The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 54

HERA

I did not run away.

But I am certain the king and his chief Ryder will not see it that way.

Especially when Leo comes back and does not see me standing at the entrance like I am supposed to.

I can already picture Midas' face and the way he will react.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that he will be livid, his eyes changing to that crimson fiery color that frightens me to no end.

He will also think I have lied to him again and maybe in a way, I have.

I can only hope he will let me explain because I did not have a choice.

My heart struggles to keep up with pace I have set, feet slapping loudly against the floor as I push my body relentlessly forward.

The closer I get to my destination, the stronger the pressure in my head becomes, until it pushes everything else from my mind and fills me with a sense of urgency that I cannot even begin to explain. Gods above do not let me be too late.

It had started from the bakery when Midas had let me go in myself, a slight pressure in my head that disoriented me for a few moments.

I had assumed it was nothing more than a left over side effect from the dream I had this morning so I shook it off, managed to ignore it.

And for a while it had gone away.

But then it started again, growing steadily from the very moment Midas left me standing outside with Leo in front of the tiny red building until it became a banging headache. Leo, keen observer that he is, had noticed immediately.

He asked me if I was okay.

I had simply nodded, not trusting myself to speak but even that simple up and down motion had felt to me like I was suddenly moving a head that was twice its original size.

I blinked many times, as if that might help dislodge the blooming headache from its position in the center of my forehead.

But when next I had opened my eyes again, the red brick building behind me had disappeared, Leo along with it.

There were still cobbled stone beneath my feet and I knew I was standing in the dragon capital but I was in a different street.

It was darker and narrower and filthy.

There was a stench in the air.

Sharp and metallic; the smell of blood and sweat and fear.

And in front of me, was a dragonkin girl...crying, bleeding

And standing over her, a brute, some monster of a man with a bald spot in the centre of his round meaty head and baggy stained trousers that hung low on his waist, his belly protruding disgustingly and stretching his shirt to its limit. The image had disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.

I had staggered, disoriented and dizzy, dropping the box in my hand and sending tiny, drizzled cakes rolling down the streets leaving behind trails of sugar and cream and floury crumbs.

Leo's firm grip around my waist had been the only thing that kept me from crumbling to the floor along with them.

He asked if I was okay again, those slate grey eyes with their piercing bluntness tell me not to even bother lying.

By then the pressure had become beyond anything I had ever felt before and I had honestly been on the verge of telling him how unwell I felt.

But then we heard a crash from inside, loud and jarring and both our heads had turned to towards the noise on instinct.

"Your highness..."

"Midas..."

Leo stepped towards the door, then remembering me, he stopped, glancing back as if seeking my permission.

I waved him away. "Go. I will be right behind you."

And I had honestly meant it.

But the moment my foot stepped over the threshold, the image had returned.

In a flash, I was there again, back in that alley.

He had been whipping her, the girl with the matted white hair, the clothes on her back torn to shreds.

I had to hold onto the door frame to regain my balance.

I wanted to ignore it. Tell myself I was imagining things or better still, pretend I did not see anything at all but then the scars on my back tingled as if coming alive and I knew that I could not do it. Not again.

So I turned around and ran down the street in the opposite direction.

Away from the open door through which Midas and Leo had disappeared and away from whatever little trust he may have begun to harbor for me.

Somehow I knew where to go, which turns to take.

A left, two rights, running down long, nearly deserted streets.

The sun is beginning to set and I know that I could get lost but I also know that I cannot stop.

Not now, not with the scars on my back, the criss-cross of faded red marks burning and stinging with the reminder of exactly how I had gotten them in the first place.

It had been the day of my 18th moon harvest.

The moon harvest is the day that marks the completion of a full cycle of Averian seasons.

A time period, as I have now learnt, that the dragon realm refers to as a 'Year'.

Back in my home realm, every Averian gets a new number added to their age during the Moon harvest.

It is a time of celebrations and loud music, fireworks and late night dancing, a time of mooncakes and strawberry creams and jellies made from elderberries.

The day of the moon harvest was a special day and even after my father died and we were driven out of our home by creditors, we still made sure to celebrate it as best as we could.

There would be pancakes and homemade ginger ale and my grandmother would even sacrifice one of the precious geese that served as our only source of livelihood.

And when night fell, we would go to the bonfire in the village square where we would laugh and dance and exchange presents wrapped up in colorful leaves or tied in pieces of shiny cloth.

We may have been poor but we were happy.

But that moon harvest, the one that had ultimately changed my life forever was nothing like the ones before it.

It would be the first moon harvest for my brother and me since the death of our entire village, the first one without our family.

There would be no pancakes or ginger ale and certainly no roasted geese soaked in mother's special sauce.

But I had no plans to let us sit and starve in the cold, damp darkness of our shed while the entire realm went about celebrating.

