Page 19 of Dreams and Dragon Wings (Clean Fairytales for Adults #2)

Aurelia

Now

G lass shatters, skittering harmlessly off the dome of Spirit encasing us as we crash through the window and into a dark room. Together.

Bene . Bene is here. Bene came for me. He is holding me.

Within the warm security of his arms, I know I am safe.

But even so, a storm of emotions sweeps through me—tumultuous and wild.

Joy, longing, rage, hunger, and agony . An agony unlike any I’ve ever known.

Air rushes past, lavender threads that send us spinning mid-fall. Bene lands first, taking the brunt of the impact, skidding across the carpet on his back. Leaving me atop him, breathless, staring into impossibly blue eyes I never thought I would see again.

Beautiful is no longer enough to describe the Bene before me.

Time has forged the boy I once knew into a man with no equal.

He is a vision of strength, of fire—strong, commanding, wrapped in rich purple silk.

Flames dance along the crown on his brow, making his silver hair gleam.

It is a crown I recognize from my Drakaran history book.

The Corona Ignis . The crown of the Dragon King.

He is my dragon prince no longer.

Shouts ring out beyond the shattered window, sending a shiver dancing down my spine. We should move. We cannot linger here.

And yet I am rooted in place, frozen within this moment.

Countless questions linger between us. Burning. Waiting to be voiced.

Bene’s heartbeat pulses in my ears—a staccato rhythm to match my own. His nostrils flare. His jaw clenches. His eyes gleam like molten sapphire.

No , not sapphire. Ruby. For a split second, I would almost swear his gaze is red, not blue.

But then the moment passes. Bene’s lips peel back, flashing teeth. Even in his human form, his canines glint with a predatory sharpness.

“ Naei ,” he snarls as the dome of Spirit around us dissolves, as a gust of Air wraps around my waist and plucks me off him with brusque efficiency.

I barely have time to gasp before it deposits me on the floor, feet first.

Bene springs to his feet in the next moment, rising to his full height. Just as when we were children, he stands not much taller than I—enough that I must lift my eyes to meet his, but not so much that he looms over me like some monster in the night.

The perfect height. He has always been perfect.

What my dragon king lacks in vertical presence, he more than makes up for in strength. In raw power. It ripples off him in kaleidoscopic bands of magic—infinite potential that clings to him like cologne.

He takes a step toward me, and my heart skips. My pulse stumbles. Especially when I notice the ring he still wears on the index finger of his left hand.

The ring woven from my hair.

“Where is your amulet?” he all but growls, those four words vibrating through my chest. His voice is deeper than I remember. Darker. Laced with a dangerous edge.

I wet my lips and whisper, “I dropped it.”

I can almost feel his disappointment. It is like a living thing, writhing between us.

His eyes snap downward and fixate on my mouth. His own twists into a frown. “And then Friedemar threw you off the balcony.”

It is not a question but a statement. More anger crashes through me in the wake of it, waves of heat that leave me weak. That threaten to buckle my knees.

“Naei,” I whisper in urgent denial, shaking my head. I am out of practice. My accent is atrocious. But my speaking his native tongue has the desired effect on my dragon king.

The hard lines of his face soften. The anger roaring within my soul quiets.

Within the quiet, I sheepishly explain, “I jumped, na’valraen.”

Na’valraen. My favorite . The title was always a mere playful endearment when we were children. But now, it seems to hold greater weight as it lingers on, hanging in the air between us.

Moments tick by. Moments in which Bene stares into my eyes, his own ablaze with a heat I don’t quite understand.

But then he blinks. Naked confusion knits his eyebrows together. “Why?” he asks.

“… Because the Aether told me to.” It sounds ridiculous, saying it aloud. But Bene doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t mock me.

He simply stares at me in wonder and edges closer by another half-step. “The Great Weaver speaks to you?”

Electricity charges the air, leaving me lightheaded all over again. Bene is here. After twelve years, he’s here, within arm’s reach of me. I still can hardly believe it.

“Only tonight,” I whisper. “He told me to run when Friedemar first cornered me. And then to jump when I was cornered again.”

A small smile crinkles the corners of his eyes for a brief moment, revealing lines that weren’t there the last time we saw one another.

“And you listened. But of course you would, Na’therya.

” Closing his eyes, he breathes out a quiet sigh through his nose and whispers reverently, as if in prayer, “Thavae, Na’Eruv. ”

Na’therya. There is that word again.

I know this word. I have heard it somewhere before, though I cannot remember where. The memory lingers just on the edge of my thoughts, eluding me.

Like something from a dream.

“What does that mean, Bene?” I ask, needing to know.

His eyes flash back open. His gaze fixates on my mouth again. My cheek. Absentmindedly, he answers, “I said, ‘Thank you, my God.’”

In the pause that follows, he draws forth strands of Earth and Fire and weaves them about his shoulder, around the arrow I only now notice protruding from his flesh.

I do not even have time to worry over the fact that he is wounded before the arrow tumbles free and clatters to the floor.

In the next moment, it turns to ash, leaving only the head behind.

I blink. “No. When you said ‘ Na’therya .’ What does that mean?”

Without meeting my gaze, without answering my question, Bene briskly apologizes, “I have ignored your own wounds too long. Please forgive me.”

Before I can protest his sudden evasive mien, he finishes closing the distance between us and tilts his face toward mine. As if he intends to capture my mouth in a heartrending kiss.

But I know better. Bene would never. He is too much of a gentleman.

Nor does he long for me the way I long for him.

Warm breath unfurls against my lips instead, bringing with it threads of Earth and the heated prickle of Bene’s healing magic as my skin knits itself back together. As my pain subsides. Leaving me well once more.

