Chapter Twenty-Five
WREN
I’d been so excited to finally get to be a part of some real bloodmagick. So of course, it rained the next three days. Hard, relentless, it caused localized flooding on the island.
Then Ronan returned with Canavar and Nasi. And with the rogue draken.
“A trial! They’re saying we're going to have a trial!” Shouted an air witch from below.
I moved carefully across the bridge connecting our treehouses, the wood slick from the rain. Witches and drakens alike ran across the platforms frantically, moving looms and children and foodstuff from the huts that sat in the low-lying areas.
Everything was damp. I felt as though I’d been wet for days.
“Benedict!” I called out loudly. “Help me to the clearing!”
Everyone was already gathering down below to welcome Ronan and the others back, and to cast judgement on the new draken.
Benedict landed on the platform ahead of me, shaking droplets of rain from his hair. “You are not going out there in this rain,” he said. “I will—”
“Make them all gather here then, I demand it,” I said, using my queen voice.
His eyes flashed with heat, one eyebrow raised as Kieran landed next to him, smirking.
“This is important. It will not take long, then we will bundle her up next to a fire with hot soup,” Kieran promised.
Benedict huffed.
“Fine.”
They both helped me down the long steps to the clearing, where the entire island was gathering in a large crowd. The rain slowed to a mist, the sun daring to peek its face out and send a few tentative rays out to the sodden ground. Water dripped everywhere, playing with my nerves.
Kaida gave me an encouraging smile, her gold wings catching the sunlight. “Your first trial as Queen, and on Lyoness since the ruin. How exciting!”
Her words were meant to be a comfort, but a cold pit of dread settled in my stomach instead.
Trial. Queen.
Oh, no.
What if I made the wrong mistake? What if I just made everyone mad at me? What if—
Ronan broke suddenly through the top of the tree canopy with Perri in his arms. Nasi and a strange draken who I assumed was the rogue were supporting Canavar, who had one wing bandages against his shoulder. The other wing flopped awkwardly, trying to assist.
I stared at the new draken. The clearing erupted with cheers as everyone raced out on the walkways and the ground, uncaring of the wet and the mud.
Perri screamed with joy the moment she spotted her parents. “MAMAAA! PAPA!”
Her mother screamed—an agonized, joyful sound—as she threw herself forward. They collided in a heap of arms and wings and sobs, claws skittering on the wooden walkway as Ronan dropped their witchling down to them, Perri babbling so fast she was nearly unintelligible.
“And then—and then—I made FIRE and Veskor helped keep me warm and—he caught me when I slipped—and he let me ride on his back—and he said I was brave—and he taught me how to hide from snow tigers, and not to eat snow but ESPECIALLY not yellow snow—AND HE SAVED US BUNCHES AND BUNCHES OF TIMES!”
The crowd went dead silent. Veskor hunched between Canavar and Nasi, held in place.
I studied him, noting how Benedict twitched at my side, every muscle tense.
This draken, Veskor, was gaunt and filthy, with haunted eyes that flicked around the crowd like a cornered animal.
He looked half-dead, shaking and trembling.
Yet another draken that had somehow survived the tragedy of Lyoness.
His scent had a lingering rot and edge to it that I recognized from the other unstable, unmated males.
Every draken stiffened, instincts rising like hackles as Canavar dragged Veskor forward. Half the clearing hissed while the other half murmured. A pseudo-trail was already forming, the muttering clear.
“He took a child.”
“But he saved her.”
“But he breached our wards.”
“But he protected her.”
“But he made the vampyres attack.”
“They’re all dead now though, ain’t they?”
I felt the divide like a crack beneath my feet.
“Where is he? Where’s the one who killed my son?
” Nerissa broke through the crowd first, marching up to her mate as Veskor tried to cringe away.
She didn’t roar or lunge. She walked straight up to Veskor and slapped him.
The sound echoed through the trees like one of them had snapped in half.
The crowd went quiet, watching what he would do.
Canavar let go and Veskor fell to his knees.
Rage poured out of me. Maybe it was my crazy hormones, or the sight of a witch striking a draken, but I lost it.
“Get your hands off him,” I growled. “He is sick! Look how unwell he is! Enya!”
Enya was at my side a moment later. “I think he’s sick. He needs to sit down, perhaps in my nest,” I suggested.
Benedict’s mouth opened, his expression murderous. I shot him a filthy look and his mouth shut with an audible click.
Nerissa wasn’t feeling charitable either.
