Like the way Reverie had squeezed his hand and the clasp of Corbin's hand around his arm when he saw he'd been hurt. The feelings he was coming to have for both beings sitting in that cavern clouded him. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel.
He'd always been jealous of Nyssa's hopeless romanticism, heard her tell her stories of how her chest would knot when she felt for someone. He thought back to Draven and Aydra and how their love shattered kingdoms. He wanted love like that. But being a son of Arbina, and now knowing the history of previous kings—knowing what his olders had been capable of in the name of what they called love... He wondered if he would ever find it. He wondered if it was something he was cursed to live without or if he could bring himself out of their shadows and become his own.
If what he was feeling for the two in that cavern was something more than lust. He thought it was... But he wasn't sure he could trust anything at that moment.
Dorian tilted his head back and pushed the overwhelming feelings out, breathing as he once did with Nyssa. In for four, out for six. He blinked back the emotion in his chest and wished more than anything he could feel her with him right then. He missed the comfort of his family and the familiarity of their embrace.
He started counting the stars and noting the shapes in them as he took those deep breaths. Much of the night sky carried the shapes of Noctuans. There was the shape of hands for Haerland. The Noirdiem. The Bullhorn. The Ulfram.
But as he searched the eastern sky, having remembered there were few patterns there that they'd been able to make out, he had to pause.
The alignments had changed. How, he wasn't sure. But the sight of what he saw staring back at him almost made him choke on the laughing tears that fell down his cheeks.
"You bastards," he uttered.
It wasthem.
Draven with his horn. Aydra with her back to him, an arrow pulled through on her bow. The stars gleamed back at him as though they'd always been there. The patterns were as clear as the Bullhorn and Ulfram.
His chest swelled, and the tears down his cheeks iced over against his chilled skin. He pushed out a deep breath with the emotion of it and stared at the sky.
"I could really use your help," he managed. "Both of you."
His insides broke, and every emotion he'd been suppressing spilled onto his surface. Dorian Eaglefyre, alone and scared, unsure of his place in the world, but pushing forward anyway with the boyish grin and a come-on.
He had to let go.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
DORIAN LET REVERIE and Corbin sleep longer than the sunrise the next morning. They had checked on Dorian before going to sleep, but Dorian couldn't surrender that night.
For once, he didn't want the swim of his herb or the drink. He wanted to feel the things going right and wrong in his life. He wanted to acknowledge all those thoughts he'd been squashing and ignoring. He'd come no closer to figuring out anything during the night, but at least he felt more affirmed in his body.
A little more confident in his truth.
But as he stepped over the sleeping pair and went towards the back of the cavern, he noted that there was only one Infi left slumping on the wall. The bones of the one he'd burned the heart of. He crouched down at the empty wall where the other had been, looking for any residue other than the black mark on the stone. The ground continued to heat under his palm, and the fact that it was gone made his stomach knot for two reasons:
It was either destroyed. Or in the cavern with them still.
Dorian stood to wake Corbin and Reverie. He nudged them both, wary of the sleeping pair, and as they stirred, he drew his sword.
"Fucking—“
The pair jumped at the sight of him with the sword.
"The fuck, Prince—“
"The Infi is gone," Dorian said, staring sternly between them. "I'm not sure if it actually disintegrated or if it somehow came back and slipped past me. Tell me something we would know together."
Reverie and Corbin exchanged glances before shifting and looking to the ground as they thought of instances to tell him.
"You almost burned the kitchens trying to bake my Belwark victory meal," Corbin said.
Dorian remembered how the servants had shoved the pair out of the kitchens to put out the fire—when in reality, it was Aydra who had started it before they got there when she tried to cook Lex potatoes.
"That wasn't my fault," Dorian countered, and he could almost feel the smile on his lips.
"Definitely your fault," Corbin argued. "You blame your older, but it was all you."
