Marked Prince - Michelle M. Pillow Page 0,16

searched many places.” Salena guided her into a home.

Fiora saw a circular couch and walked toward it. Her mouth tasted awful. Her stomach churned. She sat hard against the cushions, tipping to her side while her feet were still on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but she didn’t care.

Let the darkness come.

For the love of everything, please let the darkness take me.

6

“What is that smell?” Kane flinched as he held open the door to his home. He glanced over his cousin and automatically started to close his door without inviting him inside.

Several members of the Draig royal family lived in the mountain palace. The front was carved so that it blended into the side of the mountain, hiding it from above. Well, at least that was the original intent. The small village and surrounding valley with worn paths leading to the palace gave away the location, as did the barracks and training yard along the side.

Inside the mountain, there was plenty of space for expansion. If Jaxx wanted, he could’ve had apartments in the palace like his cousins. Like his father, Prince Yusef, Jaxx much preferred to live in the forest surrounded by the ancient trees bigger than his home.

Jaxx placed his hand on the door and grumbled, “I need to borrow some clothes.”

Kane let him push the door open with a small laugh. “Not before you bathe.” He glanced down and grimaced. “Is that—?”

“You need to have a cleaning droid sent to the hall near Grier’s dragon statue,” Jaxx said.

“A droid? What by all the gods is going on?” Kane still seemed more amused than alarmed. “Is there a celebration someone forgot to invite me to?”

“Hardly,” Jaxx grumbled, forcing his way inside.

Kane had been training to take over his father’s position as the royal Draig ambassador, so it made sense that he lived in the palace. The home looked like many of the others. Light came from a series of tubes inside the ceiling, shining through holes. The open space had a couch around a firepit. There was a food simulator next to a table, although most of the palace meals were taken in the main hall as a group. Tapestries depicting scenes from the past hung on the wall next to banners. The palace hadn’t changed much since they were children.

“What are you staring at?” Kane asked, his tone more concerned than before. “Seriously, Jaxx, you’re starting to worry me.”

Jaxx realized he’d been staring at a tapestry depicting a battle between the Draig and Var. “Do you ever think about how much simpler it was back then? When we only had to fight each other and not the rest of the universe?”

“The Federation is hardly the rest of the universe,” Kane dismissed. “And if you tell me you’re longing for the old cat-shifter wars, I’m going to say you’ve been spending too much time with Grace. She was just asking me about some old law she found to dissolve her marriage treaty.”

“She doesn’t want to dissolve the treaty to go back to war. She wants the freedom to choose who she marries,” Jaxx defended his cousin. He’d always felt bad for her. Grace had been born into a treaty between the cats and dragons. As far as the planet was concerned, her destiny was to unite the two kingdoms. The betrothal was a symbol of unity that had helped sustain peace their entire lives. It went against everything dragon-shifters believed in when it came to finding mates.

On the day each dragon child was born their fathers went to a lake, dove beneath the surface, and mined a crystal from the bottom. The dragon children then wore these crystals until the day it started to glow. This is how the gods communicated with them. When the crystal glowed, that meant they had found their mate. It was never wrong.

Prince Zoran and Princess Pia, Grace’s parents, had not intended for the betrothal to stand for so many years. None of the elders had. In fact, because female shifter births were so rare, none of them thought they’d have to go through with a marriage. The proposed betrothment was to be symbolic, a show that both sides were willing to make peace. What the elders hadn’t counted on was the romanticized view that had taken hold amongst the people when Grace was born.

Grace’s crystal had been a torment to her. It represented a path she was not supposed to take—one to true love and happiness. In that, she was alone. Jaxx