Chapter Sixteen
Vale
Iawake the next morning with Finn curled up against my side, his nude body running cool. I stroke his rich green hair back from his face even as I yawn.
Lonan makes a noise on the other side of Finnick. “If you hurt him, I’ll gut you slowly.”
I stretch, my arms going above my head. “Who?” I ask, in a bored tone, though I know Lonan is fully capable of it.
“Either of them,” he says faintly as he glares at me.
I snort, “Not worried about Ollie?”
“No,” he replies flatly, “I can tell you love her and would never do anything intentionally to cause her harm.”
“I’m so blessed to have your vote of confidence, Commander.”
I extract myself from Finn as I sit up and push myself out of the tent. The sun is just rising and the desert is already warming for the day. I stretch, letting my wings and tail out, doing a few quick warm up poses.
As if I’d hurt Finnick. I rather like the little tadpole.
Kai. Well, he’s a self-righteous asshat, but I wouldn’t harm him either, as I know the pain it would cause Ollie.
Well, I wouldn’t harm him in a lasting manner, anyway.
I think on what Finnick had suggested. Would Ollie grant him a heart bond, but not me? Was Finnick’s suggestion to make it a group bond a way to include me so I wasn’t hurt?
None of it becomes clearer but my muscles warm and when the other tent flap opens and Ollie appears, I cross to her and wrap my arms and wings around her, hiding us in our own little blue-tinted world.
She makes a little happy sound, and I kiss her, though she smells of that fire.
“Vale, my dragon,” she whispers into my ear and my love of her nearly overwhelms me. I blink back tears, my wings shielding us from spying eyes.
“Would you really, my treasure? My star?”
She whispers back, hands tracing my back, “Really, what, Vale?”
I press my face to her shoulder, in a saffron yellow gown today, and inhale her scent. The smell of my love, the scent of happiness, and all things beautiful in my life. Don’t leave me, star, I beg silently as I struggle with tears.
“Don’t leave me again, Oleander.” I gulp back a sob.
Her hands stroke me reassuringly as her head shakes firmly, “Never again, my love. I’ll never again let my revenge get in the way of my happiness.” She pauses, placing a kiss against my chest. “Instead, I’ll bring my love with me to get revenge.”
There’s my girl.
WE CREST A DUNE AND as I pause to survey the surroundings, I wipe sweat from my forehead using my sleeve.
We’ve been hiking all day. The sand makes for hard walking, but none of them have complained.
Ollie trudges along, headscarf keeping her face in the shade, with nary a word. Determined little creature.
Our years together had been wonderful. Oh, yes, it had taken me near a year to get her to trust me enough to be alone with me.
But the first time she saw me in my Fae form, I saw the wonder dancing in her eyes and I knew at that exact instant that I’d do anything, wait any amount of time, to win her over.
I had been a rather careless, good-for-nothing princeling. An outcast princeling, but a royal family member nonetheless. I mean, ‘royal,’ as Narisa had had firm opinions on monarchies. But Uncle Balthazar has changed things, and pulls money from the treasury as an allowance unchecked.
I drank, and fucked, my way through the city, leaving dry cellars and wet panties in my wake.
Collette and I had become friends after I watched her and her little troupe at a theatre.
She firmly took me under her wing, calling me ‘her’ asshole, and keeping me out of the worst of trouble.
She saw something in me that others didn’t.
And when, one day, as I nursed a hangover, she told me she wanted me to fly with her to meet someone special, I begrudgingly agreed.
But when I saw Oleander. It was as if my world had turned upside down.
I had tucked my wings in, seeing the terror on her face, and laid on my belly, neck, and snout on the ground, watching this precious creature as she quickly mastered and hid her fear of me as she came down the steps of the small hut, draped in herbs and filled with small glass bottles.
Colette had transformed and introduced me, but Oleander had merely nodded politely and then ignored me.
I started getting my life together that very afternoon.
I saw a clothier, for proper garb to approach my uncle, asking for part of my inheritance.
I bought the shop with the flat over it with the money, I stopped fucking quite so indiscriminately, I cut back drinking.
I started attending sparring sessions again.
And I followed Colette every time she went to visit Ollie, always staying in my dragon form.
A year, I waited. Waited and planned. I’m a patient dragon when I need to be.
My third visit to Ollie alone, I took the leap, and transformed.
She had been shocked, and intrigued, and attracted.
I had wanted to claim her at that moment, wondering if we were spirit mates, but I had held back.
And rightfully, as my star had been grievously harmed.
Our time together increased, and it was clear that she enjoyed my presence, but she was not drawn to me immediately, the way I was to her.
