Dragon's Oath (House of Night Novellas #1)(2)

As if in response Dragon heard echoing in the night air the distinctive croaking caw of a raven.

Anger rushed through Dragon, so hard and hot that his hands once again trembled—only this time he did not shake with pain and loss; he shook with the barely controlled need to strike out, to maim, to avenge.

“I will avenge her.” Dragon’s voice was like death. He looked down at the locket again and spoke to the shimmering blond curl it held. “Your dragon will avenge you. I will set to right what I allowed to go wrong. I will not make the same mistake again, my love, my own. The creature will not go unpunished. On that I pledge to you my oath.”

A gust of wind, hot from the pyre, blew suddenly strong. It lifted the lock of hair and, while Dragon fumbled unsuccessfully to stop it, the curl floated out of his reach up, up, up on the heated draft, almost feather-like. It hovered there and then, with a sound much like a woman’s gasp of surprise, the hot wind changed, inhaling, drawing the lock of hair down into the fiery pyre where it was turned to smoke and memory.

“No!” Dragon cried, falling to his knees with a sob. “And now I’ve lost the last of you. My fault…,” he said brokenly. “My fault, just as your death was my fault.”

Through the tears that filled his eyes Dragon watched the smoke from his beloved mate’s lock of hair whirl and dance before him—and then begin to shimmer magickally, changing from smoke to a dusting of green and yellow and brown sparkles that continued to curl around and around until they began to separate and form distinct parts of an image: the green sparkles became a long, thick stem—the yellow delicate petals of a flower with the brown circling within them to become its center.

Dragon wiped his eyes clear of tears, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. “A sunflower?” His lips felt as numb with shock as his brain. It is her flower! his mind shouted. It must be a sign from her! “Anastasia!” Dragon cried as numbness gave way to a terrible, wonderful wave of hope. “Are you here, my own?”

The image of the shimmering sunflower began to waver and change. The yellow flowed down in a cascade that became golden blond. The brown lightened to the color of sun-kissed skin, and the green melted down within the skin, swirling and morphing into shining orbs that became eyes that were turquoise and familiar and dear.

“Oh, goddess, Anastasia! It is you!” Dragon’s voice broke as he reached out for her. But the image lifted–a glowing tease just beyond his fingertips. He cried out in frustration and then stifled the sound of his misery as his mate’s voice began to spill around him like a musical stream over water-worn pebbles. Dragon held his breath and listed to the ghostly message.

I’ve bespelled this locket, for you: my own, my mate.

The day has come when death forced us to part.

You must know that for you, forever, I shall wait.

So until we meet again I hold your love safely within my heart.

Remember, your oath was to temper strength with mercy.

No matter how long apart we shall be, I hold you to that oath

eternally … eternally …

The image smiled once at him before it lost its form and returned to smoke and then nothingness.

“My oath!” Dragon shouted, surging to his feet. “First Nyx and now you reminding me of it. Do you not understand that it is because of that cursed oath that you are dead? Had I chosen differently those many years ago, perhaps I could have kept all of this from happening. Strength tempered by mercy was a mistake. Do you not remember, my own? Do you not remember? I do. I will never forget…”

As Dragon Lankford, Sword Master of the House of Night, held vigil over the body of a fallen fledgling, he stared into the burning pyre and let the flames take him back so that he could relive the pain and the pleasure—the tragedy and the triumph—of a past that had shaped such a heartbreaking future.

CHAPTER TWO

1830 England

“Father, you cannot disown me and banish me to the Americas. I am your son!” Bryan Lankford, third son to the Earl of Lankford, shook his head and stared disbelievingly at his father.

“You are my third son. I have four others, two older and two younger. None of them are as troublesome as are you. Their existence and your behavior make it quite simple for me to do this to you.”

Bryan ignored the shock and panic his father’s words threatened to break loose within him. He forced himself to relax–to slouch nonchalantly against the wooden door to the stall closest to him as he beamed the Bryan Lankford smile at the Earl, that disarmingly handsome grin that women found irresistible and made them want to seduce him, and men found charming and made them want to be like him.

The Earl’s dark, unchanging expression said that he was well aware of the Bryan Lankford smile—and utterly unaffected by it.

“My decision is final, boy. Do not disgrace yourself further by unsuitable begging.”

“Begging!” Bryan felt familiar anger stir. Why must his father always belittle him? He’d never begged for anything in his life—he certainly was not going to start now, no matter the consequences. “I do not beg you, Father. I simply am trying to reason with you.”

“Reason? Again you cause an embarrassment for me because of your temper and your sword, and you ask me to reason with you?”

“Father, it was only a small altercation, and with a Scotsman! I did not even kill him. In actuality I wounded his vanity more than his body.” Bryan attempted a chuckle, but the sound was cut off by the return of the cough that had been plaguing him all that day, only this time it was followed by a wave of weakness. He was so distracted by the betrayal of his body that he put up no resistance at all when his father suddenly closed the distance between them and with one hand fisted the cravat at Bryan’s throat, ramming him against the wall of the stable with such force that the little breath left in his body whooshed from him. With his other hand the Earl knocked the still-bloody sword from Bryan’s failing grip.