Chapter 18
They followed Marianne to the back of the restaurant, through glass-paned wooden doors that parted before she had laid a single finger on them. It was simple magic, but it captured Arla’s attention all the same. She wished the mages would all use it more.
The room was made of oak beams and glass panels that distinctly reminded Arla of Claret Hall’s sitting rooms. A table had been laid with cutlery that had been polished so it shone, and down the centre of the table lay twisted foliage, like the eucalyptus she had seen growing in glass houses across the river and evergreens harvested from the forests.
Softly glowing lights had been wrapped around the oak frames of the windows, and beyond the glass lay a pristine night and millions of twinkling stars.
‘I hope this will be satisfactory for you. We didn’t have long to prepare, you see,’ Marianne said, pulling a seat out for Arla.
‘It is perfect,’ she said, her voice faraway even to her own ears.
It was perfect. And as the rest of the court took their seats and Arla looked at each of them, she swallowed the lump in her throat and poured from the bottle of wine already waiting for them.
Hark took the seat to her left, and Elin slid in to her right, looking up at Arla through thick eyelashes as though she might disappear if she tore her gaze away for any longer than a second.
Food arrived quickly – an array of fish and venison and vegetables that had been cooked in spices that set her taste buds alight.
They laughed over dinner, and even though Arla couldn’t tear her attention away from the court and the conversations about Seb’s love life or the way Jaz had once charmed his way into a private dinner with Hark’s mother after hand-delivering books on rare flowers that came from continents too far away to ever visit, she had still noticed the faces that appeared from time to time in the doorway to their private dining room – the faces of mages that couldn’t quite believe their leaders had ventured down from the hall at the top of the mountain.
Kase’s hand gripped Jack’s under the table, his eyes growing wearier as the night wore on, but he smiled and laughed and chatted with them all the same.
‘You still look like you want to kill someone, Dragonhart,’ Jaz said across the table.
Arla leant back in the chair, trailing her fingers over Hark’s where it rested on her bare thigh at the slit in her dress. Just a little higher and he’d find the dagger she had hidden. She smiled at the thought. ‘I always want to kill someone. Tonight I’m struggling to decide who.’
‘Who are the choices?’ Kase asked.
‘You’re top of my list, obviously.’
‘Well of course,’ Kase said, but there was no malice in her voice.
‘And then I don’t know. I—’
‘Am bored,’ Jaz interrupted. Each set of eyes turned to him, and Hark’s fingers halted their tracing along Arla’s thigh.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re bored, Reinhart. Don’t deny it. You haven’t had to sit still for a second since you were nine years old. I don’t blame you for feeling restless. There isn’t anyone to kill.’
Ice formed in her stomach, her heart fluttering slightly. She wouldn’t admit that. She wasn’t bored. Yes, she pined after Halos and her unanswered letters, and she longed for someone to tell her what to do or give her instructions to hunt someone down.
‘No one tells you what to do.’
But she couldn’t allow herself to slip into that feeling of uselessness. She had felt it in the past and knew that it wouldn’t just linger there, it would confine her to her rooms and leave her unable to fathom the motivation needed to get up and do anything.
‘Just because I’m bored, Jaz, does not mean I don’t want to be here. Just because I’m altering my sense of purpose doesn’t mean I don’t care about these people or this kingdom. Perhaps I should come and hound you in the library more often. Perhaps then we would find the answers I seek.’
There was a collective silence. Even Sebastian didn’t chip in with a ridiculous comment that would send the table into roiling laughter. Because now they all knew.
They knew how out-of-place she felt. How she struggled to know her purpose, even as a dragonhart, and derive a sense of her own worth.
‘You are worth more than the skies and seas. You are worth everything this world has to offer.’
She’d have to speak with Thara about flattery and how it had never worked on her.
Just when she thought the silence might last forever and the night was ruined, a tiny voice pierced the fraught silence.
‘Dragon.’ Vivianne finally lifted her head from where she’d slept against Seb’s chest for the entirety of dinner and looked directly at Arla. She had the biggest blue eyes Arla had ever seen, and with a heart-shaped face and peach-coloured lips, she looked almost nothing like her sister.
