Page 49 of Exquisite Monster
“That the Heirs are your mates. That something happened with the Elders because they weren’t pleased. But… until you told your story, none of us knew the whole truth. I am so sorry, Lena.”
“Why?”
“Because none of what has happened has been deserved. Your fate is an accident of birth. Much like the Heirs. In that way, you are alike.”
I threw the dart in my hand with as much force as I could muster, savoring thethudof it connecting to the wood. “Believe me, I am very aware of how little choice I have had in all of this.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?”
Emotion swelled so fast there was no way to hide it. I looked away, blinking quickly. “I need them back,” I whispered. “They’re the only thing— I just need them back and I’m terrified we will fail. We have no plan but hope, and Andaros holds all the leverage.
“If we fly in and try to take them, all of you will die. They willblanketthe sky in weapons laced with scalefire. Every blade. Every trebuchet. Every arrow and every bolt. If we sneak in, we have noidea where they are or even if we can get to them. We have nothing to offer in exchange except my life, and that still will not free them.
“ForweeksI’ve felt nothing but desperation, because there is something telling me I am too late.” I pressed my fingers into the center of my chest in a futile attempt to ease the ache there. “And even if we aren’t too late, it feels like there is no chance. No choice. No hope.Stars.” Turning, I kicked a rock and listened to the clatter echo through the mountains.
I took a shaky breath. “I’ve been trained to be a pretty object, Belleo. What knife skills I have, I owe to my grandmother insisting I take lessons with the captain of the guard. Even then, I could easily be overpowered. I can throw these. And I am good, but as you’ve seen, I still am not good enough. I am not enough. If we manage to rescue them, it will not be because of me. I am no help. I…”
The words trailed off because there were no more. What else could I say? It was the truth. Gleym hadn’t lied when she spoke of how insignificant I was. I had no magic and very little strength. The potions I carried were helpful, but they weren’t going to take down the Craisian army. Every day I spent beneath the earth clinging to the idea that I needed to get to them. Find them. Help them. It was the thing that kept me sane and living.
But out here with the truth of it?
I shook my head.
“Yes. I am troubled.”
Belleo slowly approached, took me by the shoulders, and turned me toward her. “You are the mate of three dragons. That in itself makes you enough.”
“Enough for them. Not to save them. Not to save anyone else. Not to stop what’s coming.”
With a smile, Belleo looped her arm through mine and led us to a ledge overlooking the slope down into a craggy valley. She sat and brought me with her.
“There’s no denying you stand at the crossing of many things, Lena. And I am not nearly as old as some dragons, but already I have seen that the patterns of the world are bigger than all of us. You do not have the power to stop what is coming, no. But neither do I. No dragon or human, save the Elders and Andaros, can do anything to stop this. And it was put into motion long before your life. Even mine.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
She laughed softly and patted my arm where she still held it. “No, I don’t imagine so. But we feel the same. There is a reason we are all here trying to make a difference. Because we feel the same helplessness.
“You are right. We do not yet have a plan. But I do not believeyou are the first mate in centuries only to die at the hands of someone like Andaros. We will find a way. I feel it.”
I swallowed and leaned my head on her shoulder. “I don’t know if I can believe that.”
“I will believe it,” she said. “For all of us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
________
KATALENA
“Idroal, is there any way the Heirs would know Gleym released the command?”
Only if they tried to go against it and discovered they could fight back.
My heart sank. “So they don’t know?”
I hope they do, they said.But it is unlikely. They would not waste strength fighting a binding command. Especially after all this time.
The moon made the landscape bright as we flew above. It shone off the river that passed through Rensara and wove through the mountains. We were much closer now.
