Chapter Seventy-Eight Myla
“My arms are on fire,” Aria whines from where she stands in front of me, sweat beading at her temples.
She had continued to try to attack me, swinging her blade in nearly feral movements in her attempts to nick me.
It was sloppy, but even with the lack of practiced finesse, I had to admit I was impressed.
The female who had shown up to our first meeting is not the same one who stands in front of me now, dagger in hand, attacking as if I am her sworn enemy.
Maybe I am. Does her queen know about her visits here, and that is why she is deciding Aria’s fate?
And why the fuck do I keep coming back to that one sentence she said?
If Aria were to die from something unrelated to our life debt, I would be free of our bargain.
At least, I think I would. I’m not necessarily eager to find out, considering that if I am wrong, I would be dead too.
It is that line of thinking, and only that line of thinking, that leads me to ask, “Why is the queen deciding your fate?”
Aria punches at my extended hand, pausing when she makes contact to look at me with wide eyes. “Why do you want to know?”
“It seems pertinent for me to know,” I answer, gesturing with my chin for her to keep going. “Stay light on your feet. Use your back leg and core to power the punch.” I give her time to think her answer over as we move around the cavern, my muscles welcoming the heat building from the exercise.
“It’s… a complicated answer,” she says, her elbows dropping slightly. I reach out and use the tips of my fingers to lift her arms back up, putting her guard in place. Once she’s steady there, I send a few punches of my own, pulling their weight back. She blocks them, wincing slightly as she does.
“Life is complicated,” I say with a shrug, opening my palms to signal it’s her turn to come at me now. “If it helps, there is not much you could say that would surprise me.”
“I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.
” When I let the silence linger as an answer, she rolls her eyes.
“I am being investigated for treason.” I suck in a breath and choke on it, all while Aria swings her fists towards my palms, driving me backwards a few steps.
“Oh my gods, did I catch you off-guard?”
I growl and then cough again. Fuck I had been caught off-guard. Treason? Clearing my throat to settle the coughing, I ask, “What did you do to warrant that?”
“What makes you think I did anything at all?”
I tuck an errant strand of onyx hair behind my ear before gesturing for her to continue punching. “Seems like a fairly major accusation,” I answer. “Is your queen in the business of wrongly accusing the innocent?”
She exhales roughly, a dark expression flitting across her features briefly. “Queen Amari isn’t known for being fair. She’s merciless, and she extends that to anyone who she believes to be a threat to the Siren Queendom. To her.”
“And she believes you to be that threat?”
She punches at me twice, each reverberation making her brows lower. “Someone told her I was a threat because they believed I wasn’t doing what they wanted,” she says quickly, as if needing to force the words out as fast as possible. “So now I must face judgement from the queen and her daughters.”
Interesting. I don’t know a thing about how the sirens run their queendom and certainly not about how they mete out judgement. One-two. One-two. We dance in circles, her hits coming as quick as her breaths and with more strength behind them.
“It’s ridiculous, really. I didn’t fight back when Nia demanded I stay away from the seamount sirens. I didn’t fight back when she cornered me and ordered me to help her get their weapons.”
One-two. One-two. We keep moving as Aria punches at my hands, her eyes focused where her knuckles meet my skin.
“I didn’t fight back when she stole the items I had gathered, each one a remembrance of the lives our kind had taken.
And she just sold them off, as if they were nothing at all.
I didn’t fight back when she threatened to tell the queen of my involvement with those that were banished.
So many times, I didn’t fight back. And for what?
I have been beaten. Forced to do things that no being should, and still, that is not enough.
For Nia. For my mother. For those the queen surrounds herself with.
” Aria’s eyes grow glassy as her punches get sloppy, my hands trying to anticipate their direction so she doesn’t hurt herself.
“I was the only one trying to help her, and she betrayed me so fucking easily! I feel trapped between falling back into the siren I was and becoming one I am trying to be, and it’s—” Her breath hitches when she sends an errant punch in my direction, the force of it making her stumble forward.
I catch her wrist in one hand, letting her fall into my chest while my other hand lands on her hip to steady her.
“I’m sorry,” she rasps, eyes wide as they meet mine.
I swallow against the strange tightness in my throat. I know all too well what it is like to not be enough for those around me. To feel trapped within my circumstances. Even now, even with how I spend my nights, I still feel the invisible bars of my cage surrounding me.
I suppose I never considered that someone like Aria might also understand what that feels like.
My fingers flex on her hip, her sweet, warm scent laced within my next inhale.
The rise and fall of her chest against my own makes me acutely aware of just how close we are, even if the distance between our lips feels like miles.
Would she taste as sweet as she smells? The thought appears unbidden, yet my body responds to it, heat pooling low as I draw in another breath.
My mind betrays me further when it conjures up the memory of our kiss beneath the water, the positioning of our bodies not so different than it is now.
And, fuck, if there isn’t something about her that makes me want to test her reaction if I closed that small space between us.
If I drew my lips against her own not because it was needed but because I want to.
Because I want her.
It’s that realization—more than the warmth of her body against mine and the way she feels beneath my fingertips—that is more sobering than a punch to the gut, and as if I’ve been hit, I release her quickly and back away.
“Myla?”
My name comes out as a question, and I grit my teeth, pain flaring to my temples as if that will dispel whatever fucking chaos just arose inside me.
Something within me yearns to erase the disappointed look on her face.
To tell her that I understand, to some bizarre degree, everything she’s said.
That I might have been wrong in my assumptions about her.
But then my inner voice grows loud. It not only reminds me that, because of the sirens, I am forced to endure the brunt of my kingdom’s wrath and disdain but also that I have been down this road before.
My back bears the scars of that consequence.
