Chapter 55
Chapter
Fifty-Five
NAKOA
S omething had changed. Not only between Mareina and I, but something else in the center of my chest. A pull that, at first, seemed inconsequential but eventually became unignorable.
My Knowingness whispered to me who it was.
Malekai.
Mareina was still sound asleep beside me, the moons casting a soft celestial glow in the room. My eyes remained fixed on her, wondering if it was just a trick of the light or if she really was healthier after we’d finally fulfilled our bond. The dark circles under her eyes had disappeared, her cheeks were no longer gaunt, but full and rosy. Her skin practically glittered. And the expression on her face was more peaceful than I’d ever seen it. The sight filled me with so much love and fucking relief it stole my breath.
And as if that thread tugging me toward the pull couldn’t possibly pull any tighter, my gaze dipped to where her hands and arms were curled sweetly in the burrow between my chest and hers and a mark on her wrist caught my eyes.
Gently, I took her wrist in my hand to discover a pink, raised scar bearing Malekai’s name in curling cursive.
To my surprise, I didn’t feel the burn of jealousy. Instead, it made me actually miss the fucker.
Carefully, I tucked Mareina’s arm back against her chest and disentangled our limbs before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
I had a dead drakonati to visit.
Finding Malekai had been much easier than I’d anticipated. It was like a cord had been tied directly between the two of us. If I wavered from the path to him, second guessing my self, pain would flare down the bond until I returned to the proper course.
Just fucking like him to pull me out of bed when I’m with our mate.
A forest appeared on the silvery horizon, and like a beacon, my soul was somehow now connected, drawn towards a small clearing at the foot of mountains I had no name for.
An eerie stillness surrounded the cave as if everything that lived in the vicinity had fled to safer ground. I padded across the clearing on silent feet as the hairs on my arms began to rise. I could feel the flame of Malekai’s magic beckoning me into the giant cavemouth, igniting hope and relief to fill the gaping hole of grief his death had left.
I willed an orb of light to illuminate my path, though my eyes could see just fine in the dark. The tunnel inside was cavernous, opening further into cathedral heights as I reached its end, where I found Malekai’s drakonati. Seeing him reawakened my grief. The weight of it returning like a boulder on my chest.
The sadness in his glowing eyes was a mirror to my own. Laying on all fours with his head between his forelegs. Relief twined with grief escaped my eyes as I approached, laying a hand on the scales of his hide as he released a mournful groan.
I owed this male everything. My soulbound—our mate. My life. My Kingdom. Fear flayed me open as my mind flashed back to the heartstopping memory of Azrael descending with his blade poised to kill. The terror and impotence of being too far away to reach them in time.
“Thank you,” I managed to whisper.
The drakonati huffed in response. Silence stretched between us before I finally took a seat on the ground beside a boulder a few feet away.
“We need you, Malekai.”
Expression softened the curves around the drakonati’s eyes as they lifted from the cave floor to mine, reminding me of a dog’s expressive features.
“She’s doing better now. Looks healthier. Less… traumatized.”
A great sigh leaves the beast’s chest, and his relief is palpable.
“So what happens now? Do you just… lay here? In this cave forever? Is this what the afterlife is?”
If a drakonati could look bored, it would be wearing the expression on his face now.
“Can you shift back?”
“No.”
The unfamiliar male voice nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. I twisted to find a hulking, winged male standing only a few meters away. He frowned at me, stepping forward with a basket of…
Flowers?
“Lathrimos,” the male answered without me needing to ask, “I’m the protus archestratim.”
Chief Archangel.
“ I have helped your soulbound’s father rule this realm for more millennia than I care to count… And I know your father, Rumiel. Though I haven’t seen him in an age.”
Lathrimos swayed the basket in front of Malekai’s nostrils like a priest or priestess swings a thurible of incense. Malekai’s nostrils twitched before inhaling deeply. The black chasms in the center of his sea green and gold eyes dilated wide in one swift leap, and something like a laugh, if a drakonati could do such a thing, rumbled in his chest.
“What the hells is that?”
Lathrimos glanced over his shoulder at me as he continued to sway the flowers in front of Malekai’s beast’s nose. Glittering, iridescent pollen drifted up from the basket as Malekai continued to breathe in slow, measured breaths, and that rumbling laugh vibrated through him and the ground beneath where I sat.
