, her voice becoming deceptively lower.

"I said... do you understand?"

The girl nodded furiously, on the verge of tears.

Her tears had meant nothing to Minth. "Say you understand."

"Ye...yes my lady, I understand."

"Good, now get out of my sight."

Yet even after the maid had left, she could think of nothing else.

She had spent the rest of the day in a distracted rage. Snapping at her maids and carrying out the day's activities with unfocused anger.

She had dressed and prepared herself, telling her wandering mind that there could be no truth to the maid's words and that he would come to her as soon as the sun set.

He had not.

And Minth had nearly driven herself mad.

She sat in bed, wringing her hands, sitting down and jumping up, pacing frantically from one end of her room to the other.

And just when she would have snapped and gone to him herself, he had barged into her room.

She had pretended to be surprised but inside she was nearly faint with relief.

She didn't care about where he had been before now.

All that had mattered to Minth was that he was here now, with her and it could only mean nothing had changed.

She would make sure to have that maid of hers stripped and flogged for daring to upset her so.

Yet even though she had taken great care to dress up in her most seductive attires and the jewelry that she knew pleased him the most, he had barely even looked at her before dragging her towards him.

And when he kissed her it was different; even more distracted and detached than usual.

It had been the kiss of a man with something else on his mind.

Something else...or someone else.

But before Minth could come up with some sly, clever way to draw out the reason for his distraction, he had pushed her away and barged out of the room as suddenly as he had entered, barely even putting his shirt back on. And he would not come back even when she called after him in tears.

Minth had exploded.

No....No....No!!!

She threw her vase to the ground and knocked over everything on her armoire, shattering and spraying glass everywhere as the bottles of her sweet scented oils were smashed into the walls across her. This could not be happening.

Not after everything she had done to get here.

Not after everything she had sacrificed.

Even getting into the castle in the first place had been no easy task.

The gods had never given her anything.

Everything Minth has, everything she now possessed, she had to fight tooth and nail for.

Had to take it from the hands of those who were too weak to deserve what they had been so generously given.

When the castle steward had come calling to her tiny dragonkin village tucked somewhere in the hills, to handpick new castle servants and chambermaids, she had been beyond certain that luck would favor her.

After all, among all the girls in the village, she had always been the most intelligent, the prettier one, the more interesting one but even then the gods had turned their face from her and her sister was picked instead. Minth had been livid but even in her anger she knew what had to be done.

She knew something the rest of her tiny village with its stone wells and quaint conservative life did not.

Something her sister had done that she did not want anyone else to know.

So Minth exposed it in the cruelest way imaginable, embellishing the tale where she could so that it appeared even worse than it was and when everyone found out, her sister became an outcast, no one would have anything to do with her. And of course, going to the castle was no longer an option.

So Minth's family, desperate not to lose this rare opportunity, had sent Minth in her place.

But just slaving way in the castle, scrubbing floors and cleaning after royals was never Minth's idea of a good life.

It was only the beginning.

She had a sharp mind and even sharper ears.

She had been cunning and keen, willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted and if anyone stood in her way, heavens help them, she would step all over their heads and snaps their neck without a second's hesitation.

And it didn't take longer for her to move from chamber maid to laundress to even attending to the king and his council until she became the dragon castle's first female stewardess, the most important of all the people who served in the castle. But even that had not been enough.

Not for Minth.

So when the news reached her ears that the royal council had began to press the young, attractive yet cruel king to take a bride or at least a mistress, Minth knew her time had come.

She began to make herself move visible, wearing inappropriate clothings for one who was supposed to be a representative of the castle and attempting to get as close to the king as she could without losing her head.

But the king would not even look at her.

He was entirely uninterested in getting a bride or even mistress for that matter.

And when the council would not relent, he flippantly asked them to get whatever or whoever if they so desired and that he did not care one wit who it was.

So Minth bribed and cajoled, begged and threatened and all she got were meaningless reassurances and empty promises from members of the dragon's court who were more interested in her sensual curves and supple body than they were in giving her what she wanted.

And eventually someone else, some council Lord's daughter who no doubt had been handed everything she ever wanted on silver platter, was given the promise and position as Midas' mistress and perhaps someday, could the king be convinced, his queen. A position that Minth felt rightly belonged to her and her alone.

So on the night the new mistress would meet with the king, Minth had gone into her chambers as chief steward to make sure all was is it should be, bearing in her hands a tray laden with delicacies for the new mistress to satiate her hunger. Come the next morning, the King would wake up in Minth's bed instead and the Lord's daughter would be sick for a long... long time.

There was never any official announcement as to why things had changed.

Some would say perhaps it was a bad fruit or unaggreable water that had caused the Lord's daughter's sudden illness and once in a while, the truth, like it tends to do would float in whispers down the castle's walls.

That the one who had taken the sick girl's place that night and snuck into the King's bed, had poisoned her.

But Minth did not care one wit for their gossip and suspicions.

As the king's official mistress, no one would dare say it to her face and Minth had finally gotten everything she so rightfully deserved.

Everything she had worked so hard for.

Minth did not care one bit for the king's affections. Not anymore.

She has since concluded him incapable of caring for anyone else, much more loving any being besides his dead parents.

So she is no longer interested in winning his heart.

But the position of consort to the dragon's throne. The queen's crown.

That...that belongs to her.

And if gods think she is about to let some stupid, miserable human princess who had probably never known what it meant to struggle, to starve and lack, to work until your hands bled.

If they think she would let anyone at all, take what is rightfully hers away from her...

Then Hades take her soul because Minth would rather die.

But not before she dragged the king's new wife right down to hell with her.