The mountains seemed endless, stretching as far as his eyes could see across one hundred and eighty degrees of his field of vision. Bleu stood high on a cragged ledge, his back to a black mountain that many in Hell would find forbidding, because it marked the border of the dragon realm. He could see a few flying into the realm, their jewel colours bright against the dull grey sky. He hadn’t lived in the time when dragons had been free to fly in the mortal realm, but he could easily imagine how majestic they would have appeared against a dazzling blue backdrop spotted with pale clouds.

Dragons had been allies of the elves once, so many millennia ago that the only proof they had of their friendship were tattered pieces of the ancient records of the elven kings and queens, scratched onto thick leather now so brittle they would break if someone dared to remove them from the delicate glass case that contained them in the castle.

The castle.

Bleu turned his gaze towards it, instinctively aware of which direction his home lay in, feeling the familiar tug in his gut that told him to return to it. He had business there, and he had never been one to ignore his instincts. They were rarely wrong, and right now they were blaring a warning at him to step back from the dragon realm and seek a safer course of action.

He needed a team if he was going to venture into the realm of dragons and dare to question them about one of their own kind.

It was too dangerous to head in alone.

Dragons were fiercely protective of their own kind, even those they knew had committed a crime that had given their species a black name in the language of the elves.

He didn’t fancy ending up as roasted elf, so he would return to the castle and form his team—the same trio of warriors that had been with him the last time he had hunted the female dragon.

He focused on his body, calling his portal, and green-purple light shimmered over the scales of his black armour. Darkness swallowed him and when it receded, he was standing in the bright sun-filled verdant courtyard of the castle.

It towered above him, a beautiful mixture of pale and dark stone quarried from the mountains, shaped to form tall towers topped with conical tiled roofs set on a series of large square buildings with balconies that ran across their length. The main building stood five storeys tall, and the thick towers rose to spear the darkening sky and added another six levels.

A warm breeze chased over the high walls surrounding the castle and rustled the leaves of the trees in the orchard around him, carrying the scent of their blooms. Nature embraced him again, a tender touch that soothed him after being surrounded by the darkness of the demon and dragon realms.

He began to relax and then tensed again when Prince Loren appeared right in front of him, his handsome face dark and his violet eyes flashing as he shoved his fingers through his neat blue-black hair and began to pace. His formal knee-length jacket flapped around his legs with each agitated stride across the pale gravel path that spread outwards from the portal, intersecting the lush grass that grew beneath the trees.

Something was wrong.

Wrong enough that his prince had left a council meeting to come straight to him.

Before he could ask his prince what was bothering him, Loren turned on him.

The dark crescents beneath his prince’s eyes concerned him and he took a step forwards, growing determined to find out what was worrying him and find a way to relieve his prince of whatever burden his shoulders held.

“Where have you been?” Loren said, a slight sombre edge to his voice as he halted before Bleu, his bright violet eyes searching Bleu’s. “You have failed to return to the castle since Vail came.”

There was a tone in those last three words that conveyed a wealth of hurt but relief too. Loren always sounded that way when speaking of his younger brother, but Bleu held no love for the mad prince himself, not since he had gone to war with Loren and the elf kingdom, and had decimated an entire legion of the army.

The legion Bleu had served in under Vail.

He had been one of only a handful of survivors.

He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to think well of Vail, not even after everything they had learned about the reasons he had attacked his own kind. The things he had seen Vail do were branded on his mind, seared on his soul, together with the deep pain he had caused Loren. Bleu couldn’t forgive him.

“It has been a lunar cycle… so I will ask again… where have you been, Bleu?”

A month?

He could only stare at Loren as that sank in. He had thought it had been a week at most since he had left the castle, intent on returning to the last place he had seen the dragon female and seeing if he could uncover any clues that might lead him to her.

A month.

“Did your disappearance and subsequent avoidance of your home have anything to do with Vail… because he has left with Rosalind.” There was a softer note to his prince’s voice now, a soothing one that had no effect on Bleu as it dawned on him that his leaving had in part been because of Vail’s sudden appearance.

But not because he despised Loren’s brother.

He rolled his shoulder in a casual shrug, trying to let the epiphany roll off him just as easily, but failing dismally. His mood blackened again, just as it had that night a month ago when he had learned another fool had fallen under the spell of a bond.

A male no one in their right mind could love had found someone who loved him, and fuck had it stung.

“Good for him,” Bleu muttered and turned to walk away.

“Answer me, Bleu,” Loren barked and he halted, freezing to the spot and aware of the danger he was in.

Loren rarely raised his voice, especially to him. When he did, he meant business, and right now his prince was throwing off vibes that warned he was liable to break with convention and throw him in the cells if he was disobedient. It would be a first. Bleu had mouthed off to him, had behaved with little respect at times, and never had his prince punished him.

