Seadrake (Dragon Mage Chronicles Book II)

DISCLAIMER

This book is a work of fiction which contains explicit homoerotic content; it is intended for mature readers. Do not read this if it’s not legal for you.

All the characters, locations and events herein are fictional. While elements of existing locations or historical characters or events may be used fictitiously, any resemblance to actual people, places or events is coincidental.

Contents

Dedication

Disclaimer

Prologue

1. The Pursuit of Power

2. The Calm Before the Storm

3. Theros

4. Family Matters

5. Suspicion

6. Anticipation

7. Comfort

8. Rumination

9. Planning

10. Voyage by Sea

11. The Island

12. Revelations

13. Inquisition

14. Deliberation

15. Reflection

16. Indulgence

17. Groundwork

18. A Tale of Dragons

19. The Journey Home

20. Storm Rising

21. Deluge

22. The Eye of the Storm

23. Voyage’s End

Art Gallery

Firedrake (Book III)

The Dragon Mage Chronicles

About the Author

Connect with J.A. Jaken

Other books by this author

PROLOGUE

The sun rose red over the port city of Theros. On a clear day such as this, it was possible to see all the way to the horizon, where the trawlers and merchant ships were outlined like cut-paper props against the backdrop of the sky. The ocean glistened crimson in the rising light like a stained-glass window in a cathedral, swelling in a procession of endless waves to the shoreline where it repeatedly broke into brilliant silver shards against the sand.

A cool breeze rolled in off the sound with the heady, sweet-salt scent of the sea. The boy breathed it in deeply, feeling comforted by the sheer familiarity of it. He sat on his hill at the north end of the city, at the edge of the cliffs where the land met the sky. Gulls cried an insistent harmony in the sky above him, lifting their voices over the cusp of the wind. Dark hair blew against the side of his face, abrading his cheek in a stinging caress. His hand lifted without his conscious volition to push the hair back again, smoothing his fingers over the abused skin to soothe it.

His eyes followed the birds as they dipped and wheeled through their native realm above him. Someday, he promised himself. There was a single-minded intensity in the way he thought the word, as if that one small concept alone held all the weight of love and life within it.

Someday he would leave this place, this place of sea and air, wind and surf. He would leave, no matter how long it took him, and he would excise the ghosts that were even now beginning to set down roots within him. Someday, he would be as free and untouched as the birds that soared through the sanguine sky above the ocean.

Someday, he would fly.

The Pursuit of Power

The heavens were weeping.

Daryn stared down through the tower window with rapt eyes, focusing for a moment on the watery outline of his reflection on the glass, limned by the shimmer of pure, white light that suffused the room. His face looked gaunt in the hazy image, his eyes too dark, his skin too sallow, as if it wasn’t in truth his reflection he was seeing, but a glimpse of what he would look like after his spirit had passed beyond this world.

Fighting against the uncomfortable shiver that moved through him at the thought, he let his gaze deepen, moving past the fragile surface of the glass to peer down into the rain-streaked darkness of the courtyard below. A small procession of riders had just come in through the front gate, and were even now turning over their horses to the troupe of stable boys who appeared as if summoned out of the storm-laden air.

Daryn’s eyes were drawn to the lead figure in the traveling party, a tall, slender figure dressed in draping black. He could see no other details at this distance, but he knew without a doubt who the figure was. He imagined he could feel the waves of anger and tense vigilance that radiated out of the man; after so many years of service, Daryn had become well acquainted with his master’s volatile moods.

With a sigh, he turned away from the window and moved across the tower room toward the stairs that spiraled down from the archway in the far wall. He felt a twinge of uneasiness as he walked; matters in Tempest, he assumed, had not gone according to plan.

An almost palpable anxiety radiated from the main den, broken by the angry, grating sound of a man’s voice shouting at full volume. Daryn sighed with a sense of resignation and quickened his pace. Sometimes when the master lost his temper, he tended to break objects and people alike until his anger was satisfied, leaving it to Daryn to pick up the pieces.

He stepped aside quickly to avoid the servant who came rushing out of the den’s open doorway, an anxious and somewhat harried look on her face. The girl’s arms were full of a voluminous black cloak, her eyes wide and shaken. Daryn reassured her with an encouraging smile as she paused in front of him. The girl bobbed her head gratefully at him and then moved on, some of the tension draining out of her rigid shoulders as she disappeared down the hall.

Kirin was pacing agitatedly in the middle of the sitting room when Daryn arrived. Servants hovered around him with an anxious air, their eyes wide in the glow of bright mage-light that suffused the room. Daryn spared them barely a glance as he entered, but he could sense their fervent relief that he had arrived. The entire room seemed to let out a collective sigh as he stepped forward to face their master’s wrath.

Kirin didn’t seem to register the servants’ presence in the least. They might as well have been invisible, so caught up was he in the force of his fury; whatever had happened at Tempest must have been very bad indeed. Daryn took a deep breath to steel himself and then broke into that fearful regard.

Master, he said.

