Chapter Thirty-Three
The surrounding landscape of Dildain was difficult to navigate thanks to the thick trees and tangled roots that had even the chimeras struggling, but a dragon had no such troubles.
Terrea’s wings spread underneath Aemyra, black scales growing overly warm with the intensity of the sun as they flew toward Aervor and Fiorean. Aemyra could feel it now, how heavy her dragon had become in the air, the extra strain it was putting on her wings.
It was time for them to get the answers they so desperately needed.
Several miles north of Dildain the forest thinned atop a hill, revealing a circle of rugged standing stones. A cobalt dragon was drifting on the gentle air currents high above, his shadow skimming Terrea’s back.
“Fiorean,” Aemyra breathed, spotting the lone figure standing on the rise.
It was risky, to bring Aervor so close to Dildain, but the dragon blended in well enough with the cloudless sky that no one should take notice.
Terrea circled the hill, finding a spot where there was just enough space to alight on a tiny stretch of grass. Her claws barely touched the ground, onyx wings spread above the treetops, giving Aemyra just enough time to slip off her back.
The second her feet touched the ground, Terrea took off to join Aervor.
Covering her eyes against the barrage of dust and dirt generated by her dragon’s wings, Aemyra found Fiorean standing in the middle of the stone circle.
She tried to blame her thundering heart on the rapid descent, but the sight of her husband was enough to drive every rational thought out of her head.
His hair was unbound and in desperate need of a cut, spilling to his mid-back. He wore a deep blue fèileadh over a crisp white shirt and she didn’t recognize the tartan. It was fastened with a heavy iron brooch in the shape of Cailleach’s knot on his left shoulder.
“Did you enjoy your night with Thear?” Fiorean drawled, tracking her progress into the circle.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend to be jealous. I needed an alliance that gave me warriors, I found one.”
Fiorean scoffed. “What use does a dragon have of a cat?”
“Thear and his trodach are the only reason we won the battle in the valley with so few casualties. He is a good man. A loyal man.”
She only realized she had used the wrong choice of words when Fiorean reached her in three steps. “Alfred might not have put me in chains, but take one look at my back and speak to me again of loyalty.”
“It is possible for both of you to share a trait, you know.”
Fiorean’s glare was intense enough for her to feel it on her skin. “You betrothed yourself to him while you were still married to me. Would you truly have broken our vows?”
The scent of him was intoxicating enough that she forgot her snappy retort.
Aemyra sighed. “We might not have meant our vows when we exchanged them in a tower.” She reached up and traced the spot on his chest where her knife had left a mark. “But I grew to mean them in time. Even in death, they would have remained.”
Her honesty cowed Fiorean and his hands trailed down her arms until they looped around the hilt of her dagger.
His long fingers unsheathed the expertly crafted weapon with lethal grace, his eyes on the garnet.
“A dagger suits you far more than a necklace,” he said.
Fiorean’s brow furrowed and Aemyra was about to ask what was on his mind when he twirled the blade once in his palm—and lowered himself to his knees.
Prostrate before her, he lifted his eyes slowly, drinking in the shape of her body as he rolled up her sleeve. Then he pressed the blade to the crook of Aemyra’s inner elbow until a small well of fresh blood pooled. Aemyra couldn’t look away from his face as he closed his lips over it.
“I bind myself to you now. Not only as my wife, but as my queen,” Fiorean said earnestly, the word wife little more than a possessive growl.
High above, the dragons roared their approval, and for a split second Aemyra was seeing herself through Fiorean’s eyes as the link burst open between the four of them.
“You know, don’t you?” she whispered.
Fiorean nodded.
Aervor and Terrea had been using the mental link to send visions and memories to their Dùileach, drawing them together, hurtling toward a future none of them was prepared for.
Aemyra drew breath into her lungs and spoke it into existence. “Terrea is nesting.”
High above, the black and cobalt dragons looped over each other. The swell of Terrea’s belly visible even from here.
Aemyra squeezed her arms more tightly around herself, feeling the symptoms that had been shooting through the Bond for months. The nausea, the exhaustion, and the dizziness Aemyra had attributed to anxiety until it had become too much to ignore.
“If I wasn’t Bonded to a dragon, I would have mistaken the symptoms for pregnancy, had it not been for my courses,” Aemyra said.
“But you are Bonded to a dragon,” Fiorean said, a hopeful smile on his face.
