Chapter Fourteen
Kai felt every eye on him as they walked into the dining room and took seats beside each other. Drake was sitting on the end of the table and Elda was on one side. Brenna sat opposite Elda and he took the chair beside her, a good distance from her brother.
He wasn’t too proud to be glad there was space between them. If the glare he was currently receiving from the male dragonite was any indication, it still might not be far enough away.
The same as with every meal, a moment after they were seated, Chim entered with their food and promptly tied their napkins around their necks after. He’d gotten used to the ritual at every meal eaten in the room, as strange as it was.
“Thank you, Chim,” Drake said, nodding. The gnome didn’t reply, as he rarely ever did. He just hurried out of the room.
The silence in the room was short, however, before the doorway was filled with a newcomer. A tall, menacing-looking man entered. His steps were short, as if he wasn’t fully awake. From his dark clothing and messy black hair, he seemed entirely out of place among them.
“Ah, my friend,” Drake said, gesturing toward the table. “We are glad to see you have woken. Please, join us.”
The man looked around the table with a scowl on his face then took a seat at the opposite end, several seats away from Kai and the others.
When Chim approached him with a napkin, the man gave the gnome a sharp glare that made Chim gasp and drop the napkin, scurrying from the room as fast as his little legs could carry him.
The napkin, however, didn’t fall to the floor.
It stopped in the air and hovered long enough for the man to reach out and grab it. He tossed it onto his empty plate.
A wizard then? Kai wasn’t sure how he felt sitting between the two men. Drake at one end and the mage at the other. After his dealings with his father’s mage and stepson, Kai had grown wary of wizards. Almost as much as the dragonite at the head of the table.
“Umm… who’s this?” Brenna said with a confused expression that Kai found adorable. She looked over at her brother, who gave her a sigh.
“Right. It’s a long story. Let’s fill our plates and get into it then, shall we?”
The quiet was flooded with sounds of food being plated and once everyone, mage included, had their plates filled, Drake began his tale of their journey to Taten. How they’d had an uneventful trip there and arrived, meeting with the king and queen, and how they had been warmly received.
Kai had never visited the kingdom. He hadn’t gone further south than Moorine, which sat at foot of the Valerian Mountains.
His traveling was always limited to when his father decided to visit another kingdom.
He had never been permitted to travel alone.
This voyage—abduction rather—was the furthest he’d been from home.
Drake then told of being given a magical stone, one Kai didn’t quite understand the reasoning for. However, as the dragonite spoke of the stone, a large but invisible stone sank into Kai’s stomach. A magical stone? Which had recently gone missing from this very mountain?
With everything that had happened since he’d been brought back to Athera, he’d all but forgotten how he’d come to know the dragonite was in the cavern in the first place. Because he’d been forced by Dorian to enter the cave and steal a stone.
Oh, no.
The food in his mouth began to taste like dirt and he forced himself to swallow it.
Drake and Elda had gone to Taten to retrieve a stone because theirs had been stolen.
Stolen by… him. He toyed with the remaining food on his plate in silence while Drake finished the story, explaining how they had been attacked by men in the forest. The wizard present at supper had saved them and they’d save him in return.
“We owe you a great debt, mage,” Drake said, nodding to the wizard.
“It was nothing,” the wizard grumbled.
“Nonsense. I intend to repay you, somehow.”
“In what? Your royal riches? I have no need of them.”
Drake sat back with a smirk. “How do you know I’m a royal?”
“Because only royals call us mage. To commoners, I am wizard.”
“Ah, I see. You are correct. I am Prince Drake, of Athera. This is my mate, Esmerelda. We are both grateful to you…”
“Nox,” the wizard said, gruffly.
“Nox,” Drake smiled. “This is my sister, Princess Brenna. And next to her is her… mate.”
Kai hid a smile when the dragonite reluctantly introduced him as Brenna’s mate. It felt right, for reasons he wasn’t ready to explore. And the fact that Drake was annoyed by it made it even better.
