Page 80 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)

“...My thoughts exactly,” Kiera said after a minute.

“You might not care about your dragon trying to murder you every chance he gets, but this isn’t about you.

Whatever happened fifteen years ago, it’s about time you face it and find a way to tame your mad dragon.

Or there might be another incident again, and this time, your precious tribe girl might be the one they find dead. ”

Kein growled some more in fury, but it had no one to direct its anger at, so the orange dragon kept unleashing furious growls at the sky, acting restless as if it was bound by some chains or caged.

It was exactly how Kassein felt inside. He felt suffocated, trapped between the agony of the mere thought of something happening to Alezya and overwhelmed by a wave of guilt he had ignored for so long.

He was vaguely aware of his sister and Lorey walking away to return to the camp, but he stood frozen, his feet stuck to the ground and his thoughts so chaotic he couldn’t settle on one.

He refused to think of that night. It still hurt too much, and there was nothing he could do to get rid of that guilt.

And yet, Kiera had planted a horrible vision in his head, the image of Alezya’s cold and motionless body, crushed under the stones of a collapsed building. ..

“...Kassein.”

Alezya’s gentle, cold hands on his cheeks snapped him back to reality. Her beautiful dark eyes found his, and there was so much gentleness in them that the chaotic noise in his head settled down.

“Kassein, alright?” she asked, showing off new words she’d probably just learned that day. “Hurt?”

“No,” he managed to utter, answering both her questions.

He covered her hands with his, keeping them on his cheeks while he took a deep breath. He could feel how worried she was about him, and he forced himself to calm down a bit.

She was there. She was there, with him, safe and sound, and Kein wouldn’t hurt her.

His dragon had no reason to attack her..

. but the man they had killed also wasn’t meant to die.

That innocent man was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his only crime was standing between Kassein and his mad dragon.

Kassein closed his eyes, trying to chase the image away, but it was carved inside his eyelids. Before Alezya, it was the first thing he thought of in the morning and the last thing that came to mind before he slept.

Another victim, another chokehold of guilt. He reopened his eyes, looking at her. She had no idea of the monster he was, and because she had no idea, she could look at him like this.

“...Come with me,” he whispered.

He took her hand and pulled her as he turned to the castle and took the very step he’d refused to take for so long.

Since Kiera had already lured him into the garden, he was already knee-deep in the painful nostalgia of happier days before everything had gone wrong.

The garden he and his siblings had run and played in so many times, the once luscious garden filled with his mother’s plants and the smells of herbal medicine.

The familiar darkness of the castle most of them had been born and raised in. ..

The gardens had an entrance at the back, and it was easy to find the heavy door that led them inside.

Kassein hadn’t opened or walked through that door in a very long time, and yet, everything was strangely just the same fifteen years later.

It only felt... smaller. The Onyx Castle had always seemed like a mountain to his younger eyes, but now, Kassein was a grown man, and he was realizing how small this place was compared to the Imperial Palace.

There weren’t as many rooms, and the kitchen and the staff’s rooms were even in a separate building.

It was unnecessarily tall, with each floor spanning higher than necessary, its structure strange with rooms scattered, spiral staircases, and uneven ceilings of carved black stone and onyx his ancestors had covered this place in.

The most unusual thing was the smell... According to the legends his parents had told them growing up, this place used to be a volcano, and the stone had been darkened by the ashes.

Kassein had no idea how much was true, but he had never known the Onyx Castle not to smell like cold ashes.

He didn’t know if this place truly was a volcano because, from the outside, the Onyx Castle stood like a giant shard pointing at the sky rather than a mountain, and there was no record of it ever being a volcano.

Just a misshapen oddity erect in the midst of the most desolate lands of the Empire, and yet, for years, this had been his home.

“...Kassein?”

He glanced down at Alezya.

They were standing on what served as the ground floor of the Onyx Castle, a round room with a high ceiling of onyx stones, two thin and tall windows on each side, and stairs going up.

