Page 92 of Blood of Two Crowns

I owed this male everything. Mysoulbound—our mate.My life. My Kingdom.Fear flayed me open as my mind flashed back to the heartstopping memory of Azrael descending with his blade poised to kill. The terror and impotence of being too far away to reach them in time.

“Thank you,”I managed to whisper.

The drakonati huffed in response. Silence stretched between us before I finally took a seat on the ground beside a boulder a few feet away.

“We need you, Malekai.”

Expression softened the curves around the drakonati’s eyes as they lifted from the cave floor to mine, reminding me of a dog’s expressive features.

“She’s doing better now. Looks healthier. Less… traumatized.”

A great sigh leaves the beast’s chest, and his relief is palpable.

“So what happens now? Do you just… lay here? In this cave forever? Is this what the afterlife is?”

If a drakonati could look bored, it would be wearing the expression on his face now.

“Can you shift back?”

“No.”

The unfamiliar male voice nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. I twisted to find a hulking, winged male standing only a few meters away. He frowned at me, stepping forward with a basket of…

Flowers?

“Lathrimos,” the male answered without me needing to ask, “I’m theprotus archestratim.”

Chief Archangel.

“I have helped yoursoulbound’sfather rule this realm for more millennia than I care to count… And I know your father, Rumiel. Though I haven’t seen him in an age.”

Lathrimos swayed the basket in front of Malekai’s nostrils like a priest or priestess swings a thurible of incense. Malekai’s nostrils twitched before inhaling deeply. The black chasms in the center of his sea green and gold eyes dilated wide in one swift leap, and something like a laugh, if a drakonati could do such a thing, rumbled in his chest.

“What the hells is that?”

Lathrimos glanced over his shoulder at me as he continued to sway the flowers in front of Malekai’s beast’s nose. Glittering, iridescent pollen drifted up from the basket as Malekai continued to breathe in slow, measured breaths, and that rumbling laugh vibrated through him and the ground beneath where I sat.

“Dendrata zou.It’s a flower that normally only grows inLucidi Regorum,your uncle-in-law’s realm, but Mors convinced Somnus to let him grow a garden of it here… It thins the veil betweenAkashand ourselves. It enables us to reconnect more consciously with her Source energy, tap into her knowledge, and clear karmic debts and energy. Heal wounds…”

My brows lept, thoroughly intrigued. The drakonati in front of us rolled onto his back, feet peddling through the air whilst wiggling around like a dog in a field of flowers as that rumbling, drakonati laughter made the stone of the cave tremble.

The sound was contagious. The tension in my body eased, the weight on my chest lifted, all as I began to laugh, watching with no small amount of awe as this gigantic, fearsome drakonatilaughed.

“Akash almighty.Is he hallucinating?”

Lathrimos’ laughter beside me increased. “Well, I would think so. He just inhaled enoughdendrata zoupollen to reduce an entire army to babbling toddlers.”

My head tipped back with laughter that liberated my soul from the shackles of grief in one fell swoop.

Malekai’s beast hummed and babbled in a strange drakonati tongue that I wasn’t entirely sure the drakonati himself even understood. Laughter streamed from mine and Lathrimos’ eyes as our gazes met. His laughter became high-pitched, and mine a silent wheeze.

“I’ve never seen a drakonati on dendrata zou before,” he wept through his laughter, bending at the waist as he held his spasming abdomen.

The beast suddenly twisted back around, sending Lathrimos’ enormous body tumbling backwards onto the ground to avoid getting crushed. It only served to intensify our laughter to the point that I couldn’t breathe.

If I don’t stop laughing, I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

As if to relieve me of this possibility, a warm and heavy snout suddenly thrust itself towards me and began tonuzzle me.My laughter cut off in shock, unsure if it, in his hallucinations, caused him to mistake me for a snack. From the look on Lathrimos’ face, he wasn’t entirely sure either.

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