23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kes
For weeks, I wrestled with feelings and emotions I’d never expected to be hit with.
Never while on patrol, I’d learned the hard way to keep my head on a swivel, given my impaired vision.
Before and after were a different story.
Being away from the nest sucked. It broke my heart to not be able to reach out and caress their shells whenever I wanted.
By the time Upalo, Canyon and I had fled the village, aka, prison colony we were being kept in, fighting had become second nature.
We valued our scales too much to let ourselves fall into the hands of the Gorynych again.
Improving our combat skills had been a must, after all, we’d never had proper teachers.
Everything we knew we’d either learned from being forced to defend ourselves, or because someone we met in our travels took pity on us and helped us improve.
Unlike Emerson with his books, or Alex, who had a fascination with rock hounding and archeology, I didn’t have interests or even other skills to speak of.
Sometimes, okay, to be fair, a great deal of my time lately had been spent wishing I did.
Quiet patrols were nice, they truly were.
Knowing Mattias was with Caspian while he was still pregnant with our sea dragons was an honest to Goddess relief.
There was just a part of me, and a rather big one, too, that wanted to be tucked into the nest with them.
I knew I could remove my name from the patrol list anytime I wanted.
Doing it, however, wasn’t a step I was ready for yet.
It felt too much like failure. If the Goddess was willing to pass out A pluses for brooding, I’d be set, though that wasn’t what I’d come to the shore to do.
It had just happened while I’d been wandering around, searching for…
Yes, this one was a beauty!
And rare. Holy shit. I’d never found a pink piece of sea glass before.
I brushed the sand from the surface, carefully turning it over in my hands so I wouldn’t damage it as I cleared a smear of dirt off one side too.
The deep rose hue reminded me of quartz, but the oddly twisted shape, coupled with the way it was melted and twisted on one side, was a sign that it had been trapped in intense heat at one point before it had wound up in the ocean.
Too bad it couldn’t speak to me. I bet it would have one hell of a story to tell.
“I knew I should have tried the beach first, I don’t know why I bothered looking anywhere else first,” Upalo said, his voice low, like he knew his sudden appearance, and intrusion into my brooding, would startle me if he spoke too loud.
“I feel like such a shitty friend for missing so much of your pregnancy. Look at you, man, you’d never be able to tell that you birthed a ginormously stunning egg.
Seriously, dude, how, that’s what the fuck I want to know? ”
“You’ve had your hands full helping to chase leads all around the world, now that more dragons have started sharing the stories of where they came from and those that chose to remain behind, hidden, because they feared they wouldn’t survive the journey.”
“Doesn’t mean I feel any better about not getting to spend time with you the way we did with Ronan.”
“Please, don’t, I spent the bulk of the time watching cartoons and napping. I swear you didn’t miss anything.”
“How can you stand there and tell me I didn’t miss anything when you just admitted to having a mega cartoon marathon without me?”
“Odem introduced us to a few new ones. He truly is a sweetheart of a dragon, even when he’s getting on Ionus’ scales.”
“He’s also the only dragon I know who can out-snark Ronan and leave my brother sputtering like a ruffled hen. Of course, that just means I get to wind him up a little more when I ask what’s got his tail in a twist, but fatherhood and being mated clearly suits him.”
“Yeah, it does. He’s still glowing. You’d think he was carrying more eggs, but nope, just thrilled with the life he’s found here.”
“Speaking of finding things, what do you have there?” Upalo asked.
“Pink sea glass,” I said, gently rubbing it like a worry stone. “I’m going to add it to our horde.”
“Whoa, beautiful find.”
“Right? I wonder how far it traveled to reach this spot?”
“Kind of like us, huh?”
“You could say that,” I replied. “I just wish I felt like I deserved to be a part of all of this.”
“The fuck do you mean by that?” Upalo snarled, suddenly up in arms, seething with the sort of rage that would have been scary if I didn’t know him so well.
Smoke rolled off his scales. Not just wisps, either, but thick, black rolling smoke that he struggled to tuck away.
“Who said you don’t deserve to be here? I know it wasn’t your mates, they adore you. I was just over there looking for you and I got the sense that they were, well, sad, that you weren’t with them, for lack of a better word. It kind of felt like more than that. Heavier.”
