Page 22 of Dreams and Dragon Wings (Clean Fairytales for Adults #2)

Aurelia

Now

“ F ine,” Bene concedes aloud after a few tense beats of silence. “Ask me anything, and I will answer.”

“Truthfully?”

“Truthfully.”

Velda disappears around the next bend, leaving us alone. But not for long.

The thunder of footsteps grows louder, followed by the shouts of men. In the next moment, soldiers spill into the corridor. Soldiers led by a man I do not recognize rather than Friedemar.

Their fear is a tangible thing.

“Stop!” the captain calls, a tremor in his voice. Almost reluctantly, he draws his sword. “In the name of the king!”

“Na sol Theryn’kai,” Bene snarls back, anger edging the musical notes of his native tongue. Air whips outward, ripping the blade from the captain’s hand, sending it skittering across the floor. It skids to a halt before me.

I flinch and stop walking, hesitating, unsure what to do now that we are facing a small army alone.

Bene steps in close, the warmth of his nearness thrumming against my back. “ Naei .” His voice skims across my consciousness. Politely, he avoids delving too deep this time. “You stop for no one.”

But then a twinge of pain arcs between us, sending a tremble tracing down my spine. I can sense it just as easily as I sense my own feelings—the agony writhing deep in my dragon king’s heart.

“Please,” he begs. “Velda’s mask on you is not as effective as I had hoped. We cannot linger here.”

Her mask?

Drawing in a deep breath, I lift my chin and step around the fallen sword. “You will stand aside and let us pass,” I inform the soldiers before us, fighting to keep the tremor from my voice.

The captain shrinks back but otherwise doesn’t move. “Forgive me, my lady, but I can’t.”

Please , I desperately think to myself. Please don’t hurt them.

But Bene clearly hears me all the same. “As you wish.”

Another scythe of Air slices down the corridor, racing toward the soldiers who scream in the face of the unnatural wind. But rather than rend them to pieces as the last did to the ice wall, this scythe merely splits their number in half and sweeps them aside, like a parting curtain.

I gather the skirts of my now-ruined gown into my hands and hurry forward, trying not to run but still moving quickly.

A fresh wave of anxiety roils through my stomach, driving me onward.

Again, it feels as though there is a clock somewhere ticking away, tracking each second we have lost thus far, counting down to something truly terrible.

And I have no idea how much time is left.

I turn left—the direction I last saw Velda veer—and finally ask aloud, “Am I a Jewel?”

“ Vaei ,” Bene answers me without pause.

I swallow hard and push back my rising dread. Softer now, I ask, “Have you always known?”

“ Vaei. ”

Velda lingers just up ahead, flitting about before a heavy wooden door banded in iron. “ Theryn’kai! ” she calls, a frantic note in her voice. “They are through here!”

My hands curl into fists as I whisper, “And why did you never tell me?” Though time is of the essence, I still whirl about to face him, forcing him to look me in the eye when he explains to me why our friendship of seventeen years is built on lies .

But my breath catches in my throat as I find myself again staring up into crimson eyes rather than blue.

“Because,” Bene hisses aloud, something dark and dangerous writhing beneath that single word. I take an uncertain step backward when he lifts his right hand and points a finger at me. A finger now capped by a dragon’s claw rather than a man’s fingernail. “I wanted to protect you .”

He nearly shouts those final two words in my face as a gossamer-light thread of Air unfurls toward me and pushes me backward, placing more distance between us.

“Bene!” Velda is between us in the next moment. “Bene, control yourself.”

“Your weave isn’t working,” he snarls back. “I can still smell her. I still want her.”

“Just try not to think about it—” she starts to suggest.

But he roars over her, “You ask a starving man to try not to think about a feast?”

“Benevolence Radiata, remember who you are,” Velda urges. “Do not let your Shade win. Do not let Malice win. This is what he wants, not you.”

Exhaustion seeps into my bones as I watch the two of them. Their words make no sense. I feel like a woman who has been tossed into the deepest portion of a pond and is now expected to instinctively know how to swim.

Except I can’t swim.

I don’t even know if I’m keeping my head above water at this point.

Bene’s eyes shift back to blue in the next moment. “Lavren na ,” he whispers, staggering. He leans heavily against the wall. Pain pinches his features. “Please, forgive me.”

