Page 26 of A Kiss of Healing & Honor (Darkstone Academy #4)

Our farewells at the ducal palace the next morning were bittersweet.

Duke Ramón and Duchess Sibilla came to see us off in the palace garden.

There, a transformed Boreas stood impatiently waiting for us, the huge saddle strapped to his feathered back.

My cheeks heated as I spotted the bench and the patch of grass where Ilhan and I had finally made love last night. Aware of his conflicted feelings for me, I’d been waiting a long time for him to decide what he wanted.

Under the stars, I’d discovered he’d been worth waiting for.

I looked over at him and saw him staring at the bench, too, a flush rising from the neck of his shirt and darkening his clean-shaven cheeks.

Our eyes met, and he gave me a dazzling, utterly happy smile that warmed me right down to my toes.

Most of the ducal court followed us to the garden, crowding the perimeter and gaping at the exotic sight of a Wind-Walker amid the flowers and beds of fragrant herbs.

Once again dressed in our formal gowns in anticipation of meeting with King Menelaus, Mama and I took our leave of the duke and duchess, thanking them for their help and hospitality.

Lady Karminn was there to see us off.

“Your Highness, there’s something I have to tell you before you leave,” she said, hugging me with desperate strength.

“Is it about Count Fernan?” I teased. “Don’t worry, I’m not angry about you stealing my betrothed.”

“It’s not about Fernan,” she blurted. “Back at the academy, Lady Erzabetta asked me to befriend you and report everything you said and did.”

I pulled away and stared at her in shock. Hurt and betrayal sliced through me, sharp as a blade.

Karminn looked away, shame-faced. “I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me. But believe me, I didn’t have a choice. She threatened to harm Maksim.”

My friend spied on me?

Tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away with an angry swipe of her hand. “I swear, I never meant you harm. And I couldn’t bear for you to leave here thinking me your staunch friend, when I was the one who put you in danger.”

I remembered all the things Erzabetta had tried to do to me and my friends. And how she’d forced me to sign that damned betrothal contract.

Swallowing hard, I managed a smile. “Believe me, I understand what kind of person Erzabetta was,” I managed. “She was ruthless and willing to do anything to help her uncle.”

Karminn sagged with relief. “Oh, thank you for understanding! And please believe that I really am your friend!”

I nodded. “Of course.” With disappointment stinging me, I couldn’t bring myself to say any more, but it seemed to be enough.

Then she turned to Fernan and threw herself into his arms.

I stepped back, giving them what little privacy I could as they exchanged whispered promises and feverish kisses.

Though I didn’t entirely trust Fernan, I had to admit the depth of their feelings for each other. After so much deceit and danger, they deserved whatever happiness they could find.

Then it was time to mount our Dragon steed and begin the flight south.

∞∞∞

“There it is!” Boreas’ voice boomed over the roar of the wind. “The Telonos Gate! We’ve reached the Kappadokian border!”

After a day spent riding on his back, with only brief stops for rest and refreshment, our destination was finally in sight.

My heart pounding with excitement and trepidation, I gripped the leather straps of the safety harness tightly between my fingers, and I leaned forward in the saddle to see.

I spotted a massive, ancient stone gate straddling the coastal highway. It had three soaring arches, and was accompanies by a cluster of ancient-looking stone buildings on either side of the highway.

In the distance, jagged, snow-capped volcanic peaks covered the landscape as far as I could see, edged by steep cliffs plunging hundreds of feet down into the restless sea.

“We made it!” I looked back at Mama, strapped in behind me, her dark hair escaping from its braids to whip around across her tired face.

She reached out to hug my waist. “I’m so glad we didn’t have to ride horses all this way!” she shouted back.

Boreas began descending in a wide spiral and landed softly on the Kappadokian side of the gate. I looked around with interest. It was flat and desolate-looking, with occasional bushes and tufts of grass among masses of black boulders and expanses of what looked like melted rock, now cooled to glassy surfaces.

My breath caught as two massive Wind-Walkers emerged from the largest building and approached us.

The pair, clad in sleek gray and white plumage with bright yellow crests topping their heads and running down their long, sinuous necks, called out a greeting in the roaring, whistling Wind-Walker language.

“Greetings, border guards!” Boreas shouted in Capitolan. “I bring important visitors to King Menelaus at the royal aerie of Hierapolis!”

“Hey, aren’t you Boreas of Argestes Aerie?” the larger of the border guards asked in heavily accented Capitolan. His voice sounded like a combination of scraping rocks and storm winds. “We didn’t think to see your gaudy plumage so soon after Lady Aeolia sent you to live among the earthworms.”

He snorted a draconic laugh. A sulfurous blast of smoke jetted from his nostrils.

“By the Unconquered Sun, Boreas, why the hell are you carrying a clutch of humans and Fae on your back like a packhorse?” the second guard demanded. “Don’t you have any pride?”