So I had offered to clean the baker's kitchen, scrubbing pots and pan until my nails bled and in turn he had given me a fresh loaf of mixed fruit bread and a tankard of ginger ale, just like the one we used to have. But it had not been enough.

I was determined to buy my brother a present, something to make this day less painful for him.

So I put together every single coin I had managed to squirrel away since the day we ran away from the ashes of our village and I bought him a tiny gift.

But no sooner had I bought it that it was ripped violently out of my hands by a gang of boys on my way home.

They pushed me around, tossing my precious gift back and forth between each other, enjoying the way I cried and begged for them not to break it. Eventually they told me that they would only give it back to me if I agreed to steal something for them.

I was good with my hand and quick on my feet and they knew it.

They would watch the door and all the entrances while I broke into a rich merchant's house and brought them back as many coins as I could carry.

I had not wanted to do it, but I also had no desire to lose my brother's gift to bunch of lowlife bastards.

So with no choice, dejected and angry, I turned to one thing that that had help keep us alive all this time.

I broke into the house.

The streets were busy; everyone was out celebrating, watching the fireworks.

No one was supposed to have been home.

But fate had other plans for me.

The merchant had come home early and the boys, cowards that they were, had fled without giving me so much as a warning signal and I was caught fist first with my hands in his pouch.

He dragged me out by my hair and had me locked up.

I was old enough to be tried before the capital's magistrate and come the next morning they would send me to him, hands bound to receive my sentence.

The moon harvest I had so badly wanted to celebrate with my brother was spent in a dark, damp cell.

But I did not intend to go down without a fight. I was going to tell the judge everything.

Surely the boys who had put me in this situation deserved to be punished as well.

How little I knew.

As it turned out, the leader of the gang had been a Lord's son and on my way to be tried, the guard dragged me by my hair, his breath hot and garlicky on my face.

They gave me only one option. If I promised not to say anything about the boys, they would let me off lightly and the Lord whose son was behind this would make sure I got a job in the palace. It had almost seemed too good to be true.

It was.

Turns out getting off lightly meant being whipped publicly within an inch of my life as a deterrent to other would be criminals.

Sometimes, at night, I can still remember how each individual lash of the horse skin whip had felt as it struck my back and split the skin open.

The searing, burning pain that had knocked the breath from my lungs and made me unable to move without wincing for weeks after.

But the worst part of it all had been the sweaty, swollen man who had delivered them.

Each time he struck me, each time I cried out in unimaginable pain, he would laugh and swear and tell me I deserved it.

Just like the man standing in front of me now.

Towering over the dragonkin girl huddled in a corner, so weak but unable to even weep for fear that she would anger him more. She is already bleeding but he does not care.

The whip rises in the air again, ready to land once more on the battered, wounded body.

Back in Averia no one had come between me and the man who had whipped me half to death.

No one told him to slow down...to stop.

No one told him that the only crime I had been guilty of was trying to survive.

And I'd be damned if I let the same thing happen again.

I step further into the shadow of the alley, panting and breathless and angry.

Angry for me, the Hera who had cried and bleed and angry for her, the dragonkin girl I do not know.

"Touch her again and I promise you it will be the last thing you ever do."

The man freezes and I see the girl glance at me, one eye swollen shut.

I try to nod reassuringly but the fear in her eyes does not go away, not even a little.

The man turns. "Who the hell are you to tell me...?"

He stops, takes in my appearance, the red of my hair and the crown on my head and I can see the moment recognition comes into those lifeless eyes.

"You are the queen."

I raise my head.

"That is right and as queen I demand that you release that girl to me at once."

But rather than back away, he sneers, the scar on his face stretching grotesquely. "Human. You have no right to demand anything from us. Now get out of here before I forget who you claim to be."

I am shaken but I refuse to back down. If I turn around, if I run, he will only continue beating her.

"You dare to disrespect your queen?"

He turns fully towards me. "You are no queen of mine. You may have half the capital fooled and you may have bewitched the king but the rest of us, we know what your kind did."

And then he spits at my feet, his face cruel and red.

"Respect? The only thing you deserve is death and I will be happy to give it to you."

"You would not dare. The king..."

"Isn't here and once I kill you, whatever spell you have placed on him would be gone as well."

Then he laughs, revealing yellow, stained teeth. "Who knows, he might even give me a knighthood for my service to the kingdom."

I know things have not gone according to plan but it isn't until he starts advancing towards me in the narrow, shadowy space that I actually realize just how much danger I am in. "Somebody....Midas...Help!!"

Then a tiny voice, loud in the silence of my fear, kills the words in my throat just before the man's hand closes around my neck.

You just ran away from him for a second time, what makes you think he is coming?

I feel the man's large beefy fingers tighten around my neck, crushing against my windpipe.

I slap and claw at it but it doesn't move.

My lungs hurt, grey spots beginning to float before my eyes and I know that even if somehow he has chosen to come after me again, he has no idea why I am.

And by the time he does manage to replace me, it would be too late.