Page 79 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
“Bene! Bene, where are you?”
Aurelia.
I rush toward the direction of her voice but am forced to stop when I nearly run headlong into the thorny walls of my prison.
“Aurelia!” I shout back. “Aurelia, I’m here!”
Brisa is beside me in the next moment. “What’s wrong, Bene?”
“Do you not hear her?” I snarl, frantically hunting for an opening in the perimeter once more. “She’s here.” Despite my best efforts, Malice’s curse must have struck her, too.
My inner dragon rages. I must find her. I must protect her.
Suddenly, the thorns before me writhe. They shift. A sliver of green-tinged light spills through the opening.
I dive through without a second thought.
“Bene!” Brisa’s voice echoes behind me as I race down a narrow corridor cutting through the brambles. “Wait!”
The ground beneath my feet rumbles, and I chance a look backward just in time to see the way behind me collapsing. Like waves, the thorny vines roil toward me, driving me onward.
I stretch my legs and run faster. I push harder. Just up ahead, I spy a glimpse of golden hair flitting around the next corner.
“Aurelia!”
I veer to the right, but not quickly enough. The thorns behind me slash across my left arm in passing, rending fabric and flesh. I bite back a scream as pain explodes down my bicep like liquid fire.
Even here, there is pain.
But more importantly, there is Aurelia.
“Aurelia,” I gasp, stumbling deeper into the clearing I have found amongst the brambles. She stands just before me, her face buried in her hands.
The quiet sobs escaping her are a fresh knife to my heart. But her scent does not tempt me. I cannot smell her over the stench of rot hanging in the air. My Shade does not awaken and whisper dark desires to my soul.
A small blessing in this accursed place.
“Aurelia, please,” I whisper, begging. Pleading. “Please, don’t cry,na’velar. I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry. This is all my fault. I should have told you—”
“You should have,” she shouts, raising her head to glare at me. Tears streak her cheeks. Fire flashes in her eyes. “But you didn’t. You didn’t tell me anything. You let me live a lie!” Her lips tremble. “It was all a lie. Even when you called me your queen.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I am nothing to you,” she whispers, retreating from me. “I am not yourTherya’kai.”
“No, please…pleaselisten to me.”
But with every step I take, she retreats further. She refuses to listen. She refuses to let me draw near.
“Please,” I beg again, my fingers stretching toward her. If I can only reach her. If I can onlyexplain. “I thought I was protecting you, but I waswrong. I was so very wrong. I should have told you everything from the very start.”
“You should have,” Aurelia softly agrees, still backing away from me. “But it’s all right now, Bene. Malice has told me everything.”
My heart stops cold. I freeze in place. “Malice?”
“Yes,” she breathes, drawing to a pause as well.
When next I blink, her appearance shifts. Gone is her tattered pink silk gown. Gone are the tears staining her face. She now stands before me, tall and proud, draped all in glittering black with a crown forged in mockery of the Corona Ignis burning on her brow. Green flames instead of white dance in time with her words.
