Page 7 of Exquisite Monster (Dragons of Viria #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

________

KATALENA

V arí hopped up onto my shoulder when I woke him from his nap in the bowl, riding with me back to the room that had become our home.

I’d rearranged the pillows and fabric into something that more resembled a bed.

There were a few chests and chairs in here, storing things like paper and more bolts of cloth, but there was plenty of room, and we didn’t need much.

A few rooms away was a bath. Warm, swirling water in a sunken pool that reminded me of Skalisméra.

Gleym had given me a few of the shapeless robes I wore, and I slipped out of this one, damp with sweat from the effort I’d used to make the combustible paste.

Varí settled into the bed with the book, and I quickly washed. She was right. I needed to rest. Even though I’d slept for days and had been resting, I still didn’t feel right down here. I didn’t feel whole .

I wasn’t sure if it was because I was human, and being so far underground wasn’t natural for me. I missed the sky and the wind on my face. I missed the sun.

It was entirely possible that’s why I felt weaker than I ever had.

Very possible.

But it wasn’t the truth.

The truth was something I didn’t want to think about, but at the moment I couldn’t hold it back. I wrapped myself in a clean robe and sank into the nest of a bed, curling around myself, and finally, allowing them to enter my head.

I hadn’t allowed myself to say their names. Just them or mates , because the second I allowed their names into my head. Their faces, scents, voices ?—

We will find you. I promise.

Pain surged through my chest, memories coming hard and fast now that I’d breached the barrier holding them back. I’d felt their fear, their anger, their heartbreak at having to give in. Even though they’d tried to hide it, I felt it through our bonds, and I felt it now like an echo.

Tears gathered beneath my closed eyelids, slowly slipping out and down my skin.

The truth was, I felt weak and exhausted because they were gone. Because they were now a part of my soul, and we were separated. If it was like this for me, how bad was it for them, being apart from me ?

Were they all right? Was Andaros taking out his anger at me on them? Were they… were they being tortured?

A sob broke free, and I covered my hand with my mouth, not wanting the sound to travel through Gleym’s home. Dragons had much better senses, and I didn’t want her to hear my tears and think me weak, no matter if I was.

Soft little claws picked at the skin of my arms as Varí climbed over me. I was wrapped around myself, but he steadily forced himself underneath my arms until I was wrapped around him . His head rested beneath my chin, and he purred like he knew it was what I needed.

It only made me cry harder.

Endre . Sirrus. Zovai .

Would it be easier if I could feel them so far away? Would it make me feel worse if they were in pain and unable to do anything about it? Would it help them or hurt them if they could feel me?

They knew I was alive. I knew that because I knew they were alive.

Those words Sirrus said slipped into my mind. We will find you. I promise.

Would they be able to find me down here?

Would they be able to find me at all if Andaros held them hostage?

The monster that had once been my betrothed…

he’d been planning what to do with captive dragons for his whole life, and I was no fool.

He wanted them for a reason, even if I didn’t know what it was.

They had promised to find me, but I wasn’t going to wait here and hope Andaros made a mistake that would free them. I’d never been someone willing to wait for the world to make my decisions for me, and I wasn’t going to begin now simply because it hurt and I was heartbroken.

I faced death at the hands of dragons, risked the wrath of kings by poisoning my own womb, and faced down the most powerful beings in the world for a chance at happiness.

There was every chance this path would still take my life, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to walk it.

They were going to find me, but I would find them too. We would find each other. Whatever came after, we would face it together. Or we would die together and meet in the stars.

Calm eased through my chest at the decision even as the tears still flowed.

With Gleym’s help or not, I would find them.

They were held captive by a monster. Well, I could be a monster too, and I would ruin myself if it meant getting them back.

Snuggling Varí closer, I let my memories of them float through my head until the tears eventually stopped, and I slipped down into sleep.

“You are different,” Gleym said, observing me.

I brewed one of the recipes from the book she’d given me, but without the book in front of me. She wanted me to memorize it? Then I would. This was a potion of mending. Whether it was a small cut, a chipped rock, torn fabric, or a broken bone.

If the recipe were correct, a few drops could fix almost anything. I’d never seen a recipe like it. But none of the ones she’d shown me had been anywhere close to the knowledge humans had.

That any humans believed we could stand against them at all was nearly absurd. Which made me think… either Andaros and those who followed him were all crazy, or they had something hidden the world didn’t know about.

My intuition had settled on the latter. Because those whose minds had gone made decisions based on a whim, and as much as I wished Andaros were simply mad, I knew he wasn’t.

“How so?”

“You have hardened. Your determination shines through more than before.”

She wasn’t wrong. Because I’d decided. I was careful not to lift my eyes to hers as I measured a handful of black salt into the potion.

