The Dragons of Nova (Loom Saga #2)(73)

“What is also apparent is that you are letting her.” Coletta regarded him with eyes the same color as the drink she consumed. Eyes that stripped him bare. Eyes that judged him even more harshly than he judged himself.

“I have not—”

“You are the Dono.” When Coletta wished to be heard, none would interrupt her. None would sway her. She was not a flashy weapon like most Dragons, and was all the more deadly for it. “You only do what you wish.”

“You would not have had me sit in the place Petra prepared at the Court.”

“I would not have had Petra organize the Court at all.”

He loved and hated his mate all the more when she was right.

“You did not consult me before this whole affair and you took a half measure on the matter, Yveun,” Coletta admonished. “You wanted to make a statement by holding the Court on Ruana. But you merely gave Petra the opportunity to show Nova what a Cobalt Court would look like. The only thing Dono about you today was the title servants called you as they fattened you on Xin food and drink while you sat out of sight and out of mind of the people.”

His claws strained against his fingers from the tension he put them under. Still Coletta sat, and sipped, and spoke.

“You sent a half-trained ‘Master Rider’ into the fray, who was made into an even larger fool than you by an Anh.” She straightened slightly. “I gave you Leona. I instructed you to nurse her in every way a man can. You had one of the greatest tools of our past forty years of work, and you wasted her.”

“There is something deeper here.” Yveun knew there must be. He would not let so much power slip through his hands otherwise. There was a variable he was still missing. “The Chimera on Loom—”

“You would blame your shortcomings on a Chimera.” Coletta stood, walking to the balcony. “That is the only thing I could imagine to be worse than blaming them on Petra.”

Yveun watched as the small-framed Dragon ventured out into the night. She possessed all the grace of a Dono. But Coletta had never desired the title. She couldn’t win it by normal measures, so it had suited her better to attach herself to him. They needed each other in different ways.

“It is only through half measures that these things are allowed to happen.” She raised her wine to her lips again, savoring the taste. “And if they continue, you will lose everything, Yveun.”

She didn’t say “we” or “House Rok”. The statement was so pointed, it was nearly a threat. She wanted him to be made aware that the House would live without him. She would live without him.

He stood to lose the most.

Yveun felt like a man before a god as he approached Coletta. She stood, washed in night, like the Divine Patron under which she was born—Lady Soph, the Destroyer. He hated admitting he had erred. But if he was to swallow his pride, he would do it before Coletta and no one else. He would drink the bitter poison of her words, to save himself from anything else she might concoct.

“Did you know that the most deadly flowers are oftentimes the most delicate?” Her tone had shifted. It had taken a softer note. There was danger in the quiet.

“I would believe it.”

“They are beautiful, Soph Pearls, the most delicate of all. When the tiny white flowers finally lose all their petals, the smallest fruit forms. And in this is a toxin that can slay even a Dragon with some magic in their gut.”

She smiled, revealing her gray, abused gums. Worn from years of her work, from years of experimenting with flavors. From working up tolerances and immunities. From breaking down her body out of reverence for her Lady. From the belief that to create, one must first destroy.

Coletta held out the glass she had been holding. The wine sloshed, airing with the very darkness itself. The stem of the glass dripped between her fingertips like a moonbeam.

Yveun met her eyes. Coletta changed nothing in her stance. She was as still as silence personified. As ever-present as death itself.

He reached for the glass, showing no fear. He took it from her fingers and he drank. The alcohol burned lightly, cutting the sweetness of the wine. It was a jam profile, sweetened with fruit and aged in light wood. He savored the flavors, holding them on his palette, searching for anything he might have missed, before swallowing.

“Do you like it?” Coletta asked.

“It is the same wine we drank today,” he observed.

“It is,” she affirmed. Yveun waited patiently for her to impart the importance of having him try something he’d consumed all day. He waited for the spark of magic of his stomach churning against poison. “This is a specialty for this side of Ruana, a favorite among House Xin. So loved that it does not even make shipments out of this corner of Nova.”

“I was not aware.”

“I know you were not.” Coletta shot him a glare from the corners of her eyes, conveying her lack of appreciation for his interruption. If such a look had come from anyone else, Yveun would have killed them on the spot. “Because you have become drunk on power, and are operating under half measures.”

Something indeed churned in his gut, but it wasn’t poison. No, anger at the truth his life-mate was lying before him tore at his insides. He had become drunk on power, on the idea that he was an invincible force and his rule was as inevitable as the sun rising. And tonight, that would change. There was something already brewing in the air.