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To be King was to be ruthless. To be ruthless was to be cruel. To be cruel was to be a killer. To give the orders or the commands that would shape the world. That would make other empires fall and beg for mercy. Ones that would make the banner of his people proud.
All of these lessons, George had known since he was a Prince. He’d known them growing up and he’d watched his parents fighting through the wars. Their nation settled in the middle of a nest of ten other Kingdoms. They were a center for travel and trade and their ports held access for some of the strongest lines and docks to do so. Other nations behind them were landlocked. They needed agreements to get access and all of it could be cut off with the sign of a single sheet of paper.
George was seven when he became King. Seven when the crown weighed heavy on his head and the cloak sat like a mountain over his shoulders. They perched him on the throne and asked questions of him and he looked to his advisors for help.
For ten years he looked to them for help and guidance. For years he’d needed them for their aid because he didn’t know how to rule and lead a country for himself. His parents were meant to teach him but he had never gotten the chance to study under them. His advisors put their advice where they thought they could.
For ten years George listened to their every lesson. He treated them as if they held the answers to everything he had been looking for and then he deviated. He planned. He understood how wrong it was.
His Kingship was in name and name alone until he came of age.
Turning twenty and revoking the rights of many of the advisors that had raised him. His reputation from the beginning became one of cruelty and hate and anger. The rumors whispered that he had lost his mind from the death of his parents at such a young age. Rumors that said he was deluded by story books in the palace library where he grew himself in the wake of grief.
George did not care for rumors.
He cared that his advisors had been intentionally baiting him into starting more and more wars until there was not a single border of peace around them. His people were starving and angry and tired. Their soldiers were bleeding and exhausted and he had no supply to properly aid them. His people were ailing and as King, George could not look out for them. He could not conceded the wars without backlash coming stronger or a usurption hanging over his head. His paths were limited to the wants of the people but he had to be clever for any act that he did.
He’d learned to watch, to listen, over the years. He’d learned that over half of his knights were not loyal to him. They were acting more as slobs and high ranked sell swords than soldiers that had devoted themselves to a code of honor. His advisors and court wanted him dead. George had learned early how to taste the different types of poisons that would be slipped into his food and drink. The list of people he could trust came down to two cooks and a palace guard he promoted to being his general. He got to eat food that wasn’t poisoned and have his missives properly guarded and protected, the three of them got higher paid than any of the others and the ear of the King.
He would consider them his friends if he didn’t know that friends meant nothing. Not to a man like him. Not someone in his position.
He needed his work to be done on the other Kingdoms. He needed to know exactly what kind of threat he was facing from each of his enemies and he needed to know where they all stood at his borders. He needed to know where the struggles of his people fully lay and he couldn’t get to them himself. He couldn’t send one of his three to leave the palace and look for it for him. He couldn’t do anything.
The moment rumors reached him of one of his enemies having dragons as part of their military, George knew he was out of time.
He had sent his guard to investigate the crime circles running amok through his Kingdom. He wanted to know the name of every mercenary, ever off market trader, every dealer in illegal goods he could know about. Even going so far as to go undercover himself in the night and hide that he was the King that had failed his throne for the last eighteen years. All of his reports matched his guard’s.
A mercenary by the name of The Demon. A man that no one had ever seen beyond a flash of his mask. A man that left destruction in his wake so immense that rumors believed he truly was a demon and not even a human at all. That he was simply taking deals with people to take their souls as part of his payment. Contacting him was rumored nearly impossible unless the price was good enough for the man.
George sent out his request. The bag of gems and gold heavy at his hip and his sword strung close on his second.
He waited in the cover of night. Alone in the middle of the woods and not even the three he trusted knew where he was or what he was doing. They needed honest answers and he needed them to be able to move about their businesses like nothing was amiss. He needed to be certain that if any of this was caught there would be at least one piece of his plan that would be working.
If the man killed him then so be it.
It hadn’t happened.
George had waited that night until the white mask made its appearance from the shadows of the trees. The man armored in white and black leathers with only daggers resting in sheaths on his thighs. For the destruction he was rumored to cause he didn’t seem to have the arms for it.
He assumed it would be left for when he wasn’t meeting with clients.
He had been wrong about that too.
The contract accepted between them. Navigating each other for hidden meetings in the dark time after time after time. They came to know each other. Neither of them able to speak with someone to witness and neither of them able to feel in their line of work without ending up dead.
He’d asked the man how he fought the way he did. Knowing fully that he was human and knowing the damages he’d done on George’s wish and payment. The Demon had laughed. Happier and still somehow far more twisted than it should have been able to be.
“Pray you never find out, King.”
“I want the truth. Double your next payment if you tell me.”
He’d considered it for a moment. Stilling and turning to face him.
“She won’t be happy.”
“She?”
The crackle of light had changed everything.
George learned that night that his mercenary was not working alone in the way everyone considered him to be. He’d shown up with a white dragon in tow and the moment George had pulled his blade to kill the beast, his Demon had stopped him. Calling down his dragon with a simple whistle and petting along her neck before swinging himself to a saddle on her back.
His armor that matched her scales.
He understood now, why he wore the colors he did.
Months had passed since then. Months that had allowed for George to get his bearings together and sort his thoughts and his feelings. He’d been taught for all of his life that magic and the beasts that came with them were evil things and needed to be rid from the world. He’d been taught that dragons no longer existed in any of the mainlands and that every person with the skill to train them and truly bond to one was dead. That the craft was wiped from the earth and humanity was better for it.
All dragons were feral. All dragons were lethal. All dragons should die.
But he watched his mercenary handle his beast with the ease of friends long attached. He watched how he fed her and George had ridden on the saddle.
A King did not have friends, his demon was dangerously close to something of the sort.
