Chapter 29
“He must be her only anchor. It is the only answer.”
“This is not the answer. This will be her first crack. There are other ways.”
“None as efficient.”
“Many could be as effective, though.”
“You’re wrong.”
“And you’re a prick.”
~A conversation between the Twins
Fiona
It’s still dark outside when I wake in Azric’s bed. The fire has burned to a low glow, and my body aches. I’m not sure if it’s from breaking my back, the emergency healing I received, or the nightmares that plagued my dreams.
Azric’s sleeping form is under a blanket in front of the fireplace.
After last night’s revelation, he refused to share the bed with me even though it’s large enough for an entire family to sleep in.
Part of me was glad because I know they say anyone who goes into his chambers never comes out, but I just can’t imagine that would be the case for me.
He seemed so soft last night, as if he were holding a cracked vase.
Maybe that’s the way he saw me. A broken thing.
When he told me he was going to get Darian, I told him not to. I didn’t have it in me to talk about what I’d learned or what I was feeling with anyone else. For some reason, I knew Azric wouldn’t press me.
I’m sure I’ll get an earful from the only friend I’ve made since coming to Dunloch.
The blankets are twisted into knots around my legs, and I do my best to untangle them silently. I need some time to wake up before confronting the man on the floor.
Even now, after sleeping for hours, my mind still wants to revisit the facts I learned last night.
I can’t let it, though. If anything, I’ve learned that there is a time and place for everything, and sitting in my wrap in Azric’s bedchambers certainly isn’t the time to let myself be vulnerable. I was vulnerable enough last night.
I stand up and glance down at the pile of clothing and armor that lies at the foot of the bed, waiting for me to put it back on. The thought of it only brings my anger to the surface.
Those are Rhaskar’s clothes, the ones he’s dressed me in for years.
That’s his armor. I didn’t ask for any of this, not the training, not the armor, and not the clothes.
By putting it on again now that I know what he did, I’ll be accepting the man who killed my parents and tore away the life I could have had.
I shake my head, pushing those angry thoughts away.
No, this is not the time for that. I catch sight of something I hadn’t noticed hanging from the walls.
Azric’s drawings of Inni. All of them I’d seen in the Crimson Tower are here.
He brought them with him, and unlike that time, I don’t have to worry about someone catching me in his chambers.
Right now, I need diversion. Moving as quietly as possible, I look at the first one. It’s from the viewpoint of someone riding Inni as she moves through the clouds. I can make out a very distinctive scar across her shoulder that verifies my assumption.
A child obviously made the drawing. The proportions are odd, but there’s a joyfulness in it I can’t imagine coming from Azric.
The movement of the wings isn’t with purpose.
The perspective isn’t someone racing through the air towards an objective.
Inni’s head is turned, and I can almost see a smile on her face.
She’s carefree, and I wonder what Azric would look like as a child.
I move to the next one that’s far more technically correct.
This image is one from the perspective of someone on the ground who’s staring into Inni’s eye.
Every scale seems represented. The scars are long and dark.
There’s a light in her eye that seems so vivid.
I wonder if Azric could draw her scales and scars from memory.
Still, there’s a strange life to it, one that I haven’t seen from either Azric or Inni in the time I’ve known them. They’re both so serious, constantly focused on their goals.
This picture, though, is like when I told Bram his demon was terrible. The intensity is still there, but there’s laughter behind it.
“Do you like them?” Azric says from behind me.
I turn to face the Prince of Bones and see he’s naked from the waist up.
I can’t help but stare at the tattoo that crosses his chest. From shoulder to shoulder, it’s a blend of flames and shadows, of his connection to Inni.
In the center, a golden sun rises over a jagged mountain range made of shadows.
Its edges are kissed by flickering flames.
The light it casts is not soft or yielding, but fierce.
It is the dawn burning away the darkness.
The mountain directly under the sun is obviously Skycrest, the center of the Fae city of Draenyth. The sunlight seems to highlight veins of gold through the stone, as if the mountains themselves have awakened, bearing the blessing—or the warning—of the dragon.
