Chapter 11 #2
“You dare touch my mate?” he asks.
Anger boils through me. I dared help his mate when he should have been the one consoling her.
While all the dragonriders and wingrunners were trying to save his daughter and pursue his vile son, the king sat in this room, drinking tea.
While I feared that Zenevieve would suffer the same terrible fate and put my dragon in peril by skirting a lightning storm, the King of Maledin did nothing.
And this is the man I am bound to serve.
I swallow down my fury before I turn back to the king so that he doesn’t see the rage in my eyes. “I apologize, Ma’len,” I say through gritted teeth.
Princess Mirelle’s screaming and sobbing is ringing in my ears, and the sight of her bloody legs is vivid in my mind’s eye. I am sick to my stomach of standing by doing nothing while those who are meant to be under our protection are suffering.
King Aylard’s nostrils flare as he casts his eyes over me, as though he suspects my insolent thoughts. “That boy stole one of my dragons and caused the deaths of two more. Find him and bring him back here to be punished.”
A guard tells me that Zenevieve has taken Prince Zabriel to the Great Hall, and so I follow her there.
I won’t be able to sleep tonight without knowing she’s safe in our home with me guarding her locked bedroom door.
He called me Zenevieve. Those sickening words keep going around and around in my head.
As soon as I enter the hall, I hear a sharp cry, and Zenevieve hurries over to me. “Stesha! What has happened to you?”
I capture her hands as she reaches up to touch my face. I had forgotten that my lip and chin are bloody. “It is nothing. I’m all right.”
“But—”
I pull her into my arms and hold her tight, needing to soothe my racing heart with assurance that she’s safe and unhurt. I rest my cheek against the top of her head and her lovely scent drives away the day’s misery for a moment. But only for a moment.
The misery edges back as I recall the king’s orders.
While teaching trainees to ride, many of them complain that I put the dragons’ feelings before theirs, and it’s true.
I’m always thinking of the well-being of the flare.
That is my duty. But for a father to put a stolen dragon before the heart-wrenching fate of his only daughter?
Either he is in denial, or the king has a cruel streak that goes even deeper than Emmeric’s.
Zabriel approaches us, and he looks from me to Zenevieve. “The guards overheard Mirelle on the battlements. Is it true what my sister said before she…”
I cup Zenevieve’s face to my chest, glare at Zabriel, and shake my head sharply. I don’t want Zenevieve to know what the princess said before she died. She doesn’t need to know that while he was hurting his sister so monstrously, he was calling Mirelle by her name.
Zabriel closes his lips and nods, turning away.
“Let’s go home,” I say to my ward. “Nilak and I will resume searching for Emmeric at dawn.”
As I lead her down the corridors to our rooms, Zenevieve turns to me in the near darkness and cries, “This is all my fault.”
“This is no one’s fault but Emmeric’s.”
She wrings her hands. “But I knew there was something wrong with Emmeric. I knew he wanted to hurt Mirelle.”
Through her tears, she tells me of witnessing Emmeric trying to carry Mirelle away while she was in a false heat, and that his knot was swollen. I wasn’t around because I was in a rut, but she told the king. It doesn’t sound as though he believed her.
I grasp her shoulders. “Listen to me. Emmeric could be hateful, but none of us knew that he was capable of this kind of cruelty. You told the king, the only one who had authority over the prince, and he was the one who did nothing. I lay the blame at his feet.”
“Are you angry that I didn’t tell you?” she asks in a small voice.
“Of course not. I hope the king was not angry that you…” I trail off, remembering a bruise on her face, and how quickly the king lashed out at me just now. “You were hurt when I returned from my rut. It wasn’t because of a careless wyvern, was it?”
Zenevieve’s eyes fill with tears, and she shakes her head.
She wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my chest, sobbing her heart out.
“I was afraid that you might confront the king in anger for hitting me. I couldn’t let you do that.
You want to protect me, Stesha, but I care just as much about you. ”
I hug her so tightly that her feet lift from the ground.
My poor, sweet girl, keeping all this to herself.
I think of Onderz, and the pain of not being able to protect your Omega hits me like a fist. I bury my face in Zenevieve’s hair, my body shuddering in horror.
I keep picturing Zenevieve, tears running down her face, and her heart shattered into pieces, throwing herself from Minta’s back. I won’t let that happen to her.
I sleep outside Zenevieve’s door that night, without a pillow or a blanket.
My discomfort makes me sleep lightly so that I will startle by a single footfall.
As soon as I awaken in the pre-dawn light, I thrust open her door with my heart in my throat, fearful that she might somehow have been taken under my nose.
Zenevieve is sleeping soundly, her black hair cascading in a gleaming river over her pillow, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
I watch her sleeping for a moment before walking quietly forward to brush a silky tress of her hair back from her face.
Her eyelashes are gently resting on her cheeks, and her lips are softened from sleep.
I whisper as my fingers linger in her hair, “The oath I made to your father broke when you turned eighteen, but I swear a new one. Nothing is going to happen to you. I’ll keep you safe, always.”