Page 54 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
And suddenly, I am gazing down into sky-blue eyes once more, losing myself in their cloudless depths. I swallow hard, fighting against my inner dragon. My Shade. My want. Myneed.
Oblivious to my struggle, Aurelia stares up at me and whispers a single question. A question laced with steel:
“What are you not telling me, Bene?”
There is no point in denying it any longer. I can hide nothing from her with her Mind weave still binding us together.
“Everything,Na’therya,”I whisper back, breathing those words directly into her thoughts.“Everything.”
Chapter 16
Aurelia
Now
Everything.
That is the word that should steal my breath—that should stop my heart—as I lie there in Bene’s arms, my head pillowed against his chest.
And yet it is the other—Na’therya—that makes my pulse flutter.
I should be angry. What does he mean byeverything? I should demand he stop looking at me likethat, as if he is trying tomemorize my features all over again, and start answering the million questions ricocheting through my skull.
I know all this.
But it is difficult to be angry. It is difficult to be anything but utterly lost as I stare up into sapphire eyes that have haunted my dreams nearly every night for the past twelve years.
Am I dreaming still?
Blue light suddenly fills the edge of my vision, drawing my attention toward another pixie. A short, squat pixie with blue curls and eyes too large for her face:Brisa.
“You look just like her,” she whispers, a hint of awe in her voice.
I frown. “Who?”
But it is Velda who answers with a soft, “Your mother.”
My mother.Lord Reggie. Panic grips my heart all over again as Friedemar’s threats roar back to the forefront of my mind. I must save them. Friedemar will kill them both if I don’t.
Before I even have a chance to utter such a thing aloud, a vicious snarl rips from Bene’s throat, as if something unspoken has passed between us. Setting me back on my feet, his gaze snaps toward a wall of ice now coating the far side of the room. He sweeps his arm wide, sending a scythe of Air whipping toward the wall.
Shattering it into a million pieces.
A rush of cold spills through the room, flooding the space with yet more mist.
A slender, bespectacled pixie with emerald hair swept back into a no-nonsense bun retreats from the shattered remnants of the ice wall. “Please control yourself!” she calls out. “It is difficult enough for him to manage his emotions at this time without being burdened with your own.”
Glorana.
It takes me a moment to realize she is speaking to me.
“Friedemar!” Bene shouts in his accented Common, clearly as out of practice as I am. “Where are you keeping them?”
Friedemar strides out of the fog, unharmed, unfazed, an insufferable smile on his lips. His hand falls to the hilt of the sword at his hip and wrenches it free. Bands of Air, Mind, and Spirit wreathe the weapon, sending the blade beneath rippling between shades of purple, silver, and gold, as if it were forged from liquid rather than metal.
All three pixies gasp and fall back, ringing Bene and me in a protective half-circle.
Confusion, agitation, and a small shred of fear emanate from my dragon king. His muscles tense. A growl rumbles from low in his throat. Stepping between me and Friedemar again, he uses his body as a shield.
