Page 65 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Forty-Four

It’d been a very long time since Taevas woke up in a hospital room, but it wasn’t an experience one never forgot — or could mistake for anything else.

He knew where he was long before he put anything else together. The scent of sterile air, the starchiness of the sheets, the lethargy that came with mild pain medication… It was all familiar and awful in its mundanity.

Taevas lay in the bed, unmoving. His eyelids were too heavy to lift, and his limbs were even worse off.

But for the first time in what felt like months, there was no pain.

There was only the odd metallic aftertaste of medication on his tongue and a fuzziness in his mind, like dozens of people stood just outside, speaking in low voices.

That… was strange.

Taevas’s brow furrowed. Working his dry tongue against the back of his fangs, he tried to focus on the distant murmur. He definitely wasn’t alone. That should’ve bothered him. He hadn’t been around anyone except his Alashiya in weeks. There was no way—

His claws curled into the crisp sheets. Shiya. Where’s my Shiya?

She was near. He knew she was. Taevas could feel her presence with absolute certainty. She stood beside him, close enough to feel her body heat but not touching. The great, burning glow of her was there.

So why couldn’t he smell her?

Something was wrong. An alarm bell began to toll in his mind, cutting through the pleasant haze of sleep and medication.

It took several tries, but he eventually managed to pry his eyes open enough to take in the blurry shapes of a modern hospital suite.

Sunlight spilled in from a window to his left, casting the rest of the room in soft shadows.

The hum of the air filtration system was low but constant, and the machines hooked up to him made their own gentle noises as they did their jobs.

Besides his own breathing and the hospital sounds, the room was completely silent. The crowd he’d heard was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t make out any conversation or even the tread of shoes in the hall.

Disoriented, Taevas forced his head to turn. He expected to find his Chosen in the chair next to the bed, but when his eyes finally focused, he discovered his uncle slumped there.

Constantin had his forearms braced on his knees and his head bowed. Taevas couldn’t make out his face, but he didn’t need to. The position of the older dragon’s wings said enough.

I’m home, he realized, trying to work some moisture into his mouth so he could speak. But where is my Shiya?

The certainty that she was right there only confused him more.

Taevas swore he could feel the beat of her heart, ever-so-slightly out of sync with his own, and the rhythm of her breathing.

She was nearby and she was awake and she was well.

All of that was exactly what he wanted, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Terribly, completely wrong.

They were clearly in the ’Riik, which was a relief, except he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there.

His memories weren’t patchy and disjointed like they’d been when he woke up in Alashiya’s barn, and yet there was a huge gap that spanned the time between being shot and waking up in the hospital room.

A series of incredibly important things must’ve happened during that time, but he clearly hadn’t been awake to witness them, which set his teeth on edge.

Because if he’d been unconscious, that meant that his Chosen had done exactly as he asked and gotten him all the way to the Draakonriik on her own.

The need to see her, to know exactly what had happened while he was passed out, pressed down on him. A low alarm began to sound from the machine closest to his bed. A series of quick beeps made Constantin jerk upright.

“Vennapoeg,” he croaked, rising from his chair to grip the rail on the side of Taevas’s bed. “Thank the gods you’re awake. How are you? Can you speak?”

His uncle’s lined face seemed to have aged another couple decades since Taevas last saw him. Despite all his losses and hardships, Constantin looked good for his age. His laugh lines were deep and his eyes sparkled with good humor, just as Taevas’s father’s had.

But the levity that normally shined from him was dampened when he squeezed Taevas’s hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. His eyes closed as he whispered a prayer of thanks to the gods.

“Onu,” Taevas managed to rasp, “what happened?”

Gently lowering Taevas’s hand back onto the bed, Constantin shook his head and let out a long, shuddering breath. “I need to ask you the same thing. I only have half the story.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re not well, vennapoeg.” Constantin adjusted the blankets across Taevas’s chest, his brow deeply furrowed and his lips pressed tight. “You should rest before we debrief. Gods know it will take a long time. A very long time.”

Feeling more himself, and therefore more alarmed, with every passing second, Taevas arched his neck against the pillows and blinked hard.

Work, he commanded his mind and body. We’ve been weak for too long. Wake up, get moving, find our Shiya.

