Dragons and Princes - [COMPLETE]

20. Patreos

When Patreos returned, he was alarmed by the unusually grave faces that greeted him. There was a certain foreboding that chilled him. Something was wrong. Even Patre sensed it. And there was the faintest scent of Fenrir within the Den. Fenrir couldn’t be here, he thought, panicking.

Only when he came at Faeana’s father’s call did he realize something was more than wrong. Faeana hadn’t summoned him even though she was queen now. Why hadn’t she been the one who’d sent for him?

When he entered the throne room, the smell of a Fenrir assaulted his nose, and he moved to draw his sword. A sight that turned his gut inside-out greeted him. Attendants were scurrying to and fro near the thrones. He could not see through them, but he heard Faeana’s cry and was blasted by a tendril of pain unlike anything he had ever felt from another Freyja. It burned the floor and knocked several Freyja to their knees, including Lord Eiran Dagur, who staggered, being pulled back forcefully by three of the attendants. His frey cat Eir was unconscious. Lord Dagur had lost his reserve and was fighting to get back to his daughter’s side, shouting insulting curses at someone Patreos couldn’t see among the attendants circling the thrones. The former king was weeping openly, hatred blazing in his icy eyes.

From among the crowd, he heard a voice that set a cold into his bones, "Get him out of here before I kill him for doing this to her." On instinct, he drew his sword.

"You will not order me from my daughter’s side, you pretentious, backbiting Fenrir! I will not bow to you just because you married my daughter!!!" A pulse reverberated through Patreos’s being, stopping him upon the next step, and his grip wavered on the hilt of his sword. "I would rather another ten thousand years of this war than let you touch her with your filthy, dog-blood hands!!!"

"You sent your daughter into the storm!!!" Marquis’s voice had risen above Lord Dagur’s. "You wounded her heart so deeply she cannot rise!!!"

The sword quivered and fell, and Patreos saw his own war cat stagger before him. He felt his reserve turn to stone, strengthening Patre, but it was not enough to steady the Freyja captain where he stood. This was not happening. This was not real.

His feet carried him toward the group that hid the contemptible scoundrel who’d assaulted Faeana in front of him over a month ago, and three of the attendants flinched away from the Fenrir’s rage. Patreos couldn’t take another step. The silver ring upon Faeana’s hand told him the mortifying truth. She’d sent Patreos away, too much of a coward to tell him she was going to take the Fenrir Keisere as her husband and leave Patreos shunned and alone. Though he knew why she’d done it instantly, the betrayal struck him more deeply than losing his sister or being sent from his father all those years ago when he was a child. It struck him more deeply than when he’d learned his father had been poisoned by the Ajatar. It hurt more deeply than anything he’d ever felt, for he had felt more deeply for Faeana than any other in his existence.

Upon the Keisere’s head was the silver Freyja crown, and his dark hair was even braided like a Freyja male’s upon the right side. Three braids, the sign of royalty. Three Freyja braids more than the Fenrir deserved because he wasn’t even Freyja.

"Faeana, please wake up!" Marquis’s voice shook with panic, confusing Patreos. Everything he saw was so wrong that he was disoriented by it. The Keisere’s fear of Faeana’s turning breken, her father’s broken reserve and unhinged rage–

Her father being dragged back.

It was wrong, like a broken mirror being pieced together incorrectly.

The Keisere’s expression was torn between fear and tenderness as he held her ever so gently within his arms, cradling her like an injured child. He clutched at his chest, gasping, nearly dropping her when another tendril of her pain made her convulse as it struck everyone and everything around her.

"If you hadn’t tricked her into agreeing to marry you with your false promises of peace," Lord Eiran Dagur shouted, "I would not have had to do what I’ve done!"

"It was the most logical way we could end the war without bloodshed!" Marquis shouted back, holding Faeana closer. "I said get him out of here!!! As your king, I command you to take him from this room! For the love of your queen, take him, so that Faeana is not endangered farther by his rage, or his hate of me!"

With that, the guards escorted Eiran Dagur from the room, and other Freyja and their war cats carefully removed his unconscious war cat Eir. Should Eir stir, there would more than likely be bloodshed.

Faeana convulsed again, and her war cat knelt weakly when the queen’s head fell back. "Faeana!" Marquis gasped, lifting her head to rest upon his arm. Her eyes were open, but they were brilliantly lit within, a storm of chaos and rage and pain, a storm with a fading calm. "Faeana, I need you, don’t you dare let go, not when your people and mine need you to live. I won’t watch our people tear each other apart!!! I will not watch you die in my arms as Eirik died in yours!!! Wake up!!"

"We can’t reach her," one of the attendants whispered.

"Her father can rot in dragon shit for this!" Marquis cried. "I don’t want him anywhere near her again, not after he broke her heart for his hate of me–" His voice quivered, and he spat another stream of curses that made the Freyja about them flinch.

Patreos stopped before them, and the attendants moved when they realized who he was. "Captain–"

Marquis looked up, his red eyes filled with hate as he drew a bone-handled dagger and threw it at Patreos’s feet. "If she dies, you might as well slit my throat for me, because what we did will be for naught, and I have no desire to watch the bloodshed continue. Until then, I need your help to bring her back."

It hadn’t been her father who’d summoned him, Patreos realized. When the messenger had told him the king had summoned him, he had thought they’d forgotten Eiran Dagur’s title was no longer King, but Lord. He realized with disgust that by king, they had meant Marquis Morganthe. Faeana had married Marquis to stop the war. It was as brilliant as it was abhorrent. The two were utterly mad, to have made such a desperate move– they were willing to go to any length to stop the bloodshed.

Faeana had given her hand to the enemy . . .

Hate bloomed deep within him, but he shoved it aside for his love of Faeana. He would not abandon her, not now, when she needed him the most. "I will do what I can."