‘Hello, Vivi.’
The child’s eyes widened further than what should have been physically possible. ‘Dragon,’ she whispered.
Sebastian chuckled, lifting Vivianne to sit properly on his lap. ‘She might resemble one, Vivi,’ he said, ‘but Arla isn’t a dragon.’
‘Dragon.’ Her arms reached for Arla who couldn’t help the twang of pain in her chest as the little girl blinked at her. She reminded Arla so desperately of Ettie – Halos’s daughter – that Arla couldn’t help herself reaching over and holding Vivi’s hand in her own.
‘I’m Arla.’
Vivi clambered forwards so that her knees rested against the table. Seb grunted, and Arla heard Jack laugh under his breath.
‘Arla dragon,’ Vivi said, reaching with her other hand to touch Arla’s face.
The child’s fingers against her skin were electric – a static spark in the connection of flesh that stirred something in Arla’s chest. Magic, perhaps. Vivi was a mage and would likely start presenting with magic soon, Arla thought.
‘Arla dragon,’ Vivi said again.
‘That’s right,’ Arla replied softly. Vivi ran her hand over the diamonds pinned through Arla’s ears and then the brooch at her throat.
‘She likes you,’ Elin said at Arla’s side.
‘Well, I like you too, Vivi.’
‘I’m surprised she’s awake,’ Sebastian said, standing and lifting the child from the table. Vivi let out a cry of surprise as Seb lifted her, the tunic she wore so long it covered her toes as she wriggled between the fabric and Seb’s hold. ‘Hasn’t slept for two nights Cardia told me.’
‘It feels like longer, that’s for sure,’ Elin said with a sigh.
‘I wish you’d told me about the girls sooner, Sebastian,’ Arla said, rising from the table in a curtain of diamonds and shimmering fabric.
‘And the rest of you are equally awful for not telling me either. Perhaps Elin and I should make you sleep outside tonight?’ she said, winking at the girl.
Elin grinned widely, which was the strongest expression of emotion Arla had ever seen her make.
‘Try it, Reinhart, and I’ll personally burn every one of those books you had delivered this week,’ Kase said.
Arla bit her lip against the laughter rising in her throat. Gods, the wine had been good indeed. ‘Is that a declaration of war, Kasey?’
She did laugh then. Sebastian roared, and Hark choked on his wine. And then they all collapsed into tear-inducing laughter, even Kase, who shook her head at Arla in a way that promised revenge.
The evening had been perfect, and warmth lit her chest as the court filed out of the restaurant, stopping to say hello to the mages who reached for them.
Just as she was about to leave, Marianne beckoned Arla over.
Arla urged Hark and the others to go on, saying that she’d meet them back at the hall, and sat across from Marianne at a table almost hidden from the rest of the restaurant.
‘You have enjoyed tonight, I hope?’
‘It has been beautiful, Marianne. Truly.’ Arla shocked herself sometimes – how easily she slipped back into her role as courtier.
‘You’ve settled here well, Arla,’ Marianne said, and again Arla couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d spoken to this woman before. ‘You’ve been spending time in the library with Jaz, I hear?’
Arla was silent for a moment, waiting for whatever it was she thought Marianne was digging for.
When the woman didn’t continue, Arla finally spoke. ‘I have. I want to learn more about the dragonharts.’
Marianne’s brow twitched slightly, and she rocked back in her seat.
‘That’s good. You know there were many of you once. You’re supposed to unite the kingdoms, I hear.’
Bile rose in Arla’s throat, and she twisted the skirt of her dress tight between her fingers. Not this again. It kept her up at night, the wondering and worrying about what it all meant and what in the gods’ names she was supposed to do.
Marianne seemed to read the worry on Arla’s face because her eyes softened and she reached across to hold one of Arla’s hands. She could have sworn a spark of energy passed between them, and Thara rumbled softly through the bond.
‘Keep reading, Dragonhart. You’ll find the answers you seek.’ Marianne smiled before rising to her feet and walking away, leaving Arla with only her diamonds to keep her company as she mulled the words over in her mind.