Save for the dull pain that still throbs in my stomach where Friedemar kicked me, but I would rather suffer in silence than draw Bene’s attention to that.

Footsteps thunder down the corridor beyond our hiding place, accompanied by the shout of voices, muffled, frantic. They are looking for us.

Finally, I wrench my attention away from the beautiful man before me—my best friend , I sternly remind myself—and take stock of the room we crashed into. It is a sitting room. That is easy enough to glean from the stylishly upholstered sofas and chairs I spy by the light of my own glow.

But there are only two exits. Out the shattered window behind us. Or the door leading to what sounds like a small army of soldiers before us.

Fear claws at my heart again. We can’t possibly fight our way out through an entire army. And what about my mother? Lord Reginald?

I turn back to Bene, primed to ask him what we’re going to do now. But when I look up into my dragon king’s gaze, those words die in my throat, snuffed out by my terror.

Red. That is the color of the eyes staring back at me. Red like dragonfire. Like rubies.

Like blood.

“Bene?” I gasp, stumbling backward.

He doesn’t answer me. But neither does he pursue. Only his gaze follows—hungry, feral. Quivering from head to toe, my dragon king stands rooted in place.

His hands clench. His jaw tightens.

Pain . It radiates off of him in sharp swells, seeking to drown me beneath the weight of it. I stagger toward the nearest chair and brace myself against the back of it. Only the grip of my hand on that piece of furniture can keep me upright now.

“Bene, what is happening?”

“It’s… complicated,” he growls directly into my thoughts. A bittersweet longing accompanies the words, slicing through his pain. His rage. “But I will never hurt you. I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

Warmth floods me in response to his words despite the inherent danger of our situation. Despite the undeniable wrongness crackling off my dragon king. I try to tamp it down, to snuff it out. Now is not the time for me to entertain feelings for a man I can never have.

Cheeks growing hot, I can only pray Bene can’t sense my every emotion just as easily as I can seemingly now sense his.

When next he blinks, his eyes are once again the sapphire blue I know. Relief rushes through me, soothing my fears. But an odd sense of anxiety remains. As if we are both waiting for something to happen.

Something terrible.

“We have to go,” Bene rasps, his gaze scouring my face as if desperately trying to commit it to memory. “It is not safe here.”

As if in punctuation to his words, the door leading out of our sitting room suddenly bursts inward, revealing a man’s silhouette—a silhouette I am swiftly becoming all too familiar with.

Friedemar.

My stomach churns at the very sight.

But I do not have to stare at him for long. Bene lunges between us in the next moment, blocking Friedemar from my view. Protecting me.

I peek around Bene’s shoulder as the King of Briarhold and at least a dozen of his soldiers stride into the room.

Armor now wraps around Friedemar’s towering form.

A sword that thrums with a strange, muted light hangs from his hip.

Shafts of moonlight stream in through the broken window, illuminating his sneer.

But Friedemar’s cold gaze is for my dragon king and him alone when he declares, imperious, “You have something that belongs to me, Benevolence.”

“Naei.”

That word cracks through the air like thunder, just as surely as it echoes through my mind, shouted within my thoughts in the same breath it departs Bene’s throat.

With a growl, he continues, “Aurelia sol na’drakira. Shera sol Therya Drakara.”

The temperature within the room seems to drop by several degrees as Friedemar’s attention sweeps toward me. “Drakira?” he repeats, his tongue inelegantly butchering the musical Draconic word.

But where I don’t understand what it means, Friedemar clearly does. I see it in his face. In his disgust.

He speaks to me directly when he jeers, “I had heard rumors of your unfortunate reputation, my Jewel. But I didn’t realize you were so prolific, your conquests extended all the way to Drakara, too.”

Bene’s reaction is immediate. Visceral. While I am still reeling from the insult, my dragon king is drawing in threads of Fire toward himself. Breathing them in. Weaving them taut.

I realize his intentions a moment too late.

“Bene!” I scream, my hands grasping for the back of his cloak, fingers sinking into the fabric, trying to wrench him backward. The Bene I know would never do such a thing. He is kind. Good. He would never kill .

But this Bene clearly would.

A fresh shield of Spirit snaps into place around me at the same moment flames flash into being, erupting from Bene’s palms and mouth in a rush of heat and light. Gouts of Fire that arc directly for Friedemar. For the armored men behind him.

More light blazes through my peripheral vision—twin globes, one green and one blue. They flit toward Friedemar’s troops as well, almost faster than I can track.

The soldiers scream and scatter. Confused. Panicked.

Only Friedemar stands firm, defiant in the face of Bene’s flames.

I flinch and turn away, unable to watch the boy I once knew murder a room full of men.

A strange hiss fills the air, followed by steam so thick I almost don’t see the silver butterfly gliding toward me. No, not a butterfly—a pixie.

An elegant pixie with gray hair and eyes, wearing silver robes and wreathed in moonlight. I know her at once, though I have never met her before. Bene spoke often of his fairy godmothers in his letters to me.

She is Velda.

“Please forgive him his outburst, Therya’kai ,” Velda whispers directly within my thoughts, those words gently imparted on a thread of Mind. She hovers close, bathing my cheek in the warmth of her small form. “The Corona weighs heavy. He is thinking with his feelings—his inner dragon—not his mind.”

Na’therya.

Therya’kai.

Therya Drakara.

Suddenly, I remember where I have heard these words before. In my mind’s eye, I see them written so plainly within the ancient history tome Bene once gifted me.

In the section on royal lineage and address.

Na’therya . My queen.

Therya’kai. Queen of Flame.

Therya Drakara . Queen of Drakara.

“What?” I have just enough time to whisper before the room spins.

Before the pixie before me blurs.

Before everything goes black.