3. Allie #2
“I dance with death each time I go out on a mission. It’s living.”
“It’s taking unnecessary risks,” I said. “You could’ve warned me you were coming, through the palaver portal, and I would’ve helped you get in.”
“I didn’t trust any palaver, even one secured by Dara.
Not when I had the Protectorate crown on me.
This way was safer. At least if I died here, you could’ve found my body.
If Silas had known about my plans and caught me, there wouldn’t have been any body left.
” His face contorted with rage as he let out a long sigh.
By the end of it, some of the fury had vanished from his eyes.
Guilt ate at me, spidering through my chest.
Dax had risked his life to bring me the crown and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to even touch it.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said softly. “You’re more important–to me, to us, to the Clan, to Malhaven–than any crown.”
He shrugged.
“I know,” he said with a low tilt that betrayed the lie. “But I was dying to try this contraption out. When The Postman said he couldn’t transport me inside the crater–”
I groaned. “You contacted the bloody Postman?”
That man had a reputation worse than his morals. Whispers said he was a former pirate from the other side of the world, brought to Malhaven’s shores in search of more gold. Others swore he’d run here to escape the gallows.
Whatever the case, he’d brought strange magic with him and used it to smuggle anyone and anything–for the right price.
“I happen to like him,” Dax said defensively, puffing up his chest. “He can handle his spirits and knows the best pubs on the entire continent.”
“Drinking with The Postman is just courting danger,” I grumbled.
“What’s with you?” Dax frowned. “You’re picking and pecking at everything. It’s like you want me to just keep repeating the same things until you decide to believe them.”
My lips pursed and my cheeks colored.
I was doing that, wasn’t I?
Seeking someone else to ease the uncertainty, like a damn youngling.
I never used to do that.
No, I’d never had the opportunity to wonder and question out loud. I’d bottled all the doubt inside of me and pretended I was in complete control.
“That’s what happens when you take charge,” I said at last, the words thick in my throat. “People will challenge you to quiet their own concerns.”
An ugly silence followed. I kept staring at the wings, afraid I’d said too much, but glad that I finally allowed myself to.
I’d let my shoulders be weighed with everyone else’s expectations, swallowing all of their fears along with mine and letting them fester until they crumbled me from the inside out.
Now that I wasn’t holding the reins for every little plan, it felt both debilitating and freeing at the same time.
Allowing someone else to have a modicum of control over such an insignificant detail should have been easier than this.
“Gods.” Dax gasped suddenly. “Is this–is this what we used to do to you?”
“Yes,” I said with more bite than I meant, turning back to him. “You all had too many questions all the time, for answers you didn’t need or could deduce by yourselves. You just wanted to hear them from someone else.”
“Huh.” He licked the inside of his cheek. “I’m sorry, I never realized. I don’t like it to be on the receiving end of it.”
“Neither did I.”
He shook his head sadly. “We couldn’t tell.”
“You couldn’t tell a lot of things.” I swallowed all those unspoken hurts of the past and jutted my chin at the winged contraption. “So this thing actually works.”
“Miracle of all miracles, it does,” Dax said after a few beats of silence, swaying the discussion along with me.
“I admit I was a bit hesitant, I kept staring down from the rim, thinking that would be the day I’d die.
I stood there so long, I managed to nick myself in one of those shards.
” He opened his left palm, revealing a deep gash which had already begun to crust over.
“Damn thing is so sharp, it almost took my whole hand.”
Shards.
Blood.
Vegheara blood.
“That’s why the crater let you in,” I breathed out.
He furrowed his brows. “Because it maimed me?”
“Maybe because you gave it blood.” Ryker had said the crater always demanded a sacrifice.
Dax’s top lip curled in disgust. “Why blood?”
“It’s the Blood Brotherhood. It’s always blood.”
“Right.” He absentmindedly pressed his fingers against the wound and winced. “Future family reunions are going to be weird.”
I stopped myself from reaching out and cradling his hand. Dax had that tense tilt of his shoulders he got whenever he wanted to seem unbothered. He was strong, stronger than he realized, but I knew that blasted Vegheara ego would rear its ugly head and make him refuse any show of empathy right now.
“I should’ve been disinfecting you rather than the troll,” was all I said.
“Nothing a good glug of alcohol can’t fix. Drunk, not spilled.” He waved me off again. “The wound hasn’t started burning in the past two days, I’m good.”
I stared up at him. “You walked through Solkar’s Reach for two days to get to me?”
“No, I trekked through this frozen wasteland, thawing snow for water and chewing on desiccated pieces of meat for food, ignoring all the weird sounds in that blasted forest to get–what are you doing?”
My arms circled his waist and I held on tight to him as I rested my cheek against his shoulder. “I believe they call this a hug.”
“I–” He finally relaxed in my embrace and patted my shoulder awkwardly. We weren’t exactly used to displays of affection in the Vegheara family. “Yes, a hug.”
“I’ve really missed you, Dax,” I said with all my soul.
Even through his thick coat, he smelled of sea salt, olive trees, and the coast wind.
Home.
“I’ve missed you, too, Allie,” he said gently and hugged me back. “I can’t wait for things to go back to normal and we can all return home.”
My hands loosened. Slowly, carefully, but enough for the silence to slither between us.
Because I realized Dax and I had very different definitions about what our future would entail.
Maybe I doubted for the same reason I’d hesitated to grab the crown–heartbreak.
Perhaps my father’s death had left a permanent scar on my chest that wouldn’t let true hope bloom.
Or maybe I was more of a realist.
“Things won’t ever be the same again,” I muttered sadly as I stepped back from Dax.
“Why?”
“Because we won’t be.” I met his questioning gaze with my unflinching one. “Family and friends have betrayed us and they can do it again. We have to live in that reality now.”
The Protectorate had been built on the courage and the unity of the First Family.
Our family was no longer the safe haven we’d been brought up to believe it was.
If that foundation we’d trusted had been shattered so quickly, how could we count on everything else we’d been taught?
“Silas is just a bad seed,” Dax argued. “The worst of Grandpa Constantine’s seeds.”
Silas couldn’t have acted alone, I wanted to say.
Scream.
Roar.
But I’d already made peace with the fact that something heinous had been brewing in my own Clan, right underneath our noses.
“We also have a war to live through.” I looked at the flying contraption, now less skeptical. “And I fear it will spill inside the crater.”
“How’d you figure?”
“Because if you found a way inside, without going through the passage, others will as well.”