36
Fire still danced within the carcasses of homes and businesses.
It had been so for well over a moon. The beautiful yet deadly blue flames were nearly impossible to extinguish.
Wyvern fire ceased burning when it wanted to.
Few had the ability to manipulate air—to aid in suffocating the flames—and those who had the skill were weary and spread thin. So the goal had been containment.
While some did their utmost to help the royal city, most had been sent to help with the numerous wildfires burning precious woodland between the city and the northwest, where the worst of the fighting had been.
Amidst the wyvern fire efforts and rebuilding villages and towns, huts were being made. Temporary housing for Valadorn’s military, who remained in the lands we’d been forced to surrender.
The spawning grounds and miles of woodland leading north now belonged to Raxon Valadorn.
A victory that seemed horrifically pointless.
Though I hadn’t been invited to any meetings, nor answered by those who had the intel, I’d heard enough news while tucked away on the isle. And in the hours I’d lain awake, listening to Dusk’s rumbled breathing, I’d wonder if Voran had left her behind because he’d known what would happen.
That all of this fighting over wyverns would see them teeter on the brink of extinction.
Our Sunspray was gone. There had been no recent sightings of Valadorn’s remaining beast. Coraldeen had entered the war with two beloved wyverns, and both had now been killed. Moongold’s last few wyverns had flown out to sea after reaching full maturity and had never returned.
I’d suspected they’d joined the war not just because their fealty to my father demanded it, but because the kingdom of Moongold wouldn’t see another wyvern in their skies if Valadorn’s king took the spawning grounds.
“We will rebuild,” my father said.
I’d heard his approach. What surprised me was that he was here. That he’d sought me out himself rather than send for me. “It will take years.”
“For many moons, we feared we had days.” He huffed. “Weeks, should we be fortunate. And now…” He came to stand beside me. “Now we have years.”
I should have been more grateful. I was grateful. It was simply buried beneath feelings that grew more hideous by the day. I’d hoped that time would help. Yet since my return to Cloverleaf a moon ago, all that time had done was taunt and torment.
“Because of you,” my father said quietly.
Because of the risk I was about to take. I wasn’t sure what was worse, really—overhearing the terms of our surrender from the crew while sailing home, or arriving home to discover that those terms were a ruse.
A lie fed to all as our kingdom recovered and regrouped.
And secured the gold to strengthen our fractured military.
Shame nipped at my chest for such negative thinking. But the hollowing weight within me wouldn’t lighten. No matter how positive I tried to be, it just got heavier.
“A good ruler does not bow to the demands of tyrants,” my father had said when I’d dared to protest. “They fight with everything they have to safeguard what is rightfully theirs. If you wish for an opportunity to eradicate the doubt you’ve placed in our people’s minds, then this could be the only one you get. ”
It had been the first and last time my father had mentioned the ceaseless rumors about the Valadorn prince and me. Rumors that had traveled so far from the truth that they were getting ever closer to it.
Now was indeed the time to prove to all that I was loyal to my kingdom. That despite being known as the princess who a wolf had tricked, I could do some tricking of my own.
I looked at my father. Absorbed the fine lines dusting the corners of his purple eyes. A purple so dark, they often appeared black. My mother’s eyes had been blue. When I was young, she’d said I’d gotten my lighter shade of purple because of their love for one another when they’d made me.
But I’d gotten little else from my father.
His hair was the typical medium brown seen in portraits of our ancestors, and his build robust—almost blocky. Shorter than it had been when I’d left for the Archives of Avyshla, his hair now curled around his forehead and bearded cheeks like tiny leaves, failing to hide the jutted state of his jaw.
Dusk waddled back from a burrow she’d been scratching and squealing at, licking blood from her maw. Upon seeing my father, she halted and tilted her head.
Then opened her maw and screeched.
Father peered down at her. “She’s already protective of you.”
“She is.” I didn’t share that I’d been encouraging it. That I wanted her to be distrustful, particularly of males.
Let no one take it from you.
I wouldn’t. Like the claw marks adorning my throat, those words were now scars.