“He lured out my child, and Anar died because of him!” she said, voice cold enough to frost steel. “Why did you do it?”
Veskor swallowed, jaw clenching. He blinked rapidly, as if fighting to stay awake. “I wanted to be with my own kind. Your wards wouldn’t let me in.” He paused, eyes misting over. “No one ever lets me in.”
He blinked, eyes focusing on Perri. That earned hisses from half the crowd.
“And you thought that gave you the right to steal a child?” someone shouted.
“I didn’t steal,” he snapped. “She fell. I caught her. She chose me.”
Perri, still wrapped in her parents’ arms, lifted her head and called, “He DID! He saved me EVERY TIME! He fed me and kept me warm and he didn’t let me freeze!”
Her mother burst into fresh sobs.
“She wouldn’t have needed saving if she hadn’t wandered off,” Benedict rumbled from next to me.
Kieran’s eyes shunted left and right, keeping an eye on Benedict’s temper as well.
“I think new blood should be celebrated,” Kieran calmly stated in a quiet tone so that only Benedict and I could hear.
I agreed, but Benedict was still vibrating with rage. The crowd around us was volatile, demanding reparations. Nerissa shut her eyes, her fury shaking the ground.
“Enough,” growled Ronan, dropping heavily to the platform.
He straightened, face lined with determination and a confidence I wasn’t used to seeing on him. His scent had even changed a bit.
Ronan explained what happened with Veskor and Anar.
“But, after speaking to Varun and Georg,” Ronan continued, “between all of us the vampyres are all dead or about to be. Every last one. There is no more vampyre threat left in Dorea. That is a good thing. More drakens, however we came by them, is a good thing.”
A wave of uneasy murmurs rippled through the crowd as Ronan stared them down, daring anyone to disagree. Benedict’s eyes flicked toward me, wary. His gaze settled on Ronan with a strange, begrudging respect.
Nerissa looked pissed enough to spit fire. “So good thing my son died to keep you all safe, is that it? And my mate is injured?”
Tears escaped down her cheeks.
Benedict stepped forward then, shoulders squared, wings flaring in authority as he moved to stand next to Ronan.
Canavar tilted his head, stepping in front of both of them.
“Nerissa, Anar chose to leave. Even if Veskor baited him, you knew he was suffering on the island. He would’ve left at some point anyway.
It is not Veskor’s fault. I have already forgiven him.
And he single-handedly tried to take out the nine vampyres who did this to me. ”
He gestured to his wing. Benedict lifted a dark eyebrow and looked at Veskor again, as if only seeing him for the first time.
Golden lines erupted all over Nerissa’s skin, her blood magick sparking out of control. She snatched at Veskor, only managing to grab his leather bag. He let her have it, not fighting.
“Calm, love. Please. For me.” Canavar stroked a finger down her forearm and Nerissa shuddered. Slowly the golden lines sank back into her skin as she regained control. Something fell out of the leather bag, old and tattered.
“What … what is this?” Nerissa asked, voice higher than normal.
Ronan moved forward, scooping it up in his fingers. His bloodmagick sparked once and he blinked, dropping them in shock.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.
Veskor’s ears went red.
“Flowers,” Nerissa supplied, voice still filled with wonder, “from my island. Blood Lotuses. I created them with the help of an earthwitch. They help ground wards, but weren’t enough to stabilize ours permanently, I’m afraid.”
Her gaze cut to Veskor.
“I … they were pretty,” he muttered, refusing to look any of us in the eye. “I couldn’t get to your island. These floated to me on the waves.”
A bloodthirsty, kidnapping draken who stole flowers?
The other drakens and witches looked at each other, confused.
“Veskor,” Benedict said, voice carrying across the crowd. “Tell us who you are. All of it. Perhaps then a better judgement could be made.”
My heart swelled as I turned to smile at Benedict, my cheeks hurting. The rogue draken looked at him, then at me, and something shifted: resignation, and weariness. It was not the beginning of trust, by any means, but a foundation of something else.
“I don’t know where I came from,” Veskor said softly. “I only remember the fighting pits.”
A collective gasp from the crowd had Benedict tensing beside me. He took a deep breath, then gestured to Veskor to keep going.
“I don’t know how I got there. To me I’ve always been there.
It was west—far west. It took weeks of flying to get anywhere else.
The sand there burns your feet, and the sun cooks you alive.
Humans ran the pits. They had stories—legends—about dragons.
They thought I was one. They said I was broken because I never grew big enough.
