Chapter 24 #2
“Who wouldn’t I?” Bai says, excitedly. “I heard that the Shadow Vampire King has demonic lions that he rides. Is that true? I’ll write an epic song about it.”
My lips quirk. “Aye, it’s true. And want to hear something brilliant…? I also rode one of those lions.”
Bai’s eyes widen, and he stares at me in awe. “Wow, I’m putting you into my song.”
“You’re the star of almost all his songs.” Elatha pats my shoulder. “I keep telling him how daft you are, but he never listens to me.”
I shove her. “That’s because he’s smart.”
“May your porridge always hide one cold lump.”
“That’s an oddly specific curse.”
“I’m getting bored of the bloody porridge that they keep serving us for breakfast.”
“I feel your pain, Ela.”
We grin at each other.
“I have missed you, Thorn.” Elatha’s expression becomes serious.
“I’ve missed all of you too.” I turn to Bai. “How is your training going?”
Bai twirls with the type of energy that mirrors my own. I don’t know if he was born with it or whether I have been a bad influence.
Wren has always blamed me for Bai’s roguish behavior. I like to think with pride that our Little Bug takes after me.
Bai spins around me. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Your silly dragon king—”
“Don’t call him silly. Daft, fool, idiot, they all fit better.”
“Thorn.” Elatha chuckles, falling back onto one of the cots with a spray of dust. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I don’t need encouragement.” Bai grins, catching my hands and pulling me into a spin.
“Your daft, fool, idiot dragon king made me a cadet. The only good thing about that is the Instructor who lets us call him Iggy. I like Iggy. But your dragon king wouldn’t let me join the main army.
He’s weird. He said that they didn’t have kids in it. ”
My heart becomes even heavier.
Bai sounds so outraged, as if he can’t imagine a world without child armies.
“What a bastard, aye?” I reply.
“Unfair.”
Elatha rolls onto her stomach. “I give up on both of you. You’re beyond the wisdom of the Druids.”
“No one is beyond my wisdom,” a somber voice says from the doorway.
“Wren!” I draw back from Bai and rush toward my friend.
Wren closes the heavy door behind him, before waving his hand and sealing it with magic. It’s a trick that he does to make sure that no eavesdropper can hear through the barrier.
It’s been useful many times, while I’ve been planning battles.
I wish I had that skill because I would also use it to fuck my Omega in interesting places like underneath Aurelius’ desk, and he wouldn’t even know.
Although, he’d still smell us. So, I’d have to also use rune magic to hide our scents…
“The King finally remembers us, does he?” Wren demands. “And you’re already daydreaming? Thinking about your knot again?”
“Sounds like you are. Also, how could I have forgotten your handsome face? I’ve even missed your scolding.”
“Stay longer and you’ll hear more.”
When Wren limps into the room, I am concerned that unlike Elatha, he is not wearing the Draca army uniform. Instead, he is still dressed in his druidic white tunic and plaid cloak.
Wren is my most devoted follower, despite his surly attitude.
He would set himself alight if he thought that it furthered the Unseelie cause, and sometimes, his fervor frightens me.
He is strikingly tall and handsome with large hazel eyes. I didn’t expect him to keep his head shaved after the death of the druids, but he has maintained all their rules.
He’s the last of them living.
He has told me that he must keep their spirit alive.
Once, in Rune Forest, I found him carving rune marks into the dirt in front of an oak.
He dragged me down to kneel next to me.
Wren’s face was burning with passion. “The dragons can steal our court and kill our people, but as long as our land remains, then we are free. Do you understand? I wish that you’d paid more attention in your lessons.
This land holds an eon of magic and life.
It created the first shadows. If the dragons also take our land, then no blood slit from their throats could atone. ”
Except, they have taken our land, right?
They took my court, my people, and my land.
It’s time that I take it back.
Wren reaches to place his scarred hand on my shoulder.
He tried to protect his precious wren wings from the dragon fire in an early battle when he was seventeen, and the same fire burned one of his delicate, short wren wings to a stump.
If he didn’t have healing abilities, learned as a druid, which exceed those of anyone I’ve known, then he would be dead now.
Losing a wing is shaming within the fae. I hated how his injury turned Wren into an outcast within the army.
The featherglass were already wary of Wren. He didn’t know how to interact with the other kids because his childhood had already been stolen by the Druids before the dragons stole it from the rest of us.
It’s why I took him into my Frost Clan.
No one can stop bullying or prejudice, but they can do their best as a leader to shield those who need it, despite how magically powerful they are.
