The Dragons of Summer Read online

  The Dragons of Summer

  An Uncharted Realms Novella

  by

  Jeffe Kennedy

  As unofficial consort to the High Queen, former mercenary Harlan Konyngrr faces a challenge worse than looming war and fearsome dragons. His long-held secrets threaten what he loves most—and he must make a choice between vows to two women.

  Takes place after The Arrows of the Heart

  Dedication

  To everyone who loves Ursula and Harlan,

  and asked for more.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my Fabulous Assistant Carien, who suggested several ideas that made this novella come to life—and who caught some egregious typos.

  Thanks to Marcella Burnard and Jim Sorenson who provided very helpful feedback on the story and made it ever so much better.

  So much love and appreciation to Rebecca Cremonese, for crying at all the right parts, and for being a sap in exactly the perfect way.

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer M. Kennedy

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.

  Thank you for reading!

  Credits

  Line and Copy Editor: Rebecca Cremonese

  Cover: ravven.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Titles by Jeffe Kennedy

  About Jeffe Kennedy

  ~ 1 ~

  “Inspecting the defenses yet again?”

  Ursula’s question startled me, as I’d been so deep in thought I’d missed her approach. From my vantage on the walls of Castle Ordnung, I’d been contemplating the lush, green, and apparently peaceful countryside. The early onset of summer seemed to please the locals. For farmers and merchants, the fair weather brought welcome warmth for crops and dry roads for trade.

  For a warrior like me, dry roads meant enemy forces could reach the seat of the Thirteen Kingdoms all that much more easily—and fair weather only made it easier to pillage freely and set fire to the rest.

  I didn’t let Ursula see she’d surprised me—or the dark direction of my thoughts. As High Queen of the Thirteen Kingdoms, she had enough to think about. “It pays to be thorough,” I told her, making sure I looked relaxed.

  “And here you’re always nattering at me to delegate. Don’t you have lieutenants to handle this?” she asked in an arch tone, her gaze as piercing as a hawk’s. Sometimes her eyes are steely, like the sword she’d slept with when I met her, and other times they soften to gray with hints of blue, like the fog that rises out of the valleys of the Wild Lands in the mountains beyond Ordnung.

  I’ve never told her that, as she’d be embarrassed—and would likely try to hide that softness from me. My Essla—as her sisters called her, a soft, intimate nickname I loved—learned long ago to compensate for her early wounds with tensile strength and hardening her heart.

  Her tough resilience only added to Ursula’s unique beauty. The rising sun set her deep auburn hair on fire, gilding her high cheekbones and that strong nose I’d set with my own hands after her father broke it. Dressed for court—though she had yet to don her crown—she wore a streamlined and high-necked gown of black velvet. A bodice of worked silver hugged her waist and flared over her elegant breasts, finishing with stylized caps at the shoulders. One of her mother’s rubies glittered at the low dip in the center, where a pendant might rest on another woman.

  Overall, the bodice gave the impression of armor, and Ursula’s sheathed sword hung from the belt incorporated into the metalwork, the ruby in its hilt a perfect match to the one at her breast. The split skirt of the gown parted to reveal narrow silver leggings and high black leather boots beneath, allowing Ursula the freedom of movement she craved, even though she’d be waging battles of wits in the day ahead, not of arms.

  We’d only returned a few weeks back, to fortify Ordnung and for Ursula to direct war strategy from the seat of the High Throne. To Ursula’s vocal and caustic dismay, she had also returned to a veritably endless supply of gowns appropriate for court. The dressmaker, Denise, and her army of seamstresses had been hard at work during our journeys, creating formal garb so well designed for Ursula that she couldn’t find fault with them, beyond that they weren’t her preferred fighting leathers. With no excuses to do otherwise, Ursula had conceded that particular battle and looked more often the High Queen these days than road-worn warrior princess.

  She always looked beautiful to me, so unlike the meek, submissive, and gentle-voiced women of my homeland. In fact, in all my travels, I’d never met another woman like my Essla, another lover of the sword, and as determined as I to wield it for justice.

  Just as the first time I’d laid eyes on Ursula, my heart swelled in my chest, filled with the undying love I’d sworn to her service. I’d never regret that I’d given up loyalty and all connection to the blighted homeland of my birth when I’d sworn the Elskastholrr to Ursula. That vow—which must be freely given and never requested—had become my compass and foundation.

  But I did sometimes wonder how much of the love I felt for her grew from the tattered shreds of guilt and remorse where the love for my sister Jenna had once lived in my heart—and had been ripped away when she disappeared.

  In countless small ways, Ursula reminded me of Jenna, whom I’d never forgotten, though I had finally stopped searching for her. I’d kept her existence and fate my personal secret all these years, locked in a box in my heart, where no one could ever open it.

