Chapter Thirty-Two
Valora
The next morning—or what I would assume was morning—I awoke with a raw throat and gritty eyes, having cried all night long. The pain upon finding out Dracul was the reason my family died and I’d been so scarred was agonizing. I could only imagine what sick pleasure Borthen got out of revealing that information to me, at driving this new wedge between Dracul and myself. I pulled myself over to the pail of water and splashed some on my face, waking me up instantly to this cold new reality I had found myself in.
Borthen arrived shortly after I awoke, an unreadable expression on his face. He scrutinized me from afar as I hunched in the corner, glaring at him. I could sense his eyes carefully examining every part of my body: my bloodshot eyes, my sniffling nose, and my slight trembling. After several minutes of silently staring at the other, he finally spoke.
“I heard interesting news last night,” he said, inspecting his fingernails, pretending to be disinterested. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Not particularly,” I mumbled, continuing to glare at him.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that your precious Dracul’s army thoroughly defeated mine yesterday,” he said.
I closed my eyes, angry at myself for how happy I was at this news. Dracul was alive and well. He had done it.
When I opened my eyes, Borthen stared at me more intensely. “Do you know what dragaria means?” he asked.
My brain took a moment to take in this sudden change of subject. “No,” I said, shaking my head. This was now the second time the phrase had been brought up—Kessland being the first. Just as I had promised Dracul, I had not asked or investigated the term any further.
“ Dragaria is a special draconic term,” he said, his golden eyes glittering ominously. “It’s how we refer to our mate, our other half.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked warily.
“We don’t get to choose our dragaria ,” he continued, watching me closely. “It’s something that we innately know once we see them for the first time. We feel an unexplainable pull to them and they feel the same to us. It’s almost… magical.” He paused, checking for any reaction from me. When he received none, he continued. “In your time with our precious Lord, have you felt anything like this?”
“No,” I lied, an uncomfortable feeling growing within me. What Borthen described was exactly how I felt with Dracul. But that was impossible—he was a dragon and I was a human. There was no way I could be his dragaria . It could only be a silly one-sided crush on my side. Not to mention, his actions were the reason that I had gone through so much pain. I shook my head. There was no way I was Dracul’s dragaria .
“Interesting,” Borthen said in a clipped tone. He stared at me for several moments. “That will be all for today, I think.” He pulled a hunk of dried meat from his pocket and tossed it to me, and it landed about a foot away from where I huddled. “Well, I leave you to your thoughts.” As he did yesterday, he dramatically leapt from the dome, and I heard the sound of his wings once again.
Ravenously, I grabbed the piece of meat and began to gobble it down, not having eaten since early yesterday. I remained huddled in the corner, wrapped in the thin blanket, my thoughts tormenting me into an uneasy sleep once more.