The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 80

HERA

A fortnight...

Two whole weeks....

Fourteen days and fourteen nights.

That is how long it has been since I last saw Midas.

And as it turn out it matters little whether it is fourteen days or an entire life time, they all feel the exact same way when you spend them missing someone.

If one had taken a peek into my future and told me that I would spend my mornings constantly looking outside my window, waiting for the dragon King I would have called them insane and probably spat at their feet for good measure. But every morning I wake up, it is the first thing I do.

And when I replace out he has not returned in my sleep, I am forced to spend the rest of the day trying to pretend that I am not thinking about him.

It helps that my days are now no longer as free as they used to be.

In fact they have gotten quite busy on a few occasions.

What with my lessons in the dragon tongue and the ways of the realm,

meetings with the chief stewards and some of the head servants to learn and participate in the running of the castle,

and with both Midas and Leo gone, I have even been summoned a few times to sit in on council meetings.

Honest to the gods I do not see how Midas has managed to do this for the amount of time that he has.

I cannot say for certain that the dragon castle and its inhabitants are beginning to warm up to me, but it certainly does appear that they seem to hate me a little less. Henette tells me that it is because they had expected me to push back.

To perhaps report to the king or use my position as queen to punish them, given them a reason to really hate me.

And that my refusal to do anything more than show a genuine fascination with their realm and learning about them is beginning to prick at their consciousness. I almost laugh.

Good for them that they decided to stop when they did because I had honestly been one day away from having someone sent to the dungeon.

She also tells me that it had been Minth's idea all long.

Somehow, I had already suspected that.

If I had thought the King' mistress merely disliked me before, then I was being naïve.

She hates me.

Word must have somehow gotten to her about my presence in the king's room on the day of his departure.

I personally prefer to think she had heard my screams and moans.

But somehow since she found out that the king and I perhaps no longer hated each other as much as before, she has been the absolute bane of my existence.

The worst part of it all is how well she hides it.

Choosing subtle and cunning words, making me feel foolish or inadequate in front of the court, humiliating me whenever I am trying to do anything in the presence of any of the other members of the castle. The gods know that I try to ignore her.

To act completely uninterested in whatever game she is playing.

But it is getting harder and harder not to sock her in her beguiling angelic face and pull out all her hair and perhaps an eye too for good measure.

But I suspect that is what she wants me to do.

My place in the dragon's castle is too shaky.

No one trusts me yet and each day feels like walking on thin ice while knowing it could always crack any minute.

The crown on my head and the fact that I am wife to the dragon King are more than likely the only reasons why they treat me with any form of respect.

But if I were ever to stoop to hair pulling and eye punching cat fights, I would no doubt lose that as well.

No matter how much the other person may have deserved it.

However, long days and Minth's antics aside, I am actually beginning to get used to life in the dragon realm.

My favorite days are the ones where I get to go into the capital.

Fine 'get to' is not actually being honest.

It is more along the lines of the days where I tell the steward and my guards that I am going out, then they try to stop me because they are afraid of Midas and then I tell them politely of course, to kindly get lost and out of my way. Which of course means they always insist on following me.

But even that is slowly becoming bearable.

The dragonkin outside the castle are much less antagonistic than those who live within the stone walls high on dragon's mount.

I, of course still get a few side eye, evil glances but I would like to think that the dragonkin of the capital are slowly beginning to accept me, maybe not as their queen but at the very least as some sort of fixture in their lives. And on some days...

On some days, I can even dare to be happy.

That is until the guilt creeps in and I start to think about everything I left behind.

About my brother.

I can only hope that the king of Averia kept his word to take care of him.

Because no matter how hard I try, I am replaceing myself beginning to think less and less of Averia.

My days and nights filled instead with thoughts of the dragon realm and its inhabitants.

And about their King who as of this morning had still not returned.

I miss him.

I miss him so badly that it actually aches.

And I am beginning to get sick with worry.

I keep asking if there has been any word but no one seems to have heard anything.

That or they do not wish to tell me.

Neither one sits right with me and on some nights, I fall asleep sitting by my window.

Praying to all the gods that he is safe and willing him to come back home...to come back to me.

The bell rings out for the eleventh time this night and I look up from the book I am reading.

Since the night Leo brought me here, the fountain has become my absolute favorite place in the whole of the dragon castle.