  Where the wounds inflicted by the cruel world had nearly killed Jenna before our insane escape attempt, they’d honed Ursula into a weapon. Jenna had possessed no fighting skills, no knowledge of the world outside the Imperial seraglio. Both princesses and heirs to powerful parents, Jenna and Ursula could not be more different.

  Perhaps Jenna had survived to go on and find something of Ursula’s ferocity. Probably that was a foolish and idealistic hope. Jenna was no doubt dead. Yet I couldn’t help wishing otherwise.

  “Harlan?” Ursula asked, when I failed to reply to her question. She tipped her head, studying me with a too-knowing gaze, a wealth of other questions crowding her simple asking of my name.

  I shook my head, willing the old memories, the miasma of nostalgia—and dread of the future—to go back to the shadows where they belonged. She’d asked me about delegating, a rich question coming from her, who thought she had to handle every cursed thing herself.

  “You put me in charge of Ordnung’s defenses,” I reminded her. “And I’m very good at my job. Let me decide what can be delegated and what requires direct supervision.”

  She smiled slightly, more of a thin-lipped grimace than anything, as she stepped up to stare out over the walls and the road to the to
wnship along with me. “It wasn’t a criticism,” she replied mildly. “I’ve received a message from Andi,” she said, seeming to change the subject, though I knew this must be why she’d sought the solace of the walls.

  “Ah. And how is my heart-sister?” The message held bad news, no doubt, as we seemed to have only that variety of messages lately. And, as Queen of the Tala, Andi lived at the heart of the brewing storm.

  Sure enough, Ursula huffed out a sharp, impatient breath, stepping away from me. “Carelessly overextending herself, as usual.”

  “Sounds like someone else I know,” I replied, smiling easily when she glared at me. “I have to point out that you’re supposed to be resting before court, not checking up on Ordnung’s defenses.”

  She narrowed her gaze at me, eyes sharpening. “How do you know I didn’t come up here looking for you?”

  I lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Did you?”

  Giving me that thin-lipped smile, she turned to sweep her gaze over the pastoral scene below us, if one could consider a fully-armed castle with guards at high alert ‘pastoral.’ “I thought you’d be drilling with the guard,” she admitted. She was scrupulous about being honest with me, determined to never again cross lines she thought had nearly destroyed our relationship before. Though I’d explained countless times that nothing could damage my love for her, the rejected and abandoned child who still lived in Ursula’s heart would never believe it. All I could do was give her that love without reserve or qualification.

  “And before you get annoyed with me,” she said, bristling at my expression, “I wasn’t checking up on the defenses so much as…” she trailed off, searching for the right words.

  “Reassuring yourself that all is as it seems?” I suggested, and held out an arm for her, so she’d lean against me for a bit. She gave me a relieved smile, real affection in it, coming to me with at least that much trust.

  “You always understand me—often before I understand myself.” She snuggled against me, letting out a long breath. “I hate that the practitioners of Deyrr can mess with our minds. I’m more comfortable with an enemy I can predict. And one I can skewer with my sword.”

  I hugged her close, her slim form and long bones nearly delicate, though I knew better than most how fast she could strike when provoked, and how lethally. “I do understand—and agree,” I told her.

  She tipped her head against my cheek, so I kissed her temple, giving her the comfort she’d never ask for, her fiery hair always surprising me with its silky texture. It had grown longer since I’d met her. Tamed for court by her ladies, it lay in sleek waves and ended in wisps down her neck.

  “Andi reports that the Tala are gathered and the navy assembled,” she returned to her point. “Now that Karyn and Zyr have recovered somewhat from their ordeal, Kiraka has been interrogating them about what they found.”

  I grunted in sympathy. Kiraka was an old dragon—literally—and as cantankerous as they came.

  “It’s bad.” Ursula said it so softly I almost didn’t hear. “Andi expects an attack on Annfwn at any time.”

  “But the magic barrier is still holding, yes? The Dasnarian navy is still on the other side.”

  “At last report that seems to be the case, but the ships are massing there as if they expect that to change and soon.”

  I held her, glad she’d come to me. “We have a lot of might on our side, too. We’ve done everything we can to prepare.”

  “I know.”

  She did. We’d both known most of this. The waiting was what wore on us. She shook herself and stood straight. “Andi warned me to expect attack here. The Deyrr sleepers might have infiltrated deep into all the Thirteen Kingdoms. They’re waiting to spring some sort of trap on us all, or they would’ve attacked already.”

  “If they do we’ll fight back. We’re ready for them—and not so easy to surprise.”

  With a brief smile, she turned back to gaze over her realm. “I wish I could be so sure. Of everything.”

  Something about the way she said that—some intuition perhaps—sent a brush of alarm that made my short hairs prickle. Something else was on her mind, and it wasn’t good.

