48. Special Delivery
Mani has a heart-to-heart with his kidnapper...
The Queen’s Aerie is a MMF fantasy romance (romantic fantasy?) in 57 parts that I serialized throughout 2023/2024! If you are just now joining the story, you can catch up by starting here. Full story ToC here.
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Previously: Rodgardae had to 'fess up...
Mani woke up slowly, but kept his eyes closed to ward off the pain in his face. He tried to remember going to bed, but he couldn’t, and wondered if somehow Ro had carried him to bed as he had done plenty of times in the past.
Yet something seemed wrong and was nagging at his sleepy consciousness, and not just how much his face hurt. He gently touched his cheek with the tips of his fingers and hissed at the pain radiating out. He forced himself to open his eyes, because there was something definitely not right about his face feeling like it’d been hit with a brick. He looked up at a cheaply made wooden ceiling with bare rafters and plain wooden planks. As he slowly reached full consciousness, he realized that there was a slight swaying motion under him. Slowly, he shifted his feet over the cot he was on and sat up. Looking around, it was a very nondescript little cabin, with a table and a couple of unadorned chairs. It was dark except for where there were wide but narrow windows high up along the wall, just under the rafters, which were obviously less for light than for letting air flow through.
He had no idea where he was, and no idea how he got there.
He sat there blinking through the pain and the confusion for a while. He had no idea how much time actually passed before his brain finally clicked over like a watch starting up after being frozen for several minutes, and he remembered Consort ver Kleelan walking into the tent where Mani had been watching over Ro. He remembered his confusion and then, with startling clarity, he remembered Consort ver Kleelan punching him in the face. He didn’t remember anything after that.
It was hard to believe that he had been kidnapped by the nearly feral dragon, but it did seem to be what had happened. His memory was a little foggy in places, but he did remember clearly the blanket that Consort ver Kleelan had laid out on the ground and realized as he looked down at the bed that it was the same blanket he had been wrapped up in on the cot.
He stood up very slowly, gingerly testing out his feet and legs and leaning over to grab the back of one of the chairs for stability. The floor was definitely shifting a little, but Mani had been on enough ships to know that the motion wasn’t quite right. It felt more like a floating dock then a ship on the move. Given that there were no windows except for the high narrow ledges, he had no way to tell exactly what the situation was. As he stood there he thought about maybe trying to stand on one of the chairs and look out through the windows that were barely more than slits, but he thought, given the circumstances, it might not be a good idea to risk life and limb that much just yet. He could wait.
He walked around the room a few times just to get his blood flowing and then finally tried the door that was the only way in or out, but was unsurprised to find it locked. With a sigh he went back to one of the chairs and sat down. He tried to think about what he might be able to do, although his options were distressingly limited.
Fortunately, as if notified that he was up and around – which for all he knew could be the case; if they had guards outside the little cabin he was in, then they would’ve heard him moving around – the door rattled as it was being unlocked and a board being slid away. Mani stood up just as it opened to reveal, unsurprisingly, Consort ver Kleelan.
The dragon walked into the room looking mostly the same as he had when he kidnapped Mani, although Mani thought that he looked a bit more stressed than he had ever seen him before. Consort ver Kleelan usually looked calm and unconcerned about most things, but now the skin around his eyes was tight and he held himself with a certain fragility that Mani took as a warning sign of the situation that they were in. Whatever was going on, Consort ver Kleelan did not feel like he was in control of it, and if that was the case, Mani would be on his best behavior.
“I’m glad to see that you are awake,” Consort ver Kleelan said, inspecting his face but standing by the door and not moving into the room very far, which was probably wise of him. Mani did have half a mind to just attack him, even if it would be a losing battle. It was the principle of the thing. Kidnapping was not a very gentlemanly thing to do to anyone.
“Yes I’m awake, and I’m sitting here, very confused about what is happening. Where the hell am I?”
Consort ver Kleelan tipped his head curiously. “You don’t remember our conversation?”
Mani stopped himself from shaking his head and paused to think back over what he did remember. Then he looked up at Consort ver Kleelan in surprise. “You literally kidnapped me and brought me out to the urshvalkin? Are you telling me that outside that door is Lady Agadart and the emperor?” It seemed too absurd to humor the idea.
Consort ver Kleelan smiled. “Actually, yes they are. Both of them. The emperor is wounded and in no position to fight off Agadart or make a dive for the water, at least not yet. Not that he would live long if he did, because flying through water is much different than flying through the air, and anyway his blood would attract every shark within a hundred kilometers. So he’s remaining motionless as possible, which is the first smart thing he’s done in this whole damn war.”
Mani just looked up at him, his mouth ajar.
ver Kleelan walked over and smoothly sat down in one of the chairs. He waved at Mani to take the other seat across from him. Mani carefully walked back to the table, never taking his eyes off of ver Kleelan as he did so, and then slowly sat down. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on or am I supposed to guess?”
“I think you already know most of it. Agadart fought the emperor and when she finally got the upper hand against him, the closest landing site for her was this urshvalkin. I took it upon myself to deliver one of her mates to her, as I saw that she is bordering on going feral, as I explained to you back at the medical camp.” He shrugged, crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands around that knee, sitting there like a schoolmarm lecturing a class of children. “You were the more convenient one to carry.”
“Yes, I got that much. But you have not explained how you could possibly know if she was verging on going feral, since last time I checked, she has never met you before…at least not since she was a very young child.” Mani folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Consort ver Kleelan. “You have never struck me as a man who cared about the politics.”
ver Kleelan laughed. “Admittedly I don’t care a lot. But the queen of Watt murdering the emperor of Iskaryyva would incur major repercussions far beyond the borders of the two countries themselves. Furthermore, I don’t think a new queen, and certainly not the first queen that Watt has had in eight hundred years, needs to be dealing with the political nightmare that would result of her actions if she did that. She is my niece, and as I have said, she is my primary concern. I admit I planned to grab her out from under the emperor’s hold, but obviously those plans went to waste — she was too closely guarded for too long, and then she manifested. If I can get her back to Watt without any further international incidences, such as killing the emperor in cold blood, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“How considerate of you.” Mani leaned back in the chair a little bit, still studying the strange man across from him. “I do see the holes in everything that you are telling me, all the things that you are leaving out, but the most important one is why you think that I can be of any assistance with helping her when she’s feral. The only people that can ground a dragon who is going feral is their mate, their guardian. I can ground Ro, although I’ve never needed to. He could ground Agadart, if he were here. But he’s not here so I’m not sure what you think I can do.”
Consort ver Kleelan stared at him for a few moments. “Tell you what, instead of me trying to convince you of anything that you don’t plan on believing anyway, let’s go out and talk to Agadart directly.”
Mani shook his head. “If she’s that close to feral it would be too dangerous for me to go out there.”
“Then I suppose you’re just going to have to trust me,” Consort ver Kleelan said, standing up, grabbing Mani’s jacket, and hauling him out of the chair and across the room to the door before Mani could even try to fight him off. Not that he would get far fighting such an old and experienced dragon as Consort ver Kleelan. He dug in his heels as a token resistance but there wasn’t much more he could do as Consort ver Kleelan threw open the door and physically tossed Mani out onto the deck. He tripped and fell down, catching himself on his hands and knees. He started to get up but stopped.
Above him, looking down at him with emerald green eyes shot through with gold, was the most beautiful dragon he’d ever seen.
