Disabled Dragon King's Substitute Bride: Dawn Phoenix Awakening novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Princess
Odalys vanishes the morning of the dragon wedding, so King Osric forces Maelis into her dress, and at Ashfall Gate the Dragon King says she will wish her sister had been caught.
Odalys's bed was empty at dawn, and the wedding dress lay across it.
Maelis stood in the doorway with a tray of cold tea she had brought her sister.
A note sat on the pillow, written in Odalys's looping hand.
"I will not be given to a cripple. Be kind to Father."
Maelis read it twice, then went to find the king.
Osric Hartwen was in the throne room with his steward, shouting at a map.
He did not look up when she came in.
"Your sister has run," Maelis said. "The dragons' escort leaves in an hour."
"I know she has run." He finally turned, and his eyes went over her like a man checking a horse. "You will wear the dress."
"I won't be a stand-in for a bride who left."
"The treaty needs a Hartwen daughter at Ashfall Gate by noon, or the dragons burn the river towns."
"Then send soldiers after her."
"There is no time for soldiers." He stepped closer. "You are the spare, Maelis. This is what spares are for."
Nobody in the room moved.
Maelis had heard that word her whole life, in different clothes.
The spare daughter. The quiet one. The one who looks too much like her mother.
She set the tray down on the king's own map.
"Then I have terms," she said.
The steward coughed. Osric's face went the color of old wine.
"You have no terms."
"My mother's carved comb is locked in your chest. I want it."
"It is a bone trinket."
"Then it costs you nothing.
"And when the dragons ask, I am your daughter by choice, not by order.
"You say so in front of the court."
"Why would I say that?"
"Because if I arrive weeping, they will smell a lie. And they burn towns over lies."
Osric looked at her for a long moment.
She watched him see, for the first time in years, that she was not a child.
"The comb," he said to the steward. "And have the seamstresses take in the dress."
Odalys was taller. The gown still hung off Maelis's shoulders when they laced her into it.
Four maids worked in silence, and none of them met her eyes.
One of them pinned her auburn hair so tight her scalp stung.
"It's the king's order," the maid whispered. "He wants you to look like her."
"I know what he wants."
The comb came last, pressed into her palm by the steward without a word.
It was pale bone, carved with a bird in flight.
It was the only thing she owned that her mother had touched.
She slid it into her hair where no one could take it back.
The ride to Emberhold took the whole morning.
The dragon escort rode in black, silent men with amber eyes, and none of them spoke to her.
Their horses shied from them, as though the animals smelled smoke.
Maelis kept her back straight and her hands folded and her mouth shut.
She was afraid, and she let herself be afraid for exactly one mile.
Then she counted the road signs instead.
By noon the road tipped upward, and the mountains closed around them.
Ashfall Gate stood at the top, two black towers with a stair climbing behind them into smoke.
The clan waited along the walls, hundreds of them, all with the same amber eyes.
Near the gate sat a man in a chair of dark wood.
He did not rise. He did not need to.
Every dragon on that wall looked at him first, and only then at her.
Torvald Ashenreach was larger than she had pictured, even seated.
His shoulders filled the chair. His hands lay flat on its arms, scarred across the knuckles.
Pale marks like scales ran along his temples, and a blanket covered his legs.
His eyes were the color of a forge when the iron is nearly ready.
An escort helped her down from the horse.
She walked to him on her own feet, because she did not trust anyone to hold her up.
He reached out and lifted her veil with one finger.
His face did not change at all.
Then he leaned back and spoke quietly, so only she could hear.
"Your sister had since dawn to run," said Torvald. "Your father gave you one hour."
Maelis kept her chin level.
"I am Maelis Hartwen," she said. "I came on my own terms."
"Did you." Something moved behind his eyes, too quick to name. "Come inside, Maelis. You will wish she had been caught."
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