Page 58 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
I don’t even know if I’m keeping my head above water at this point.
Bene’s eyes shift back to blue in the next moment.“Lavren na,” he whispers, staggering. He leans heavily against the wall. Pain pinches his features. “Please, forgive me.”
“What is happening, Bene?” I ask, my voice finally cracking. Breaking. “What is going on?”
Now that the questions have begun, they spill from me in a torrent of sound, each more eager to be heard than the last. “Why did you call mena’drakira? Why did you tell Friedemar I amTherya Drakara? Why do Ifeelwhat you feel? Why does Friedemar want me so desperately?”
I have more questions.Why did you never come back for me?Why are you acting so strangely? Why do your eyes keep changing color like that?But I dare not ask them yet.
Bene’s hands, now wholly human in appearance, flex. His jaw works. Reluctantly, he admits, “It is too much to tell you all now. We do not have time.”
“But she still has a right to know these things, Bene,” Velda insists. Even so, she flashes a look back the way we just came, to the corridor where the soldiers are still encased in makeshift prisons of Air.
“Fine,”my dragon king growls within my thoughts again, though his misgivings seep across the link between us. Misgivings tinged with fear.“If you want to know everything, open your mind to me,Na’therya, and I will show you.”
Open my mind? Instinctively, I know this is a dangerous request. One fraught with risks. My thoughts would be exposed to him completely. My every secret. My every insecurity. My every desire.
The very idea makes me shiver.
But as I stare across the distance between us, as I gaze into his once more crystalline blue eyes, I know something else, too:
It is a risk I will have to take if I want to finally understand.
If I want to finally know what it is my dragon king fears so terribly.
Drawing in a deep breath, I visualize that metal gate within my mind again. Except this time, I picture flinging it open. I picture Bene striding in.
Velda flings up a shield of Spirit between us—a wall I somehow know is meant to protect me from the physical Bene. But it does nothing for the Bene within my mind. He is already there. Invading my thoughts. Overwhelming my senses.
I smell him as if he stands near. Wood smoke and earth and something darker still. I hear him as if his voice is just there, caressing my ear.“Forgive me,”he whispers,“but you must know.”
Suddenly, the floodgates open between us. Visions flicker past, too quickly for me to track. A lifetime of memories, of fears, ofknowledge, of dreams. His thoughts are mine. My thoughts are his.
We are one.
My breath freezes in my chest. My heart forgets how to beat. For a moment, my legs threaten to buckle all over again.
But then he’s there, holding me steady.
No. He still leans against the wall further down the corridor, trembling in time with the shivers wracking my own body. I see him through the haze of Velda’s shield. He cannot be touching me. He cannot be holding me up. He is too far away.
Yet, I still feel him. I feel the strength of his arms wrapping around my back. His fingertips pressing into my shoulderblades through the silk of my gown. His brow brushing against mine.
“I wanted to spare you this pain,Na’therya.”
Those words echo through me, overlaying the memories still flashing by.
A woman wreathed in light who whispers,“He will be a great king. A king who will take a Jewel instead of a dragon for his queen, and together they will heal the rift between our peoples and bring about an era of peace and prosperity the likes of which the world has neverseen.”
“The pain of knowing.”
“Madness,”a dark voice purrs from somewhere far away.“His Jewel will lead him to madness.”
My body shudders as I witness the world aflame. As the pained cries of a thousand dragons vibrate through my bones. Helpless, I watch the sky darken. I watch shadows devour the earth.
Bene’s anguish is my anguish. Tears gather in my eyelashes, blurring my vision as I witness the world end in a million different ways all at once. The scream I wish to unleash catches in my throat. It is too much.
But still, there is more.