“Athera?” Nox asked, his brow pinched. “Where in the realm is that?”
“Well, it’s another story, I suppose. Here goes…”
Kai listened intently to the story of the dragonite kingdom, how they’d come to be cursed, and how their curses, two of the siblings so far, had been broken. Brenna chimed in to tell their part, leaving out all of the kisses between them, probably for the best.
He didn’t add anything, just smiled when she looked to him and tried to ignore the thought in the back of his mind that they were incredibly lucky Taten had been able to give them a stone to replace the one he’d stolen.
After learning the stones were keeping the dragonites safe and a missing stone might have prevented Brenna and Drake’s younger brother, Ladon, from ever awakening, Kai counted his lucky stars that they had a new stone and maybe his Brenna would never need to learn what he’d done.
~*~
Nox stared at the plate in front of him and took in the story he was being told.
It was outrageous. Ridiculous. Completely insane.
A kingdom cursed and hidden from the realm for hundreds of years?
Being saved by… gnomes? Impossible. Almost as impossible as there being a real-life dragon in the forest, being harassed by a pack of heartless men.
If he hadn’t seen Drake in dragon form—or dragonite, he was learning—he would have never believed it.
In fact, when he’d first heard the commotion, he’d thought the beast the men were discussing was an imp.
A black monster with giant wings? What else could it have been?
That’s why he had followed the bandits in the first place.
When he’d gotten a good look at the beast they’d been tracking, however, his magic had flared. Not in the same way it did when an imp was around. His magic wasn’t appalled by the dragonite. Instead, he’d felt a fierce need to protect it. To save it.
He still couldn’t understand why he’d intervened. It hadn’t been smart. His power had never returned to full strength since his mate had stopped visiting him in his dreams. Where was Zaria now and would he ever see her again? He couldn’t think of her. He had to focus.
“So you’re saying,” Nox began, “that this Athera—where we are now—is in the Blackfoot Mountains?”
“Yes,” Drake said. “Our castle is inside this mountain, but our valley is yet to be revealed to us. I assume as time goes on and our brother is eventually awakened, we will hopefully find the valley and the rest of our people. We believe they were also frozen with the curse.”
“And if they weren’t?”
“If that’s the case and the valley is gone, then we are the last of our people.”
Nox gave a short nod. He understood being alone and hoped this wouldn’t be the fate of the dragonites. At least they had their siblings and mates. Perhaps, he could find a way to help them before moving on.
“I am happy to assist you, Prince Drake, if you are in need of a wizard’s service, before I leave. I owe you, in return for saving me after my power drained. You could have left me there and just saved your Esmerelda. You didn’t. For that, I give my thanks and my magic. For a short while.”
Drake and his mate both smiled at him.
“You’re not king now?” Nox added, sitting back in his chair.
“What do you mean?” Drake asked, his smile slipping.
“You said your parents were lost prior to the curse landing in Athera. Since you and your siblings are the only ones the gnomes managed to save with the stone, doesn’t that mean you are now king?”
It was Elda who spoke, “Drake is holding out hope that when the rest of the kingdom is revealed, that maybe his parents will be among them.”
Drake gave his mate a sad smile then shook it off, standing. “For now, I will remain Prince Drake, and I have a lot to attend to. If you are serious about offering your assistance, Nox, we have a mountain outside that is crumbling and a severe lack of defense surrounding Athera.”
“I am happy to help in any way I can,” Nox said, rising.
As Drake started toward the door, the prince turned to look down at the other male in the room, the Prince of Nivea, who froze in place so quickly, Nox thought he looked like he wanted to disappear. It was sort of amusing.
“You,” Drake said. “Kai. If you’re staying, you will make yourself useful also. Let’s go.”
Kai placed a quick kiss on Princess Brenna’s head and followed Drake from the room. Nox chuckled to himself, caught between feeling sorry for the young man and jealous that this prince had been able to fit into his new mate’s life so easily. Something Nox would never know.