Chapter 9 #2
I refused to believe that she was my vengeance, that taking her life was what I needed to do in order to have it, but that belief wavered whenever I thought about her blood and her father, and Neve’s visions.
And that was the reason I had come here.
Not to ask Neve whether she had known Saphira was part seelie born of the Summer Court—my enemy—but to ask this.
My words were broken, hollow sounds as I leaned my weight against my hands, gripping the bars as they ripped the strength from my body and threatened to send me to my knees.
“Tell me that my vengeance does not mean harming her,” I croaked.
Soul roaring and heart shattering at the thought it might.
“If you ever hurt Saphira, I will leave my dungeon and you will have to deal with me,” Neve snapped, her eyes flashing brightly as gold scales rippled over her exposed skin, her teeth as sharp as daggers.
“Killing her is not an option.” My voice broke, just the thought of hurting my little wolf enough to have my shadows restlessly lashing at the old stones of the dungeon, the ones that rose up behind me poised to strike me down, to eliminate the threat to the one I loved.
“I would sooner kill myself than hurt her.”
I shook my head and leaned forwards, resting my forehead between two of the bars.
“Even if it was the only way to avenge my family… even if I had not fallen for her… I could not do such a thing. She had no knowledge of this… and I saw how deeply it shook her.” That image would never leave me, was forever seared onto my mind.
She had looked so desperate, so wild, and so broken.
I flexed my fingers around the cold metal bars as my claws came out, the need to protect her rising swiftly inside me as I growled, “I am worried about her… out there navigating both a seelie court and this revelation at the same time.”
“She will be fine.” Neve’s tone was soft but her expression was fierce, filled with the belief I failed to muster for myself.
“You only tell me what I need to hear, not what you have seen.” I shook my head, rubbing my temples against the hard bars, and the dark slashes of my eyebrows furrowed as I looked at her. “If you have strength… if you could… if it would not drain you or harm you…”
She smiled softly. “What is this? My king requesting a vision rather than demanding? You really must be in love.”
I tried to smile but my lips would not comply.
“I have the strength you need, but even if I did not, I would still force a vision for you,” she whispered earnestly, her devotion to me shaming me for all the times I had made her do such a thing.
I did not deserve this dragon who bore all I threw at her without flinching.
“I would never deny you, not when your need is so great.”
“I would never deny you either.” I meant those words, making them a solemn vow as she nodded, awareness glittering in her amber eyes. She knew I would keep them. That whatever storm came, we would face it together.
She moved to kneel on the rug that covered most of the damp stone floor of her home, and rested her hands on her thighs with her palms facing the ceiling. Her eyes closed and she went deathly still.
I did too.
I was not sure how long it took for her to speak again, but every second ticked past like a strained eternity, only the sounds of my breaths breaking the silence.
Her voice was weak and stretched thin when she uttered words that cut me to my soul, revealing the pain she had tried so hard to hide from me as she had forced a vision, delving deep into her magic to pull one up from the abyss for me.
To give me hope.
She only gave me pain.
“I see Saphira in danger,” she whispered, her fair eyebrows pinching and her lips flattening, the corners turning downwards as her expression twitched and shifted as she navigated the vision. “Her back scored in brutal lines as darkness whirls among vivid blooms.”
It took all my iron will to remain where I was, clutching the bars of her cell, anchoring myself to the Shadow Court instead of exploding like star-flecked night into the Summer Court to take her back.
Neve jerked and hissed, golden scales rippling over her skin.
“What do you see?” I issued that question as an order, a demand for her to tell me what had evoked such a reaction from her as fear sank icy talons into my heart.
“I see the black abyss of nothingness. I see the glimmering gold of velvet around me. But I hear…” Her voice lowered to a whisper that bordered on tender, laced with sorrow. “I hear a silent cry in each beat of my heart. A call. A summons. A bond I can never break and one that breaks me.”
“Stop speaking in riddles,” I barked, patience wearing thin.
Tears dampened her eyes as she opened them and looked at me. So bleak. I had never seen her so bleak.
“I see the source of the Summer Court’s power to find Saphira in a mirror, shimmering silver.”
I growled, shadows restless. “Who?”
I had always felt that perhaps the Summer court had a seer of their own, and that is how they had discovered Saphira would be at that auction, just as Neve had seen her there for me.
Neve remained quiet, her voice strained, as she uttered two words with effort. “My twin.”
I staggered back a step, almost losing my grip on the bars. The Summer Court had a dragon shifter. That was how they had known where to find Saphira.
Inky tendrils branched from beneath my boots to lash at the stones of the dungeon, crawling from the corners where the torchlight did not touch, writhing as they merged and grew stronger, and returned to me, forming a black abyss beneath me.
“Why did you never speak of a sister?” I could not hold back the demand or the rage that brewed inside me, that rattled the castle in a thunderous boom as lightning struck.
She snarled right back at me, eyes wild and frantic, a vicious little thing. “Because he killed her.”
She immediately reared back, her expression shifting towards conflicted as her eyes darted over her upturned palms, her book, even me.
“That is what he told me,” she muttered and lifted her hands, pressing them to the sides of her head as she clawed her blonde hair back from her face, pulling her skin taut.
She rocked, the motion speaking of her agitation as she spoke to herself.
“Taunted me with it. He killed her. Killed her. In the darkest throes of his rage, when the inky poison coating his mind smothered all the good in him. He killed her. He dropped her body. Watched it plummet the great drop to the earth. Watched it break on the mountain. Watched her inevitable death. And he… he begged me so sweetly without words. Aching to be rid of the poison. So I carved it from his heart while he slumbered.”
Her head slowly turned, and I followed the path of her gaze.