Page 20 of Dreams and Dragon Wings (Clean Fairytales for Adults #2)
Benevolence
Now
A urelia faints. I sense her body betraying her as if it is my own. Her consciousness winking out. Her legs crumpling. She has been forced to endure too much.
I whirl to face her, snuffing out the Fire roiling forth from my mouth and fingers, ripping open the shield encasing her. Boneless, she tumbles into my arms, her face so wan beneath her glow that my heart clenches in fear.
My eyes snap to Velda. “What did you do?”
My inner dragon roars in protest, clawing to be free, to punish the one who dared harm Na’therya , even as my rational mind reassures me that Velda would never.
Brisa abandons the ice wall she erected around the enemy soldiers and flits in close to snap, “Velda didn’t do anything. You’re the one who frightened her, and you know it, you Fire-weaving ninny!”
I peel back my lips and snarl at my blue-clad auntie.
Velda drifts between us. “Tensions are high, and we are all doing our best,” she murmurs, trying to soothe us both. “But we need to remain united in this if we want to bring Therya’kai home unharmed.”
“Home?” My arms tighten around Aurelia instinctively, cradling her against my chest as, for one wild moment, I entertain the thought that perhaps I can bring her home. That perhaps I can formally name her Na’therya .
That perhaps we can fulfill the prophecy her mother first foretold thirty years ago.
Together.
The idea is a siren’s song that calls to the wounded places of my heart as I gaze down at the beautiful Jewel in my arms. As I drink in deep her intoxicating scent. She smells like sunshine and warmed earth. Like roses. Like power.
Raw, delicious power.
Here she lies, the key to saving all Drakara, helpless in my arms. Waiting to be claimed. To be consumed—
“Naei!” I shout. To my fairy godmothers. To my Shade. To the Great Weaver Himself.
Why does my God continue to torture me?
Why did He bother showing me that Aurelia was the key to saving my people— our people—when I cannot be near her for more than a few minutes at most before I start to hunger for all that she is?
Glorana calls out from her place tending to Brisa’s ice wall, holding Friedemar and his soldiers at bay.
“Technically speaking, Bene, you have no right to deny Aurelia the chance to return home to Drakara if she wishes to do so. She is Therya’fey in her own right, just as her mother was before her. Queen of the Flora Vale.”
“The Shadow Lands,” I correct with a growl. “The Vale died with the rest of her people thirty years ago. And I have every right. I am the King of all Drakara. She is merely the heir to one small portion.”
Aurelia’s eyelashes flutter. A groan escapes from her throat as she comes back to herself.
And suddenly, I am gazing down into sky-blue eyes once more, losing myself in their cloudless depths. I swallow hard, fighting against my inner dragon. My Shade. My want. My need .
Oblivious to my struggle, Aurelia stares up at me and whispers a single question. A question laced with steel:
“What are you not telling me, Bene?”
There is no point in denying it any longer. I can hide nothing from her with her Mind weave still binding us together.
“Everything, Na’therya, ” I whisper back, breathing those words directly into her thoughts. “Everything.”