Page 49 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
Gently, I weave just enough Air to tip her chin upward, to let me better inspect the damage Friedemar has done. Beneath the moonlight, Aurelia is even more beautiful than I remember—a vision painted in alabaster and gold. A faint luminescence pulses beneath her skin, making her shine as brightly as any star.
My jaw hardens as I tilt her face to the side and spy the dark bruise blooming on her cheek. Friedemar has committed the greatest of crimes: violence against a woman.
Mywoman.
I am going to kill him.
Tears shimmer in the eyes of my queen—Na’therya.
“You came,” she whispers.
“Vaei,” I breathe back as my arm around her waist tightens, as I tip her chin upward by just a touch more. Starlight dancesin her summer-sky gaze—eyes in which I long to drown.“You called,Na’therya.”
I speak those words across the thread of Mind still linking us—a thread of her own weaving—and delight in the way that simple utterance makes her breath audibly hitch in her throat.
If only I could steal her breath again and again. If only I could make her heart race, just as she makes mine. But I know these moments between us are stolen ones. Fragile. Fleeting.
Already, I have wasted too much time.
My aunties will realize what has happened before too long—that I am no longer in the Living Waters, that I have taken up the Corona Ignis, that I have opened the Door. They will come for me. They will try to stop me before I can do the unthinkable.
Just as I have always prayed they would.
“Aurelia,” I whisper, my tone turning urgent. “There are things I must tell you—”
But my words shift to a roar as somethingthumpsinto my left shoulder. Pain radiates from that point—dull, throbbing. An arrow. Someone has shot me.
Aurelia screams as more arrows descend like a dark cloud, threatening to pierce us both.
From far away, I hear Friedemar shout, “No! Not her! Do not shoother!”
With a scream of rage, I draw in threads of Spirit and weave them around us both, shielding us from the onslaught. I adjust my grip on Aurelia, wrapping both arms around her now. My shoulders hunching, I brace myself.
“Hold on,selira feyra,” I whisper against her hair.
“Bene!” she screams in reply, her voice ringing in my ears as, with a gust of Air, I fling us toward the palace.
And straight through the nearest window.
Chapter 14
Aurelia
Now
Glass shatters, skittering harmlessly off the dome of Spirit encasing us as we crash through the window and into a dark room. Together.
Bene. Bene is here. Bene came for me. He is holding me.
Within the warm security of his arms, I know I am safe.
But even so, a storm of emotions sweeps through me—tumultuous and wild.
Joy, longing, rage, hunger, andagony. An agony unlike any I’ve ever known.
Air rushes past, lavender threads that send us spinning mid-fall. Bene lands first, taking the brunt of the impact, skidding across the carpet on his back. Leaving me atop him, breathless, staring into impossibly blue eyes I never thought I would see again.
Beautifulis no longer enough to describe the Bene before me. Time has forged the boy I once knew into a man with no equal. He is a vision of strength, of fire—strong, commanding, wrapped in rich purple silk. Flames dance along the crown on his brow, making his silver hair gleam. It is a crown I recognize from my Drakaran history book.
