Page 63 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
Every scrap of knowledge Bene has shared with me roars to the forefront of my mind, leaving me wincing in pain. Pressure throbs behind my right temple—a proper headache this time rather than my dragon king rifling through my thoughts.
My mind is on the verge of breaking, of unraveling completely, from trying to hold all the many pieces of a far larger puzzle I have been gifted.
I am not human. I am a Jewel. The last living Jewel.
The only Jewel left who can fulfill my birth mother’s prophecy.
IamBene’sTherya’kai.
A disbelieving laugh bursts forth as I so easily embrace these truths rather than try to deny what I am. In the span of a singleevening, my entire life has been flipped upside down. Should I not be violently shaking my head, refusing to believe that I am different?
But I have always known I was different, ever since my eighteenth birthday. Now at least I have a name for my strangeness. Now at least I know there was a reason for my suffering. Now at least I know I have a purpose. Something important I am supposed to do.
I don't have to marry Lord Reggie. I don't have to seek work as a governess. There is aprophecy. I am destined to be a queen. To help Bene.
Despite all the rest I still don't understand, despite the curse, there is still a strange sort of comfort in knowing all this.
Another projectile zips past, and Bene banks hard to the left to avoid it. This time, I am the one who screams. But it is not the storm that frightens me. Nor the oversized crossbow bolts trying to shoot us down.
It is the sensation of somethingwrongapproaching us hard and fast from the east—a sensation that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Something is coming.
Something I do not want to meet.
Bene?I instinctively reach out to my dragon king’s mind to ask him what this is that I feel. But instead of the warm familiarity of his mental presence, I am met with only a steel wall. Solid. Impenetrable.
He has shut me out.
Lightning flashes through the clouds, illuminating the three pixies who flit alongside us, riding a current of Air woven from Brisa’s fingers. Their small faces are pinched with fear. With worry.
Do they feel what is coming, too?
Mama is speaking again, though her words are swallowed by the wind. The thunder. The rising patter of rain striking against Bene’s scales. I only catch a scrap of it.
“… Lord Reginald has some connections in Cindralune. We should be safe there. Perhaps they will even have some new medicines we might try.”
Cindralune?But the human kingdom to the north holds nothing for me.
“I can’t go to Cindralune, Mama,” I shout back.
I don’t need to see my mother’s face to feel her shock over the fact that I would dare not immediately agree to her latest plan. But we see what came of her last—of my attending King Friedemar’s ball. Even now, though he cannot reach me all the way up here, the thought of Briarhold’s king is enough to make my skin crawl.
But it wasn’t all bad, I suppose. If I hadn’t gone, Bene wouldn’t have come.
If I hadn’t gone, I never would have known who I am.
“Can’t?” my mother cries out over the storm, incredulous. Another bolt of lightning splinters the heavens as Bene veers to the right, circling something below. “And where else do you possibly intend to go?”
Brisa answers for me, loudly declaring, “She is theTherya’kai. Her place is in Drakara.”
Mama has no time to balk, nor to question the little pixie’s words. None of us do.
For Bene answers his fairy godmother with a rumbling snarl—a snarl that shakes me to my very core—before the threads of Air binding me to his back melt away, leaving me vulnerable to the elements.
Panic seizes me as my hands scrabble at his wet scales, hunting for purchase.
“Bene!” I scream, but it is too late.