Kirin’s head snapped around with a barely restrained snarl, his eyes flaring and then narrowing dangerously. Daryn’s heartbeat quickened under that icy stare, but he held his ground resolutely.

Kirin stared at Daryn for another interminable moment, the intensity of his gaze giving him a disturbingly predatory air. Then he appeared to physically shake himself out of his current mood, his gaze sliding toward the fire that flickered with grim determination in the hearth. Out, he commanded in a voice that was almost too quiet to be heard even in the intense stillness of the room.

At once, the servants roused themselves and cleared out of the room, leaving Kirin and Daryn alone together. Daryn frowned when his eyes caught on the thin sliver of red-lined scar that slashed diagonally across the other man’s cheek.

You’ve been hurt, he said quietly.

Kirin raised a finger to his cheek as if he’d only just realized the wound was there. Then he dropped his hand away in a sharp, negating gesture. It’s nothing, he said, sounding rueful. The tension eased out of him in stages with the words. Just a minor cut from a whore’s blade.

It should at least be washed out. Without waiting for permission, Daryn moved to the basin of water that one of the servants had left and dipped the soft cloth he found beside it inside. He gestured toward one of the large chairs in front of the fireplace. Sit down, please, Master.

Kirin hesitated for the barest of moments, then acquiesced to his servant’s pampering. Daryn stayed silent as he raised the cloth to his master’s face. Even more of the tension left Kirin’s frame as the cool water slid over his skin.

I am a fool, Daryn, Kirin said after a moment, his gaze shifting to stare morosely into the fire. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Why didn’t I kill him?

Daryn never looked up from his careful ministrations, sensing that this was a rhetorical question. He felt a small surge of pride that his master would feel the urge to open up to him like this, as he had on so many occasions past. It was difficult at times holding his place at this man’s side, when even at seventeen the other servants still called him boy. They made a number of assumptions about his purpose in their master’s service, but he did not let it bother him. He had heard all the whispers about his youth, about the beguilingly delicate quality of his appearance, about the amber softness of his hair and the way the light caught in his dark eyes, about how even a shadow mage such as Kirin could not be immune to such charms.

The rumors mattered little to Daryn, so long as they did not interfere with his master’s willingness to keep him close by.

When he finished with the cloth, he set it aside and moved to work out the tangles in Kirin’s long hair with his fingers. The dark brown strands felt as soft as spun silk in his hands, dampened by rain and glistening nearly black in the light of the fire. The dragon mage still lives? he ventured after a long silence, feeling the weight of both their thoughts.

Kirin laughed softly under his breath. It was a scathing, bitter sound, for all that it was barely audible. He still lives and breathes and warms my former master’s bed, yes.

Daryn said nothing further, sensing his master’s need to mull things over on his own. When Kirin was ready to talk, he would. That was a part of what made Daryn so indispensable within the dark mage’s household, no matter what the others thought of him; he knew how to listen, and he had learned over time not to ask too many questions.

After a moment, Kirin shook off his mood and glanced up from the fire. It’s late, he said, cupping one hand over Daryn’s where it rested on top of his shoulder. His narrowed eyes were soft and midnight blue, reflecting the shimmering light of the fire with an almost hypnotic sheen. They were filled with emotions that Daryn couldn’t put a name to.

Daryn’s lips parted in silent wonder as he met that twilight gaze, his fingers moving without his conscious volition to linger against the nape of his master’s neck. Kirin’s skin felt velvety warm under his fingertips, hidden beneath an ocean of cascading dark hair.

Something in Kirin’s eyes darkened in response to the caress. He leaned forward in his chair slightly, pulling away from Daryn’s touch. I should be starting my bath. He paused for the briefest of moments, then added, Send Carlin up to my rooms to join me in about an hour, would you?

Daryn swallowed thickly, fighting down an irrational surge of jealousy. Carlin was one of the more eye-catching servants presently residing in the household, young enough to seem corruptible and yet worldly in his experience. It had only been a matter of time before he began to draw the dark mage’s interest.

Yes, Master, he said.

It still amazed Daryn after all this time that Kirin had never once tried to seduce him into his bed. It was something he had expected, even young as he was, when he was first brought into the dark mage’s household all of those years ago. As a child he had been poor, an orphan, a ghost of the streets of Theros, which was the port city where Kirin himself had spent his boyhood. Kirin had seemed like a god to him on that day, offering whispered promises of food, of shelter, and of less tangible treasures such as health and happiness and home. Home. Even now, Daryn found it hard at times to believe that this was real, that this new life of his was real. And he owed everything he had, everything he was, to this man in front of him.

Kirin had given him everything—his own room, his own servants, his own tutors to teach him all of the subjects his new master felt he should know. It was strange, and more than a little surreal, but Daryn had never questioned, never once fought against the rule that was imposed upon him. This new life was far preferable to the pitiful existence he had been eking out in the streets of Theros, negligible freedoms and all. And so he devoted himself wholeheartedly to pursuing his studies, and to serving his master, and to ignoring the whispers of whore that passed from the lips of the older slaves.

