Chapter 27 #3
“Jore!” I shout. “You said you’d always come when I called, and my mom died, and today’s my wedding, and you’re ruining it.
” I know she’s gone. I know she can’t show up, and maybe part of my tantrum is because I wanted her here.
I wanted my mother here, and my other mother here, and both of them are dead, and I’m having the happiest day of my life without either of them and it sucks.
The crowd starts to murmur, clearly worried I’m bonkers.
Even the blessed are exchanging glances and whispering.
But there’s still no Jore. Because I killed her. I know that. I mean, I’ve called her a million times over the past few weeks. I know she can’t come. I’m not an idiot. But I have to figure out how to—
A massive crack opens up in the rock near the edge of the cliff, not two hundred yards away with a thunderous smack. The crack spreads toward us, moving fast.
“Shoot,” Dad says. “That’s not good.”
“Evacuate,” someone shouts.
And then everyone’s standing, shouting, and milling around.
Before anyone has time to leave, the crack widens just past the lines of seats and our raised platform, and liquid gold bubbles outward from it. Axel’s hand tightens so much on mine that I’m worried I’ll lose circulation to my fingers. What’s happening?
I shrug. “I’m not doing that.”
Daughter. Jore’s voice is clear and loud, but within a second of hearing her call to me, she rises from the crack. She’s golden and bright and as powerful as ever.
“You’re alive!” I drop Axel’s hand and walk past rows of guests to draw nearer to her.
Her eyes are vast, and they’re also kind. Of course I’m alive. I told you I would always answer your call.
I close my eyes for a moment, and then I inhale deeply. “This is the best wedding gift anyone could ever give me. If you could please take all the voices away, and then you could deal with all that instead, that would be amazing.”
Her smile’s bright. I took my first vacation in millennia, and it was quite nice. I’m sorry it left you with all the demands.
“I mean, I didn’t do anything for them,” I confess. “I didn’t know how.”
Next time, I’ll have to give you more instructions. She looks around then, as if just noticing that we aren’t alone. This is quite a gathering.
“It’s my wedding,” I say. “But all the voices demanding things were making me go insane.”
Jord lifts her hand then, and a rush of golden, light, bright magic flees my body and disappears into her. It makes no noticeable difference in how she looks, but I hope I’m done luminescing all over the place like a bizarre sort of radioactive nightlight.
“I thought I’d killed you,” I whisper.
She laughs then, and the sound’s radiant. “My child, you can’t kill me. I blessed those swords with my own magic. They could no sooner kill me than that egg could kill you.” She steps closer to Coral and brushes the top of it with one golden hand.
The egg begins to rock and twitch, and I freeze. “What’s—is it hatching?”
She needed but a bit of energy to ready herself.
“It’s a girl?” Axel blinks.
I can’t help my smile. I spin and crouch, taking the egg out of Coral’s basket and holding it as carefully as I can while it pitches and twitches, and then one tiny piece of shell cracks and falls away from the top. Then another.
Finally, in a rush, the whole thing cracks wide open and a tiny purple dragon with sky blue eyes falls into my arms, fluffy white feathered wings unfolding as she looks up at me. Who are you?
If I’m crying, well, it’s a human hazard. “I’m your mother.” I squeeze the little scaly, winged thing carefully against my chest, and I feel happier than I’ve ever been. “We are just delighted to meet you, Indigo,” I say.
“I thought we were going to name her together,” Axel mutters.
“Maybe I’ll let you name the next one.” Though I wouldn’t count on it.
He laughs.
“So do we continue the wedding?” my dad asks. “Or is this where we all just pass the baby around and introduce ourselves?”
I’d like to see your wedding, Jore says. I can hold her for the ceremony if she’s too distracting.
There’s no way I’m letting my tiny little dragonet go. I cradle her in my arms while my dad pronounces us not-quite-man and more-than-just-a-normal-wife. And I’m not the only one with tears in my eyes when I kiss my husband for the first time, while holding our newly hatched little dragon baby.
It’s not the perfect ceremony I imagined, but it just might be better. After the losses we’ve suffered lately, regaining Jore and meeting Indigo was exactly what I wanted.
“What about your vows?” Coral asks.
“Oh, no,” Asteria says. “This is all happening entirely out of order.”
I laugh, repositioning Indigo so her wings stop tickling my chin.
“My whole life’s out of order.” I lift up our little baby girl so she’s cradled along my hip.
“But I’ll go ahead and start. Axel, earth blessed and Azar, flame blessed, I hereby dub you Axar, king of the dragons.
The two names are too confusing, and now you usually just take the one big old dragon form anyway.
” I smile. “When you’re not being human to be near me. ”
He holds out his hands and I pass Indigo to him, finally. I wanted to make sure she liked me the most before I passed her off. She tries to claw her way back to me, which makes me smile, but eventually, she lets her father cradle her.
“You and I had a very strange start,” I continue. “And then I had to teach you to kiss. It was a very memorable kiss, leading to us entwining, and then you promptly forgot all about it.” I snort. “But as that was my fault two times over, I suppose I’ll let it go.”
“I remember it now,” he whispers, but he’s too busy smiling at our daughter to really make much impact with his words.
“Nothing about our lives has ever been what I thought it would be, and maybe that’s half the fun.
” I can’t help thinking about how our little daughter and my previously dead mother earth basically both crashed our wedding.
It’s par for the course with us. “I promise that whatever happens in the next few years or decades, I will be here, by your side, trusting in us. In all the crazy upheavals and insane things that have happened, you’re the one thing that has always made sense. ”
“And I promise you that no matter what anyone else says or does, no matter what choices we make,” he says, “I will always choose you. I will bear any pain, make any sacrifice, and slay any threat. No matter what separates us, either circumstance or villains, I will always come back to you.”
“Even when I’m old and gray and you still look the same?” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.
“Even then,” he says. “I’m yours forever.”
“Great,” I say. “Because I’ve been looking into human taxidermy, you know. I plan to hold you to that. I could see a really nice spot for me on your couch for centuries after I die.”
My dad looks a little sick. Clearly our sense of humor’s not quite the same as his.
But it’s fine.
Sammy’s chuckling, and Coral’s lip is twitching. At least my siblings get me. I’ve probably just warped them enough that they do. Whoops.
“How’d you like to take our little bits on her first flight?” Axar asks.
“I think it’s a little early for that.” I snatch her out of his arms. “I can’t believe you’d even ask.”
But he shifts then, into his massive, powerful, and shimmering new form. You can hold her, and I’ll hold you. How does that sound?
Honestly, everything with him sounds just about perfect.
***I HOPE you really enjoyed reading Embattled and the entire Dragon Captured series.