Crouching down, I rewarded Dusk’s wariness by stroking her head and smiling as I met her golden gaze. She remained at my side when I rose, eyes steadfast on my father. Her little body rigid.
While I gazed upon the city down below, my father gazed down at Dusk. The wind pushed tendrils of hair over my cheeks and swept smoke and dust across the rocky shells of buildings. Most that remained were charred, citizens attempting to scrub them clean.
“Again,” Father murmured, “I find myself wondering where this hatchling came from.”
He’d been given the same story as the high priestess. Except he was far less inclined to believe that Dusk hadn’t been left in the spawning grounds due to the war. Especially because of who sired her.
“I often do too.”
His tone turned honeyed. Pleased. “Regardless, I am grateful for another Cloverleaf wyvern.”
My hands curled. I quickly unfurled them before Dusk noticed.
Judging by her scales, her mother was a Coraldeen beast—always magenta or white or even both. Valadorn’s wyverns had been darker scaled. Not to mention, unlikely to have mated while being prepared for war. Which meant Dusk’s father had been Sunspray.
Which meant my father planned to have her trained for battle as she matured.
He sighed. “The ballroom fills.”
The reason I was out here waited—my grand farewell. A celebration of my sacrifice and our commitment to peace. A lamb gifted to gluttonous wolves, Paphin had said on our journey home from the archives.
Tyressa had cried.
I’d vomited profusely into the sea.
“I know. I just…” I folded my fingers tightly together. “I suppose I needed some air.”
“You’ve always been fond of the Moongold prince.” There was a pause as he made sure we were still alone. Though we were, he lowered his voice. “Are you not relieved to escape the fate everyone believes awaits you?”
“I am,” I said, and I was. Of course I would rather marry Meront than King Raxon. Despite what had happened at the archives. “I think I’m just sad to be leaving when I’ve not long returned.”
Another truth that wasn’t the entire truth. After marrying Meront, I would stay in Moongold. To be better protected from King Raxon, I presumed, when he discovered my father’s trickery and the wolves converged.
“Well,” my father said, “at least this despondency is certainly to be expected.” His hand took mine and gently squeezed. “No one would expect Raxon’s future bride to be smiling.” A brief chuckle preceded his stern warning. “However, you must not arrive too late.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
King Raldin left, and I turned to watch him march up the hillside toward the towering spear-shaped trees lining the crest. Beyond them stood the castle that survived a siege due to surrendering the Scale Crown.
And with it, a bride who could touch the crown without angering the remaining wyverns. A bride who was supposed to leave for Valadorn at first light, but who would instead travel to Moongold for a second chance at winning the war people thought was over.
Sighing, I collected Dusk, and we headed back.
Although the castle had evaded ruin, it hadn’t escaped damage. Woods encircled half of the fortress, and a stone-crafted wall bordered the rest. Much of that wall now lay in piles of brown rubble.
Beyond it, dust covered the flower beds forming a cloverleaf in the courtyard. The fountain fashioned after our royal crest—a sword wreathed by clover—was in two pieces in the diamond-shaped pond.
One steel gate remained. The other was in a twisted heap aside the dirt drive lined with our guests’ carriages.
My tower had suffered the most damage.
As we left the trees and walked the debris-speckled grass before the ruined wall, the tower’s innards came into view.
Once, the stone stairs had ascended to my chambers.
Now, they ascended to nowhere. My bed, shelving, and the toys my mother had gifted me had been gathered into a charred pile beneath the remaining rose-stained window.
I’d been sleeping in a guest wing on the second floor. When I did sleep.
Ever since I’d returned, it came in sporadic bursts. Usually in the afternoons. I’d surmised it was the change of quarters, and fearing that someone would take Dusk. Though, really, it was probably a result of this widening pit within my stomach.
Before the sharp turns in this castle I’d once called home, I frequently encountered whispers too low for me to catch, and quick-to-flit-away gazes.
Maybe one day, I could be like the Valadorn prince. Maybe one day, I wouldn’t care who spoke about me nor fret about their disapproval. And maybe one day, I would cease relentlessly thinking about him.
Maybe.