Chapter 11

SHOCK AND DISBELIEF FILL AESON’S eyes. I pull my head back, our faces mere inches apart as what I just said settles between us like kicked up mud in a pond.

“Dragons…” he repeats, like he needs to wrap his mouth around the words before he can wrap his mind around them. “Who?”

“Not here,” Lorn interjects, reproach darkening his tone. He looks around the corridor pointedly, and Aeson straightens in understanding. We start down the wide hallway again, the clomp of heavy footfall the only sound bouncing off the walls as we go.

Unease cloaks both scions, their furrowed brows and downturned mouths indicative of a typhoon of tumultuous thoughts. There’s something oddly satisfying in the way my revelation has rattled them. It feels karmic and remarkably affirming to witness their struggle to process something that I, myself, have had a hard time coming to grips with. It’s fucked up—I shouldn’t wish my pain on anyone, but I can’t find it in me to care. Betrayal is a nasty beast; why should I be the only one to wear its scars?

“We shouldn’t take her to the infirmary,” Lorn states, his mien contemplative and tense.

“The rookery is secure,” Aeson supplies, but there’s a splash of something in it that I can’t identify, like he’s unsure about that option but doesn’t proffer a better one.

With a nod from big brother, Aeson changes direction. He walks right for what looks like a wall. A wall that suddenly slides open at the commander’s approach, revealing another corridor, one that was completely hidden seconds ago.

I stare at the new opening, utterly gobsmacked. A queasy understanding clambers forward in my mind. On the off chance that someone escaped their cage down here and tried to run, they would never find the way out. It’s diabolical, and brilliant, and it makes my blood run cold.

What the hell was I thinking coming here?

On my best day, I am out of my league in this place, and today sure as shit isn’t my best day.

Aeson picks up his pace and we approach another elevator. I stiffen, nowhere near ready for round two. The commander must notice my reaction because his face dips and his eyes catch mine. Understanding dawns in his gaze, a keen comprehension I want to wipe away.

Why couldn’t he be pretty and dumb? This would be so much easier if he was all package and zero substance. But no, it’s just my luck that the fucker is clever, adept, and annoyingly observant.

Questions I have no intention of answering flash across the commander’s face. I flatten my lips into a scowl and look away from him, making it clear I’m not going to tell him shit about why the elevator puts me on edge.

“Your secrets aren’t going to be yours for much longer,” he warns as the group piles into a much bigger elevator car.

“Maybe, but they’re mine for now,” I contend, ignoring the glimmer of challenge I see in his eyes.

This time, no one presses a hand to a panel or does anything else before the elevator doors close and the box starts moving. I look around the group, trying to discern which one of them is controlling this thing, but everyone looks stiff and focused, making it impossible to tell.

I recognize Chastain, the big blond brute I first ran into back in Lairwood, and another drake from the lirocar ride, the one with purple scale armor whose name I still don’t know. A massive drake, the biggest I’ve ever seen, stands behind Aeson. His hair is black, his complexion tawny, and his scale armor is a rich dark brown. He’s a Thrasher, and his solemn cinnamon brown eyes are fixed steadily on me.

I meet the drake’s stare, neither one of us offering a challenge or grappling for dominance. We simply take one another in, like we’re trying to see where the other might fit in all the uncertainty and chaos that’s unfolded today. I just barely notice the black glyphs and bands on his arms. They’re almost camouflaged against the deep brown of his scale armor, but they irrefutably mark him as a member of the Royal Wing.

Chastain leans over and whispers something to him that I can’t hear, and I spot another set of bands and glyphs that I know for a fact weren’t on the Channeler’s night blue scale armor before. My gaze darts around the elevator, landing on one glyph-covered arm after another until I realize that they’re all marked as members of the Royal Wing. It shouldn’t be a surprise. I am standing in an elevator with the two Noctis scions, but it hammers home my precarious reality even more.

“Who is your mother?” Aeson asks out of nowhere.

