The pommel of Draven’s sword crushed into the egg. Aydra closed her eyes as she heard him ripping and removing the shell delicately from around the beast.
It was only a few moments before she felt a radiance enter her core, a freedom she had not felt before, and she opened her eyes just in time to see it rip itself of the sac, and it flapped its great wings to shake the fluid from around its body.
Draven tried to move backwards and tripped on a rock as the dragon child, taller than he, leaned over him.
And then it nuzzled his face.
The dragons were purring behind them as they sat in front of the fire. Aydra couldn’t shake her core of the pride that had such filled the beasts upon her being released of her pain.
But it was the feeling that had taken her over upon the dragon’s seeing Draven that made her most curious. So curious, that she couldn’t stop staring at him.
“Come now, Sun Queen,” he said after a while. “Keep staring at me like that and I’ll think I’ve somehow broken you.”
“You don’t know how much they love you,” she blurted out.
His eyes narrowed sideways at her. “What?”
“I mean…” She fumbled with the cup in her hands, choosing her words. “You have to understand, my abilities… they are stronger than my sister’s and my sister’s before me. They don’t just allow me to hear the creatures. I feel them… Their pains. Their darkness. Their happiness. It swims through my core as it would my own emotions. The Rhamocour today… the pain of her child’s agony tore through me, but when the mother saw you… it vanished, if only for a moment.” She looked up and met his eyes. “They revere you. Anything you ask of them, they would do. They would die for you at a moment’s notice. If what they feel for you is love, then what I have felt has been nothing more than lust and the child-like vision of love our Chronicles portray.”
He stared at her for a moment. “I envy you,” he admitted.
“What?”
“The bond you share with them. Your ability to communicate as freely as you do with them. I would give anything to hear that.”
The screech of the great Aviteth bird burned through the forest then, and the sound of its call made Aydra’s chest swell.
“What?” Draven asked.
Aydra stared at the sky, feeling a genuine smile rise on her face. The Wyverdraki family’s song rang through her ears, and then she met his gaze again with a sudden realization.
“You’ve never heard it,” she realized.
“Heard what?”
“The Wyverdraki song.”
His brows narrowed. “They have a song?” he asked.
She smiled wider, and then wrapped her arm into his. He stiffened, but did not move as she closed her eyes and felt for their song as they flew above the canopy.
It started off a melodic hum that she allowed radiate from her throat and into the still air, and when the chorus came from above her, she sang the words aloud to him.
From once a wind
And brisk of leaves.
There came a night.
Across the sea.
And in its shadows
There was a memory.
Of what once was
Our land of free.