  ~ 2 ~

  “It all looks so peaceful,” she said, gazing out, still skirting the heart of the topic. “So… normal. Like I recall it being back in the day, in Uorsin’s early years.” She waved a hand to disperse the shades of all that had happened later in the tyrant’s rule.

  We didn’t talk much about her father, the late High King Uorsin, and for good reasons. In fact, it said something that she’d mentioned him voluntarily at all. Just speaking his name put unhappy lines around her mouth, signs that the emotional wounds he’d given her had cracked open to seep pus and old blood. She liked to see herself as whole and healed. I knew her better than that.

  I set a hand on the small of her back. Through the flexible silver bodice, Ursula’s lean and strong muscles were as tight as I’d anticipated. My Essla is built like a racehorse, all slender speed and alert readiness—and she’s equally as high strung. She tried to hide the strain of rule from me, the anxiety she felt for her sisters and her realm, pretending she didn’t need me or anyone. Still, she leaned in to my touch. Gratifying, given how long and patiently I’d worked to earn her trust.

  “Things were good then, in the early days?” I asked leadingly, willing to accept this conversation instead of the one that clearly weighed on her.

  She frowned slightly, watching something on the road. I followed the line of her attention and found nothing salient, so she must have been seeing images play out in her memories, frowning as she always did when she remembered her father.

  “Maybe I just have the idea things were good because he said so all the time,” Ursula said slowly. “Uorsin was a great one for singing his own praises. But that’s how I remember things, back when Salena was alive, when Andi was still little, and before Ami was born. Abundant and peaceful.”

  “Those were the years right after the Great War ended,” I noted.

  She huffed a sigh of acknowledgment. “Exactly, which would play in. If nothing else, Uorsin put a stop to the bloodshed and conflict. He built the roads and mandated that everyone use Common Tongue. In those early years, he accomplished a great deal, and most of the kingdoms prospered. People were relatively happy.”

  “People think that war stimulates trade,” I reflected, “when the underlying truth is that the end of war allows trade to rebound.”

  She nodded, her gaze unfocused, attention still on the past. “I’d come up here to the walls sometimes, just to watch the road and all the people living their lives.”

  Their normal lives, she meant and didn’t have to articulate. “You wouldn’t have been ten years old yet,” I observed as neutrally as possible. She so rarely spoke of her childhood that I treaded carefully when she did, even when I wasn’t certain—as I was now—that she was building up to something else entirely.

  “True,” she replied, then fell silent, brooding, so I moved fully behind her, working my fingers into the gaps of her bodice to loosen the knots I could reach. She rolled her shoulders with a murmur of relief, and continued. “Truly, back then I came up here mostly to figure out what Andi saw in it. Even at barely four, she had a knack for slipping away from her nurses. We’d always find her up here or on one of the towers, staring out like she’d lost something.”

  “Was that before she had her bedroom in the tower?”

  Ursula flicked me a wry glance over her shoulder. “Yes. The tower bedroom was a solution to the problem of her forever running off. With the views from the windows, she was at least content to stay in her room and look out from there. That changed, of course, once she discovered horses—and proved remarkably good at evading notice to ride off for hours in unpredictable directions. If we’d known then that we were dealing with a budding sorceress, we might’ve done things differently, but Salena would’ve been the one to know that and…” she shrugged.

  “I might po
int out that you were but a girl yourself and bore no responsibility for what your mother and father should’ve handled, as parents and as king and queen.”

  “There you would be wrong. Taking care of Andi and Ami was always my responsibility, whether they liked it or not. And the Thirteen are my responsibility.” Her face hardened, and she turned to face me. “You’re worried about something. That’s why you keep coming up here. But not about war. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised at what she noticed. Even apparently and thoroughly preoccupied with matters of court and defense, Ursula missed very little. “This is simply a good place to think,” I hedged, hoping that might be enough to deflect her.

  She leaned back against the parapet, facing me with crossed arms. “You think and think, yet you never tell me what plagues your thoughts. Don’t you think it’s about time you changed that?”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” I told her, a weak defense, but I didn’t have a better one.

  She laughed, short and without humor. “First, that’s not true. Second, I do worry because I love you, and I’m reliably informed that it’s not only natural to worry about the people we love, it’s usually expected. Third, that reply was an evasion.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. I might’ve left the Imperial Palace of Dasnaria far behind in my misbegotten past, but I’d been around plenty of rulers in a variety of lands and I knew how to handle an irritated monarch. More, I knew Ursula. Better than I knew my own heart. “You have plenty on your mind and I can handle myself.”

  “Another evasion,” she shot back. Debating with Ursula often felt the same as sparring with her, though it was rarely as enjoyable since the odds of getting my hands on her were much lower in a debate.