Page 45 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Taevas wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

His other hand cradled the back of her head, holding her to him as firmly as he dared.

The wretched, useless wings folded against his back twitched with the instinct to wrap her in the dragon’s embrace, where she would be sheltered from all the evils of the world.

The embrace was a sacred thing reserved for closest kin and Chosen.

For a dragon to let a person into the embrace was to expose their greatest vulnerability, the hyper-sensitive membrane and delicate bone of their wings, and offer them the protection of their shelter.

An embrace meant sacrificing their wings in the event of an attack. It meant letting a person under your guard, where they might slip a knife between your ribs or snap a fragile bone. It meant family and love and choice.

It made him angry — so, so angry — that he couldn’t give her that which was her right, her place. Because of the decisions of a few faceless men, he couldn’t give her the embrace when she so clearly needed it, and he would never, ever forget that.

But when Alashiya slid her arms around his waist and clung to him like that, a little of his rage was tucked away, saved for another time and a better use. She pressed her face into his throat, where her eyelashes tickled his skin. Her breath warmed him in tiny distressed puffs.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she whispered. “I just want to go to sleep.”

She was hiding again. Running from the conversation. He felt as though he’d forced a door open that had remained shut for too long, and the memories that had escaped weren’t the sort that could be dealt with in a single night.

But he couldn’t let this die. As much as he wanted to, as much as it killed him to push, he had no choice. He couldn’t allow her to suffer in silence any longer. She was his to protect, and that started now.

“I don’t need details,” he explained, “and I won’t push any further than this, Shiya, but I have to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t care for you properly until I do. I can’t know how to ease your pain, what to avoid, how to help you. A healer can’t cure what they don’t see, and your husband can’t soothe what you don’t share.”

Her breath hitched. “You’re not really my husband, you know.”

“I am,” he answered without hesitation. “You decided this, my Shiya. It’s done. Now tell me what happened to your grove.”

Alashiya leaned into him. “A rogue band of shifters came through. Rovers released from the army after the war. They were looking for a place to settle their little pack — or that’s what they said, at least. My grove welcomed them in, fed them, let them sleep in the barn.

But they overstayed their welcome. Got pushy, then violent.

When my parents and some of the others decided they had to go… ”

Ice tipped into his veins. “What’d they do, metsalill?”

“They killed them.” Her fingers dug into the dense muscles of his back.

A fine trembling ran down her spine. “It was so fast. I was in the kitchen with my grandma when it started. We all felt it as soon as the killing started. Everyone scattered to hide in the woods, but most of them were hunted down. Just for fun, I think. It wasn’t like we had anything to steal or were any sort of threat. ”

He could hardly get the words out, but he managed to ask, “What happened to you?”

“I hid in the place you found me,” she answered, soft and matter-of-fact. “I was so scared, and I could hear screams close by. So I dug deep and let the roots take me. I hibernated for days, until my grandparents managed to find me and convinced the forest to let me out again.”

A shiver ran through him. “Shiya…”

“Not everyone was killed by the shifters. Some of them were so damaged by the horror they chose never to come out again, or went into hibernation afterward, when the grief got too bad. The forest chose to keep them. That’s what happened to my mother.

The forest made its choice and… and I never saw her again. ”

Sickness churned in his stomach. He knew what slaughter looked like, and he knew the devastation couldn’t always be counted into carnage. Most often, the true cost was paid by those left behind.

Dreading the answer, he asked, “The forest isn’t just a hiding spot, is it?”

“No. It can hide us, it can sustain us, and if it chooses, it can end us.”

He closed his eyes. Swallowing hard, he grated, “The shifters. What happened to them?”

“We weren’t the only victims. They’d done it before, and they were caught not too long after they ran from here,” she answered. “Rangers got them. They’re gone.”

He wished it satisfied him. Even knowing how swift and brutal shifter justice tended to be, it didn’t make him feel any better.

Taevas wanted details. He wanted to know they suffered for what they’d done to Alashiya and her family. He wanted to avenge her like he’d avenged his parents and everyone else terrorized by Isand Jaak.

But he couldn’t. All he could do was take care of her now.

“That’s enough, metsalill. I don’t need more.” Stroking his claws through her fragrant curls, he murmured, “Go lay down in our nest. I’ll clean up the dishes and then join you.”

She didn’t move right away. They lingered there for a while longer, their bodies swaying ever-so-slightly to the music of crickets just beyond the windows, until at last Alashiya’s arms fell away.

It pained him to let her go. Taevas pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Rest,” he breathed into the fine, wispy curls at the edge of her hairline. “I’ll be in soon.”

She nodded. Saying nothing, her eyes downcast, Alashiya stepped away from him. The feeling of loss was instant.

He watched her wrap her arms around herself, the extravagant sleeves of her golden robe trailing from her elbows, and slowly walk out of the kitchen. A queen in finery made of scraps, off to a nest on a floor.

A queen of memory. A queen who belonged to him.

He found her curled up in what had become his spot.

She’d changed into one of her pretty pleated nightgowns and tied her hair back in a loose braid. It snaked over the pillows in a thick, mahogany coil. Her back was to him, but he sensed that she was awake.

Dread was heavy in his gut. Exhaustion and pain made him crave the soft embrace of the nest, but it was the desire to shield her that propelled his steps across the darkened room. Taevas lifted the blankets and slid in behind her.

“Your wings, Taevas. You should lay on your stomach, not on your side,” she whispered in soft protest. Her voice was rough. Had she been crying? The faint scent of salt in the air made his chest clench.

He slipped his left arm around her waist and tucked his right beneath her pillow. “I would trade them for a chance to hold you without hesitation.”

