Chapter Four
Avari
Preparing for our second meeting and the looming training session left me both curious and uneasy.
An unfamiliar restlessness coursed through my body, my fire pushing to the surface more than usual.
It wasn't what I'd expected. The king's hostility had been predictable, but his sudden shift to reserved civility unsettled me far more.
I couldn't help wondering what had prompted the change.
I stepped out of the warm portal and was greeted by a curtsy and a soft smile from Michael, the socially awkward assistant.
‘Welcome, Princess Ava. We’ve been awaiting your arrival,’ he said, yesterday’s shyness gone without a trace.
‘Nice to see you again, Michael. Am I late?’ My pulse quickened as I checked the time, but it showed six fifty in the morning.
The man smiled reassuringly before adding, ‘Not at all. It’s the king who’s always early to important meetings.’
I recognised how vital the conjuring was to King Dracon and the Fogoyans.
The thought of having to choose between genuinely training him or merely pretending for my mother’s sake made my stomach churn.
Her figurative grip had tightened around my neck my whole life, and over the years, I began to wonder whether breathing was even worth it.
This alliance offered me the resources to hone myself into the weapon I always had the potential to become. The king was a perfect example to learn from, the only person my mother had ever struggled to destroy. The only person she couldn't break.
The Elder Committee had bestowed a rare opportunity upon me by enforcing the treaty, even if it hadn't been intentional.
And it surely hadn't. They'd known of my suffering in the Ortensian court for over a decade, ever since I'd petitioned to abdicate my title.
I had been willing to walk away with nothing.
Yet even as the court had nearly destroyed me, they'd done nothing.
Michael and I walked in silence. While I tried to memorise the route, the castle was a maze of staircases and winding corridors.
Eventually, we entered an ornate dining room bathed in the early morning light, its warm rays spilling across the furniture and over all of us.
The golden-framed window-walls overlooked the lushest forest I had ever seen, and the sight left me breathless.
The hues of green calmed something deep within my soul.
The sun rose above the untamed trees and mountains, stretching so far they looked endless.
‘Those are the mountains my family hails from,’ Anya murmured in my mind.
The information shocked me. We never spoke much about her relatives; it was a sore subject.
‘Your family lived in the mountains?’
‘The system of caves within them. I’ve seen them in their dreams; it’s a city in its own right. It’s nice to see it’s still standing after all this time.’
‘I can’t even imagine what that must feel like.’
‘I’m glad to have found you, Avari. Now, train him or not, but your king has been coughing for a while to get your attention.’
Anya cut the conversation short and withdrew, leaving me alone with the watchful monarch. My dragon would have loved a flight here, but it wasn’t a good idea to tempt the king. The jury was still out on his plans.
‘Have you been conversing with your dragon?’ He slid the chair nearest him back and gestured for me to sit.
I dreaded the moment my treacherous power felt his presence, but I couldn’t risk insulting him by sitting elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, the nearer I drew, the more my fire surged, and the harder it became to rein it in. Muscles straining, mind burning, I sat down and silently cursed.
‘Yes,’ I confessed, my voice hoarse. ‘She was reminiscing about the Cave City below your mountains.’
Pupils widening, he kept leaning closer until his elbows nearly brushed mine on the dark marble table. ‘Your dragon is from my kingdom?’
The way his irises lit up made it seem like they shimmered. ‘Doesn’t she want to visit her old home?’ The question sounded more like a demand.
I suspected I was still alive only because dragons needed to choose to bond; otherwise, he would have disposed of me yesterday and taken Anya for himself.
‘Her family is. Maybe one day.’ If he proved I wasn’t just a means to an end—or at least that he had no murderous intentions.
Worried about the direction of our conversation, I decided to change the subject. ‘Quite the spread for breakfast, isn’t it?’
Assessing my options, I found every manner of fruit, eggs, cereal, pancakes, waffles, bagels, white and wholemeal bread, jams, cheese, ham, vegetable platters and, for some reason, a lobster. It was overwhelming, excessive, and remarkably fitting for the head of this court.
‘I couldn’t exactly ask my spies about your preferences since you virtually don’t exist, witch,’ the king snapped, his cold glare sending shivers down my spine.
My body stilled while I kept observing the tiniest movements of the brute seated inches away. Anger was never a good emotion to be around, especially when it came wrapped in muscle and power.
Keeping my tone even, I avoided his gaze and replied softly, ‘A piece of toast would have sufficed.’
He leaned back in his chair, a sneer tugging at his lips as his eyes swept over me. ‘Is that what you usually eat? Explains a lot.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Sensitive to criticism, the words slipped out before I could stop them. His vicious smirk only widened.