His yellow eyes narrowed on me and my companions. Disdain radiated from him, and cold malice.

My heart pounded with nerves. The rest of our group was silent, too, waiting to see what happened next.

Boreas had sworn to me and Mama that we’d be welcomed with open wings in his homeland. Yet these guards seemed to hate humans.

Had Boreas’ confidence been misplaced… again?

I twisted in the saddle to look back at Mama and the others.

Mama met my gaze, her eyes dark with worry. Gwydion’s angular features were drawn into lines of strain, while Tama sat motionless and watchful, a pale statue with glittering onyx eyes.

Ilhan, Alondra, and Fernan all looked like they desperately wanted to be elsewhere. Fernan was clearly regretting his decision to accompany us south of the Dominion’s border.

“Fuck off, Guard Skironis,” Boreas said cheerfully. “And trust me, King Menelaus will want to see these humans as soon as possible. One of them is his long-lost mate and the other his hatchling.” His tone turned imperious. “Now let me pass.”

“Menelaus mated a fucking earthworm?” the first border guard asked. “No fucking way! I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want, Guard Pylios.” Frustration crept into Boreas’ voice. “Anyway, Princess Jacinthe here is a member of my aerie. She has a right to see the fucking king!”

“Prove it,” Pylios snarled. “Because I think you wouldn’t dare fuck over your clutch-mother like that.”

Boreas swung his huge head around to look at me. “Show him the aerie mark I gave you, Princess Jacinthe.”

I pushed up the short tulip-sleeve of my gown to reveal the stylized flame Boreas had burned into my upper arm last summer.

The pair of border guards exchanged uneasy glances, their large bodies shifting uncomfortably.

“I think we’d better summon Lady Aeolia to deal with this,” Skironis muttered.

Pylios snorted again. “Let’s do that. I want to watch Lady Aeolia plucking Boreas bald for polluting her precious aerie with a stinking earthworm,” he predicted. “Skironis, go tell her what’s happening here and ask her what she wants us to do.”

“Yes, Clutch-Brother.” Skironis spread his wings and launched himself into the air. He headed south.

“As for you and your guests,” Pylios said to Boreas. “You’ll stay in that guest house over there until Lady Aeolia decides what to do with you.”

He pointed at the largest and most decrepit of the stone buildings standing next to the highway.

My heart sank. Boreas had clearly misjudged the welcome we would receive. And it didn’t sound like his mother would be pleased with him… or me.

Stiff from hours in the saddle, we dismounted and plodded over to the so-called guesthouse.

The structure loomed like a massive, crumbling warehouse. We passed through a cavernous doorway, clearly designed for creatures much larger than humans. Inside, it was dim and musty-smelling.

The interior was vast and echoing, clearly meant for dragon occupants, not humans like us. The floor was hard-packed dirt, strewn with piles of dirty hay. Crumbling plastered walls revealed crude stone blocks beneath.

There were no furnishings that catered to human comfort. No chairs, no tables, no beds. Just the bare expanse of dirt and hay. It reinforced that we weren’t wanted here.

“This is it?” Alondra asked in dismay, her voice echoing in the vast space. “We have to stay here? For how long?”

Boreas heaved a loud sigh. “Until Lady Aeolia gives her permission for us to enter the kingdom.”

Once we were as settled as we could be in such uncomfortable surroundings, I turned to Boreas. “Were the guards right about you getting in trouble for adopting me into your aerie?”

“They’re full of shit. My clutch-mother will understand it was necessary,” he insisted, but through our bond, I sensed the undercurrent of uncertainty that he tried to mask with bravado.

It did nothing to ease the knot of worry tightening in my stomach.

∞∞∞

The stark light of early morning found us huddled around an unappetizing breakfast of raw meat delivered by Pylios.

I tried using a Fire magic spell to cook it, but it wasn’t much of an improvement.

All of us picked listlessly at the charred, unseasoned, gamey-tasting meat and ate the last of the bread and cheese we’d brought with us from Baleares.

My stomach churned with nerves, and I could barely force myself to swallow a few bites. Across from me, Mama looked equally unsettled, her normally smooth olive complexion lined with strain and sleeplessness.

A sudden commotion outside had us all jumping to our feet, hearts in our throats.

Through the vast doorway, I saw massive wings, green-and-gold plumage glinting in the sun.

We all rushed outside to see a strange Wind-Walker, easily twice Boreas’ already impressive size, banking in for a landing.

Boreas let out a strangled noise, something between a gasp and a groan. I whipped around to stare at him, alarmed by the spike of sheer dread that lanced through our soul-bond.

His eyes were wide, the slitted pupils narrowed to hair-thin lines. His huge, curving talons dug deep furrows in the dirt.

“Boreas?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Who is that?”

His head drooped. “That’s…that’s my clutch-mother. Lady Aeolia.” His normally booming voice was hardly more than a whisper. “She came to see for herself.”

