Chapter 25 #2
‘Whose side did you fight on? In the wars, I mean.’ Arla didn’t know if she was expecting names – didn’t know if the gods even had them, but Thara’s answer raised goosebumps on her arms as if she had given Arla the very identities of those responsible for the world.
‘Whomever was right.’
There was a snap of branches that had Arla whirling, blade drawn, her feet planted squarely on the uneven ground.
‘My mother said I might find you here.’
A petite frame dropped from the trees. She had a pretty face too similar to her mother’s for Arla not to know her immediately. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman Arla had ever seen.
‘Princess Hyacinth.’
The princess smiled. ‘Just Hyacinth, please. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’
Hyacinth offered a hand to Arla, and she shook it slowly.
‘You were following in the trees?’ Arla questioned, her gaze lifting to the dense growth above them.
‘Oh, no, forgive me, I wasn’t spying. I’ve been training all morning, and the trees were the quickest way to find you.’
Thara rumbled softly, and a sprinkling of unease flowed through the bond. Arla shut it down immediately.
‘Your mother lets you train?’
Hyacinth’s grin grew wider. ‘What use is a princess if she can’t defend her lands and her people?’
‘Indeed,’ Arla said, twisting her lips to avoid the approval flooding her body. Hyacinth would be a valuable ally.
There was a girlish glow to the princess that betrayed her age. Arla knew Hyacinth was in her early twenties – around Halos’s age, she thought, as a pang of longing stabbed her deep in the gut – though the softness in the princess’s eyes made her look younger than even Arla.
The princess had been kept sheltered, obviously, though the confidence of the way she held her head and her eagerness to train told Arla that the girl dreamed of greater things than a castle carved into a cliff.
‘What would you like to see first?’ Hyacinth asked, but her voice was distracted and her eyes … gods, her eyes were focused on Thara and—
‘Don’t hurt her!’
Arla barely had time to form the thought she sent through the bond before the princess had reached up to run her slender fingers across the scales of Thara’s chest.
Arla thought her heart might stop as Thara shifted beneath the touch, a warning growl spilling from her throat.
Hyacinth, however, didn’t balk beneath the dragon or snatch her hand away.
Instead, her eyes widened with something like awe.
The innocence in her parted lips tugged something in Arla’s core.
Would Arla have been so gentle if she had been protected by her king rather than sent out to kill in his name?
‘Forgive me,’ Hyacinth murmured softly as she removed her hand, clutching it to her chest as if it had been burned.
‘You better not have—’
Thara growled, ‘Of course I did not harm her.’
The princess shifted on her feet, pine needles crunching beneath the movement. ‘I have long studied the gods and their dragons, but for you to be here now … it is not a prophecy I expected to be fulfilled within my lifetime.’
The word sunk into Arla’s chest and pierced her with a hundred tiny needles. ‘What do you mean prophecy?’
Hyacinth stared at her with round, doe-like eyes that were so green against the tawny brown of her hair. ‘Walk with me.’
Arla didn’t miss a step, falling into line next to the princess, so close that the floral scent of her washed over Arla. Peonies.
‘You have heard that you will be the one to unite the kingdoms, no? It is why you have come here, isn’t it?
The gods have never been clear in their intentions nor have the fates who wrote them.
But people often forget the second part of that prophecy spoken whilst the last dragonhart lay dying on his own blade. ’
Arla’s heart pounded furiously against her ribcage, her blood rushing in her ears. There was a rush of air behind the two women, the flap of leathery wings and the creak of breaking branches as Thara took to the sky. Damn the fates and their secrets.
Arla cleared her throat. ‘What second part?’
Hyacinth was quiet for a moment, her fingers reaching to pluck a wild rose that she twisted into her hair as she walked.
‘That when the risen takes flight to seek an ally, the clock will begin its duel. You have come here for help, Dragonhart, but you have set in motion plans laid down almost a century ago. If you don’t find a way to unite the kingdoms soon, all that will be left is ash.’
Another secret her dragon had kept from her…
A pit opened up in the centre of Arla’s chest. A writhing, black thing that swallowed every hope she had once had.
It was all too much, the fates tying this prophecy around her neck like a noose.
She hadn’t asked for any of it. She hadn’t wanted to be a dragonhart or unite kingdoms. All she had wanted to do was survive.
But she couldn’t say any of that now.
She swallowed, her mouth sour and coated with a panic that made her heart race faster. ‘Tell me of the last dragonhart. What happened to him?’
She hadn’t realised they’d reached the edge of the forest. When she looked up, there were the training rings and the temples and the beach beyond that.
Hyacinth laid a gentle hand against the crook of Arla’s arm. ‘Another time. You must come and watch the training. It’s really rather special.’
Arla didn’t want to watch archers or sword fights or any of the things that sang to the violence in her blood. She wanted answers and information and for her dragon to stop keeping things from her. This was her life. Her destiny. That she should be kept in the dark was fucking cruel!
‘I cannot speak of what the fates prohibit—’
A roaring ripped through Arla’s chest as she followed Princess Hyacinth through the forest, her eyes fixed on the girl’s back as her mind sent pulses of agonised fury through the bond.
‘Fuck the fates. You told me this bond runs deeper than anything, that it is as old as time. You keep secrets from me knowing how desperately I seek the knowledge, and how dangerous it is to blunder about in the dark. You’re as cruel as they are.’
Arla slammed the bond shut before Thara could reply.