The question spikes my adrenaline, which makes my head pulse even harder, but I pretend like nothing’s wrong as I look up into a shrewd pair of sky blue eyes. I get lost in the color for longer than is appropriate, and his hold suddenly tightens…almost possessively.

Why do I like that?

I study his face and find myself wondering things about the commander that I have no business wondering. This is my enemy. I shouldn’t want to know what he looks like when he smiles, or care what his laugh sounds like. I sure as shit shouldn’t be wondering what noises he makes when he comes.

A strange flutter starts in my core, and the oddest feeling washes over me. It’s as though I’m no longer the only one looking out of my eyes. My first thought is that it’s my dragon, floating just below the surface, taking everything in, assessing.

But somehow this is different.

The unfamiliar pressure doesn’t subside, and an undeniable touch of cognizance tickles my mind.

Is Aeson doing this?

Or is this me?

Or maybe this is the Source’s fault for getting me drunk?

I reach for my dragon, eager for contact or a sign that the cage separating us might be weakening, but, just like always, that piece of me is locked away and dormant.

Rattled and confused, I lean closer to Aeson, probably too close. I blame my scrambled depth perception and my fuzzy head, not this strange pull I suddenly feel toward him.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be talking about top secret things,” I whisper, purposely dodging his question, and his gaze drops to my lips.

“Is that top secret?” Aeson asks, his tone a gravelly taunt bordering on a deep growl that makes me think I just might know one of the noises he makes when he comes.

“I thought everything about me was top secret. Isn’t that why you’re sneaking me up to your rookery like some female your kindred wouldn’t approve of?” I ask.

“You’re not going to get anything coherent out of her until Jori deals with her Source issues,” Lorn interjects.

I point at the heir’s chest. “You have Source issues. You also have some dirt right there.” I gesture toward his right peck. He swipes at his shirt irritably before looking down to find it’s still pristine. I giggle. “Gotchya.”

Lorn’s scowl is icy. It’s the perfect accessory to go with his white hair, wintry blue eyes, and cold beauty. The thought makes me giggle again.

“You have a dimple,” Aeson points out, like I don’t already know.

I gasp and cover the small indentation with my hand. “It’s back?” I exclaim.

Aeson frowns at me, the look in his gaze perplexed.

“Don’t scare it away!” I admonish. “I haven’t seen the little guy in forever.”

Aeson snorts out a laugh and then quickly cuts it off, like the show of amusement just happened against his will.

“It only comes out when I’m happy or having fun. Don’t mess this up for me,” I scold, and Aeson’s amusement instantly dims.

Everyone grows quiet, and I bite down on my lip to keep any more nonsense from slipping out. I wince when I accidentally reopen the cut I forgot about.

“She’s bleeding again,” someone announces.

I wave a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing, just my lip. I’ve had worse injuries…like way, way, way worse. Don’t even worry about this one. It’s not even a blip on the radar of the fucked-up things that have happened to me.”

What the fuck am I even saying?

Mortification has me closing my eyes. I press a hand over my mouth as though it will stop the involuntary word vomit.

“Can someone just knock me out until we get where we’re going? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me,” I plead, my voice muffled against the palm of my hand.

“We’re almost there,” Aeson assures me, and I nod and then regret that movement. “Now back to your mom,” he tries to redirect.

I groan and drop my hands back into my lap, irked.

“Stop being so obsessed with my mom; way to give a girl a complex.” I open my eyes to give him a look, and freeze.

I’m surrounded by white dragon stone on the walls and floors. It has light gray and gold veins running through it just like I remember. The arches are the same. The dragons carved into the stone of the walls, flying, hunting, living life, are different and yet similar enough that my heart lurches and my lungs try to quit on me.

Wasps get to work destroying my insides.

It’s not the same. You’re okay . I tell myself, but I instantaneously don’t believe it.