“What is happening, Bene?” I ask, my voice finally cracking. Breaking. “What is going on?”

Now that the questions have begun, they spill from me in a torrent of sound, each more eager to be heard than the last. “Why did you call me na’drakira ? Why did you tell Friedemar I am Therya Drakara ? Why do I feel what you feel? Why does Friedemar want me so desperately?”

I have more questions. Why did you never come back for me ? Why are you acting so strangely? Why do your eyes keep changing color like that? But I dare not ask them yet.

Bene’s hands, now wholly human in appearance, flex. His jaw works. Reluctantly, he admits, “It is too much to tell you all now. We do not have time.”

“But she still has a right to know these things, Bene,” Velda insists. Even so, she flashes a look back the way we just came, to the corridor where the soldiers are still encased in makeshift prisons of Air.

“Fine,” my dragon king growls within my thoughts again, though his misgivings seep across the link between us. Misgivings tinged with fear. “If you want to know everything, open your mind to me, Na’therya , and I will show you.”

Open my mind ? Instinctively, I know this is a dangerous request. One fraught with risks. My thoughts would be exposed to him completely. My every secret. My every insecurity. My every desire.

The very idea makes me shiver.

But as I stare across the distance between us, as I gaze into his once more crystalline blue eyes, I know something else, too:

It is a risk I will have to take if I want to finally understand.

If I want to finally know what it is my dragon king fears so terribly.

Drawing in a deep breath, I visualize that metal gate within my mind again. Except this time, I picture flinging it open. I picture Bene striding in.

Velda flings up a shield of Spirit between us—a wall I somehow know is meant to protect me from the physical Bene. But it does nothing for the Bene within my mind. He is already there. Invading my thoughts. Overwhelming my senses.

I smell him as if he stands near. Wood smoke and earth and something darker still. I hear him as if his voice is just there, caressing my ear. “Forgive me,” he whispers, “but you must know.”

Suddenly, the floodgates open between us. Visions flicker past, too quickly for me to track. A lifetime of memories, of fears, of knowledge, of dreams. His thoughts are mine. My thoughts are his.

We are one.

My breath freezes in my chest. My heart forgets how to beat. For a moment, my legs threaten to buckle all over again.

But then he’s there, holding me steady.

No . He still leans against the wall further down the corridor, trembling in time with the shivers wracking my own body. I see him through the haze of Velda’s shield. He cannot be touching me. He cannot be holding me up. He is too far away.

Yet, I still feel him. I feel the strength of his arms wrapping around my back. His fingertips pressing into my shoulderblades through the silk of my gown. His brow brushing against mine.

“I wanted to spare you this pain, Na’therya .”

Those words echo through me, overlaying the memories still flashing by.

A woman wreathed in light who whispers, “He will be a great king. A king who will take a Jewel instead of a dragon for his queen, and together they will heal the rift between our peoples and bring about an era of peace and prosperity the likes of which the world has never seen.”

“The pain of knowing.”

“Madness,” a dark voice purrs from somewhere far away. “His Jewel will lead him to madness.”

My body shudders as I witness the world aflame. As the pained cries of a thousand dragons vibrate through my bones. Helpless, I watch the sky darken. I watch shadows devour the earth.

Bene’s anguish is my anguish. Tears gather in my eyelashes, blurring my vision as I witness the world end in a million different ways all at once. The scream I wish to unleash catches in my throat. It is too much.

But still, there is more.

“I wanted to carry this pain for you.”

Every moment I’ve ever stolen with Bene flickers past in rapid succession. Every letter. Every midnight flight. Every memory. Are they mine? Or his?

I no longer know. I can no longer separate one from the other.

Pain rips through me, horrific and wild, as I relive the moment I leapt off the balcony to escape Friedemar. Except this time, Bene doesn’t catch me. This time, he binds me in threads of Spirit. He pulls free from my heart a pulsating globe of light.

And then he lets me die. Shattered against the ground.

Bene’s roar thunders deep in my soul—the tortured cry of a dragon mourning his drakira even though I still don't know what that word means—as I witness myself die again and again at his hands.

Tremors wrack my form just as surely as they wrack his. This is his fear.

And now it is mine.

