Page 28 of Dreams and Dragon Wings (Clean Fairytales for Adults #2)
Aurelia
Now
I flicker in and out of consciousness, fighting to stay awake as I am spirited across mist-drenched mountains, glittering waterfalls, lush valleys, and fantastical forests alive with fairy lights. Drakara is just as beautiful as I always imagined it would be.
But it is difficult to appreciate its beauty.
Exhaustion seeps into my bones. My eyes ache from crying. My throat burns from screaming. I am tired—tired of fighting. Tired of being helpless.
And, most especially, tired of being a prisoner.
When dawn finally seeps across the horizon, the landscape abruptly changes, shifting from green to lifeless in the span of a single moment. Dry fields and woods choked with rot unfurl beneath me, leading us onward toward the dark fortress that looms ominously in the distance.
“Release me at once,” I demand for perhaps the fiftieth time since we first passed through the Door, infusing my voice with what venom I have left.
As ever, Malice ignores me. He does not speak. He does not so much as growl.
He simply flies us straight for that fortress and in through a large, arched opening located at the top of one of the many towers, carrying me into what seems like a room made for the coming and going of dragons.
The entire space is composed of nothing more than open air and many more archways that ring the room, allowing for a perfect view of the skyline beyond.
A single flight of stairs located in the very center leads downward and out of sight.
Before I can finish catching my bearings, Malice unceremoniously deposits me on the cold stone floor, on my stomach. As if I am little more than a parcel he has delivered to himself.
Biting back a groan, I push myself to a sitting position and then freeze as I find myself staring up into emerald eyes again.
As I look at him, waiting to see what he intends to do next, he tilts his head to the side in near-perfect imitation of the look Bene gave me the first time we met as children. Finally, I see the family resemblance.
I bite back the peal of hysterical laughter threatening at the back of my throat.
“You cannot weave,” Malice observes, cool and straight to the point. When I open my mouth to claim otherwise, simply for the sake of being contrary, his look sharpens. “That was not a question.”
Without another word, he steps close and sinks into a crouch.
While I am still reeling from his sudden nearness, his hand shoots forward like a striking viper to twitch back my skirt, revealing my left leg all the way to the knee.
Ripped stocking, torn flesh, and dried blood greet us both, turning my stomach.
I jerk away from him and cover my leg once more. “Don’t touch me!”
Malice’s nostrils flare, as if he can smell something I cannot. “I will need to tend to the wound if you do not want it to fester, girl.” Jaw tightening, he adds, as if such words pain him, “I fear I am better at breaking things than fixing them. Earth weaves elude me.”
I lift my chin and repeat, “You will not touch me again, Lord Malice.”
The man stares at me. After a moment, his eyebrow arches. “Not even to carry you down the stairs? It is a long walk.”
“No,” I bite out through my clenched teeth. “I would rather tumble down every single flight of stairs than be held for a single moment longer by you.”
For the briefest moment, I could almost swear a smile flashes across his lips. But then the moment passes. His eyes turn hard.
“Suit yourself, proud feyra ,” he whispers, rising back to his feet.
Feyra . Bene always told me that Draconic word translated to friend . But now that Malice has uttered it, I know that was yet another lie.
I don’t dare ask the dragon before me what it truly means, though. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of realizing he knows something I do not.
Pain bites into my wrists as strands of Air infused with cold wrap around my arms and wrench me to my feet. Try as I might to stop it, a cry of pain escapes me unbidden when I place weight on my wounded leg.
In frigid silence, Malice half-leads, half-drags me down the spiral staircase, through shadow, through cold, through dank.
I grit my teeth hard to keep from crying out again as I limp along behind him, doing my best to remember every turn we take once we depart the stairwell and journey through a series of darkened hallways together.
But the corridors all look the same. There are no markers by which I can remember the way. The walls and floors are barren. Shadows seep into every corner.
And I can swear something is following us.
Claws skitter over the ragged stone. Eyes watch me from the darkness.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end again.
“Where are we?” I finally ask, gazing out through one of the many broken windows we pass. I catch only a glimpse of what appears to be a labyrinth choked by thorny brambles guarding a tall tower at its center before I am tugged onward.