And if service sometimes was hard, and came at a cost, then Daryn was willing to pay that price. After all, nothing of value was ever free. He had learned over the years how to make himself indispensable to Kirin, and he guarded his position in the dark mage’s household jealously. This put him at odds with a number of the servants, but endeared him to most. There were few who dared stand up to their master in any way, and over time the others began to come to him when they were in need of advice or assistance or just plain comfort.

It should have been enough.

Sometimes Daryn wondered if the physical desire he felt for the dark mage meant there might be something wrong with him. He felt very much aware of his master as a sexual being—it would be hard not to, with Kirin being who he was—and the realization that Kirin did not see him that way in return was maddening. Not that he had any particular reason to want Kirin as a bed partner, and in fact had quite a few reasons not to. His master, for all his charms, was not known for being the most benevolent of men.

Kirin was notorious for being less than gentle with his many lovers, disposing of them almost as quickly as they caught his eye. Even if the relationship began with the most positive of intentions, eventually it would devolve into an inevitable decline of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. The dark mage seemed to have a near-instinctual need to dominate and manipulate those around him, as if there was something inside of him that refused to allow him to experience gentler emotions such as happiness, affection, or joy. As if domination and lust and the near-obsessive pursuit of power were the only pleasures he was capable of feeling.

Not all of his bed partners were willing, and not all of them emerged from the experience with their dignities and bodies intact. It was often Daryn to whom these battered souls would flee once they were released from their night of service, Daryn who would patch up the broken parts and hold them while they cried. He had become intimately familiar over the years with the gamut of emotions their lord’s affections could wring out of a human soul, although he had never once been asked to suffer through those attentions personally.

Even so, Daryn wanted.

At times, he wondered where his master had learned to associate sex with pain, and pain with power, and power with love. There was something inexplicably sad about Kirin, as if he were constantly punishing both the world and himself for crimes that Daryn could not even imagine. Daryn often felt curious about what had happened to turn his master into the man he was today, a man who faced the future with such open hostility and aggression, as if it were an enemy that needed to be conquered and subdued.

And yet, there were times when Daryn actually thought that he might understand.

The truth was that it wasn’t Daryn’s body the dark mage wanted, no matter how much Daryn might long for such a connection between them. What Kirin wanted was an apprentice, a successor, someone to follow in his footsteps and carry on the banner of his life’s ambition. Daryn knew he had a talent for the magic; it was the reason Kirin had chosen him, after all. The thought of it thrilled him, and intimidated him, as nothing else could.

Although Kirin had not yet claimed him officially as an apprentice and forged a training bond with him, Daryn knew that time must be fast approaching. Already, Kirin had taught him some lesser magics—small glamories, psychomancies, minor manipulations such as the lighting of fires. It wasn’t enough to make him a mage by any means, but Daryn contented himself with the knowledge that he was young yet—there was still plenty of time for Kirin to claim him if he chose.

At times, Daryn wanted to be a mage so badly it frightened him. It seemed at those moments as if he would do anything, suffer through any service, any indignity, any torment, for more training in the ways of the magic. It was an addiction, carefully sown and carefully nurtured in him, until even Daryn was aware of how very dependent on his master’s teachings he had become.

In his darkest moments, he wondered if such a path was truly worth the price he was paying for it. There were times when the magic seemed like a living thing, coiled in the shadows, waiting for his guard to drop so it could swoop in and devour him. It was a thought that haunted him in the quiet hours when he was lying alone in his bed at night.

At one point, that fear had grown so overwhelming that he had worked up the nerve to go to Kirin and discuss it with him. The subdued comprehension he’d seen in his master’s eyes had terrified Daryn more than anything he’d ever in his life experienced. It was as if Kirin understood the fears he was describing intimately.

As if they were his own.

Good gods, was that what he had to look forward to in his future as a mage? To be endlessly at war with the forces he sought to control? To be in constant fear that if he faltered, even for a moment, he would be lost to the consuming hunger of the powers he had invoked? Was that what it was to be a mage? No wonder Kirin faced the world with such an air of studied antipathy; no wonder that at times he seemed barely sane.

Yet even these considerations were not enough to dissuade Daryn from following his master down this path. As horrifying as it was to feel himself being drawn into this darker world, the alternative was even more horrible to contemplate. The need for the magic lived in him, burned in him, and he knew that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could convince him to let it go. He was trapped, as surely as Kirin was trapped, and it was a willing captivity. For as much as Kirin was his master, the magic had taken something far more terrible from him than simply the rights to Daryn’s life and his future and his body and heart.

The magic had stolen his soul.

Whore, his mind accused in a scathing whisper.

Cutting off any further musings, Daryn turned and left the room to fetch a servant to prepare his master’s bath.

The Calm Before the Storm

The road to Theros was thronged with travelers when Jander and his friends arrived at the border of the thriving port city. It was still early in the day, and the sunlight was brittle with both autumn and morning. Around them, the countryside was dotted with low bushes and broad swatches of open ground, but in the distance further inland the hills were cloaked in thick blankets of dark