I have learned with Aurelius and Lanlin that you can be the most powerful in the room but also the most vulnerable.
I can use that.
“Why aren’t you wearing an army uniform?” I blurt.
Wren pulls back, glaring.
Here comes the scolding.
Having my arse kicked by my rival feels familiar enough to make my shoulders relax.
If Aurelius believes that he can hurt my feelings, then he needs to understand that I have grown up with Wren.
“I should have expected that someone who, if our spies are correct, has been prepared to train as both courtesan and assassin for our enemies would ask me that,” Wren admonishes. I wince. “But I have principles. A Druid would never pollute their magical core by fighting for—”
“He failed the physical trials in the first week,” Elatha dryly cuts in.
Wren blushes, dropping his head and avoiding my gaze.
“Ela,” Bai hisses, as if she has let out a secret that they had agreed to keep.
My expression gentles. “Who’d want to fight for these bloody dragons anyway, right? They wouldn’t appreciate your abilities like I did. And you’ll soon be my righthand fae again like you should be.”
Wren’s head snaps up like he expected me to mock him. “I shall serve you until my death.”
“Let’s keep you alive, aye?”
“That’s what Iggy says,” Bai pipes up.
I turn to stare at him. “Iggy? Has he actually said you can call him that? Isn’t he your instructor?”
“He’s different to the other dragons.” Bai tips up his chin.
“He stopped the other instructor from beating me when I played a prank by stuffing feathers into his helmet. You should have seen his silly face when they fell all over him when he put it on! They all got stuck in his hair and beard. Iggy was so angry when that instructor tried to drag me to the whipping post. He ordered all the whips to be burned right there in this big bonfire. I wrote a song about it.”
Of course he did.
“Good on Iggy. I’ll maybe even let him win the next round of cards that we play.” My heart is in my throat.
Bai was almost whipped like I had been.
I must get them out of here.
“Also, he let me sing him the song,” Bai says proudly.
I frown. Is he finding another hero to worship?
I don’t know how to feel about that. “He asked me if I was a bard and what instruments I played. I told him how sad I was that the mean dragons smashed my instruments when they took me prisoner. Then a week later, he gave me this…”
He pulls aside his cloak.
I lean down, peering at the gleaming bone whistle that hangs from his belt by a leather chord.
I smile at his glowing happiness. “What a good dragon.”
Wren growls.
He grabs me by the arm and drags me backwards toward the cots. He hurls me onto my back next to Elatha.
Then he leans down over me, caging me. “There is no such thing as a good dragon, Thorn. Just because they treat you kindly as a pet, rather than with brutality, doesn’t make them good.
A prisoner is a prisoner, whether the cage is made of gold or iron.
You have been here too long. Have you forgotten what you owe your people? ”
My breathing is too fast.
Elatha twists onto her back and snakes her arm around my middle.
“I’ve forgotten nothing,” I snarl.
“I am pleased to hear that because despite near starving with no ration apart from what the others can spare,” Wren continues, “I have been assessing the magical properties of Bael with my scrying. The King’s uncle has a terrifying level of power.
I needed to work slowly to remain magically out of his sight.
There is one room in the palace in the North Tower, however, where the magic is concentrated and dark.
Cursed. But it will amplify mine. You need to find a way to get me there. ”
My brow furrows. “That will be hard.”
“What in our lives hasn’t been?”
“Fair. I’ll use the ravens as our signal.”
“Scar to scar.” Wren raises his hand, which is mapped with pale burns and presses it to the map of scars that I proudly bear above the line of my robe.
It is both a ritual greeting and oath that Wren developed for my army, after we became marked with the cursed iron of enemy fighters as children. We refused to be shamed by it, as Wren made the decision to refuse to be shamed by the loss of his wing.
It binds every member of the featherglass closer than blood.
My chest warms.
How could I have doubted my place amongst them? We could have been parted by the Void, and they would have still kept a place here for me.
Elatha folds back her wings. Then she waggles her foot, which is scarred, where some silver dragon once nearly took her ability to walk from her.
She elegantly lifts her foot to press it onto my collarbone. “Scar to scar.”
I wrinkle my nose. “When did you last wash your feet?”
She laughs. “Not after the drill exercise that I ran all day yesterday. Are you trying to say that I stink?”
“I’ve smelled fresher battlefields.”
“Funny, it reminds me of your cooking.”
Wren snorts with laughter before he can remember that he’s not meant to have a sense of humor.