“ Dendrata zou. It’s a flower that normally only grows in Lucidi Regorum, your uncle-in-law’s realm, but Mors convinced Somnus to let him grow a garden of it here… It thins the veil between Akash and ourselves. It enables us to reconnect more consciously with her Source energy, tap into her knowledge, and clear karmic debts and energy. Heal wounds…”
My brows lept, thoroughly intrigued. The drakonati in front of us rolled onto his back, feet peddling through the air whilst wiggling around like a dog in a field of flowers as that rumbling, drakonati laughter made the stone of the cave tremble.
The sound was contagious. The tension in my body eased, the weight on my chest lifted, all as I began to laugh, watching with no small amount of awe as this gigantic, fearsome drakonati laughed.
“ Akash almighty. Is he hallucinating?”
Lathrimos’ laughter beside me increased. “Well, I would think so. He just inhaled enough dendrata zou pollen to reduce an entire army to babbling toddlers.”
My head tipped back with laughter that liberated my soul from the shackles of grief in one fell swoop.
Malekai’s beast hummed and babbled in a strange drakonati tongue that I wasn’t entirely sure the drakonati himself even understood. Laughter streamed from mine and Lathrimos’ eyes as our gazes met. His laughter became high-pitched, and mine a silent wheeze.
“I’ve never seen a drakonati on dendrata zou before,” he wept through his laughter, bending at the waist as he held his spasming abdomen.
The beast suddenly twisted back around, sending Lathrimos’ enormous body tumbling backwards onto the ground to avoid getting crushed. It only served to intensify our laughter to the point that I couldn’t breathe.
If I don’t stop laughing, I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
As if to relieve me of this possibility, a warm and heavy snout suddenly thrust itself towards me and began to nuzzle me. My laughter cut off in shock, unsure if it, in his hallucinations, caused him to mistake me for a snack. From the look on Lathrimos’ face, he wasn’t entirely sure either.
A pink tongue the size of a baby whale snuck out and licked up the entire front of my body. The force of it even lifted me to my toes.
The drakonati purred, nudging me as if demanding to be petted. My eyes met Lathrimos’ from over the top of the beast’s head to find his brows sat just as high as mine. I tentatively raised a hand, stroking his scales, and the drakonati hummed with satisfaction.
“I’ve never seen a bond transfer like that before.”
Suspecting this had been one thing, but hearing it confirmed from the protus archestratim’ s mouth was another thing entirely.
“You’re sure?” I asked, even though I already, intuitively, knew the answer.
“Somehow, when you fulfilled your bond with Her Majesty, the bond they share, though very different from your own, extended to you.”
About a thousand questions rose to the front of my mind.
“So… He’s also my soulbound?”
Lathrimos shrugged, shaking his head a little helplessly. “Something like that.”
My hand stilled upon Malekai’s scales, making him nudge me like a needy pup demanding more pets.
“Does that mean…”
My throat worked on an awkward smile… I mean… It’s not like I could fuck a dragon.
“… That I’ll desire him like I do Mareina?”
I’d already been wondering the same about Ataraxus.
Lathrimos gave a chuckle. “I don’t know. As I said, I’ve never witnessed this before. Have you ever desired a male before? That would be a good indicator, I imagine.”
“No... I’ve only ever craved a female’s touch.”
The male shrugged. “Well, there you have it… However, I imagine there might come a day when love leads you to make exceptions. I have rarely ever found anything to be absolute.”
The drakonati gave a pained whine, drawing our gazes back to him. I watched as a glistening tear the size of my head swelled like a watery balloon in the corner of his eye. Malekai’s drakonati rose, ambling toward the cavemouth in pounding steps.
Lathrimos and I followed him outside to see him take to the air on gargantuan wings.
Lathrimos sighed in relief beside me. “Well, that’s progress.”
“Progress?”
“Yes. Some people will spend an eon in the caves of Avernus mourning their past lives, buried beneath hundreds if not thousands of years worth of guilt from a lifetime of misdeeds before they’re able to transform that pain into compassion. Love. Which is usually when they feel called to reincarnate.”
His words managed to pry my gaze from the shrinking drakonati in the distance that my soul was now tied to.
Lathrimos’ frown was pitying at best, as if he could see every sin I’d committed against another.
“No one is without their faults, and it is never too late to change and embrace the version of ourselves that we long to be.”
I’d barely managed to thank the male before I flew back to Mareina with a speed and determination I’d only ever experienced when it came to her.
Only ever her.