She’d keep reading, but she didn’t think it would ever be enough.
Hark was waiting for her in her rooms when she returned to the hall. She opened the doors to find him lounging on her bed, feet crossed at the ankles and the top three buttons of his shirt undone. She couldn’t help the shiver that teased her skin.
‘Don’t look so surprised, Dragonhart,’ he purred. She would let it all go to hell if he kept looking at her like that. Forget the kingdoms and the gods and the fates, she would let it all burn for Hark Stappen.
‘What surprises me,’ she began, prowling towards him, ‘is that you still insist on separate bedrooms when you come here looking like that and staring at me as though I’m not wearing anything at all.’
‘Fuck, Arla,’ he hissed. She loved it, the careful undoing of him she had become so proficient in over the last few months.
There had been a time when she had struggled to get beneath his skin at all.
Now she lived there, burrowing into the deepest parts of him so that she could have him between her teeth and relish the way they had both changed.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘For tonight – for everything. I know you don’t want to be like your father, Hark, but believe me when I say I don’t think you could be like him even if you tried.’
She stroked a hand down his arm, and gods, he was looking at her as if she had fallen from the stars. ‘I know I’ve been difficult, and I don’t adapt to change very well—’
‘Hey,’ he interrupted, sitting up straight, his hands settling on her elbows as she stood in front of him.
There was a seriousness in his face that made her throat tighten.
‘Don’t apologise to me for being who you are.
I know, and I see every part of you, Arla.
I knew it two years ago, and I know it now.
You don’t have to apologise or feel out of place.
And if you’re struggling, if you’re going into that dark place, you tell me, okay?
You aren’t alone anymore; we go through this together.
And today? Standing up there? That was all for you.
Anything to make you feel like you belong here, it’s yours. ’
Gods, she could hardly breathe around the lump in her throat, and she knew her eyes were filling with useless tears, and she didn’t care. She loved him. So, so much.
‘You looked radiant tonight,’ he murmured as she climbed onto the bed, crawling towards him so that the rest of the world melted away and there was only Hark Stappen and a star-covered ceiling.
He reached for her, tugging her close so that she straddled his lap, drowning them both in that magnificent dress and the diamonds she had worn like armour.
‘And you looked like a king.’
His lips came crashing onto hers.
Afterwards, when her body felt soft and her heart beat a lazy, contented rhythm, Arla lay her head on Hark’s chest and relaxed into his fingers running through the golden waves of her hair enough to send her into the throes of sleep.
‘This might be my favourite thing in the world,’ she uttered softly, her own fingers drumming a rhythm against his muscled forearms.
Hark chuckled, pressing his lips against her temple. ‘Imagine when there’s no prophecy hanging over us, I might not let you leave this bed for days.’
She’d like that.
Arla snuggled closer, pushing all thoughts of the prophecy to the back of her mind. The gods knew it had taken up enough of her worries in recent months. ‘We could live in a little house by the water.’
‘You wouldn’t stay here?’ Hark asked, though there was no annoyance in his voice that she might leave Claret Hall, only a soft curiosity that made her smile.
‘I’d have both.’
Hark laughed then, a lovely sound she wished to bottle and get drunk on.
‘Of course you would.’
He was silent for a few seconds before he continued. ‘What else would you want – besides a pretty cottage by the river?’
Sleep was tugging at her, and yet Arla couldn’t help the swelling of her chest, the smile that split her lips as Hark continued stroking her hair.
‘I’d want to have a garden, where I might grow lilies in the spring. And I’d want a hound, too, and I’d name him Treasure, and he’d pretend to hate you.’
It was a beautiful dream. One she had wished for since her very first days in Flambriar.
Hark shifted beneath her, tilting her chin up so that she stared into eyes of icy blue.
‘You will have it all,’ he vowed, brushing her cheek with the pads of his fingers. ‘You will have a garden, and a hound, and we will camp in the mountains and watch the stars once all the ice has melted.’
She didn’t think it was possible for her pathetic heart to pine for something more, and it scared her deeply.
But that future? The one where their lives were peaceful?
She’d solve a hundred prophecies for that.