Of course he’d found my soft spot. Judging by his behaviour, there was little he missed; the man probably psychoanalysed the way I buttered my bread.
Having achieved his petty victory, he rasped, ‘Listen, I adore our little chit-chats, but you should eat your nutrient-dense breakfast so we can get on with conjuring.’
I didn’t feel like prolonging the pointless exchange either. Eating my avocado toast, I ignored his loaded looks and the way he obviously disapproved of me.
Though I had to admit, even if I didn’t like the Fogoyan King—infuriating and mean as he was—going to all this trouble over my breakfast was a kind gesture.
From a vile psychopath, but kind nonetheless.
After breakfast, as we quietly walked through the surprisingly airy castle, I was struck by the abundance of houseplants throughout the court. I had expected dirt, heat, and lava surrounded by volcanoes, not this.
Throughout my life I had tried many times to learn more about the land that birthed half my power. But the Fogoyans had closed themselves off after the Blood Witch War four hundred years ago, and even more so once conflict arose between them and the Ortensians over the Gem Fields.
The former monarch, King Louis, had attended committees organised by the Elders, but he rarely ventured beyond them.
When his son, the current ruler, took the throne, he closed their borders entirely—nobody in and nobody out.
That wasn’t all. He sent spies to retrieve or eliminate anyone who knew too much.
Notoriously secretive as he was, he went by his last name, keeping his true one hidden.
No one that paranoid should rule.
We finally reached the glass doors leading to the courtyard, and his assistant held them open, his eyes darting between the king and me.
‘Thanks, Michael,’ I murmured, offering him a shy smile.
‘Michael? I didn’t realise you two have gotten so acquainted already,’ the man scoffed, striding past us towards a clearing.
I feared he might take his unpleasantness out on Mike, but the assistant seemed unfazed. He winked at me, and for a second, I wondered if I’d imagined it.
‘You don’t fear him,’ I said, fascinated by the shift in his demeanour.
‘No,’ he replied simply, gently placing a hand on my back to guide me forward.
Such contact would have been a scandal in the Ortensian court, where assistants never touched royals without permission. It appeared the Fogoyans didn’t share those protocols, or they simply didn’t think I was worth the effort.
As I closed the distance, dread coiled through my mind.
What if my fire broke free and reached for his?
If he drained me, I would be useless, incapable of teaching him to conjure.
But he would also eliminate his political enemy’s greatest advantage.
It wasn’t easy to decide which outcome he’d prefer.
‘I like to hunt.’ His grave tone and the glint in his eyes reminded me of a monster ready to pounce.
I froze, waiting for him to elaborate.
‘There’s a lot I enjoy about it, truth be told,’ he said, jaw twitching as his eyes drifted to my chest, ‘but what I enjoy most is the fear. The way their hearts hammer in their chests when they realise they’re helpless. How their pupils dilate as I draw closer and they have nowhere to run.’
A slow, merciless smile crept across his face. Shoulders squared and stance balanced, he stood rigid, one wrong move away from lunging.
My mouth had gone dry. I forced myself to blink away the fear in preparation for an escape, though my legs had turned to stone, useless if I needed to flee.
Was he threatening me?
Anya was instantly alert in my mind.
‘So you’d better start controlling your body before you make me want to hunt you down, witch,’ he spat, the word leaving his lips like a curse. The predatory gaze of his flicked towards my chest, tracking the thud of my heart as if it called to him.
Retreating a step, I turned my gaze towards the mountains, struggling to stay calm—an impossible task when I suspected the monster might kill me, as he had many Ortensians before me.
While I would have fought back, my power was nothing compared to the Fire King. The man had spent his entire life honing it into a weapon. Before I could even summon my modest strength, he would reduce me to cinders. Besides, I’d only just discovered it was faulty as well.
The cause of my racing pulse stood tall, arms crossed, his bicep bigger than my thigh. A promise of violence simmered in his darkening eyes as his fists tightened like he was restraining himself.
My thoughts refused to settle, replaying all the ways he could wield those powerful arms against me. All the ways he had used them against my people. The deaths. The butchery.
Taking several deep breaths, focusing on my dragon, I forced my heartbeat to slow. I couldn’t show him the fear his words inspired. I knew he’d despised and slain witches long before I’d ever been commanded to teach him.
When I finally looked back, he was scratching his nose, as if to show me the entire ordeal was beneath him. All I could think about was how deep that hatred towards witches ran and whether I would walk out of this deal unscathed.