Indebted

14

The king glowered down at his descendant. His dragon only letting him know which of his lineages the man was from. Magnus felt his dragon had grown more disagreeable of late. "You have chosen a slave for your mate?" Magnus growled. His bastard lines had flourished in the gutters. The annoyance Magnus felt clear to all in the room. Only most would assume the annoyance was that another low born bastard was breezing into court to cause a scene.

Only Magnus was actually annoyed because of his own dragon. The beast would not tell or share with Magnus anything of note. Only a single utterance of 'Beast Born' given as an answer for if this latest royal bastard was useful or not. 

Unable to reveal to anyone the truth of the growing rift between himself and his beast. Magnus carried on as though his word was law and infallible. Pretending that he knew exactly who and what this young man was. Beast born meant that the man could shift, could be anything from a dragon, to a hyena these days. 

Magnus needed more true born dragons. His ranks were growing thin. Trueborn dragons required love and fate matches to bloom. But the court ranks needed marriages for political gain. A constant, struggle to balance the two opposing needs. There were too many low born, useless bastards as it was in the family.

The gnome moved to step behind the much larger man who had come to join the unexpected spectacle. Esti also wanted to hide, but confined and chained to the floor she was unable to move. She wasn't brave enough to even try and look around. Esti did not know who this lord was, was fairly certain he was not her fated mate. Though without a beast of her own to confirm she did not know for certain. Maybe he was telling the truth, it was madness to claim a slave during a trial that should have ended in an execution.

"The fates have chosen for me." Atticus had been raised with humans, the words he had been coached to say felt strange in his mouth. He tried to say them exactly as Myrrh and Sustaince had instructed. Having been the only dragon he knew of in the city where he had lived with his mother, Atticus was not accustomed to knowing he was not the strongest or most powerful in a room. The king could crush him in a second. Until Atticus heard his own dragon say only the dragon was strong, the king as a man was weak. The two had fallen out of sync.

Magnus's eyes narrowed, almost like he had overheard the slanderous appraisal of Atticus's dragon. Instead Magnus was studying how the man had presented himself. The sigil on the shoulder marked him as a descendant of Isadora, Magnus's first unsanctioned lover. The same gentle wavy texture of her hair still apparent in a many times removed grandchild. Rank wise, of little import, regardless of how fondly Magnus still thought of his first love. Magnus wasn't even certain he had ever met this particular descendant before. There was nothing remarkable about him as far as Magnus without his dragon could discern.

Myrrh had warned Atticus and his dragon, be as unimpressive as possible, otherwise Magnus would never let Atticus free again. Magnus decided that this distant spawn of his loins was of no import, and would soon depart. All the better if this waste of royal blood took the problem that Magnus considered Estella to be with him. Assuming that the near total silence from his dragon was from complete disinterest, Magnus was eager to end this farce of a court session and forget it.

With a wave of his hands, a soldier moved to undo Esti's chains. "I decree this woman free." The silver band around Esti's throat undid itself at the king's words, falling to the floor. A guard picked it up to return it to the slave master for reuse. Waste no resource.

A guard undid the chains that held Esti to the floor. "Claim the wench, as a gift in memory of your great grandmother her debts are absolved. She is your problem now." Esti was in complete shock. The slave band. Her debts and fines were gone. The physical and existensial pressure that had marked her return to court both lifted at once. She was going to be mated to this stranger. She wasn't going to die today. Esti's mind was reeling and spinning out of control. Everything had changed. She could cross the magical border without the band around her neck. She could run. Too many thoughts at once.