They were upset when I reached adulthood and wasn’t a real dragon. They punished me for it.”
Anger flared through me: hot, protective, nauseating.
“They made me fight,” Veskor said. “Humans with swords and bows and spears. Then creatures twice my size. Things with tusks. Things with claws. Everything was only about survival. Survive to my next meal. Every hour. Every day.”
Several drakens snarled at that. How familiar the story sounded, too familiar. Human cruelty was always the same, no matter the continent.
“I lived,” he said simply. “So they kept throwing bigger things at me.”
He stared at his hands and claws: scarred, calloused, trembling. “One day … My opponent was a real dragon.”
The clearing froze.
My breath caught.
“It was old and blind, and could barely move. But it was so massive, its golden scales scalding to even touch. But it could still breathe fire, and it grew angry. I saw a chance. I didn’t kill him.
I made a plan with a man with dark skin, he had magick.
He said there was someone in the crowd who would help us.
When the time came, I broke the dragon’s chains.
The dragon turned on the humans, storming the crowd and breathing fire everywhere. It was glorious chaos.”
A few drakens hissed in satisfaction.
“I killed my overseer,” Veskor said, eyes distant. “Drove a metal spike through his throat. Then I flew. I didn’t stop. Flew until I collapsed.” He swallowed. “When I woke, buzzards were eating me.”
My stomach flipped in horror.
He shrugged. “So I ate them instead.”
A ripple of uncomfortable agreement went through the crowd.
“I kept flying until I reached the southern islands—Nerissa’s—I don’t know their names, but I smelled my own kind. I watched for weeks. Wanted … badly … to be part of it. Other drakens. I’d never seen other drakens before. I’d thought I was a freak of nature: a disfigured dragon.”
Nerissa’s jaw flexed.
“But your wards wouldn’t let me in,” Veskor said, voice rasping. “So I left a message in a bottle. A note. I didn’t know who would find it.”
The crowd broke into loud mutters.
Benedict went rigid.
“The draken Anar found it,” Veskor said.
Canavar inhaled sharply.
“He left the island while I slept. Vampyres attacked him on the continent.” Veskor said quietly.
We waited for him to continue.
“I found him afterward,” he whispered. “I put him in the ocean. It was the only burial I knew. I couldn’t dig a hole myself and I didn’t want the buzzards to get him. I … I’ve seen what buzzards can do.”
Nerissa covered her mouth.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
Then Perri wriggled free from her parents, ran to Veskor, and wrapped her tiny arms around his leg.
“He’s GOOD,” she declared, glaring at every adult within reach. “He SAVED ME.”
The crowd erupted again into arguments and shouts, whispers and accusations.
“Kill him!”
“Spare him!”
“Exile him!”
“But he saved her!”
“He caused this!”
“He didn’t mean to!”
“He’s dangerous!”
“Broken!”
Beside me, Benedict tensed. I grabbed his wrist and Ronan stepped forward.
“He stays on Lyoness. He is one of us,” Ronan challenged the crowd.
My heart soared, and Benedict jerked in surprise. I stepped toward Veskor, who was shaking. His eyes locked on mine: defiant, wary, utterly lost.
Veskor bowed his head, before his knees gave out. He fell on his hands, but didn’t raise himself. Instead he slid along the ground, prostrating himself before me and the mercy of his own people.
I hesitated as every eye on the island shifted to me.
This was it.
Would I prove my worth as Queen of the Drakens or be revealed to be the weak human girl I’d always believed myself to be?
I almost wavered. Almost.
But Benedict’s hand was a steadying presence on my lower back as he stood behind me, to the right.
Kieran stood proud and tall on my left, half his body in between me and Veskor, ready to throw himself between any threat.
Ronan hovered, trying desperately to convey with his eyes that he believed Veskor, and was relying on me to be on his side.
So much pressure. Such a large choice.
Don’t mess it up.
I took a deep breath. All I could do was my best.
“Veskor,” I said softly, “your story doesn’t excuse everything, but it explains it.”
Silence.
“You want a place,” I continued. “You want a people. You want to belong.”
His throat bobbed.
“You will earn it here,” I said. “With honesty and accountability, working hard alongside everyone else to rebuild our society.”
Gasps.
Nerissa stiffened, but I wasn’t finished. “And as for Nerissa, only time will tell. Do your best, and let her decide what forgiveness looks like, if it comes at all.”
His lips moved, but nothing came out. He fell forward, exhausted and finally at his body’s limit as he passed out in front of me.