“Aervor mated with Abheinn sometime before the battle of the five brothers, he understood the signs. Thanks to you helping me with our Bond, I could interpret his feelings. It’s how I managed to send him to protect your army in àird Lasair. ”
“We might have a limited understanding of our new connection, but Terrea has never nested before. None of us knows what to expect,” she said, finally able to admit her worries to someone who understood.
He tightened his grip. “When you win this war, we will scour the libraries of àird Lasair and safeguard the future of the dragons ourselves.”
Brigid had made them burn for each other, and then kept them both alive.
Aemyra would never get a second chance with anyone else she had lost—so she would not squander this one.
Now, seeing Fiorean standing in the middle of a circle of ancient stones, auburn hair unbound and scars bared, she was only able to think one thing.
Fiorean looked like a king.
And she wanted nothing more than to be his queen.
“I risked everything for you. My own life. Tell me it was enough,” he whispered, his face the tragic beauty of a forest in the grip of wildfire.
He stood, bringing his hands up around her neck, seeming to crave the contact with her pulse.
“Didn’t we agree that we would have to be a villain in somebody’s story?” Aemyra said as his fingers skimmed the hollow of her throat.
“We can be the villain to everyone in Erisocia for all I care, as long as we don’t view each other as such,” he replied, carefully sliding her dagger back into her belt. “So how do you view me, Aemyra?”
As Fiorean spoke his deepest fears aloud, Aemyra responded in kind. She had already admitted it to herself after his blazing kiss by the riverbank.
But she had known for a lot longer than that.
“I love you, Fiorean,” she breathed.
He froze for a heartbeat, his emerald eyes unblinking.
Aemyra reached up tentatively to brush a long strand of his hair away from the scars on his cheek.
“I love you, Fiorean Daercathian. I love your fierce pride and determined will. I love your intense need to protect the people you care about and your wickedly smart mind.” She ran her fingertips over his scars until he closed his eyes.
“I love you for every flaw and weakness. Not in spite of what they make you, but because they make you who you are.”
Aemyra watched his cool mask melt away, his defensive walls shattered to pieces.
“I’m yours if you’ll still have me,” she whispered, heart pounding and terrified of the answer.
After a moment, Fiorean scooped her face gently in his hands.
“Of course I’ll have you, you beautiful, stubborn woman. I have been yours since the moment I beheld you in that forge.”
Fiorean dropped his lips to within a breath of her own.
“I was wrong before,” she said hastily, needing to get the words out. “If our roles had been reversed and I had to save my family…I would have done the same thing.”
Fiorean’s eyes closed as though he was breathing her in.
Aemyra swallowed with difficulty. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
His scarred hands cradled her face, his eyes soft. “Haven’t you figured it out by now? You can’t get rid of me.”
Suddenly, an overwhelming need to possess him, to feel truly alive, surged through her. Desire pooled low in her belly and with trembling hands and softening mouths, they relinquished their souls to each other again.
Aemyra groaned against him, her thin shirt only heightening the sensations skittering over her skin. Her imaginings had been nothing compared to the reality of what Fiorean was able to make her feel.
As she hitched her leg up, back arching, Fiorean twisted her hair around his hand and pressed her against the nearest stone.
“You are my wife, Aemyra,” he said roughly, his lips against the skin of her cheek. “I vowed to protect your life with my own, and I will never forsake that promise.”
Her tunic was suddenly gone, and she pulled her shirt out of the waistband of her breeches. Fiorean stilled his hand, skating his thumb over the fabric.
“I don’t want to see you in the arms of another man again, loyal or not,” he said.
Aemyra could have hit him for bringing it up, and there was a twisted part of her that might have enjoyed watching Thear and Fiorean battle for her hand, but she knew who would win. If Fiorean drew his sword, she would even fear for Dòiche.
“Thear Leòmhann is protective of his queen,” Aemyra said, teasing him even as Fiorean dipped his fingers into her breeches.
His gaze turned hard. “The only man’s name you are allowed to utter when I have my hands on you is mine.”
As if proving his point, Fiorean stroked two fingers through her soaked slit, eliciting a guttural moan in the back of her throat.
“Perhaps you forgot, but your body belongs to me,” Fiorean said. “I will possess it until you forget your own name.”
Aemyra smiled and spread her legs wider in invitation.
Fiorean’s fingers were inside her a heartbeat later.