The only place I can come to think.

And in recent times, I have been thinking a lot.

Which is something that tends to happen when you have found out that you are somehow in possession of powers that you are not even supposed to have.

Or that you might even been human.

I push off the bowl of the fountain and hop down to the floor.

It is cold out and my cloak is not doing much of anything to ward off the chilly autumn air.

I should be in bed.

Everyone, Henette included actually does think that I am in bed, but this night had turned out to be one of those nights where I just could not fall asleep.

So I had wandered into Midas' study and snuck out a book and then somehow found my way here.

Returning back into the castle, I turn left, back towards his study.

The book is written in the dragon tongue and full of words that I do not even fully understand but I had thought some mindless reading would help me fall asleep quickly.

I had been wrong.

It talked about the magic that existed in the 5th realm. Their Ryders and dragons.

The things they could do and the things they couldn't.

Funny enough there had been no mention of dragon Ryder being about to fly without first fully transforming into their dragon form which is something I have seen Midas do not once but three times now. All in all there had been nothing mindless about the book and now, I wanted more.

His study is almost never locked.

Who would dare steal form the dragon King?

So again I simply push open the heavy wooden door and step into the darkened space.

The only source of illumination is the full moon outside that sends shaft of bright light through the impressively large window behind his chair.

I decided not to light the candle sitting on the edge of his desk and to simply use the moon's light to return the book back to its position.

Big mistake.

You would think by now, that as one of the least graceful people to ever walk the 7 realms, I would know that moving through a dark room without a light is a very terrible idea.

But seeing as I do not always think things through, I attempt to anyway.

And I do succeed, for the most part.

I manage to return the book to its location on the shelf but when I turn around to move to the next shelf, my dress gets caught on something.

In my defense, it was quiet and dark and there was an eerie hooting noise coming from outside the window.

Anyone would have reacted the way I did if they thought some strange night creature had gotten a hold of their cloak and was now determined to drag them to the underworld.

All this is to say that I may have...over reacted a little bit by leaping a mile in to the air and grabbing unto the shelf a little too hard.

Turns out it was designed for the weight of books not, scared, leaping humans.

So it fell.

They all did.

I barely managed to jump out of the way before one could topple on me and split my skull open.

And now I am standing in the middle of Midas's study, hands over my mouth wondering how I am going to be able to explain to him and the rest of the castle that some monster snuck into his study and destroyed everything. I do not have to wait very long.

"Would you like a mace so you can break them apart properly?"

My heart stops.

He shakes his head, ankles crossed and arms folded as he leans on the open door of his study.

"Two weeks Hera. Two weeks and you are already trying to send my castle crumbling to the ground. What in all the realms would happen if...humph..."

He catches me and holds me against him, my arms wrapped around his neck.

"Easy...easy...you have an amazingly strong grip for such a tiny human"

He smells like sweat and dirt and hours upon hours of hard riding but I do not care.

He came back to me. That is all that matters.

"I am unsure if you are hugging me or trying to choke me."

"Both"

He must hear the tears in my voice because he strokes my hair gently before pulling back and placing me on my feet so he can look at me. "What is the matter, are you hurt?"

I almost cannot believe he is asking me that but he looks so genuinely confused and worried that I burst out laughing unable to even stay mad at him.

I shake my head and wipe at the tears on my cheeks. "I'm just so happy."

He smiles one of those rare smiles of his that makes me feel like maybe coming to this realm was not the most terrible thing that has ever happen to me. The he pulls me back against him, burying his face in my hair

"Gods you smell like Heaven."

I stroke his hair, rub my hands up and down his arms. "Midas..."

"Hmmm?"

"How are you?"

He stiffens and something tells me that he has not been asked that question in a long...long time.

He holds me tighter and I can almost feel the exhaustion in the weight of his body, in the way his arms crush me almost painfully to his chest.

"I am fine."

"Liar."

He scoffs. "Still as disrespectful as ever."

"Don't try to change the topic."

He is quiet for a long time and I almost start to worry that he had managed to fall asleep standing in my arms.

But then he sighs, deep and heavy into my hair.

"I am tired Hera. Nothing is going the way it is supposed to and for the first time in my life, I have absolutely no idea what to do."

And because I do not know what to say to that, I do the best thing that I can.

I hold him.