When her burning golden gaze locked onto him, her jaws parted. An ear-splitting barrage of roars erupted, the fury in them clear even to my untrained ears.

The sound echoed off the stone walls and vibrated through my chest. It was primal, full of wrath and reprimand, and it rooted me to the spot.

∞∞∞

Boreas

Terror curdled my stomach as my clutch-mother Aeolia, matriarch of my aerie and vizier to King Menelaus, landed in front of the border guesthouse. Her golden eyes blazed with fury as she looked around.

For me.

Her enormous form dwarfed even my own considerable size. I swallowed hard, knowing full well she could crush me as easily as humans crushed insects underfoot.

“Boreas!” Her voice boomed across the sky, causing Jacinthe and the others to flinch. “What in the name of the four winds did you do?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out. The need to protect Jacinthe by giving her an aerie mark had seemed so right at the time.

Now, faced with Lady Aeolia’s wrath, I felt like a hatchling again—small, foolish, and utterly unprepared.

I felt the weight of accusing stares boring into me from all sides. Jacinthe’s companions, even her mother, were glaring at me as if I’d betrayed them all. My claws dug into the stony dirt as I fought the urge to roar back at my clutch-mother.

It was an honest mistake, damn it all! How the fuck could I guess Aeolia would react like this?

“I… I was just—” I stammered, my usual bravado deserting me.

“Did I not expressly order you to be on your best behavior among the humans? To avoid their petty squabbles and politics?” Aeolia roared, her wings sending gusts that buffeted us.

I bowed my head, glad that Jacinthe and the others couldn’t understand our language. “Yes, Clutch-Mother.”

“And yet here you are, telling the Notia brothers that you’ve adopted a human into our aerie!” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Have you lost what little sense you possessed, fledgling?”

My heart sank further with each biting word. Part of me wanted to roar back, to defend my actions and my friends.

But a wiser part kept me silent.

“I… I only meant to protect Jacinthe,” I managed at last, hating how small my voice sounded. “She’s different. She’s—”

“A human,” Aeolia cut me off, her tone dripping with disdain. “No matter how ‘different’ you claim she is, she is only a human. And humans have no place among Wind-Walkers.” She shook her head in disgust. “By the North Wind, you’re just as bad as Menelaus around human females!”

I groaned silently. How did everything go so fucking wrong, so quickly?

Yesterday, my plan seemed foolproof—fly to Kappadokia, bring Jacinthe and her mother to Menelaus, convince our king to send Wind-Walkers to wage war on the humans.

Simple, right?

The aeries were filled to bursting with restless young males. They’d be champing at the bit to go on an adventure in human lands. Especially if they got to fight something.

Now, with my clutch-mother blocking our path into the kingdom, I realized I’d forgotten a crucial fact. Unlike a human male, I wasn’t free to make my own choices.

I belonged to the aerie. To Aeolia.

Her golden eyes narrowed as she turned her attention to the humans who stood at my side.

I felt Jacinthe grip my feathers. A wave of anxiety washed over me through our bond.

“You, human,” Aeolia said, her voice now crisp and clear in Capitolan. “I am the High Lady Aeolia, Royal Vizier to King Menelaus of the Anemodareis and clutch-mother of the Argestes Aerie.” Her lips curled into a sneer as she added, “An aerie that has never accepted humans into its ranks.”

I felt Jacinthe’s sharp intake of breath, her body tensing against mine. Through our connection, I sensed her fear, but also a spark of defiance. It made my heart swell with pride, even as dread coiled in my gut.

Then Jacinthe’s mother strode forward in a swirl of rumpled green silks. “And I am the Princess-Royal Jonquil di Severieri, heir to the throne of the Imperial Dominion of Human Lands. I wish to speak with King Menelaus regarding an important matter, and—” She swept her hand out and put it on Jacinthe’s shoulder. “I wish to introduce him to his daughter.”

“You want me to believe that fool actually took a human as his mate instead of just fucking around with you?” Aeolia scoffed.

Princess Jonquil crossed her arms defiantly and glared up at my clutch-mother.

Slowly, Aeolia lowered her gigantic head until it almost touched Jacinthe and her mother. I saw her inhale deeply and tensed.

I prayed she wouldn’t decide to deal with the problem by simply eating the two humans standing so bravely before her.

A flash of movement, and suddenly Tama was standing between Aeolia and Jacinthe.

Fuck. I tensed even further.

Maybe the Sea-Brother could take on a fucking whale and kick its ass, but I knew my clutch-mother could roast him to a charred smear of fish-oil without ruffling her feathers.

But Aeolia didn’t attack. She didn’t move at all for what felt like endless minutes.

“Well,” she said at last, resignation replacing rage in her voice and demeanor. “So, it’s true. These two… humans… really are Menelaus’ mate and hatchling.” She exhaled a gusty breath that billowed Jacinthe and Jonquil’s garments. “Very well. I will take you to the royal aerie at Hierapolis.”