Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ican't sleep.
I'm not sure why I even bothered to try.
After we returned from that hellish underground lair, Briar and I spent hours talking in her room, trying to figure out our next steps, before deciding we'd be better off getting rest and making any decisions in the morning.
Well, she decided on that, at least.
She can sleep through anything, I swear. And I envy this ability more and more as the hours tick by with me staring at the ceiling, trying to settle my racing heart.
Finally, I give up. I crawl out of bed and get dressed again, making my way out into the palace in search of…what, exactly? I don't know.
I want to talk to Reave.
I need to talk to him.
But I also never want to see him and his insufferable face ever again, because he has to have known at least some of what was happening underneath the Temple of the Mouren Flame, yet he hasn't bothered to tell me any of it.
Our world is on the cusp of war, dragons are going rogue, the gods are pulling strings in ways we can only guess at…
And I’m caught in the middle of it all whether I want to be or not. As is he. So I once again find myself on a collision course with the Mouren King.
He once again proves a difficult target to track down.
Eventually, I find myself pausing at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to his private hall and bedroom, gripping the banister with all the strength I possess as I try to talk myself into climbing the steps.
Standing invitation, he told me the last time I visited his room. Of course, it was a standing invitation to come to his bed to fuck him whenever I liked, and not necessarily to discuss the dark, devastating things his kingdom has done, and all the bloody, complicated consequences of those things.
I'm sure he'd rather we focus on the former.
It doesn't matter either way, though, because when I find the courage to go look, I find that he isn't in his room. The guards patrolling the hall outside of it inform me they haven't seen him for hours.
No one seems to know where he is, despite the fact that foreign dignitaries are filling his guest suites, and I know he's been busy all day meeting with those visitors; he expected their conversations to last well into the night.
It seems like an odd time for him to vanish without a trace.
I make peace with the idea of not sleeping any time soon. I return to my room again, but only long enough to put on a coat and some proper boots before heading outside.
The night air offers little reprieve from the suffocating atmosphere of the palace; it's just as heavy out here, and the heaviness is accompanied by a damp chill and blustery winds.
Another storm seems to be brewing—the third one in as many days.
I try not to think of that as an omen. I try not to think of anything at all as I draw my hood up and stuff my hands into my pockets, following the winding creek at the edge of the palace grounds.
Sesca soon appears overhead, though her body is difficult to pick out amongst the rolling clouds, lost as the moonlight flickers and wanes with the building storm; I feel her more clearly than I see her.
Something is wrong.
It's not a question she presses into me, but a statement—one punctuated a moment later by the sound of a dragon roaring somewhere in the distance.
My heart skips several beats as Sesca dives down from the clouds, pulling up just before she hits the ground, her wings flaring wide.
I'm momentarily distracted from my worries, transfixed at the sight.
It's astounding how much her flying is improving with every passing day; I can hardly even remember the wounded, stumbling hatchling she was when we first arrived here.
She flexes her wings before folding them at her sides, fixing her golden gaze on me in that expectant way she does—the way that always seems to draw my words out, even if I'd planned on keeping them to myself.
“I can't find the king,” I tell her.
She settles into a sitting position, lifting her head toward the sky.
Another distant roar rumbles through the clouds.
“But maybe it's for the best,” I add, pulling my coat more tightly around myself as the first drops of rain begin to fall. “I don't know what I'm going to say to him, anyway. I don't even know where to start.”
Sesca extends a wing, shielding me from the drops as they fall faster.
“You should go find shelter from the coming storm,” I tell her.
I like the rain, she informs me.
I watch the water shearing off the tips of her wings for a moment, catching what little light the clouds allow through, and the way her wet scales shine like the surface of a calm sea.
“…I do too, actually,” I say with a shrug, and then continue my walk with her at my side.
Even though she steps lightly, her feet still leave imprints in the damp ground, mud squelching between her claws and splattering up her legs as she goes; it's a sensation I know she doesn't like—she's not a fan of being dirty, I've learned.
