Page 53 of Dreams and Dragon Wings (Clean Fairytales for Adults #2)

Benevolence

I look up and meet Aurelia’s eyes. I hear her voice as if from far away, screaming my name.

Behind her, her people scatter, taking back to the skies. All but her father, who grips her hand and tries to bodily pull her away from me.

My aunties bicker, fighting over how best to help me now. I can sense their panic. Their exhaustion. But their weak weaves do little to dislodge the tainted Spirit bolt from my chest. They need to rest to recover their strength.

They need to leave me now.

“Go,” I whisper to them all.

When they do not listen, I shout more urgently, “Go!”

“ Naei !” Aurelia screams back at me over our bond just as bolts of lightning and flame strike the ground beneath me, ripping it open and sending me pitching down into the yawning darkness of the earth.

Brisa, Velda, and Glorana fling out one last weave, trying to stop the inevitable.

But it is no use. The chasm is already too wide. Too deep.

The ground swallows me whole.

My fingers and feet scrabble at the soil rushing past me like sand through an hourglass, fighting for handholds and footholds, trying to keep me from descending too deep. Already, the crust of the earth lingers far overhead, the moon and sky but a distant memory. Malice’s silhouette darkens all.

I grit my teeth and dig my hands into the plant roots I find tangling through the soil, holding on for dear life.

The irony that my uncle seeks to kill me with the one element he cannot even weave—the one element at which I am a master—is not lost on me.

His mocking laughter fills my mind.

“I thought it poetic myself,” he agrees with me, easily reading my thoughts now that I cannot keep my mental blocks in place. “How do you like your grave, Nephew?”

“I would like it better if you were down here with me!” I shout back, earning for myself a mouthful of dirt that coats my tongue and crunches beneath my teeth.

My mind races.

I stare up at the great distance between me and freedom.

Can I climb back out? Can I escape?

I mean to try.

I will not leave Aurelia behind. Not now that we have finally found one another again.

I will not die today.

My hands grip tighter at the roots I cling to. The muscles of my torn back burn as I haul myself upward bit by bit, finding new holds as I go, fighting against the rush of the earth all the while.

Gusts of Air race past, trying to rip me from the earthen wall and pitch me down into the deep. Beneath my grip, the delicate plant matter snaps. I slip back down by several more inches until my fingers find new roots to tangle themselves with.

“And since you were so concerned about how I intend to claim the Corona once you are dead: I do not believe witnessing you be buried alive counts as—”

His words cut off on a pained roar. His wings crumple. Suddenly, the great mass that is my uncle in his dragon form is falling straight toward me, a single ballista bolt piercing the joint of his right wing. Not a Spirit bolt like the one still lodged in my heart.

Just… a ballista bolt. Like the sort Malice used to shoot me out of the sky back in Spindleton.

I press myself against the wall of the chasm and try to make myself as small as possible. But it’s not enough. His body still slams into me in passing.

Something inside my chest gives way with a sickening crunch. My delicate human bones are no match against his draconic.

Suddenly, breathing is painful.

My head swims.

My grip on the roots loosens.

Malice’s screeches of panic fill my ears and my mind alike as I tumble backward into the darkness, following my uncle into the belly of the Vale. Into the grave we are clearly meant to share. His desperate weaves do little to slow either of our falls.

He expended too much of his energy in ripping open the earth with mere Air and Fire in the first place.

My vision darkens at the edges, fading, even as a blinding light spills into the chasm from above. A golden glow that descends toward me like a shooting star, calling forth lavender strands as she goes.

Aurelia .

Her Air weave wraps around my broken body, gently slowing my fall. But not quickly enough. Still, we tumble down into the unknown.

The ground around us rumbles, as if calling out a low warning.

Even wavering on the verge of unconsciousness, I sense my queen’s fear.

“Hurry, Therya’fey !” someone shouts from above. “Now that its magic has returned, the Vale seeks to heal itself!”

Aurelia’s weave tightens around me just a little more. But I can still feel her hesitation.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whimpers within my mind. The damage to my torso must look even worse than it feels.

“You can’t,” I remind her on a hoarse whisper, choking on the words. “Not like that… at any rate…”

Threads of Air snap taut around me, reversing our course so quickly that I forget how to breathe.

Blood pools in my mouth.

I feel myself fading.

Some part of my mind fears I’m not going to make it.

“Yes, you are,” Aurelia bites out, flying as fast as her weave can carry us. The ground shivers all around, an emerald light borne of nothing but the land itself glowing bright as the soil swiftly knits itself back together like a healing wound.

Beneath us, a great boom resounds.

Far away, the tolling bell falls still.

Together, we emerge from the ground just as the last of the chasm snaps shut.

Relieved sobs greet me. My aunties. They lie in the grass, panting for breath, the last of their strength completely gone for now.

I have the vague sense they are the ones responsible for the ballista bolt. A stroke of poetic justice.

I try to thank them for their aid, but only a broken gasp shudders from my chest when Aurelia tenderly settles me next to them.

“Father! Velda!” she calls from where she now kneels over me, tears shimmering on her cheeks. She looks so lovely, even when she cries. I wish to tell her that, but I can no longer find the words.

A sudden pain pierces my heart—a pain beyond any I’ve ever known. It seeps through me like fanged barbs, burrowing deep, bringing with it a dark oiliness that feels so much like him .

Malice.

“I think you’re right,” Velda whispers from far away. “I think pieces of Malice remain inside his heart. That must be why…”

I flicker out of consciousness for a moment.

“… beyond my ability…” Rowan murmurs next. “He needs the Waters…”

Aurelia’s face swims back into my fading vision. Warmth glides against my cheek.

Her touch. Her kiss.

“Hold on, Na’theryn ,” she pleads. “Stay with me.”

Tir’anor , I try to remind her. I have made a vow of Always to my future wife.

I do not intend to break it now.

“Please,” she prays aloud, “please give me the strength to go a little further.”

And suddenly, I am airborne again. The night blurs past. The ground falls away.

Again, I am wrapped in my queen’s embrace.

Naei , I protest. She has already endured so much in my name. It is now my turn to carry her. She needs to rest. I should be spiriting her away to safety.

“I am your Therya’kai ,” she reminds me as we fly across Drakara as fast as the wind can carry us. “And I finally realize what that means.”

I struggle to cling to consciousness, to hang on her every word as she whispers to me, “My burdens are your burdens. Your pain is my pain. When I can go no further, I know you will carry me. And when you can go no further, know this: I will carry you. To the ends of the earth if I must. Never again do you need to suffer alone.”

Another ragged breath rattles from my lungs. I cough, choking on blood.

Aurelia’s grip on me tightens. I feel the swirl of her pain and fear though she tries to hide them from me.

“Stay with me, Bene. I only just got you back. Please ,” she begs again. “I do not want to do this without you.”

You never will , is all I have time to promise before unconsciousness finally claims me.

Before I sink down into a darkness from which I fear I might never wake.