Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

But now I totally get how she felt. They make running away for love look so cool in entertainments and in books. But there’s nothing inside of me that feels good about the way I left things with my parents. And even more guilt presses down on me when I think of my uncles back in North Dakota, still running the kingdom I was supposed to take over.

No, I won’t be calling my mother, even if it is supposed to be my big day. Instead, I go unusually quiet and let Staci do her work.

My ultimate look turns out to be a perfect match for the dress and something that never could have been spontaneously created by a machine. Neon makeup applied in such a daring way, I could easily stand-in for one of the Misfits in the latest Jem and the Holograms reboot.

“Wow!” I say after I step onto the round platform in the walk-in closet to look at myself in the three-way mirror.

I know this isn’t what any of my family ever wanted for me.

But when I look in that tri-fold mirror, it feels like I’m finally meeting the queen I’ve always wanted to be.

Hopefully, my much more conservative mate will like her too.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Yeah, I know I’m the queen, and this night is supposed to be some kind of historic presentation. But I force Thalia to take off after I’m fully dressed to enjoy the festivities with her own family and friends.

“I want you to have fun tonight, too, and show off that fleek emoji dress,” I tell her, waving a hand at the silver nanite cocktail dress I insisted she have fabricated while I took my nap. “Plus, it will help me to see one friendly face in the audience when Damianos presents me or whatever.”

It’s a bit of an argument, but in the end, Thalia relents and leaves me at the top of the grand staircase leading into the even grander two-story front hall.

These were the same steps Damianos came down the first time I laid eyes on him. And it feels like a huge role reversal when I spot him standing with Bazzi in his arms at the bottom of the stairs.

Their backs are to me, but I can tell the moment Damianos registers my presence by the way his end of our mate bond suddenly goes numb. Only then does he turns around to face me.

But even with our mate bond on mute, I can tell he’s feeling me by the way his golden eyes gleam hot and hungry as he watches me descend the stairs. Fat tummy or no, I’m still rocking a Detroit brickhouse bod, as my Great Aunt Wilma likes to call it. Take that, Agda.

He’s wearing a coat with long tails and a white tie underneath, I note. And he’s somehow managed to shove Bazzi into a formal baby tux.

“You and Bazzi look like history and I look like a heavy metal space opera,” I say when I get to the bottom step.

“Yet here we all are,” he answers, his mate bond giving me nothing but cold dead silence.

“Yeah, here we be,” I agree, keeping my mate bond as aggressively open as his is closed.

Bazzi screeches something I can only assume means “Mommy!” in the dragon language he apparently already knows after just a few conversations and reaches out his arms.

“You like my dress, Bazzi?” I ask. Thank goodness Staci used stay proof makeup because after a whole day apart, there’s no way I’m not hugging my little boy tight.

Bazzi answers with another happy screech that I choose to interpret as yes. And I tell him, “Thank you, that’s a huge compliment.”

Damianos surprises me by saying, “I like the dress as well. It is incredibly…” he pauses, seeming to search for the right word, then finishes with, “You.”

“Aw, thanks, Triple D. That’s like, a whole damn ode of praise coming from this version of you,” I answer.

His mouth quirks in a way that could either be irritation or amusement.

“Come,” he says, holding out his arm.

I take both it and a deep breath as he leads me and Bazzi toward a set of wide double doors in another wing of the house that I’ve never seen open before.

But a deep breath wasn’t enough.

I nearly drop Bazzi when we walk into the ballroom. It’s just as crazy baroque as the rest of the house. Hand painted ceilings, marble walls, and even more crown molding slathered in even more gold leaves. (Maybe they were having a sale that century?) I don’t even bother to count the crystal chandeliers, there are so many of them. And these feature real candles, not bulbs like the other ones I’ve seen around the place. Apparently unlike Akwasi, Damianos has no problem whatsoever with over-the-top.

The ballroom must have been built around one of the island’s slopes. The floor rests at the bottom of another grand staircase in what should technically be the bowels of the house. But a row of four humongous recessed arched windows on the far wall showcase a calm blue sea with the sun setting over it.