“I hope you decide to help me,” I said. “This is your home and your domain, and things will be easier if you help me. But whether you choose to or not, I will find my mates.”

Silence stretched through the room, and still, I did not look at her. “ Varí ,” I said quietly. “Bring me the dried root of moss.”

A scuffling sound reached me before he hopped up on the table next to me with a glass vial in his mouth. I smiled as I took it. “Thank you.”

His wings puffed up with pride, and I scratched the back of his head. He’d started assisting me, and was good at it. When he didn’t know the name of something or seemed confused, Gleym would say something in the growled dragon tongue, and he’d get it immediately.

“It is not your fault, girl.”

I looked up at her then. “What isn’t?”

“That the dragon Heirs are where they are.”

All the breath rushed out of me. “How is it not? I was their target. The only reason Andaros knows of their existence is because of me. I’m the reason he needed revenge. I’m the reason the Elders were so angry at them that they chose to allow their own offspring to be taken and be?—”

Thinking the word tortured and saying it out loud were two very different things. I hoped they weren’t being tortured. But I also knew Andaros too well.

“Are you?” Her staff clicked against the floor as she approached. “You did nothing but be born, Princess of Gleira. The Elders have been trying to destroy humans for generations. Are you at fault? Or have the decisions of everyone who came before you merely put you in this place?”

Gritting my teeth, I glared at her. “What does it matter? I am still here, they are still there, and whatever decisions were made before my life, I’m still responsible for my choices in this one.”

Gleym leaned on her staff, watching me. I sprinkled the powder Varí had brought me into the cauldron and stirred it slowly. This was almost complete.

“Can you light the top on fire?” I asked Varí .

He looked at me as if asking that I was sure, but when I nodded, he puffed fire into the pot and stared as the top of the liquid burned, revealing a potion of a true, deep green.

“Shall we test it?” Gleym moved her staff, breaking it over her knee in one movement.

I gaped at her. That staff wasn’t a mere twig. It was thick, and I’d thought it was stone and not wood. “I—” Shaking my head, I reached in and coated my fingers with the green mixture. This was safe to touch. She held the ends of the staff out, and I covered them before guiding them back together.

It was stone.

My first assessment had been right. Gleym was old, but she was not infirm. I suspected she hid far more power than I knew about.

A low sizzling sound came from the crack in the staff, and it healed over before my eyes. She lifted it with a smirk and leaned on it once more. “Well done.”

“How much can it heal? How far?”

“Are you asking if it can bring someone back from the dead?”

I swallowed, but nodded.

“No. It cannot. But for living things, as long as there is life still beating and enough time, it can heal most things. Use it sparingly.”

“What about a sheyten ?”

“No.” With a single word she shattered the idea as thoroughly as the stones themselves. “It would help heal them.”

I looked away in frustration, toward the shelves that never seemed to become less full. More empty bottles and vials had appeared before I came to the workshop this morning. I began to fill them. “Where did you get the bottles? ”

“Here and there.”

“You expect me to believe that perfectly intact glass vials fell from Evrítha because some poor trader dropped them overboard?”

She chuckled. “Evrítha is not the only way beneath the world. But no, I do not expect you to believe that. Nor do I plan on telling you where I got them. Yet.”

I filled the vials and sealed them, leaving the liquid to cool. Varí nudged one with his nose, sniffing before leaping off the table and landing on my shoulder with a chirp. “Thank you for helping.”

He didn’t need me to speak the dragon tongue to know that he’d had fun.

“It is not an easy thing,” Gleym said. “To be someone at the crossroads of fate.”

My breath hitched. “Is that what I am?”

“It’s never easy to tell unless you are looking to the past, where the way the world has gone can be seen with perfect clarity. But until now, you have been exactly where you have needed to be. To be a mate of a dragon is not an accident, Lena. The mate of three dragons even less.

“Whether or not your choices led you here, and whether or not you carry any blame, you are here.”

“I am very aware of where I am.” My eyes burned. I was so far away from where I wanted to be. Whose arms I wanted to be in.

“When fate intervened once before, you faced that fate and it led you to them. Now you are here,” she said again. “Face this, and it will lead you to them again.”

“How can you be sure?”

Gleym inclined her head. “Because I will help you.”

I gasped, and she kept speaking like she hadn’t just given me the very hope I needed. “But you are not ready. There is much you do not know.”

“How long until I’m ready?” I asked, trying to contain the desperation I felt. After yesterday, I hadn’t even been able to think about the revelation of who she was. Even with that, I wanted to go. I wanted to find them.

“Keep working and we shall see.”

“I will,” I said, straightening my spine. “But I have questions.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure you do. Do as well as you did today, and I might answer them.”

It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. And that was enough.

I didn’t leave the workshop, instead sitting at the table with Varí to memorize the next recipe in the book.