I can feel her disgust ripple through me with every particularly mucky step she takes.
But she endures it and stays at my side, slogging through the mess rather than elegantly twisting through the sky like she'd prefer to do.
It feels appropriate to be down here together, given the messy things we've unburied today.
We're halfway between the palace and the distant forest when my thoughts about altars and bloodstains get so overwhelming that I find myself slowing to a stop, lifting my face to the sky, closing my eyes and fully embracing the rain.
Like this cold water could wash me clean, somehow.
Maybe erase the haunting, miserable feelings that have been clinging to me since I first stepped into that dark tunnel underneath the arena.
A sudden screech jerks my attention back to the present.
My eyes flash open just in time to see two dragons drop from the clouds, entangled in a fierce battle.
Furious wingbeats slice and echo through the damp air, stirring up an unnatural wind. I stare, frozen in place, as their claws swipe and tails whip viciously about, as they tumble and dive at one another, each trying to force the other toward the ground.
The smaller, darker one ultimately succeeds, catching the other's wing and twisting it until something gives with an awful, resonant crack, sending it into a dazed, spinning freefall.
The earth caves in around it as it hits, long, jagged cracks spreading out in all directions.
The smaller dragon swoops down after it, a dark cloud gathering around its tapered snout. It hovers for a moment, leathery wings slick and shining with rain and what might be flecks of blood.
The injured dragon rocks awkwardly back and forth, legs flailing as it scrambles to right itself.
It's too slow.
The cloud of darkness descends and immediately begins to eat away at the fallen dragon's hide, leaving it covered in weeping patches with blackened edges; raw, peeling wounds where the scales simply…
cease to be. Its struggling quickly stops, its limbs going rigid and its eyes widening into saucers of pure black.
I clamp a hand over my mouth and nose as a putrid, sulfurous reek rolls outward on the wind.
Sesca steps in front of me, her frill pressed flat, her tail and wings drawn in close and tense as a coiled spring. The poison-breathing dragon cocks its head and locks eyes with her. It starts to open its mouth, and I start to panic—
But then it drops several feet in the air, swaying as if a sudden weight has slammed into it from above.
It tears its gaze away and then flees, vanishing into the fog above the nearby forest with a final, rattling screech.
I'm still watching the sky when my gaze is caught by something far below—a shadowy figure that appears to have been watching the battle from the other side of the palace grounds. As soon as the fleeing dragon streaks past it, the figure turns to chase it.
I must be seeing things, I think.
Sesca's vision slides briefly over mine, sharpening my senses just long enough to let me get a closer look at that shadowy figure…
And now I finally know where the king has disappeared to.
In the next instant, he's gone, slipping into the woods, still heading in the same direction as that raging, poisonous dragon.
“Why would he be running toward it? Is he out of his mind?”
Sesca gives a low, uncertain hum in response.
All I can think about is how unpredictable Mouren's dragons have been lately. How Reave admitted he's been struggling to control them—why does he think tonight is going to be any different?
Was it something that happened during his meetings? Something that made him desperate to prove to his allies that Mouren still has some semblance of power and authority over its winged beasts?
A dark, terrible thought seizes me and won't let go.
He's going to get himself killed.
My legs are moving, one uncertain step after the other, and then suddenly I'm jogging, running, sprinting as fast as I can manage in the slick conditions, the rain pounding into my face, blinding and cold and stinging—
Sesca darts in front of me, blocking my path.
I open my mouth, prepared to shout at her to get the hell out of my way, when suddenly she kneels in the mud and renders me speechless.
Thunder rumbles overhead. A flash of lightning draws my gaze upward as it illuminates the poisonous dragon flying erratically over the forest. It spirals sharply left, then right, then drops rapidly before catching itself just above the tree-line.
It tries to gain altitude again, fails, and plummets out of sight.
The sound of limbs creaking and snapping carries back on the wind, followed by the thud of several entire trees going down—and then the unmistakably loud crash of the dragon itself hitting the ground.