Page 112 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
The journey was nothing short of unsettling for Kassein.
He didn’t want to go there, and he was also certain Kiera had gone there with Lorey and Alezya on purpose like one would lure an animal to a trap. He’d entrusted Alezya to Lorey, but he had forgotten how cunning his sister could be. Of his three sisters, Kiera was unpredictable at best and incredibly shrewd at worst. She would have been an amazing military leader if she was capable of staying in one place...
Still, Kassein marched stubbornly, each angry step taking him closer to his sister’s trap, just because he wanted to bereunited with Alezya. He could almost hear Tievin’s disbelief behind him as his Intendant did his best to keep up.
The dark stone appeared in the distance, and Kassein’s chest tightened every time he saw the silhouette of that place. When he was a child, that mountain of dark stone had been his home. As an adult, it stood like a monument to his failures. Luckily for him, the Onyx Castle was far too small of a place to host his dragon; thus, he spotted Kein’s orange scales somewhere farther away in one of the long stretches of deserted land that once held his mother’s gardens, right outside the castle’s walls. This place was almost as bad as standing inside the castle itself, but he pushed away the dread, focusing on Alezya instead.
“Ah, there he is!”
He replied to his sister’s satisfied expression with a furious glare.
She was standing, playing around with a dagger she kept throwing in her hand, one fist on her hip, and watching him walk into the frozen gardens with a smug smile. Opposite to her was Alezya, also holding a dagger, the one she’d taken from his tent. It looked as if the two of them had been sparring, and Kassein’s eyes immediately scoured Alezya’s body for any injuries, but she looked fine, if a bit tired.
A few steps away, Lorey was sitting on one of the benches his father had built for his mother. He walked up to Alezya, immediately dropping his hands to her shoulders and letting relief fill his lungs again. As much as he trusted his sister with her safety, nothing could beat holding her in his arms for himself to be certain.
“Sorry we made you come all this way, Your Highness,” Lorey said. “Kiera insisted—”
“I have no doubt she did,” Kassein growled.
His tone was filled with so much anger that Lorey was taken aback, although his glare was on his sister, not her. Lorey had no way of knowing he would have never come to this place if not forced, but she immediately understood something was off, her eyes going to Kiera with a suspicious, questioning frown. His sister was not apologetic at all.
Instead, she kept throwing that dagger, watching her younger brother with her malicious eyes.
“I wondered if you’d come,” she said. “Turns out you like this girl a lot more than I thought.”
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied,” he hissed.
Kassein could feel Alezya’s worried eyes on him, and he curled an arm around her waist. Although she couldn’t understand their argument, she could certainly understand he was angry, and Kassein didn’t want her to think it had anything to do with her, so he kept his angry eyes on his sister.
“Not really,” Kiera tilted his head. “I was expecting you to be... I don’t know. Angrier.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he grunted.
Then, he turned around and gently pulled Alezya with him toward the garden’s exit.
“When are you going to grow up, Kassein?”
He stopped in his tracks, glaring back at his sister. This time, Kiera had lost her smile, and instead, she stared at him with an annoyed expression.
“It’s been years,” she said. “Fifteen years since your dragon went mad, and you refused to set foot in the Onyx Castle again. I don’t know what happened to you that time, but you–”
“What happened is none of your fucking business,” he hissed.
“Your dragon went mad,” Kiera retorted. “We had never had a dragon attack one of us before, not the way Kein tried to kill you. If Dran and Krai hadn’t stopped him, you would be dead.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t want to address it? To face the truth?”
“None of your damn business.”
“My little brother’s business is my business,” she retorted. “...And what if Kein attacks Alezya someday?”
The mere thought sent a horrible shiver down Kassein’s back.
Even more surprising though, was how Kein suddenly let out a furious, loud growl that made them all jump. Alezya stepped deeper into Kassein’s embrace, but her scared eyes were now on his dragon while Kassein’s had gone to hers. The fear in her eyes was something he never wanted to witness again.
“...My thoughts exactly,” Kiera said after a minute. “You might not care about your dragon trying to murder you every chance he gets, but this isn’t about you. Whatever happened fifteen years ago, it’s about time you face it and find a way to tame your mad dragon. Or there might be another incident again, and this time, your precious tribe girl might be the one they find dead.”