It seemed like she had merely called his name because she was slightly confused about the place because her eyes were scouring every inch of black stone with a mix of wonder, shock, and bafflement.

She was still flanking him, and he changed their positions, offering his arm for her to hold on to as he guided her to the stairs.

“This was my home,” he said, talking as if she could understand every word, just to fill the silence. “The Onyx Castle.”

He made a large gesture around them before turning to her to make sure she had understood this.

“Onyx Castle,” he said.

“...Onyx Castle,” she repeated, although she visibly wasn’t sure.

He gave her a nod before taking her up the stairs. They passed a couple of corridors, but he knew which room he wanted to take her to.

He ignored the room that had once been his parents’, as the doors were shut anyway, and continued to another room nearby.

Their mother had always wanted to keep her children close, although the unruly architecture only allowed for so many children to be in the neighboring rooms. Thus, as more siblings were born, the older ones moved to other rooms, which they often shared until they all moved to the Imperial Palace.

Being the second to last child, Kassein had only ever been in this room, the one closest to his parents.

He pushed the door open, and sure enough, everything was as he remembered, with a thin layer of dust everywhere.

There was a crib on one side, the crib they’d all been in, and a small bed on the opposite side.

“Baby,” Alezya muttered, walking to the crib on her own with a look of surprise on her face.

Kassein stood at the doorstep while she inspected the wooden frame, her hand touching the cold little mattress.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to feel upon entering this room, but right now, he felt.

.. nothing. A faint wave of nostalgia, perhaps, but that was it.

This room felt like a memory, something that stood with the past, empty and cold.

He glanced over the room before he forced himself to take a step inside. Alezya’s eyes turned to him, full of questions.

“This was my baby brother’s,” he said. “Sepheus.”

He pointed at the baby bed. He couldn’t explain they had all been in that crib once, but that was enough explanation for now. He then pointed at the small child’s bed.

“This one is mine. Kassein’s.”

Alezya frowned and turned to the small bed.

“Kassein?”

“Yes. My bed. Baby Kassein’s bed.”

To his surprise, she smiled softly and walked to the bed, sitting on it. Alezya wasn’t a particularly small woman, but the fact that she spread her arms to check that she could touch each end of the bed with her fingertips made it look charmingly smaller.

She glanced back at him, clearly amused that he had once been small enough to fit in this bed. He walked over and sat next to her, and with the two of them sitting side by side, they covered most of the bed.

He pointed at two large baskets in the opposite corners of the room, on either side of the door.

“This was Kein’s bed.”

“Kein’s bed?” Alezya repeated, surprised once again by the size of it. ”Dragon Kein bed?”

“Baby dragon Kein’s bed.”

Alezya looked absolutely shocked. Kein was now gigantic, but back when Kassein slept in that bedroom, his dragon hadn’t been bigger than a large dog. She pointed at the other basket.

“Sepheus dragon. Seus bed.”

“Sepheus?” she repeated.

He pointed at the crib again.

“Baby Sepheus bed. Like Kiera is my sister, Sepheus is my brother.”

“...Three children?” Alezya frowned, using the few words she knew.

Kassein snorted, his first hint at a smile since he’d entered this place.

“Eight children.”

Alezya gave him a suspicious glance, so he held his fingers for her to confirm. Her jaw dropped, and he chuckled, amused.

“Come.”

It felt much easier to show Alezya around than if he had been alone.

With him holding her hand more than she held his, he took her to each bedroom, teaching her the names of his siblings and their dragons.

Their bedrooms still retained some of the personality of their last occupants; Darsan’s bedroom was a chaotic mess, with a ripped rug, the remains of furniture he had accidentally broken and fixed multiple times over, and his dragon’s very chewed-on basket.

He had been the only one allowed his own room because no one could endure his snores or the constant chaos that surrounded him and Dran’s antics.

Kassian had shared his room with his nine-years-younger brother Shenan for a while, and it was the tidiest of all, with books perfectly lined up, many quills on the desk, and stacks of paper. Even their beds were made as if they would return the next day.