Chapter 50 #2
‘The healer came, and she worked on you for a while. She stitched the wound in your side and then she said you needed to rest and that you weren’t to be disturbed.
That was five days ago, which is the last time any of us saw you – save for Rheia and Lilith.
Hark carried you to your room and spent the day pacing and swearing at all of us. Arla—’
She started at the direct use of her name.
‘I have never seen him like that. He went somewhere else, and no matter how many hours I spent talking to him, I couldn’t get through to him. He visited you, I think, but then he left this afternoon and said he would return later. He said you weren’t to leave your room, actually.’
Arla stared. And sipped her tea. And stared again at Kase.
Hark cared, then. More than she thought he ever would.
Her heart swelled with warmth and with the realisation that she hadn’t imagined it – that there was something raw and burning between them.
She’d felt it – gods, she’d felt it too much at times, no matter that she’d tried to deny it.
But for Hark… She could never have dreamed he felt the same way.
There were no words for the sort of feeling that bloomed in her chest, and yet if it could be bottled she was certain to get drunk on it.
Because in the past month she had come to care for him more than she ever should have, and maybe, without her knowing, it had even begun before that.
She’d found him a constant, steadying partner, and the longer they’d worked together, the more she’d found herself longing for him to look at her.
For him to laugh at whatever wicked thing would come out of her mouth next.
For his hand to brush hers. For him to be there. Constantly. Forever.
She didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like, that sacred, burning thing she had always been too scared to admit to wanting, but she thought it must feel something like this.
‘Your human heart feels too much. Stop it.’ And yet there was nothing mocking in her dragon’s voice.
Kase cleared her throat, and when Arla was sure she could look at her without crying, she held Kase’s gaze.
The woman swallowed. ‘What?’
‘Why the … gesture in the hallway? Why have you suddenly decided I’m worthy of your kindness?
’ She might be sore and weak, but she wasn’t a coward.
A flicker of the assassin shone through in the bite of her words.
The flash of shame flickering in Kase’s eyes confirmed to her that she’d not imagined the animosity between them.
‘You know what it means, for a dragon to serve you, do you not?’ The air seemed to halt, as though the entire world held its breath. The bond suddenly felt too taut between her and Thara, as if the dragon daren’t breathe for what came next.
‘I asked them for help. They answered.’
Kase scoffed as if she couldn’t believe what Arla was saying. As if she was being entirely stupid. ‘Arla, you’re the last dragonhart.’
Well, yes, she’d gathered that back in the tunnels beneath Castle Grey when Abredus had told her of the prophecy.
She hadn’t had much time to unpick what that all meant.
She certainly didn’t know how she’d managed to unite the kingdoms and was deserving of Kase’s admiration.
All she’d done was take on a king and almost die.
‘I haven’t united anything.’
‘You helped free the slaves, and all those who have magic running in their blood have flocked here. Elrod can’t touch them anymore.
Is that not enough to unite kingdoms, Arla?
If the gods are willing, the kingdoms should start to flourish again,’ Kase challenged, crossing one leg over the other as she drank deeply from her own tea.
Arla remembered that Abredus had told her that the gods were angry with what was happening to the magic-wielders, that to spill their blood to use it for yourself would upset the balance of magic, and that was why the gods had punished the kingdoms. Maybe now that they had stopped Elrod’s cruelty, those who carried magic were safe and everything would be okay.
She hoped so. She wished Halos and her children could find safe passage to this stronghold over the norther border. She hated to think of them trapped in the town if Hadalyn began to fall in the same way Kastonia had.
‘So you’re being nice to me now because I’m gods-blessed? Classy, Kase.’
Why was she like this?
Arla watched hurt shoot across the girl’s face and Arla immediately regretted her comment. She only had the one friend and she didn’t know how Halos put up with her.
Kase squinted slightly, and Arla could see the internal battle taking place in the girl’s mind about how much she dared say to Arla. How much she dared challenge a dragonhart. Arla hoped she wouldn’t hold back.
‘I won’t pretend I wouldn’t love to go up against you in battle, Reinhart,’ she said finally, ‘but I’ll have you know that my opinion of you changed when you woke up after Hark had been taken and you decided to gallop back to Hadalyn with a concussion in order to save him.
I was on your team then; don’t make me regret it now. ’
How odd that Arla respected the girl now more than she ever had before. Perhaps it was the brutal honesty that had not dimmed just because Arla now commanded dragons.
‘What happens now?’ Arla asked, an overwhelming flood of emotion now battering her because … she hadn’t felt like this in so long. She’d fought with everything she had to become King’s Assassin, to feel like she belonged somewhere and that she had a purpose in life.
Now … now she had effectively declared a war on Kastonia. She couldn’t return to Hadalyn for fear that Kastonia would use that as an excuse to invade, so she was … she was lost. Lost and drifting with nowhere to go.
‘Now we move on,’ Kase said, leaning forwards and reaching a hand out to rest on Arla’s knee at the sight of a tear escaping her eye. That one tear was the crack in a dam that had been too close to bursting for too long, and suddenly she was sobbing.
Heavy, salty tears splashed on her hands, and her shoulders shook. She was broken, and lost, and worthless. She knew nothing and she had nothing.
‘Never.’
‘Why are you crying?’ Kase asked gently, pulling herself off the couch to crouch by Arla’s hunched figure.
‘Because I’m lost, and I have nowhere to go.’ Arla wept, the vastness of her situation crashing down on her.
And then there was a voice in the doorway, a low, soft voice that sent her heart pounding and drowned out the rest of the world.
‘You have me.’