Page 14

Chapter 14

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Lorn demands cautiously, but I ignore him and keep my eyes trained on his arrogant asshole of a brother.

My boot hits the carpeted floor with a soft thud, and several of the drakes immediately pinpoint the magic charm on my ankle. I reach for it at the same time Karis and Gatlin step in front of Aeson, and Nils and Urser pull Lorn back behind them. I run a finger under the smooth metal of the charm until I feel the release. Pinching it, the formerly solid charm separates, and the magic that’s been hiding my scars suddenly shatters and disappears as the anklet falls to the ground.

A shocked hiss is the first thing I hear as I straighten and face Aeson and the other drakes. I adopt the same fuck you stance that the commander was just aiming at me, ignoring the crescendo of outraged growls and the looks of utter dismay. The weight of their stares is laden with abject horror and distress as they take in the map of what I suffered at the hands of the Tainted.

Out of habit, I run my thumb over my forearm, sighing with relief when I finally feel the scars Wistan carved there. Aeson’s thunderstruck gaze tracks the movement, and then a horrified understanding fills his eyes as they slowly lift from all the cuts and slashes marring my skin. My answering stare is razor sharp daggers and icy contempt. I tell him with a single look exactly where he can shove the savage vehemence and pity now clouding his tempestuous face.

Rage simmers in his depths and smoke starts to stream from his nose. He takes a step closer, but Gatlin tries to stop him. Aeson rumbles a terrifying warning at the other drake, and Gatlin instantly freezes, dropping his gaze and tilting his head to expose his throat in a clear display of submission.

Pandemonium sweeps through the room as Aeson advances on me. Raw, undiluted power pulses out of him, and it sends the drakes already on the brink of a volatile shift careening past the point of no return.

“Who.”

Aeson takes another step.

“Did.”

And another.

“This.”

Tahir scrambles back, and several drakes shout orders for everyone to move out of the way.

“To.”

Blay charges. At first, I think he’s going to tackle Aeson, but he streaks past, diving for one of the massive archways instead. A mountain-sized purple dragon erupts out of him, the beast launching itself off the outer lip of the tower. An enraged roar reverberates through the dragon stone floors, walls, and ceiling as Blay’s dragon streaks away.

“You.”

Aeson is suddenly in front of me, waves of heat pouring off of him like morning mist off the waterfalls that flank this keep. I gasp as his power pools and eddies against me. The sensation is terrifying and somehow exhilarating. It’s like holding on to a live wire, knowing it could incinerate me at any moment but not being able to put it down.

Smoke billows out of his nose and mouth with each heaved breath, and his eyes have morphed into the bright blue predatory stare of his dragon. He reaches for me, but I slap his hand away, still riding the wave of anger his imperious bullshit has caused.

“Don’t push him, Ever,” Lorn barks in warning as Aeson snarls at my rebuke. “He’s balancing on the edge of a frenzy. Don’t tip him all the way over.”

Instead of listening, I bare my teeth in a snarl at Aeson when he eliminates the space between us altogether. The warning growl rumbling out of me doesn’t register in the slightest to the wild hurricane of a drake in front of me. In fact, it only spurs him on, and he answers my resounding threat with a thunderous one of his own.

His chest brushes against mine as he studies my face, drinking me in and swallowing me down. His rage confronts my own. My defiance baits his. We stand, two enemies on a battlefield, neither willing to cede to the other, and somehow, I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now. I’ve never felt more seen.

With a bellow that shakes the rookery, a dark blue dragon and then a blood red one follow after Blay and go plunging off the railless balcony out into the dusky sky. The chandelier above me shakes and clangs, threatening to shatter, but it holds.

It isn’t lost on me that the healers in the hospital were right to be wholly terrified of The Horde’s reaction to my scars. These dragons don’t know me. I’m nothing to them. And yet their response to what was done to me is undeniably visceral.

“How did this happen, Ever?” Lorn demands, his tone razor sharp and surprisingly pained.

I’m taken aback by the heir’s slip of emotion. My mind is warning me that I know better than to trust The Horde, but I’d be an idiot not to notice that there’s more going on here than I’m capable of understanding right now.

Aeson reaches for me again, and this time, I let him trace the slashes on my neck with his unsheathed talons. I should probably be afraid. I’ve seen firsthand what the wrath of a dragon can do, how quickly it can tear the world asunder. But there’s something about being in the presence of this primal, raw rage that calls to me. It’s as though basking in the physical manifestation of what I can only feel inside is exactly what I need to be whole again, even if it’s only for a little while.

Instead of my dragon surging forward and battering against the confines of the curse, the opposite happens. That part of me settles and calms, like it knows it’s finally home…safe, and now it’s time to heal and rest.

Aeson pulls me closer and I go willingly. He relaxes infinitesimally when our bodies press together, and he drops his face and rests his forehead against mine. Thick smoke wraps around us, but it isn’t choking or cloying. It feels strangely protective, like he needs to shut everything else away and take a moment. As someone who’s been there quite a lot lately, I get it.

Hot fingers stroke the scars on my neck and upper chest before dropping down to graze over the ones running down my arms.

I think he’s counting them.

“How?” Aeson half rasps, half rumbles.

I sigh and close my eyes, wanting to lock his dragon out, but he nuzzles the tip of his nose against mine, and I give in and look up into his exacting blue eyes.

“Beatings, at least it started that way. He had this special kind of whip he liked to use. That’s what’s on my back,” I explain, and Aeson’s hands move from my arms to my shoulder blades where he traces his way through my pain, one slashed scar at a time. “Eventually he got bored of that and started carving tallies into me. At first, he would do it every time they bled me, like he wanted to keep track of it on my skin. But after a while, it became less about the blood and more about lording his power over me. He’d carve tallies like I was his own personal scoreboard, a walking embodiment of his wins and my losses.”

I shake my head and run a thumb over the lines and slashes on my forearm.

“I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t heal. I couldn’t stop him.”

My whispered confession mixes with the smoke floating between us. Aeson breathes it in, my pain anchoring his anger.

“Who?” he demands, the solitary word a threat and a promise.

I study him for a moment, taking his measure. I can’t decide if he’s worthy of my trove of wrongs and reprisals, if he can be trusted to bear the weight of them like I have. Maybe I should continue to hoard all of my hurts, keep everything to myself, but the temptation to share the burden, to put it down for just a little while, is like a siren’s song rising through the haze of Aeson’s smoke. I know I’m going to end up broken on the rocks for giving in, and yet, I just can’t stop myself.

The fluttering in my stomach becomes its own frenzy, but I can’t tell if I’ve trapped butterflies or wasps. My pulse races and my blood burns with rage, with heartache. Before I can change my mind or think better of it, I offer Aeson a broken sliver of myself, wrapped in the name of the bastard who tried to shatter me beyond repair.

“Wistan…Wistan Allaire.”