Home for Now…
As I arrived back at the hideout with the early morning light peeking over the mountains, I let out a sigh of relief. Vasin refused to let me stop and see everyone before we headed back, saying something about nine lives and having used up three.
“I changed my mind. They will be fine without us. The other dragon riders are meeting up with them instead. I can’t trust that you won’t do something entirely too stupid, and I’ve had all I can take of that for a lifetime.”
The moment we landed, Dayson was there, pulling me off Vasin, fear written all over his face. “Are you hurt? Why are you covered in blood? Where is everyone else? Are you alone?”
“Easy, cousin, let the poor woman speak if you want answers,” May suggested as she joined us, wrapping a cloak around my shoulders.
The shadow of another dragon passed overhead, and I looked up to find Paxton and Ninnat coming to land beside Vasin.
Paxton hopped off his dragon and stormed over to me, his face turning purple with the anger he was holding back.
“You are goddamn crazy, you know that? Why didn’t you tell me what the hell you were thinking?
I could have helped you, but no, you had to go and leap off a perfectly good dragon and do it all yourself! ”
“Look who’s talking. You’re the one who blew up one of the oldest buildings in our country, not to mention almost killing me as it collapsed!” I yelled back, meeting him toe to toe. “I was handling it just fine, but you had to let your crazy out.”
“Oh, ho, ho, is that what you think? Well, Your Majesty, the next time you get kidnapped, locked away in a cellar, tied to a chair with a psycho-manipulative fake guardian, I’ll be sure to leave you there since you can handle it just fine.”
Reaching the end of my limit on things I could handle in one night, I punched him right in the face, catching him so off guard he fell on his ass.
“If you wanted me to say thank you, that’s all you had to say, no need to be a dick about the whole thing!
It’s not like I asked you to come save me, goddammit. ”
Paxton looked up at me, eyes wide with shock as he cupped a hand over his eye.
Then in an odd turn of events, he started to laugh.
He laughed so hard he fell onto his back, and even his good eye started to well up with tears.
“Holy shit. How is there someone as perfect as you in this world? You just decked me in the face and scolded me for being a dick.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Now I’m going to my room to wash off Lord Everett’s blood, get some real clothes on, and tell everyone we have to leave this place because it’s no longer safe… that okay with you?” I growled.
Paxton stopped laughing, dropped his hand, showing his already swelling eye, and opened his mouth to say something else, but Becka stopped him. “Dayson, would you please take Cassarah up? I’ll get some ladies together and bring up the water for a bath.”
Bless that woman to know when I’ve had enough. I was barely holding it together now that the adrenaline was wearing off and the full reality was hitting me. “Thank you, Becka. When the rest of them get back, can you please send Jade to me?”
“Of course,” Becka assured me.
Dayson lifted me into his arms, so I snuggled against his chest and closed my eyes, listening to his heartbeat.
These men and women were becoming everything to me.
They were my family, my best friends, and people I wanted to trust with anything and everything.
In a blink of an eye, one of them betrayed me.
Granted, he was never truly one of my guardians, but I had started to let him in.
Could I trust that the others wouldn’t turn on me as well?
“Cassy-bear, it’s going to be all right,” Dayson murmured as he cuddled me. “We are all okay and made it out of there alive. As long as we are together, we’ll be able to make it through this.”
“He sold me out, Day. I trusted him to keep me safe, and he was going to deliver me to the enemy. Then his brother, my real guardian, killed him and slit his throat without a second thought. Paxton doesn’t even know me, but he killed his flesh and blood to keep me alive.
Why would he do that?” I asked, reaching out to clutch Dayson’s shirt with my hand.
Dayson took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Paxton has never shown loyalty to anyone or anything, but now it makes sense as to why. His father and brother were selling out our people for what… power, fortune, approval? He tried to tell the clan leaders, but they wrote him off as a boy who was mad at his father and always caused trouble. What Pax did today was nothing unusual. He’s always been known as the act-first-ask-questions-later type.
I can’t tell you why he did it, but that is the first time he’s ever picked a side that wasn’t himself. ”
“Vasin thinks he’s a bad influence on me.” I chuckled.
Dayson let out his own bark of laughter.
“No, what I saw out there was a woman standing up for herself when her guardian was being a dick. I’ve never seen you get so heated before.
It was quite impressive, totally made you even more attractive.
I don’t know what it is about a woman who can lay out a man, but it just does it for me. ”
That had me snapping my gaze up to his. “Is that your version of expressing interest in me?”
“We are way past interest, Cassy-bear. I’m halfway in love with you…
” He paused when he saw the look on my face.
“Now, don’t start frowning at me like that.
I know you asked for time, and I’m more than willing to give it to you.