Between the sun and Skycrest, blackened wings unfurl—neither fully dragon nor fully shadow, but something in between. Like living flames, they stretch and coil.
It’s beautiful, just like him. “That’s a rather… unique tattoo,” I say.
He stands beside me without looking down, his attention on the drawing I was looking at. “It’s Inni’s gift to me at my birthright ceremony. It bound me to her in a way that no one else has ever been bound to a dragon before. She’s… Our souls are tied.”
“I didn’t know it was like that. I thought you and she were like Rhion and Sidon, simply a man and dragon who worked together.”
Azric shakes his head. “Inni has been my only true friend since I was born. She’s been there for everything. Even when… when I was taken, she came with me. No one can separate us. My bond to her is stronger than any other.”
I turn to look at the drawing again. “Is that why you only drew her?”
He shrugs. “I drew her because she’s the most beautiful creature on Nyth.
When I was younger, I saw artwork of warriors and queens, of battles and landscapes.
I never saw any artwork of her, and I decided there should be some.
Those were better days, though. Before…” He shakes his head.
“My life was simple then. I did my schooling and spent time with my parents, aunts, and uncles, and whenever I had any extra time, I spent it on Inni’s back, seeing the world. It was glorious.”
“You still see the world from her back, don’t you?” I ask, surprised at how much vulnerability he’s showing me.
A broken smile crosses his face. “It’s not the same now.
I can see what the land should be. I can see how we’ve ruined so much.
There are still good things, and there were originally good reasons for that ruin.
I’m not so na?ve as to think that the world would have been better had no one prepared for the Hunters.
It’s just that… I don’t have the same sense of wonder that I once did.
My Mistress pulled the curtain back for me, and it’s hard to see the world with the same eyes I had as a child. ”
There’s a silence between us in the pre-dawn darkness.
I move from this drawing to the next, one of Inni flying through a moonlit sky.
Except that this time, the perspective is from a distance.
Inni doesn’t seem so whimsical in this one.
Her form is rigid and unyielding against the light of the moon.
Azric moves to my side again, and he says, “This is my favorite, my last drawing. I drew it right before I turned eighteen, before everything changed. I never picked up charcoal again to draw.”
“You should,” I say. “You’re very talented. Everyone needs to have things they enjoy.”
He turns to me. “And what do you enjoy for diversion, little Priestess?”
“I’m not a Priestess,” I say. “And I never will be.” I glance back at the pile of clothes, and anger surges inside me. “I would prefer it if you didn’t call me that anymore.”
Azric pauses for a moment and nods. “Then Fiona, what do you enjoy for diversion? I was under the assumption that your… people were as interested in entertainment as my sword is.”
I try to smile, but it’s broken. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe my people aren’t the best source of inspiration for doing something other than training. Though, since coming here, Darian taught me to play Khorra. Do you play?”
He smirks. “Uncle Darian taught me to play as well. I still haven’t beaten that sly bastard. I’ve never understood how he’s never gotten a bad hand, or that I never simply got lucky enough to win. There have been a few times I came close, but by the end, he’d come up with a trap I never expected.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “I thought it was just because I was new to the game.”
Azric shakes his head. “The man is devious with cards in his hands. To this day, I doubt he’s ever lost.”
“He loses on purpose to… Rhaskar every time he plays him. He says he prefers to be known as an idiot.”
Azric’s smile only widens. “Typical Uncle Darian, always playing the fool toward anyone who doesn’t know to look closer.
You know, he was the one who taught me to hide my abilities.
All my family tried to impart their own versions of wisdom when I was growing up.
It’s strange since they all knew I’d grow up and become their enemy eventually.
It’s taken too many years to understand why they did it. ”
I frown. “Wait, how would they have known that you’d become an enemy?”
He turns around to show me his back, where another tattoo, no less beautiful but far less hopeful, adorns his skin.
In the deepest black, a serpent winds from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. Its scales shimmer like obsidian. Somehow, I know the creature is no mere snake. It’s something older, something endless. Each coil seems to drink in the light, the absolute opposite to the sun on his chest.