Not spirit mates, and that revelation had cut me deep.
It had been Colette and the gang who snapped me out of it.
“Then she must choose you for herself. That’s a strong bond, that’s a choice she could walk away from. ”
And she did. Walk away.
I stop and take a drink of water from my flask, swallowing down the same hurt that I’ve swallowed for a decade. I shade my eyes, looking from one rock formation to the next, trying to find the hidden door.
But she came back. And she says she’ll never leave me again. Perhaps I should ask her, one last time, for a heart bond.
I’m just not sure I could survive another no.
THE SUN IS JUST DIPPING into the horizon when Finnick clears his throat. “I think we should set up camp before the chill sets in.”
I shake my head, frustrated. It feels so close.
That fire fuckhead grumbles, “Just shift and find it.”
I spin to glare at him. “Do you really think I’d be hiking through the sweltering desert if I could fly?”
Ollie crosses, putting herself between us. She lays a hand on his arm. “Kai, Vale can’t transform. If Rowan is in her dragon form, and scents another dragon, even her blood, she might go into a rage to protect her hoard.” She shrugs, her little hand rubbing his bicep. “That’s why we hiked.”
“Moron,” I add under my breath.
Finn coughs loudly.
My eyes sweep the landscape. I know it’s here somewhere.
“Let’s give it until over that rise,” Ollie suggests, “I’m with Vale, this seems really similar.”
Lonan nods and slaps my back as he starts up again. I trudge on, seeking the rock formation that looks like a fallen tree, that marks my mother’s favorite, and most secret, lair.
I walk next to Lonan at the front of the group, his hand resting on his sword hilt. Always at attention, eh? I try not to chuckle to myself.
We struggle up the minor rise, sand shifting and moving under our feet, the sparse grass nearly nonexistent here.
“Ah ha!” I yell, pointing.
There it is.
Ollie hurries up next to me, grabbing my arm. “Yes! That’s it!” She grins and starts down the rise, “Let’s go!”
Lonan gives me a conspiratory sidelong glance. “She’s such a delight, stubborn as a mule one moment, excited as a Faeling the next.” He shakes his head. “No wonder we all love her, huh?” He starts down the hill.
I follow, Finn and Kai trailing. Ollie hustles over to the rock formation and stops, using one foot to tap along cautiously.
I step behind her, tail extending, and take her waist protectively.
Sure enough, she finds the spot, and the sand trap collapses. My tail tugs her backward even as she lets out a small gasp. Large wooden spikes, as thick as an arm with a lethal point, are shoved into the ground.
Lonan makes an unimpressed noise. I slide my tail down and wrap it around a spike, intending to yank it out.
“If you like that tail of yours, you should move it,” Kai mutters.
I look at him and feel him pulling magic so I quickly yank my tail away.
And not a moment too soon, as a blast of heat causes the stakes to burst into flame. They burn hot and quick, reduced to ash in the space of several breaths.
As the smoke clears, I raise an eyebrow.
“C’mon!” Ollie chirps, hoping down into the hole, to Kai and Lonan’s protest. My tail is back around her waist, the wily creature, and I make her drop into the entryway gentle. I follow her and turn towards the large metal door.
Lonan drops beside us as I raise my hand and tap out my special rhythm, so my mother knows it’s me. I add the few extra beats to let her know that I have a guest she knows, and some she doesn’t know, as well.
We wait a long time before my ears pick up footsteps. Kai is huffing at my shoulder like a pig, and Finn is holding Ollie’s hand.
When the tarnished door’s circular handle starts to turn, I let out a breath. She’s joining us in her Fae, or at most, half-shifted form. That’s good. Very good.
The door cracks open and my mother stands there, wings up and spread—as much as the space allows. Her garnet hair is braided tightly, and she wears a simple dress of brown that covers her pink skin, etched with scale markings in a metallic red.
“Rowan,” Ollie bubbles, and as my mother’s eyes take her in, they hug tightly.
“Hatchling,” she pronounces happily, her golden eyes turning to me before she has let go of Ollie. She hugs me tightly and I hold her firmly.
When she pulls back, she cups my cheek. “Long time, no visit.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You know where I live.”
She snorts, half laughs. “Like I’d risk that old blowhard getting wind of me in his city.”
Ollie grins, “Well, it has its perks.”
My mother’s eyes dance. “It does indeed.” She turns, taking in the men behind me. “And who have you brought me? Not dinner, I assume?”
“Not dinner,” Ollie agrees firmly. “Friends. Lovers.”
“Oh, indeed?” she says, looking them over again.
I cough and my mother turns to me.
“Yes, yes, come in.”