Chapter 34 #2
I opened the door of the seamstress’s shop, the bell tinkling brightly to announce my presence, and made a show of looking at the fabrics on display, working my way towards the back of the building.
I slipped behind the heavy curtain that gave her clients some privacy during fittings and focused as soon as I was out of sight, summoning my invisibility.
And slipped out through the storeroom.
My boots were silent on the cobblestones of the narrow alley as I moved along it at speed, not slowing until I reached the edge of the lower city, where I teleported.
I landed in the spot where I had been when I had met the dragon shifter, panting as fatigue rolled through me, reminding me that I wasn’t at full strength and that pushing myself beyond my limits was dangerous, especially when I couldn’t risk running back to the castle on foot and didn’t dare shift.
The pain would probably make me shift back almost immediately.
Arianell was where she had been that day, her bare feet paddling in the crystalline stream as the longer grass at the bank swayed against her calves.
The ragged hem of her grey dress spilled over the flattened grass where she lay on her back, her silver hair fanned outwards from her head, revealing more of the cloth that covered her eyes.
Her fingers played in her hair, twisting it around their lengths as dappled sunlight danced over her, constantly shifting as the tree above her swayed in the gentle breeze.
“The little wolf returns at last,” she said, her voice as pure as starlight and warm as the sun. “Did you bring me treasure?”
She angled her head downwards, towards me.
Towards my pocket.
She grinned. “She brought me treasure.”
She was on her knees in a flash, grabbing at my pocket, and when I started and jumped back, pushing her hands away, she hissed and silver scales rippled over her skin.
“They are mine,” she snarled, revealing fangs.
“I know, and I will give them to you, if you swear you will give me the answers you promised me.” I pulled the box from my pocket.
“Yes, yes. Answers. Yes.” She lunged for the box, snatching it before I could stop her, and sat cross-legged on the grass.
She lifted the lid and cooed at the two crystals in a tongue I didn’t know.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when she removed the cloth from her eyes and took one of the crystals and pushed it into the hollow socket, and then the other, but I was close to vomiting as she worked the rocks into them.
Only they weren’t rocks.
She blinked and they became real eyes, as beautiful pale blue as she had described, and I recalled An’sidwain—a piece of the beating heart of a dragon that resembled a ruby crystal.
“Are dragons common in the faerie lands?” I couldn’t hold back that question, not when I knew of at least two here and possibly a third if Neve was right and another was hunting for that piece of heart she had taken through magic.
I had always been led to believe dragons could only exist in Hell.
That they would die if they ventured into another land.
That’s what my father had told me. My true father.
Not Sylas. He had sat with me on my bed, regaling me with fanciful stories of dragon shifters in Hell or the big cat shifters that roamed those lands, with their blue fire that danced at the tip of their tail and beneath their sleek black paws. I had devoured those tales.
But he had told me when I had grown older that they weren’t tales, but truths.
I wasn’t sure he had known much about the faerie lands though. Maybe dragons could live here without suffering the consequences of their curse.
Arianell shook her head as she blinked and squinted at her surroundings, her eyes watering.
“There are three of us.” She leaned to her right and pressed her palm to the earth, whispering, “I can feel one of us through the threads of this land, his malevolent presence poisoning the caldera where he slumbers. I lost track of the other.”
Neve, I realised.
Arianell had lost track of her because she was concealed by magic.
“Did you help the seelie find me?” I moved to stand before her, blocking her view of the world so it wouldn’t distract her as her gaze roamed over everything.
“I did. Sylvan has told you as much.” She smiled up at me. “Has he not?”
“He has.”
“I did not tell him everything, of course.” Her fingers drifted through the air, weaving the glimmering threads of gold and black magic again.
“What didn’t you tell him?” I watched the design forming, curious as to what it would be.
“That I sent him there for a reason he would not like.” Her smile held. “That you would be the downfall of the steward of the Summer Court.”
My gaze snapped to her, chills bolting down my aching spine. “Sylvan’s downfall?”
She nodded and grinned broadly. “Sylvan craves power. He is bound by its influence, chained to the past and what he perceives he has lost and cannot find. He seeks it endlessly.”
