Page 17 of Dragon Throne: Part One

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Searing emotion carved tunnels through my being as I finished reading Keira’s words. Tears sliced the back of my eyes, trying desperately to fall onto the page and mix with her own, but I didn’t let them. I couldn’t let them.

So many secrets.

So much evil.

Endless pain.

Still holding the letter, I glanced up at Braxton, but I couldn’t really see him. Everything seemed to be both in slow motion and spiraling fast as my mind processed what it had just learned. The feeling of Kingston taking the pages from my grasp reached me before my steps took me away from them. I had never met Keira Skystorm, but I could almost hear her voice echoing in my mind with her story.

“It was then that your father crafted a plan. A final battle…”

“Ezra and Sienna agreed, with only one condition. If anything went wrong during the battle, Khaydenwas to grab me and leave to the Mirror World without looking back. That way, Raithian would never find us, and we could train you to be the weapon that would one day come back to destroy him…”

“My true name was Keira Devenish, and I was the Princess of Caelisium…”

“…I beg you to kill the Warlock King, Braxton. You have to kill my father.”

“Gods…” I breathed, somehow managing to filter air into my lungs. Blinking, I turned around to find Braxton walking slowly towards me. “I-I…”

I couldn’t speak. Keira’s story still reverberated through me, chilling me to the bone. The realization of everything she and her husband had sacrificed also burned through me. A mix of fire and ice that warred inside me.

A single tear managed to slip from my guarded eyes, but I bitterly wiped it away. This was not my pain, it was Braxton’s. He’d been right about his father, the man my people and I condemned… I had no right to cry.

No. I had no words to speak, but I had the duty to try.

“Braxton…” I reached for him the instant he stopped before me. “Please forgive me. Please forgive my people, they didn’t know what they were doing. They only felt the losses his departure caused them, and the pain and desolation that followed. My people didn’t know," I repeated, hoping he would find it in his heart to forgive them, because they were his people too.

“Tell me…” Kingston’s voice reached us, and we both turned to find him lifting the letter to me. The pleading in his voice and the need in his eyes spoke of how much he wished he could read the letter himself. “Tell me, please.”

Reaching for him, I took his hand in mine. “The Harbinger never betrayed us, Kingston. He never left us willingly.”

“After my mother became pregnant, my parents started experiencing the pull I had to the Dragons,” Braxton explained. “My powers, the ones you’ve seen me use to communicate with them, that connection I share with them, was somehow strong enough to call to them to my side even with me being in my mother’s womb. As more and more Dragons appeared to her, they realized how powerful I could truly be, and how that connection could help me one day destroy Raithian.”

“But with that realization also came the true danger Keira and Braxton were in,” I added. “If our army lost the great battle and Raithian took Keira while pregnant, he would have sucked the magic right out of them, using it to finally conquer the Dragons and Caelisium entirely. My parents could not allow the Warlock King to possess that kind of power.”

Kingston’s brows furrowed as the pieces finally fell into place for him. “So your parents forced them to leave when Raithian took control of Azazel?”

“In a way,” I answered. “They made Khayden and Keira Skystorm sign an accord, vowing to leave if things went wrong during the fight, which they did. He didn’t abandon our cause, Kingston. He went to look for his wife and child, to take them as far away from the Warlock King’s grasp as he could, so one day Braxton could return to us and use his powers to help us defeat him.”

“My father never stopped fighting for you and our people,” Brax explained. “He fought every day, even in the Mirror World. He fought to train me the best he could, given the circumstances. To raise me. To keep me healthy and block my connection to this world—to the Dragons—so Raithian could never find me. He did everything he could… Even placed himself in front of Azazel’s fire breath meant to kill us all.”

Braxton’s pain escaped through his cracking voice, matching Kingston's broken expression, and I pushed down the emotion threatening to come out of me and never stop. I had held it down for so long…

“All this time, we have resented the Harbinger of Justice for abandoning us, when my own parents asked him to leave… to protect us. I-I am so sorry, Brax.”

“Don’t apologize. I understand now why your parents did what they did.” His arms wrapped around me, cradling me to him, but I felt so ashamed.

“They should have told me.” I pulled away to look at him again. “I could have prevented our people’s hatred, their resentment, if I had only known—"

“It was necessary,” Kingston interrupted grimily, and my confused gaze went to him. “The only way we would have truly let his father go was by believing that he had betrayed us.”

“Kingston,” I protested, but he shook his head.

“You don’t understand, Evanna. I admired the Harbinger of Justice in a way I can’t even begin to explain. Everyone did. If I hadn’t believed he abandoned us, I would have gone looking for him myself… unintentionally putting him, Keira, and Braxton in danger.”

His muscles tensed with the weight of that truth. After all, the pain was fresh for him too. My parents had deceived him like they had everyone else.

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