Page 56 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
Shouts still ring out far overhead, followed by sounds of fighting. The very floor beneath my feet trembles with the latest blast.
The moment I am steady, Bene retracts his arm and steps away from me, as if he can’t bear to touch me for a moment longer.
Ridiculous though it is, my chest tightens with the sharp, familiar sting of rejection.
“Velda,” he growls aloud.
His silver auntie is still with us.
Closing her eyes, she sends out a golden strand of Spirit that speeds through the darkness like a shooting star, flitting beneath one of the many doors lining the far wall. After the span of a single breath, her eyes flash back open and she points toward the northeast. “They are this way.”
Rather than using one of the doorways leading out of the gallery, Bene weaves together Fire and Air and blasts a hole straight through the wall in the exact location Velda indicated.
The silver pixie immediately dashes off through the hole and disappears from sight.
“Follow Velda,” he orders me without even glancing my way. “I will walk behind you to better protect you.”
I want to protest. I want to demand he tell me what’s going on before I move another step.
But Mama. Reggie. Their safety is more important than my confused feelings.
I kick off my dancing shoes, leaving me wearing only stockings on my feet, and race after Velda as fast as I dare. The corridor beyond is dark. Deserted. The ball must have ended after that awful business with Lord Reginald and the king.
Footsteps thunder in the distance, driving me onward. I veer to the right, following the distant gleam cast from Velda’s wings. Bene follows, his nearly soundless steps lost beneath the shallow hitching of my own breath, the racing of my heart. I walk briskly, remembering Bene’s warning about not running.
A moment later, a pressure grows just behind my eyes, as if a headache is coming on.
Bene’s voice sounds in my head again. Tense.“Who is ‘Reggie’?”
My steps skip a beat, leaving me stumbling as I round the next corner, following Velda’s distant silhouette like a hound tracking a fox. Disbelief washes over me. Is Bene truly pilfering through my thoughts? A flare of irritation tightens my jaw. On pureinstinct, I imagine a metal gate slamming into place around my mind, keeping him out.
Behind me, Bene hisses, as if in pain.
“You do not get to ask me any questions. Not until you tell me what you meant when you said you have been keepingeverythingfrom me,” I breathlessly inform him, no longer caring that I am beingrude, that I am speaking with a sharp tongue to a man far above my station.
This is Bene—a man who is supposed to be my best friend, but whom I am no longer sure I even know.
I have been lied to. Kidnapped. Held against my will.Struck.
Iwillhave answers.
Chapter 17
Aurelia
Now
“Fine,” Bene concedes aloud after a few tense beats of silence. “Ask me anything, and I will answer.”
“Truthfully?”
“Truthfully.”
Velda disappears around the next bend, leaving us alone. But not for long.
The thunder of footsteps grows louder, followed by the shouts of men. In the next moment, soldiers spill into the corridor. Soldiers led by a man I do not recognize rather than Friedemar.
Their fear is a tangible thing.