Bleu slowly turned back to face him.

“Did you stay away because of Vail?” Loren whispered, a heartfelt plea for an answer that told Bleu his prince didn’t want to punish him this time either, but people were watching them closely, and they would expect Loren to do just that if Bleu showed an ounce of disrespect.

He shook his head. “No… Vail isn’t the reason I have been away from the castle.”

It was the truth.

Well, mostly the truth. Vail wasn’t the whole reason he had left or the reason why he had been away.

He had just been the last straw.

Seeing Vail bonded to his fated female on a day that had been Loren’s wedding day to his own mate Olivia, and had brought the happily mated couples of Sable and Thorne, and Bleu’s sister Iolanthe and her mate Kyter to the elf kingdom had hit Bleu hard.

He hadn’t really thought about his actions at the time. He hadn’t really considered why he had left or what he had been feeling. He’d had a pressing need to investigate the dragon and he had left to do just that.

But an entire month had passed, and the look in Loren’s eyes told him that he had worried him, that the tone Bleu had heard in his voice and the sombre edge to his eyes had nothing to do with Vail, and everything to do with him, and that Loren wanted answers now.

Bleu had none to give to him, at least none that answered the questions in Loren’s eyes, because he didn’t want to look too closely at his reasons for leaving.

Instead, he would give his prince a safer explanation for his behaviour.

“I tracked the dragon,” he said and Loren’s expression gained a curious edge and he stepped closer to Bleu. Bleu sighed and raked his fingers over his longer hair, preening it back from his face as he tried to figure out where to begin. He knew how important the sword was to Loren, and he had sworn to retrieve it, and now he felt he was on the verge of fulfilling that promise. “I believe she has returned to her own realm for some reason. Perhaps the dragons there are hiding her, or she has gone to see someone, or she believes she will be able to conceal herself again among her own kind. I only returned to assemble a team so I might track the dragon into her own realm.”

Loren began pacing again, his head bent and the thumb of his left hand playing on his lip. His prince had never been able to keep still when thinking. It drove the council of elders mad when he silently paced back and forth in front of his throne, and that often amused Bleu no end. Anything that pissed off the council was fantastic in his opinion. They were antiquated idiots who stuck firmly to the rules and had given his prince nothing but pain and heartache for the forty-two centuries he had been at war with Vail, constantly badgering him to kill his brother.

Bleu had been all for killing Vail, but he never had been able to bring himself to do it whenever they fought. He had always faltered when dealing the killing blow, aware of the devastating pain it would cause Loren if he took Vail’s life.

Now the council were probably giving Loren hell as he attempted to convince them to allow Vail back into the elf kingdom now that he had proven he had been nothing but a pawn, a puppet controlled by a dark witch, and was maddened by the terrible things he had done.

Bleu couldn’t see them agreeing to that, and he couldn’t see his prince giving up this time either. Loren was a stubborn bastard at times, especially where those he loved were concerned.

“I have experienced fleeting sensations.” Loren glanced across at him but didn’t slow his pacing, taking long strides across the path, only needing three to reach the grass before he had to turn back around.

His prince needed a bigger space to work off some of his tension. Bleu would have offered to spar with him, but the urge to pull his team together and head into the dragon realm was growing stronger, and the thought of delaying his departure was near painful. He had to get back to the dragon realm.

He had to find her.

“They are familiar… and it took me some time, but I have realised what they are. It is the sword.” Loren huffed and his lips twisted into a grim, self-reproaching smile. “I admit that it has taken me some time to decipher the sensation… because my connection to it is not as strong as Vail’s… but it has surfaced again. Perhaps the dragon has retrieved it from wherever she hid it?”

Bleu didn’t like the sound of that. They still didn’t know why the dragon had stolen it or whether she had any ill intentions. She could easily decimate an entire demon army with it. But if that had been her agenda, why would she have waited so long to carry it out?

Why had she hidden the sword?

He wanted to believe that she viewed the sword as treasure and only treasure, but there was still a part of him that feared she meant to use it, that she had been waiting for some reason. Dragons could see the future if they were born of a strong bloodline. Had she seen something in her future and had stolen the sword because of it, and had been waiting all this time for that future to come to pass?

Loren’s hand clapped down on Bleu’s shoulder, jerking him away from thoughts of the dragon and what might lie ahead.

“Hunt the dragon. Eliminate her. Retrieve that sword for me, Bleu.”

Bleu had the feeling his prince was more aware of his innermost feelings, the ones he had tried to bury deep and ignore, than he would like and was giving him a mission to focus on in order to take his mind off things.

To give him a purpose again.