I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me that this is where they were bringing me. They said rookery, and that could’ve only ever meant the towers of King’s Keep. And yet, I feel like I’ve just been kicked in the gut.

I wasn’t ready.

I don’t know that I ever could have been.

“What’s wrong?” Aeson demands, suddenly stopping so he can look at me, but my thoughts and memories are yanking me back to a time I’m all at once desperate to escape.

“King’s Keep,” I answer, my whisper a hollow shell of devastation, because the last time I was here, I watched my mother, my brothers, and my father being butchered.

My breaths grow shorter, and my heart rushes between beats until the cadence is one constant thrum of foreboding. Ants crawl through my veins, and I run a finger down my scars to try to ground myself, but they’re still hidden by the charm, and that disconnect between what should be there but isn’t, it sends me spiraling.

All at once, I can see it. Smell it. Hear it.

It’s like I never left.

“No,” I tell myself, clenching my hands into tight fists to quell the shaking. My broken and jagged nails dig into my palms, the small kiss of pain helping to focus my racing thoughts. “You’re not there,” I chant quietly. “They’re not being torn apart. You can’t hear them screaming. It happened already. It’s over. You’re not there.”

But suddenly I am, and the horror of it all once again seizes me so fast I can’t do anything but survive it all again.

Enslee burrows deeper into my lap, the fabric of my skirt helping to muffle her cries. They found our brothers. We thought they escaped, but the drakes are dragging them back into the room. The queen is screaming. Father is pleading. He’s trying to bargain, to beg, but the armored drakes won’t listen. Brooks is crying, he’s so scared.

I should close my eyes.

I should look away…but I can’t.

“I am not there,” I chant to myself. “I survived.”

Ronin and Novak scream when the drakes pull Brooks away. Their terrified wails join the agonized bellows of my father and the queen. My mother’s lying in a puddle of blood just behind them. Her body has stopped twitching, she’s gone still. I think she’s dead.

Brooks screams, the anguish and agony searing through me, eviscerating everything I am.

I am not in that tower. I am not watching them die! I snarl at my mind, fighting back, refusing to succumb to the horror. Not here. Not now. It’s not safe. I can’t afford to be vulnerable. I can’t show them my weaknesses.

I shove out of Aeson’s arms, needing space, to be sick, to pace, to shatter…I don’t know. I make it a few steps, but my blood loss and battered body put a quick end to my hasty retreat. My vision dims and my knees suddenly give out. A pair of capable arms are quick to catch me, to keep me from falling, and then I’m being cradled against a wide, hard chest.

A warm hand strokes my hair, and a sonorous voice picks up my mantra, repeating it back to me in perfect synchronicity. “You’re not there,” he whispers against my uninjured temple. “You’re safe,” he adds, over and over again until I can almost believe him.

I want so badly to believe him.

I whimper as the screams echo in my mind, but I refuse to look at the haunting specters of my family as they’re ripped limb from limb. The smell of blood tries to fill my nose, but I hold my breath against the phantom invasion. I know it’s not real. It happened, but it isn’t happening now. Yet even with that certainty, it’s so fucking hard to kick free of the violent torrent and find the surface.

I don’t know how long I sit, murmuring in harmony that “I’m okay” when it couldn’t be further from the truth. I tread through the trauma until I begin to find my way out. Slowly, my breaths grow even, my heart finds its proper pace, and my eyes adjust. The merciless memories are shoved back into their box and reburied within my tattered depths. I know they have no intention of staying there, they never do, but that will have to be tomorrow’s problem.

I open my eyes, spent, depleted, but ready to face the world again. Chagrin colors my cheeks. I can only imagine what everyone around me must think. I feel alarmingly exposed and frustrated that I can’t do anything about it.

I turn to face Aeson, not sure what to say, or how to even explain what just happened, but a different pair of blue eyes meet mine. Aeson isn’t the one offering me comfort and coaxing me back from the dark.

The warm arms and gentle voice cradling me are Lorn’s.