It’s a stark admonition that warns of the dangers of believing I’ve found common ground with someone.
Of believing I’m worthy of any kind of deep connection.
Aria continues to stare at me, her body frozen in the position I left her in when I stumbled away.
My voice is rough when I finally find it.
“You’ll have to learn how to control your emotions when you fight.
While the intensity will benefit you, the sloppiness will not.
” For a long moment she doesn’t move, nothing beyond the working of her throat as she swallows.
Then her expression shutters, and the tension between us dissipates as she nods.
“Teach me another combination of hits.”
The rest of our time together is spent mostly in silence, the only words spoken when I make a suggestion to her form or show her a new combo.
By the time Navin and Lan show up, I’m on edge, frustration coiling through my veins.
Aria wastes no time returning to the ocean, giving my brother a parting wave before returning to the sea.
I climb on Lan’s back, sitting behind Navin as I grip the leather strap and prepare for flight. Only, Navin lingers. “What?”
“I found something out, and I don’t want to tell you.”
I scowl as I stare at the back of his head, my fingers tightening around the leather. “What is it?”
“You have to promise me that you won’t go all Myla—”
“Navin.”
“—and try to intervene. In this instance, I have to insist.”
I tilt my head back and close my eyes, letting the warm sun paint my face as I try to calm my annoyance. “Fine,” I promise, rolling my shoulders back. “What do you know?”
“The king has increased patrols even more in Khargis and has extended the King’s Riders vigilance to the air above the city as well.”
“I know this, Navin,” I say, unable to keep the ire out of my voice. “I’m quite aware of just how many of the bastards are in Khargis.”
He sighs, heavy and full-bodied as Lan adjusts beneath us, a low rumble vibrating down his body.
I fight off the urge to dig my heel a little harder into the impatient beast’s side.
“You asked me about the mages and the dragons and I wasn’t exactly truthful with you when I told you I didn’t know what was going on with them.
” A bitter taste blooms in my mouth at the admittance of his lie, even if it’s hypocritical for me to feel that way.
Maybe my silence relays that because Navin tries to fill it with a series of apologies before I get him back on track.
“I didn’t know at first why Father was kidnapping them, only that he was.
He’s kept everything close to the chest, only allowing Father Yamin the details about the dragons and mages—”
“Get to the point, Brother,” I snap.
“It’s the bonds,” he says, leaning to the side so that his gaze can meet mine. “He’s terrified that, eventually, the failing of the dragon bonds will happen to him.”
I draw my brows together, shaking my head in confusion. “He believes me to be the cause of that particular bad fortune. What does that have to do with the mages?”
Navin’s gaze is hard as it holds mine, his serious tone growing uneasy. “He’s using the dragons to kidnap mages and bring them through the Spell. Then he’s forcing them to test their magic on the dragons in an attempt to repair the bonds.”
What? “That doesn’t make any sense. Even if their magic was compatible, they’d die before he’d properly get to test it.” That must be why he was giving his men a quota, why those males in the stairwell were so stressed about grabbing more mages. “He’s a fool.”
“Except there’s something else you don’t know,” Navin says slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck. I lean forward, my eyes narrowed at my brother.
“Which is?”
“The mages have the ability to pass through the Spell. Without loss of life or magic.”
I’m silent as I overturn Navin’s words. I have no clue if mage magic can repair a dragon bond. Could it force a bond? Is that what they want Bali for? For Sunis?
“There is nothing you can do about this, Myla. Nothing you should do.”
“I won’t,” I say, earning a sarcastic look.
I don’t try to convince him any further, so he sighs again and faces forward.
Within a few seconds, Lan launches into the air, snapping his wings out and beating them hard to lift us higher.
The wind whips at my hair, my eyes closing as I run through everything I’ve just learned.
My father can try whatever he wants with the dragons that have lost their bonds.
But Sunis? She is mine, and I’ll be damned if I let that bastard take anything else from me.
Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I walk the outskirts of the dragon fields, my gaze turned up to the night sky. Mist floats high above me, the flicker of silver stars only just visible through it. The wind carries with it the scent of rain and the residual smell of something burning.
When I finally reach Bali and Sunis’s cave, rare nerves rattle my stomach.
What will I do if my father is successful in luring Bali away with the drugged food?
If Sunis is taken as well? I don’t want to be a sentimental fae, but the possessiveness over the dragon that isn’t even mine is nearly overwhelming.
Is it possible to have a bond with the creature without one actually forming?
My pathetic anxiousness is snuffed out when I hear wings rustling inside the cave.
The ground begins to rumble, a pair of yellow eyes blazing to life against the dark backdrop.
My gut says it’s Sunis, and that’s confirmed a few moments later when she emerges, her head low as she observes me.
Holding my hand out, I release a trapped breath when she nudges her head against it, the roughness of her scales welcome against my palm.
A low purring sound comes from her as she closes her eyes.
I bring my other hand to her snout, rubbing before laying my forehead against her.
“We’re running out of time,” I whisper to her.
To myself. Stating the obvious out in the open.
A second dragon trill comes from inside the cave, and Sunis lifts her head away from mine as her wings ruffle at her sides.
She backs into the cave until there is only darkness once more looking back at me.
They are safe here, I tell myself until I scan the dragon fields and spot another large pile of dead goats and sheep just waiting to be eaten.
Fingers curling into my palms, I gather some sticks from the nearby treeline, working quickly to light them one by one from a nearby flaming pile of something, and then toss them onto the tainted meat.
Rage flickers inside of me as I watch it burn, a sizzling in my blood that can only be alleviated by one thing.
Putting my mask back in place, I tug my hood over my head and retreat back to the forest. Khargis was being infected with a different kind of poison, and I am more than ready to bleed it out.