54. Max
Max
My face was still wet from the farewell at the platform.
“Protect our mate.” Caspian had gripped Aelindor’s forearm. “Bring our brother home.”
“With my life,” Aelindor vowed, his forehead touching Caspian’s, then Nikolai’s.
“Send word when you need us,” Nikolai said, his hand on the base of Aelindor’s skull. “And we’ll come.”
Missy had cried and breathed the square with me, forehead to forehead.
“You always come back, Max!” She wiped her face with her wrist and looked at me with her jaw set. “When you see Prince Drak, remind him he pinky-promised me another dragon ride. He has to come back with you and keep it. It’s not a maybe!”
Ross wound his scaled bulk between my legs to stop me going anywhere. When that didn’t work, he growled instead. A promise from the guardian he’d be once he grew.
And then Caspian and Nikolai kissed me, over and over, until the train bell rang ten times.
The platform pulled away, and their figures went smaller and smaller, my princes and my sister, until I couldn’t see them at all.
The train didn’t care. It ran west, toward the arena, toward that bitch mother of mine.
Ash started to fall, hissing faintly as it blew past the windows. Eighty-one years on, and this was still the world the Rupture made.
Aelindor took my hand and kissed my knuckles.
“Wherever you go, I’ll follow, love. You’ll never be alone.”
The constellation came up behind my eyelids.
Four threads strung on light, and me at the center of them. The last one, furnace gold, flickered in the ruin of the world.
On and off.
Drakken.
StarFell (Blood and Bond Book 4)
Coming Feb 2027