George waited for him now the same way he’d waited for him since that very first time.
It was later than when his mercenary usually arrived but he had been paying attention to the rumors that told of fights breaking out and the confirmations officially coming in that his enemy had dragons in their midst. He’d heard rumors of a fight but he didn’t think much else beyond it.
No one was celebrating the death of the Demon. No one was even mentioning him being there at all. No one seemed to know another dragon even existed. Certainly not one that breathed lightning instead of fire. They were fine, he just had to be patient.
George was not a patient man.
He heard the footfalls before he saw the white armor in the shadows. Knowing how to look for him and ignoring resolutely the way his heart kicked up a beat when they were with each other now in the woods. It was only because he knew how dangerous all of this was. It was only because he knew the risks of them being with one another to talk.
The risk of a dragon being seen.
Hated or not, George was still the King. If anyone caught him in the area with a dragon nearby, Spirit would be hunted and killed and hung on a wall for his honor and there would not be a single word he could say that would be able to stop it.
“Took you long enough.”
“You know exactly why I’m late.”
Something sounded off in his demon’s voice. George stiffened at the thoughts that told him it was an imposter. That he’d been killed and someone else donned his armor to come here. He didn’t see Spirit. He didn’t hear the flap of her wings. If he had walked then there was good reason and most of it pointed to it not being his ally at all.
His hand found the hilt of his sword.
He felt the eyes behind the mask track the movement.
“Really? I’m hurt.”
“Prove you are him.”
“I’m too tired for this.”
“I don’t care.”
His mercenary stilled. Turning away from him and George saw him reach a hand toward the closest tree to lean against it. He was the perfect poise of irritation and annoyance.
“I know you heard about the fight with the dragons over the border.” His voice was low. “Spirit was hit. She’s fine, for the record. We flew out as fast as we could and I’ve been keeping watch on her. I lost track of time, I haven’t slept, I had to walk; you’ll forgive my being late without drawing a sword on me.”
He sounded more like himself the longer he spoke and George allowed himself to breathe and force the tension from his shoulders and stomach. He had lived so long under paranoia and fear that he didn’t know how to live without it. He didn’t know what he would even be without it.
“How was she hurt?”
It was the closest thing to an apology his mouth knew how to form. His mercenary bent more towards the tree.
“Burned. I was able to make a salve for her to heal with. I’ve been tending her. She’s fine, won’t even have a mark from it. The longer healing is from when we were nearly tackled out of the sky.”
An arm wrapped around his middle. His grip on the tree turned harder. George caught it immediately, his spine going straight and stiff.
“You’re hurt.”
“Wow, you’re a genius.”
“Come here.”
He watched his mercenary take a breath, then another, before he pushed himself away from the tree. Turning and taking a step with the normal confidence and bravado he always did before George was watching his leg fold beneath his weight and his body crumple.
He was with him in seconds.
Hands moving to push away the hood and reveal the blonde waves it smothered underneath. The mask was the next thing to come off. He’d seen his face before. It wasn’t the first time nor even the first in a while but he still felt the breath steal from his lungs when he saw him. The freckles that dusted over his cheeks. The tan of his skin that spoke to days without hiding and lines from laughter etched to his skin.
“Dream?”
He avoided using his name. He avoided calling him by it. To use it was to admit that they had a bond to each other. To admit a bond was to admit a weakness. To admit a weakness was to die.
George would not allow either of them to die.
“Dream, wake up.”
His eyes were closed. His lips looked bloodless. A fast check to his neck beneath the leathers padded collar told him he still had a pulse. Strong and steady.
Dazed eyes opened to meet his. He waited, just long enough to give Dream time to look around and see where he was.
“You fainted.”
Dream didn’t answer. Rolling himself to his side and bracing himself with his arms and hands pressed to the ground. He wasn’t steady, even barely lifted as he was. This close he was able to hear the wheeze coming with each of his breaths.
“You need to rest.”
“I know.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Wounded dragon. She matters more.”
George bit his tongue the moment he heard it. He knew that was going to be the excuse he heard but it was still different to confirm it. To know rather than simply guess.
There were dark rings beneath Dream’s eyes. Even when he closed them and tried to let himself breathe instead of move.
“How hurt are you?” Dream didn’t answer. “I believe that you didn’t tend yourself in favor of helping Spirit but I refuse to believe that you’re stupid enough not to at least assess yourself to know what you were and weren’t capable of.”
It was one of the reasons he enjoyed speaking with the other man. The fact that both of them understood how just one wrong mistake would be the difference between life and death. That they had no chance or hope of a recourse if they made an error in their plan.
They understood the weight and importance of secrecy and they understood it for each other better than anyone else could.
“Ribs, bruised and cracked I think. Maybe broken now, I’m not really sure.”
He huffed. Ready to make a remark but he kept going.
“Head, arm. I got thrown out of the saddle. Spirit dived for me. She caught me and got me back up and safe. She wasn’t able to dodge the fire because she was securing me. She was hurt because of me.”
George bit his tongue to hold his words from coming out. He knew that Dream had strong feelings for the cone companion he’d had with him for his entire lie. He knew that he loved his dragon. He knew that he would do anything for her.
“You said she’s resting now?” Dream nodded. “And she knows where you went?”
Another. George sighed.
“Stay here. Sleep. I’ll watch you as a guard. And if you stay in the area or come back tomorrow night I can bring supplies to help you.”
“Why?”
He hated that word from his mouth. He hated the look of Dream’s eyes calculating him up and down. He hated that he knew exactly what answer the man was looking for.
“You’re no use to be dead.”
“Because we’re friends, George.” He breathed a laugh. “It’s because we’re friends.”
He bit his tongue. Dream closed his eyes.
“Just go to sleep.”
He’d deal with the rest later.