“Give me the brief version. Everything after I was taken. Tell me about the Wing.” His voice sounded like soundpaper, but the words came out clear enough.

“You need water.” Constantin hurried over to a little table, where a pitcher of water and a cup were waiting. He came back to the bed just as fast and carefully angled the soft silicone straw toward Taevas’s lips.

When half the cup had been drained, he said, “I’ll give you the short version and then I’ll call the healers in to check on you.”

Taevas swallowed. His voice sounded marginally better when he muttered, “Fine.”

“First, no one in the Wing was injured when you were taken,” his uncle informed him. “That stumped us for a while, and there was a very thorough investigation into whether we had a traitor, but there’s no evidence of that.”

Encouraging him to take another drink, Constantin continued, “There was an attack on the solstice. Not just you, but every leader in the UTA. There’s a lot of evidence that it was coordinated by a militant faction of Glory’s Temple — some new version of the Ardeo — but actually linking the attacks has been difficult.

It looks like every hit was planned by them but carried out by separate groups either hired or with their own motives. It’s been a fucking mess to untangle.”

The Ardeo? Taevas frowned. The Ardeo had once been a spectacularly powerful military branch of Glory’s Temple, but it’d been disbanded hundreds of years ago when the Collapse began.

Since then, Glory’s Temple had taken a much less active role in politics and state games, but since they were the largest religious organization in the world, they still held considerable power.

None of that explained why they’d coordinate hits on all the leaders of the UTA, or how in the world Sergei was involved.

Dread coiled in his belly when he asked, “Deaths?”

Constantin set the empty cup on the bedside table with a sigh. “One.”

“Who?” Bile crawled up his throat. Please don’t say Teddy. He’s just a boy, and he’s freshly mated. Killing him… that’s too fucking cruel.

“Queen Sigrid,” Constantin answered, his tone grave. “She was shot in her home. Lee was attacked but came out fine. Sophie Goode was in critical condition for a while. She was just released from the hospital.”

“What about Teddy?”

Only his uncle’s small smile stopped Taevas from snapping at him to talk faster. “Your protege is fine. He and Healer Goode were nearly shot at a solstice ceremony, but were saved by High Priestess Zaskodna and her mate, who broke open the whole mad plot.”

Taevas felt a little bad for the amount of relief he experienced, but he’d never been particularly fond of the old war bat Queen Sigrid, so it couldn’t be helped. He liked her daughter Astrid more anyway.

Relaxing a little, he said, “That explains a little bit of what happened to me. I was kidnapped, but something clearly went wrong. They weren’t prepared to hold me for as long as they did.”

The smile fell from Constantin’s face. “Our understanding is that the new Ardeo were working in collaboration with other groups. If they’d planned to pass you off or something, that could’ve been disrupted when everything was exposed.”

“I don’t know who else they were working with, but I know who kidnapped me.”

Constantin’s expression hardened. “Who?”

“One of Jaak’s offspring. A man named Sergei.” Taevas let out a long breath. “I don’t think he’s dead, so we’ll need to hunt him down. Shouldn’t be too hard. He’s a big blue bastard with gilded horns. Hard to miss.”

“One of Jaak’s sons?” Constantin looked as confused as Taevas had been. “We knew there was a dragon involved, but we didn’t even think it could be connected to one of them. They’ve been quiet for decades. Was this all for revenge?”

Taevas tried to shrug, but the bindings on his wings made it difficult. “I don’t know. Things got a little messy when I tried to ask him about it.”

“I’ll let the investigators know. If he’s anywhere in the UTA, we’ll have him in custody within the week. If he’s flying… That might be a bit harder.”

Taevas allowed himself a grim smile. “He’s not flying. I injected him with the same suppressant he gave me.”

“That sure makes it easier.” His uncle shook his head, his salt and pepper curls swaying around his horns. He clapped his hands. “We’ll talk more, but for now we need to make sure you’re healthy. The ’Riik is fine, our enemies are on the run, and we have our Isand back. Everything else can wait.”

It very much did not feel like everything else could wait. Taevas had a thousand questions, but the one on the tip of his tongue wasn’t about his territory or his people or the Ardeo, of all things. It was about Alashiya.