“No fair, sister, trying to drag our drakaina from us.”
Mikkel’s smooth chuckle is everything, as he cuddles close to my left side where he was spooning me with one leg draped over my hip. Naked as the day he was born, he grins at Lærke, then reaches out to slap her hand playfully. She purses her lips at him, though she smiles.
Then, she blows a raspberry at him before releasing me.
I’ve never seen the Thorsen twins so playful; something about it brightens my heart, and I laugh now. A good laugh, it’s free and unfettered, as I feel my real family here, crowded close around me.
Because that’s what my drakes are, and Lærke, plus my stepfathers, my uncle, and cousins, even though they aren’t here right now. Not to mention all the wonderful people I know and love from my life at the Red Letter Hotel Paris—my real family, true and beloved in the life I have found.
It bolsters me that all is not lost, as for a moment, I feel my heart glow bright.
“Someone’s feeling better.” Ström’s loving voice is gentle on my right, as he smoothes my hair from my face, then turns me towards him. His grass-green eyes shine, luminous as he stares down at me from where he’s come up to one elbow at my side. Lowering his lips, he kisses me gently.
And that kiss lights up my entire world.
I revel in it, and him, and everyone around me as I feel that goodness take me. It’s stalwart, as Bjorn palms my waist, and cosmic, as Baldursmooths his hand over my belly and smiles so brightly I can see it even with my eyes closed.
And it’s viciously loving, as I feel both Mikkel and Lærke smile also at what’s happening now—feeling me returned from the darkness I descended into.
Ström’s lips are real and good, soft as he kisses me with all of his heart in his kiss, and in his eyes as he watches me. Because my drakes love me, none more so than my best friend in this Bloodbond.
As a beautiful relief beams from Ström now, along with cheeky pleasure, I realize we are in theexactsamenest he and I once fell asleep in, cuddled around each other all night.
It’s fitting, as we cradle each other now and I feel how beloved he’s become. He grins at me, kisses my lips once more just for the hell of it, then releases me to Bjorn.
Bjorn is serious, however, as he sits up with me in the nest. Half cuddled around me, half seated by my side, he takes my chin gently in his strong fingers as he stares me down. Conflict roils in his lavender-gold eyes. Conflict, deep passion, and love, as he holds me in a far more dire space than Ström.
Staring right through my very soul, into the places I hide.
“Are you here now, drakaina? Are you back?” Bjorn asks me as he holds my chin and stares me down. I know what my First Drake is asking; have I returned from wherever the fuck I went, when I went ballistic as my very own Black Dragon, attacking my sister and then freaking out into a catatonic nowhere-space.
I nod, though I say nothing. Through our bond, Bjorn can feel the emotions that roil through me as his gaze holds me. He already knows I’m sane, back from wherever I went when that infernal darkness in the Black Rift pushed me to go ballistic against Lithava.
But I’m not whole yet, as I feel that deepest darkness still creeping inside me, trying to get a foothold. Even as my internal Bone Magic raisesits head and snarls at that most horrible void inside me, I know that deepest darkness is not my Bone Magic.
It’s something else that pulls at me, something deeper than my Blood and Bone Magic. It’s the schism between them, the Rift that was created in all Blood Dragons ages ago.
A Rift that still lives inside me, though I have both magics within.
I rub my chest, frowning as I feel that Rift. I don’t know how to heal it, like Maryse insinuated from my dream, as both sides of my Bloodwalker magic roil inside me, restless.
But I know that this is the real problem assailing the Dragons of Blood and Bone, which the Black Rift and the Black Dragon somehow perpetuate. As my drakes and I step out of the nest, I know this is my true mission now, as I reflect upon Maryse’s wise words out in the endlessness of the Void—to heal this Rift before it takes us all down, for good.
Though my drakes and I are naked, no one is getting frisky, because everything we just went through nearly took us out. We quietly dress in borrowed Old Palace guard leathers from cubbies nearby, then leave the nest-hall.
I feel the bone-deep fatigue my drakes are hiding as we make our way across the lofted stone bridge into the Old Palace proper. Though Ström grins that I’m feeling better and Mikkel’s dark eyes flash, while Baldur smiles with a beaming benevolence, and Bjorn grunts with his usual stalwart brusqueness, all of us are still exhausted from when I nearly gave our everything yesterday to kill my sister.
It’s a big deal, as we silently make our way through the Old Palace up to Ström’s tower rooms. As we enter his beautiful old-world apartment with its stone facades and archways, plus modern glass and chrome details, I feel how much Mikkel and Lærke stew that they had Emil Beck in their clutches and had to give him up again. Bjorn is likewise silent as he reviews his father’s presence in that cavern, fighting as Lithava’s First Bloodmate, a place he killed Bjorn’s motherto take.
And Lithava killed Baldur’s sister, Hekla; Baldur is even more monkish than usual now, despite our renewed togetherness after the cavern’s events. Ström hates Lithava because she killed his older brother at Riksfold. Then she used him with Alfhild Fey to find and reclaim Hedda’s creationary items for the Black Dragon, those which weren’t trapped in the altar atUnhaemmerten.
And even if I didn’t hate Lithava for deceiving me with her borrowed powers from Hedda, convincing me and my drakes to break intoUnhaemmertenand liberate Hedda’s tainted spirit, not to mention her mates’ wights, I would still hate her for killing our parents.
Which I know she actually did now; that knowledge makes me fall from my peace after speaking with Maryse, as I feel some part of me tumble into that black pit that lives inside me.
All of it leaves us in a bad place, as we take turns showering in the two bathrooms in Ström’s apartments, then dress. I towel off my hair, clad in a set of dark plum and black guard leathers, and return to the common area where everyone is waiting for me.
I was the last to get clean; I stood in the hot water a long while, letting it pour over me as I tried to process everything that’s happened. But as everyone looks up at me now from where Ström has had a veritable feast delivered upon his glass and chrome dining table, I see the thing they were just staring at.