I had suspected he hungered for power almost as much as Lorien did, and that this was all some sort of game to him, and he was playing with us heirs for his own purposes, but to hear it from someone. It knocked the wind from me.
“I read that he was the only witness to the attack by the Shadow Court that killed Sylas’s queen and heir.” I crouched before her, glancing between her and the pattern she was building in the shimmering air.
“That is true.” She looked at me.
“Were you around then? Dragons can only see the future, and not the past. So were you here then?” I had to be sure, because if she had been here, she might be able to tell me why Neve had seen me delivering Kaeleron’s vengeance—and who I needed to introduce to my fangs.
“Of course I was here. It is a wonder you know anything if you pay so little attention.” She added a finishing flourish to her work.
Twin dragons.
One gold. One black. Chasing each other’s tails in a circle.
The dragons moved, the circle spinning a full rotation before they broke apart and the black dragon chased after the golden one.
It dove into the stream, disappearing on impact with the water, and the onyx one followed.
Was the golden one Neve?
She had gold scales.
“Did the Shadow Court really order the attack?” I asked.
She sighed and began weaving again, silver and black this time.
“I do not know the answer to that question. I did not foresee the attack, and Sylas was most cruel to me. He blamed me for it, even when I explained that Sylvan had depleted me of magic with his constant pressing me for visions of the other courts so Sylas could protect his borders.”
“That’s a little convenient,” I muttered as I watched the threads of shadow twining with starlight, forming a wolf chasing an elkyn. Or was the elkyn chasing the wolf?
“It was rather,” she replied merrily and sent the wolf and elkyn running with a wave of her hand. “Sylvan knows it takes me almost a full lunar cycle to recover if I am forced to have visions.”
So he had known if he pushed her hard enough, she wouldn’t foresee what he had done and couldn’t report it to his cousin. If I hadn’t been suspicious of Sylvan before, I would have been now.
“Do you think he would kill the queen and child of his own cousin for his own benefit?” It sounded barbaric.
She laughed brightly. “I know he would. Sylvan only cares about one thing. Power. It is all he has ever cared about. Everything he has done has been in pursuit of it… and believe me, child… he has done terrible things, things far worse than the murder you believe he carried out. He is a butcher, merciless and cruel.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.” I tried to reconcile this version of Sylvan with the one I knew, and my wolf instincts growled low in a warning they had issued many times since I had set foot in this court.
Since I had met Sylvan in that glade in Canada.
“Perhaps because I am. Perhaps I am jaded. Perhaps my time being tortured by him for failing to foresee the deaths of the queen and heir have coloured my view of him.” She pushed to her bare feet, scowling at me.
“I spent two lunar cycles strung up in his dungeon, my ability to heal pushed to its limit as he carved me to pieces, dedicating hours each day to making me suffer for something he did. I could not have a vision because of him, yet I was the one punished.”
Gods, he was barbaric.
“Do not underestimate him.” She blinked her large pale blue eyes at me. “His patience is formidable, and his wrath is terrifying.”
“Sounds like someone I know,” I muttered.
Her expression relaxed as she regarded me. “You speak of the Shadow King.”
I nodded and toyed with my moon ring.
She glanced at it and lingered in that way Neve had, her gaze growing glassy, so I hid it behind my back, shattering the spell it had cast on her.
“You said something when we met.” I tried to divert her attention back to me. “You said Lucia was guiding me and the land called my name. Why? Why would the goddess of this realm be guiding me?”
Arianell’s brows lifted as she regarded me with wide eyes. “You would need to ask her that. Only she knows.”
“If only it were that simple. I’ll just summon a goddess and speak with her about it.
Sure,” I muttered, but didn’t let her answer deter me.
She had promised me answers, and I would have them.
“I have these… dreams. From the moment I set foot in this land, I’ve felt as if the trees were calling me.
It’s happened more than once. I feel deeply… connected to nature here.”
Arianell sat cross-legged again, peering up at me like an eager child wanting to learn more or hear my story.
I eased to my backside on the grass and considered what to tell her, trying to place everything I wanted answers to into order of importance, in case she had a limit to the number of questions she would answer in exchange for her eyes.