“Therya’kai?” Velda’s voice swims toward me as if from leagues away. I barely hear her over the racing of my heart, over the terror that slicks my body with sweat beneath my gown.

“ Savren na, ” Bene repeats again, the words ricocheting off the swiftly crumbling walls of my mind. We are delving too deep. Into corners of my thoughts I never wanted him to see.

Another vision flickers past—a vision I recognize all too well. I desperately try to shy away, to break the link, mortified as I unwittingly reveal to Bene one of my many dreams concerning him.

Embarrassment floods me, threatening to drown me completely. I try to run, but I am rooted in place, forced to stare down the corridor at Bene as dream after dream flashes through my mind.

Dreams of his fingers combing through my hair. Dreams of him holding me close. Dreams of him crushing his mouth to mine.

I want to die. I want to dissolve through the floor and disappear for all eternity. I would rather witness more death and destruction than this. I would rather witness him murder me in countless horrific ways than this.

Anything but this.

Please , I try to scream, begging Bene to sever the connection between us. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to expel him from my mind. But I dare not let him see more. I cannot bear the thought of him seeing more.

As if from far away, I hear a shout. Through the haze of my tears and Velda’s Spirit, I see the set of Bene’s shoulders tense as he shakily pushes himself away from the wall and back to a standing position.

Within my mind, I feel his urgency. And something else—a dark hunger I do not dare name.

His ghostly hold on me tightens. Protectively, possessively, he tugs me against his body even though he still stands so far away. How? That is impossible. But I feel it so plainly.

The strength of his chest. The warmth of his arms. The thrum of his heart.

Steady. Solid. Real .

I tremble, trying not to fracture into a thousand little pieces as my deepest desire plays out with such intangible clarity. Only my skin keeps me from flying apart. This is all I have ever wanted—for Bene to hold me, to want me as more than just a friend. But this can’t be real.

It can’t possibly be real.

Bene , I breathe across the link as my heart flutters wildly, as my pulse spirals out of control. I want to ask what is happening, but I dare not.

What if this is all in my mind? What if he can’t feel it, too?

Warmth stirs against my mouth like breath exhaled, and my lips instinctively part to greet it. I am truly going mad. That is the only explanation.

“Na’drakira.” That word brushes against the skin of my cheek, whispered aloud rather than in my thoughts. A fleeting caress. But it’s Bene’s voice. Warm. Rich. Yet honed to a sharp, dangerous edge.

I would know it anywhere.

“Na’therya.” Those three syllables rumble through me, sapping what is left of my strength, my resolve. I would surely collapse to my knees from the strange sensations assailing my body and mind were it not for Bene’s impossible embrace holding me secure.

I know without him saying that my dragon king wants to delve deeper still. That he wants something from me that I so long to give but dare not:

Everything .

Darkness sweeps through me, eclipsing all else as something sharp pierces me straight through. Like talons hooking into my soul. A veil sweeps from my eyes, letting me see the world in a completely different way.

That there are now two phantom Benes shimmering before me alongside the true Bene, the physical Bene, the Bene whose fingers subtly twitch as he stares at me through Velda’s shield. Eyes red. Body shaking.

One apparition is the Bene I know and love. Down on his knees, bound in chains, he screams like a tortured man. Tears stain his cheeks as he writhes in pain. So much pain.

It breaks my heart to see it.

And then there is the Other . The shadow Bene—the Shade—who stands with his body crushed against mine, wreathed in darkness, with eyes like twin blood moons.

“Selira feyra,” the Shade whispers just a hair’s breadth from my mouth as a long, clawed finger tips my chin upward, tempting me with the kiss I have always wanted. But not from him .

Not like this .

I try to scream, to call out to Velda for help, but no sound emerges.

The Shade’s sharp laughter clatters through my thoughts like shards of glass, mocking me. It was I who flung open the door. I who let the monster in.

And now it is going to consume me.

“Naei!” my Bene screams, his voice burning away the darkness overwhelming my thoughts like the rising dawn. Finally, I see it—the glittering web of Mind he has been weaving around my consciousness this whole while.

But I don’t have time to question its purpose before he hoarsely whispers, “Forgive me,” within my thoughts and pulls those threads taut, pitching me into darkness.

Forcing me to faint once more.