Chapter 14 #2
“This is absurd!” she yells, clearly frustrated. “How in the realm am I supposed to get up there?”
You help her! Even I need help getting up there, I plead. Rolling his eyes, air puffs out of his nostrils and blows in my face, letting me know exactly how he feels.
He lowers his head, and I haul myself up—slower than I’d like, the months of lost muscle making everything harder than it should be.
Odeyssa copies me, a little clumsy but determined.
She slides in behind me, close enough to feel her breath at my neck.
“He’s a lot bigger than mine. I didn’t expect it to be such a struggle,” Odeyssa admits.
“No problem.” Even before I was held captive, there was no graceful way of getting on him. “You’re gonna want to hold on,” I say, half warning, half challenge.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she states. Voraxis grumbles under us, and I can only imagine it was his idea of a laugh.
Once he starts moving, I do my best to squeeze my thighs around his neck for stability.
Then with a shriek from Odeyssa, we’re off into the sky.
The city of Excidium becomes smaller and smaller until it is a blob in the center of something so much bigger than anyone down there knows.
The brisk, cold air bites against my cheeks as Voraxis flies steadily through the fast-approaching night sky.
As we fly north, there’s a pull—faint but persistent—tugging me west, toward the place that briefly felt like home.
But even as the instinct flares, I know better now.
Naivety, like a memory, is a fragile illusion.
The place I found to keep me grounded when I felt to be in freefall.
But just like everything else in that life, it was ripped away and burnt to ash.
Are you sure this is what you want to do? Voraxis’s concern is prominent, but the truth of the matter is, if we went to Nefarium, we wouldn’t know what we would be walking into. And for some reason, Voraxis isn’t allowed inside the town’s limits, and I have no plans on separating anytime soon.
It was either this or the forest. Somehow, this seemed like the lesser of two evils.
Turning to look over my shoulder, I see Odeyssa lying on her back, eyes closed, and it amazes me how she can seem so relaxed, so at ease, despite everything. I have half a mind to leave her be, let her rest, even though I’m envious.
I can’t remember the last time I felt like that.
“Odeyssa?” I start.
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbles.
The question has plagued me since the moment I met Voraxis—or rather since I saw the barrier.
“Why aren’t dragons allowed in Nefarium?
” I wince as soon as the question leaves me, berating myself for being so nosy.
At first, I thought the dragons were confined to the meadow, not allowed beyond the barriers, but when Voraxis showed up in Excidium, that theory was proven wrong.
Then, when he suggested we go to the forest, which Odeyssa pointed out was across the realm, it begged the question that if Voraxis could travel there, he could go anywhere. So why not Nefarium?
Voraxis stiffens a bit, his torso tightening just a hair but enough for me to notice the shift. However, despite the obvious discomfort, he stays silent.
Odeyssa lets out a long sigh and sits up. “Honestly, it isn’t spoken of. The barrier has been there for at least as long as I’ve been alive. But I know it’s been up for much, much longer.”
“But you don’t know what caused it to go up in the first place?” It’s hard to believe the princess, future queen and ruler of Nefarium, has no clue about such a historical topic. Surely, she’s been in training or “princess school” since she could walk.
“Truthfully, I don’t know what sparked the feud.”
“Feud?” I find it hilarious that fae and dragons would have some sort of unresolved issue. The dragons could’ve easily retaliated, burnt the whole town down to the bones. So why didn’t they? Voraxis scoffs but still doesn’t say anything on the matter.
“Disagreement? I don’t know. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“So, he agrees with it?”
“I guess so?” But it comes out more like a question.
“Because if he didn’t, he could just as well take it down.” My body begins to heat, filling with anger and resentment even though I know it’s not her fault. But maybe it is—part of it, anyway. As the heir to the throne, I would think she has some sort of say.
Odeyssa must sense my annoyance. “Well, Kallie, by all means, why don’t you just turn your big, fire-breathing machine around, and we’ll go ask my dad himself!”
“So help me, Odeyssa, I swear to the Goddess I will throw you off and let you plummet to your death if you keep fucking suggesting that!” There’s a feeling I can’t shake.
Although I find it odd that she won’t let it go, there’s another part of me that thinks she wants to separate Voraxis and me.
After all, we did just establish that it is the one place in Siderium he can’t go.
“Do that and you’ll have a target on your head, punishable by the mark of banishment and sent to the forest for killing the princess of Nefarium.” It isn’t malicious, the way she says it, but like she thinks she outsmarted me, almost smug.
“Newsflash, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s already a target on my head. And wherever they send me—whatever they do to me—it can’t be worse than what I’ve already endured.” I feel her body deflate behind me, and the rest of the flight is quiet.
As the night grows longer and the temperature drops, Voraxis makes the decision to stop for the night. None of us has uttered a word or so much as sneezed the rest of the flight.
Voraxis touches down on a patch of grass, and neither Odeyssa nor I wastes any time dismounting.
Where are we? The trees are different from the others I’ve seen since being here. They’re taller, skinnier, but the leaves are fuller, making them appear larger than they truly are.
Just outside the Kingdom of Vaiterra, Voraxis answers.
Do you have any clue how this is going to go?
Well, they don’t have a barrier. But like I said, I haven’t returned since the leadership changed.
Noted.
Voraxis skillfully gets the saddle off—how, I have no clue—but it’s nice to know I don’t have to do it every time. He lets me know he’s heading out to hunt, and honestly, I don’t blame him. It was a long flight, and he did haul all our crap the whole way.
Once he’s gone, it just leaves me and Odeyssa. She rummages through the pockets holding whatever Atticus put in there for us. I still find it odd he didn’t come, but maybe there’s a reason I’m not aware of.
All these secrets are giving me hives.
I wait until she’s done searching for whatever she needs, walks away, and disappears into the brush of the trees before going over there myself.
My stomach rumbles with the festering hunger I’ve had since this morning, and the chill from the night is finally starting to set it.
Inside the pockets, I find mounds of food, way more than we got in town.
Different fruits and vegetables, meats and breads are all stacked and piled together.
This is way more than we could possibly use on this trip. Maybe he thought we were feeding Voraxis too. I grab an apple and the package of strawberries and then go in search of a blanket.
In the second pouch, I find blankets, coats, shirts, pants, socks…undergarments. Any and all clothing items we could ever need are all in here.
Maybe I’ve underestimated how long this trip is going to be.
Wrapping one of the blankets around my shoulders, I leave the saddle—not that I could move it if I wanted to—and decide against going after Odeyssa. She probably needs some time to cool off, and truth be told, so do I.
Sitting on the ground, I lean against a tree, making sure to keep the saddle and the direction Odeyssa went in my line of sight.
Exhaustion begins to take hold, and I fight against it, focusing on putting one berry into my mouth at a time.
But my eyelids start to droop, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to bring my hand to my mouth.
Then, before I know it, I snuggle deeper into the blanket, allowing the tree to bear all my weight.
Just as I’m about to drift off, dreaming of a different time—a different life—where I wasn’t constantly running, or fighting, and could finally just be…
an unfamiliar voice snaps me back to the present.
“Look what we have here.”