“Umbra Castle,” Malice answers me, “where I rule as king , not lord .”
“Bene is king,” I whisper back, my response automatic. I refuse to say was. I refuse to believe I merely imagined the fact that he was still breathing—if only barely—when last I saw him.
Heavy wooden doors carved with intricate floral designs faded by time line the corridor, leading to rooms that Malice utterly ignores.
It is not until we come to the end of the hall that he finally stops walking and opens the set of double doors there to reveal a bedchamber that looks decidedly out of place.
Where the rest of the palace is dark, it is illuminated by soft lanterns. Where the rest of the palace is cold, it is warm. Where the rest of the palace is austere, it is richly furnished.
My mouth immediately runs dry. This must be his room.
“No!” I rasp, my breath already hitching, my pulse already racing.
I am caught in a never-ending nightmare now playing on repeat.
It is Friedemar all over again.
I strain against the threads of Air binding me in vain. I scour the chamber before me for any glimpse of something I could use as a weapon.
But there is no need.
In the next moment, the weave around my wrists dissolves and a gust of wind slams into my back, shoving me inside. The door swings shut behind me.
Leaving me alone.
“Do sleep well, my dear,” Malice says through the heavy wood separating us, his words punctuated by the rasp of a key in the lock. “We will speak further once you have rested.” A beat. “And bathed .”
Rested , he says, as if I could possibly sleep now that I am finally alone and can hunt for a way to escape. I try to wrench open the doors before me first, as if I didn’t just hear my captor lock them.
Unsurprisingly, they hold fast.
“Let me out!” I shout to no avail.
Malice’s footsteps are already receding down the hall, leaving me truly alone.
I whirl on my heel and make for the windows across the room, desperate to keep myself busy. If I stop moving, I’ll start thinking—about Bene, about his glassy, unseeing eyes, about his weak breath.
About what might happen if I don’t find him and help him before it is too late.
No . Steeling my heart against the grief waiting to consume me all over again, I grasp the velvet curtains draping the windows and fling them open. But what shred of hope I was secretly harboring wilts when I find myself staring at mere stone rather than glass.
There are no windows. I am in a solid room with only one exit.
Truly trapped.
“Worry not, Therya’kai ,” a soft voice whispers directly against my ear, stopping my heart in its tracks. “We will find a way out of this.”
Before I can conjure up the energy to scream, Velda glides in front of my face and shushes me, turning my initial fear to disgust.
I twitch away from the pixie who just stood by and watched Malice perhaps murder her sisters, who allowed Malice to nearly murder her godson. Without looking at her, without speaking, I return to my study of the bedchamber.
I move toward the fireplace next but soon find that it is a false hearth with no chimney to speak of. The flames are composed of threads of Fire with a cushion of Air to contain the smoke.
Velda follows me. “You have every right to be angry with me, but I hope you will listen to the reason for why I did what I did before you seek to judge me.”
I turn to face her and coldly remind her, “You did nothing .”
Pain flashes across her features like a streak of lightning. “I did nothing because Bene asked me to do nothing. He ordered me to hide so that you would have at least one ally, no matter what happened next. He wanted to ensure you wouldn’t be left alone.”
All the air rushes out of my lungs as my knees threaten to buckle beneath me. Bene . Even when driven half-mad by his Shade, Bene was still thinking of me and my welfare.
I stagger toward the edge of the bed and finally allow myself to collapse. Blinking rapidly, I will myself not to cry. How do I possibly have any tears left to shed?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, unable to bring myself to lift my eyes toward her face this time. “I’m sorry for misjudging you.” Drawing in a shaky breath, I wrap my arms around my midsection and hold myself tight.
Exhaustion crashes over me. My wounded leg throbs. I have now been awake all day, all night, and into the next morning. But I can’t possibly rest now. I can’t possibly stop. Not until I discover what happened to Bene.
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Velda softly explains without uttering another word about my rudeness toward her, “Malice’s weave was but a sleeping curse, not a killing curse.
They are alive.” She sighs, sounding tired herself.
“ Somewhere . Malice will be keeping them close. It is the Corona he wants.”
The Corona . My mind flashes back to memories long past—to nights spent poring over the ancient Drakaran history tome Bene gifted me.
Suddenly, I understand.