A watery laugh escaped her. “You’re very smooth, argaman mlk.”

Pressing his lips into the curve of her shoulder, he asked, “What does that mean?”

A soft huff escaped her nose. “Purple king.”

He hoped she could feel his smile against her skin. “You are my wildflower and I am your purple king. I don’t think either of us gets points for creativity.”

“I like that you call me metsah-leel.” She slowly slid one hand beneath the pillow until she found his fingers. Twining them together, she whispered, “I never imagined what your voice would sound like.”

He gave her fingers a small squeeze. “How is it?”

“Good.”

“Just good? Ah, my Shiya. You love to wound me.”

The softest, most precious laugh popped like champagne bubbles in the dark. “It’s very good. I like it even when you’re being bossy.”

“I fear I will always be bossy,” he wryly informed her.

Alashiya was quiet for a beat. “My grandfather wouldn’t approve. He always said I needed to find a nice nymph for a husband.”

Taevas stared into the darkness beyond the nest, the weight of her tragedy pressing down on him from the shadows. “Do you think I could’ve won him over?”

He felt her deep breath as she drew it in and let it out. “Yes.”

Surprised by that, he noted, “You sound very certain. He must not have had his mind set on a nymph after all.”

“He did,” she insisted. “It’s all he talked about at the end. He was so worried about me being alone, and he blamed himself for not having done enough to make sure I wasn’t when he passed. But he’s not so anxious anymore. At least, I don’t think so.”

Taevas’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“It’s tēq. I carry his ghost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A queen isn’t just a queen. It’s not just a title. It’s tēq. To carry. To hold memory, knowledge, and the souls of those who passed.” She clutched his hand beneath the pillow and curled a bit more tightly on her side, like she needed to protect herself against something unseen.

Speaking in the rhythmic cadence of a storyteller, she whispered, “The first nymph survived because she was given to the Earth by Blight. He couldn’t provide her with milk, so he dug a hole at the base of the oldest cedar tree and placed her inside, where the roots and the soil itself could provide for her.

They burrowed into her skin, her bones, her heart, and twined themselves into every part of her.

When she was strong enough, he dug her out again and showed her how to live in the forest he’d made.

He told her that the knowledge was hers to hold forever. ”

“I’m not used to Blight being the hero of a story,” Taevas murmured.

The god of disease, decay, and wilderness wasn’t widely spoken of for being kind or nurturing. He was known as the scorned lover of the goddess Glory, the being who lurked in the dark and whose image was never shown, lest his gaze rest for too long on an undeserving soul.

“The gods aren’t heroes. They simply are.

” Alashiya pulled the arm he’d slung around her waist up so she could cradle it against the plush warmth of her chest. “Blight disappeared, leaving the nymph to fend for herself. Eventually she found a husband and had many children, who went on to have children of their own. When she died, her knowledge passed to her oldest daughter, and then again to her daughter.”

Taevas blinked. “Wait, what?”

“All nymphs are descended from the first. A few years ago I did some research at the library and read that she was most likely a normal arrant woman who somehow became infected with a strain of mycelium that grows on tree roots — Blight only knows how, I suspect. That mycelium allows information and nutrients to transfer from tree to tree, and, with time and the mutation of magic, from nymph to nymph. We all have it. We all live and die and make our mark in the hyphae, the network — but only queens carry it.”

He wondered if this was what it was like to be truly, completely gobsmacked. “I… You have a hive mind?”

“No,” she replied, rubbing the line of his knuckles against the underside of her chin in slow, soothing drags.

“We have a connection. We share memory and knowledge. How to survive in the wild, what berries are safe, and what caves have bears. Over the generations it deepened, became more complex. I can’t speak to my ancestors through it, but I can feel them and access the knowledge of their lives through impressions.

All nymphs can, to some extent, but only queens can reach back as far or hear them as clearly as I can. ”

“Queen of memory.” Goosebumps prickled his arms.

Alashiya nodded. “Each grove has its own queen, its own branch of the hyphae, but all nymphs are connected by the root, the first. And now me.”

“And you… You became queen of your grove when your mother died.” She hadn’t said it, but he couldn’t imagine how else it could’ve gone.

“My grandmother, actually,” she replied, her voice tight with emotion.

“My mother never got to be a queen. My grandmother outlived her, and then when she passed, it became my responsibility. But by then it was just me and my grandfather. When he died, there was no grove to guide or family to share the memories with. Nothing but ghosts and the end of a line that saw the beginning of all things.”

Taevas wanted to say something. He wanted to offer her some profound words of comfort or a speech about how she was a fucking queen, and that meant something even now. But the words wouldn’t come.

It was nearly impossible for him to comprehend the enormity of what she’d told him, what it meant to her, to the world, or the ocean of grief that rippled in slow, dark waves beneath every word.

No wonder she didn’t want to speak of how she’d ended up alone in Birchdale, cut off from the world.

Taevas tightened his arms around her. “You’re not alone anymore, Shiya. You’ll never be alone again.”

“You can’t make promises like that. We barely know each other.”

He let out a shaky breath. “I think we know each other better than anyone else in the world.”

The fresh scent of salt tinged the air. Alashiya was crying, but she didn’t make a sound or shake in his arms. She simply wept in the way one might bleed — silently, continuously, until eventually it stopped, one way or another.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry.”

Alashiya sniffed. “What for? You didn’t do anything.”

Regret curdled his stomach. The sour taste of it climbed up his throat to settle on his tongue and the backs of his teeth in a thick, toxic film. It tasted like salt and cowardice.

He closed his eyes. “For making you wait so long.”