“They’re worried about me,” I admitted. “Can’t say that I blame them.
No one said anything about me not belonging here, even when I explained that my powers were broken.
They just got Raven to take a closer look, which is when she discovered that there was a spell keeping me from connecting fully with my dragon. ”
“I always wondered if there was more to the words Daigle spoke over you the day he took your eye.”
I bobbled the sea glass before tucking it into my pocket so that wouldn’t happen again.
Upalo never brought the subject up. Was he finally going to fill me in on the missing pieces from that night?
Even the renewed connection with my dragon hadn’t been able to do that.
He didn’t remember it anymore than I did.
When he said nothing further and allowed the rolling surf to provide the ambiance, instead of words, I dug my toes in the sand and felt it squishing between them.
“He was going to take both,” Upalo blurted.
Screech.
“He wanted you dependent upon him and at his mercy,” Upalo said.
I had to force myself to look at him and immediately saw that my best friend was shaking.
“Please,” I said, reaching for his hand so he couldn’t fly away on me again. “I need to know all of it.”
For the first time, he held tight, instead of tugging free and taking off.
“Y-yeah, I-I know,” Upalo said, suddenly covered in smoke again, tears shimmering in his eyes that hissed and fizzled when they landed on his cheeks.
Heat rolled off him in waves, but he never let go.
“He used his talons to take your eye,” Upalo said.
“You know that part. After you passed out, he stood there, holding it up, marveling at the color, talking about it like it was a precious gem. He thought it was funny that I kept cussing him out and trying to get to you. He asked if I realized how special you were? How rare? Talked about the power you had then being a pale comparison to what you would have when you were an adult, because your father’s line was kin to the protectors.
He said that it was unfortunate that you refused to accept that your place was by his side”
Upalo needed a moment. His shaking had grown more intense and the tears were thick and heavy as he choked back a sob.
“I couldn’t do anything to help. Nothing. No matter how hard I tried. Not with all the leaches they’d used to get me back under control. Daigle promised to claim you piece by piece, if that was what it took. Then he pulled this jar from that pouch he always wore.”
Upalo held his fingers apart to show me the size of it. As soon as he did, I knew exactly what Daigle had done with the eye he’d taken from me.
“He put your eye in it,” Upalo confirmed. “Claimed it was too beautiful to throw away.”
Pretty boy. I remembered that much. He’d called me that several times, even before that day.
“He talked about needing the matching set, that it wouldn’t be right to separate them, like anything he’d done was right. Goddess, his words were so fucking creepy. I’ve never been able to get them out of my head. He was touching your eye socket, stroking it, like, like….”
Another deep breath, his body shuddering when he exhaled.
“He was fascinated by it. He slid his fingertip into the socket, then leaned over you and kissed the hole he’d made, licking the blood away like some deranged fucking vampire or something.
He said he was going to have a great deal of fun with them once they healed.
That’s um, when your other eye opened, only it was white, like ice. ”
“I don’t remember waking up again until the forest,” I admitted.
Lips pressed in a grim line, he nodded. “Jagged spikes of ice erupted out of you. Well, it was more like you became an icy porcupine. He kept away from you, gushing blood like a macabre sprinkler. It was everywhere. His fury was like a hurricane. One of his henchmen tried to apply pressure to the wound in the side of his neck and he turned his fury upon him and ripped him apart. I was terrified that he was going to kill you, but he just snarled and said you could protest all you wanted, you would belong to him. He said other things too, in a language I didn’t recognize until we came here. ”
“Draconian.”
“Yeah.”
“But we escaped. If he was so determined, how did I wake up in the forest? How were you and Canyon able to get me away from him?”
“We didn’t.”
“I woke up in the forest with you and Canyon with the village two mountain ranges away. Which still shocks the hell out of me because we left Ronan behind."
“We didn’t have a choice. Canyon was hurt too badly and with the leeches all over me I was next to useless. Daigle ordered his men to kill Canyon to teach you a lesson about what would happen to everyone you cared about if you didn’t quit resisting. Your dragon did not take that well.”
I waited for him to add something more, but he went tight lipped again.