I’m not pressuring you for anything, but I will damn well make sure you know how I feel about you. ”
When we entered my room, he set me on my bed, kneeled in front of me, and pulled my injured leg to rest on his.
Slowly, he started to undo the filthy-looking bandage to reveal the wound underneath.
It was puffy and red. The stitches looked like they tore a little, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
“Looks like it’s going to scar… I’m sorry about that,” Dayson said as he pressed around the wound, looking for any infection.
I glanced at the jagged mark and thought of all that had changed because of it. “Scars are moments in our lives that we will never forget. So far, this one has a pretty amazing story to tell.”
Dayson looked up at me with pride shining on his face as he smiled. “Paxton had one thing right. How in the world did a perfect woman like you come to be?”
Unsure of how to respond to a question like that, I was thankful when the door opened and four women entered, all carrying buckets of water.
Soon, the tub was filled, and I asked to be alone as I cleaned up.
I just needed some time to process things.
The water turned pink as I washed all the blood from my body, making it so I had to have Becka bring up another bucket of water for me to rinse off with.
Finally clean and dressed in the softest leather pants I could find, along with a loose, billowy navy blue shirt, I lay down on the bed.
I didn’t fall asleep. Instead, my mind went over the night’s events on a loop, looking at every detail, trying to figure out what I could have done differently.
There had to have been a way to avoid what happened, but on the other hand, how long could Payson have hidden in plain sight?
If I hadn’t figured out the plan for the castle, would the attack still have happened?
I covered my face with both hands, rubbing my aching eyeballs.
When I lowered them, I found Jade’s light green eyes staring down at me, his body covered in blood, dirt, and soot.
Before my brain could catch up, Jade had me in his arms, kissing wherever his lips could find skin, murmuring endearments and nothingness as he wrapped himself around me on the bed.
I decided I didn’t care what happened in the past because this was the Jade I knew and was falling for.
As we held each other, I cried while he told me everything was going to be all right, we all survived, and made it back home.
At some point, I drifted off to sleep, and when I woke, it wasn’t Jade who was sleeping next to me but Cole.
I was sleeping on my side while he was flat on his back, arms tucked behind his head, chest rising and falling steadily.
His face was relaxed, void of the scowl it’s had on it lately—the one I seemed to keep putting there.
I reached out and ran the tip of my finger along the bridge of his nose to see if he was really sleeping.
His hand shot out and gripped my wrist before one eye slowly cracked open to look at me.
“About time you woke up, sleepyhead. It’s well into the afternoon. ”
“Says the man taking a nap beside me.” I grinned.
Cole shifted onto his side, so we were all but nose to nose. “Getting drugged and hit over the head will do that to a guy. What’s your excuse?”
“Saving the guys who got drugged, hit over the head, and locked in a cage. Oh, and a few dragons too.”
“Wow, sounds like that person had some pretty impressive training. I wonder who her instructor was…”
“I think you would like him. He comes off as kind of an asshole, but once you get to know him, he’s just a big, overprotective teddy bear,” I teased, then reached out and cupped his cheek. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Turning his head, he kissed my palm before he clasped it in his hand. “I feel like a horse kicked me in the skull, but I’ll be okay. You going to be all right? Dayson told us about Lord Everett.”
“I’m not sure if I’m being honest. He would have killed me without a thought, so he didn’t leave me any choice in the matter,” I answered. “Is everyone back?”
“Yes, most of them are resting at the moment. We thought it best to let everyone sleep since we didn’t get much shut-eye last night. Rumor is that you have a plan.”
“Haven’t you learned yet that I always have a plan?”
Cole reached out and tapped a finger on my nose. “Not all of them are smart plans, like jumping off a dragon, for instance.”
“Saved you guys, didn’t I? I’d say it’s well worth it,” I argued.
“That’s where you have things a little backward. The guardians are supposed to do the saving, not the queen.”
“Why can’t the queen also do the saving from time to time?”
Cole groaned and rolled onto his back again. “I’m not going to win this discussion, am I?”
“Sorry, I don’t think so.” I slowly sat up, my body screaming at me from all the abuse it’d gone through last night as I swung my feet off the bed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Cole demanded as he got out of bed to head me off.
“We need to call everyone together. It’s not safe to stay here for too long. The Lost King might have won Royal City, but we are next on his list,” I stated, waving him down to pick me up.
Cole scowled as he lifted me and headed for the door. “Where exactly can we go? This is the safest place we have.”
“No, there’s another place that not even the Lost King knows where to find. The mercenaries are going back to the motherland. We’re going to Sheca, where I’m ready to claim the lost throne of the Dragon Queen.”
The End
To be continued in The Forgotten Throne