And then he told her about that time, too. How the front crawled toward them as the Packlands dissolved and the elves warred with the orcs. One day he’d woken up to the sound of gunshots and explosions. There was no time to evacuate, not when his grandparents were too weak to fly. They had urged his parents to leave them behind, but they didn’t even have time to make that choice.
His fathers, mother, and grandparents died in the shelling. The elves wanted to take a chunk of the ‘Riik, hoping to encircle both the Packlands and the Orclind, slowly choking them both, and his family’s dwelling lay in their path. Led by Thaddeus II’s ruthless shadow Patrol, they swept a bloody tide over the border.
For two days, he lay under the rubble of his home. His wings were shattered, one arm pinned. Fire burned whatever it could reach, and in the narrow gap where he lay, smoke gathered, oily and thick. It would not have bothered another dragon, but Vael was half human, and as a child he was more sensitive, more vulnerable.
The smoke stole his voice before he could work up the courage to scream.
He lay there, shell-shocked and broken, sipping the sweet water that dripped through the cracks in the heavy stone, until Taevas’s rogue Wing arrived.
“You know he wasn’t always our leader,” he explained, soothing himself with a nuzzle against her ear. “For a long time, he was considered a traitor. A rebel. He refused to listen to the old Isand, who thought each dragon should fight for themselves in the traditional way. Taevas didn’t believe anyone should be left to defend their roost alone.”
Vael did not know what wild, terrible courage it took for a boy of seventeen to become a warlord, uniting clans under his banner even as some of his own people tried to kill him, but he was grateful. He owed Taevas his life. He owed himeverything.
“He went to every dwelling and searched the rubble himself.” Vael closed his eyes, remembering. “He didn’t want anyone to be forgotten or discarded. No bodies unclaimed. No orphans left to wander. I’ll never forget how he lifted the stone from over my head — how bloody his hand was from digging.”
Hele shuddered. Her little fingers curled into the wet strands of his hair and held fast. “I did not know any of this.”
“It’s not something we like to talk about.”
“Yes. I wouldn’t want to.” Her lips rubbed against the cords of his neck. “But what about your wings? Your injuries?”
He grimaced. “Taevas took me to a field hospital where I was extremely,extremelylucky to be cared for by a healer. They put me back together the best they could, but it took years of therapy to fly again. My voice came back faster.” He shook his head, half hoping he could rattle those memories loose. “But it didn’t matter. I didn’t talk for a long, long time. Years. Couldn’t think of what to say. What was there to talk about when my clan was gone?”
Hele drew back slowly to look into his eyes. Tentatively, she said, “You did not have a voice.”
“No, I didn’t.” His nose stung with unshed tears when he looked at her tortured expression. Cupping her cheeks, he rasped, “Do you see why it was so important to me that you get everyfuckingopportunity to choose, to live your life? My life was stolen from me. My choices were taken. My future, wiped away. Even knowing that I only ever wanted to give youeverything,I couldn’t stand the thought of taking your choices, Hele. It made me sick to imagine you might regret Choosing me a decade, a century from now, when you could have been doing anything. I had to give you time.”
Her fingers trailed down the back of his neck, over the slopes of his shoulders, and down his chest to press against his thundering heart. Water lapped at her knuckles. Her hair, one long banner of white, swirled around them in a graceful arc. “I understand.”
He felt something cold and hard snap inside of him — a sudden, violent release of guilt and worry. A tear fell.“Thank you,”he whispered.
“You were wrong, though.”
A startled, watery laugh bubbled out of him. “Yeah?”
“Yes.” Hele leaned forward to peck his nose. “I Chose you because I do not see any future, any choices, without you. This worry that I will feel regret isjustworry. I won’t feel it.”
His heart felt too full. Voice breaking, he asked, “Hele, how can you be—”
“Because,” she stated simply, “I waited eons for you.”
So simple. So sure. Once again, he suspected that his Hele was more dragon than elemental. It was with a dragon’s certainty that she stared at him, her chin thrust out and her brow furrowed. It was an expression that said,I Choose you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Vael wondered if it was possible to die from relief, fromjoy.Could a heart beat so hard for another that it simply stopped?
He didn’t care. If he died from loving his fallen star, then he died the luckiest man on Burden’s Earth.
“Eons, huh? Makes my two years look a little less impressive.” He pressed a kiss to one corner of her mouth, then the other, before he sipped from her lips again, a little deeper with every leisurely pass. His tail snaked over her hip to hold her tight against him as he slowly walked them back toward the edge. Hele’s breath puffed between them in short, excited pants.
Her little nails, blunt like a human’s, curled into the tough skin of his chest. “I think you are very impressive.”
The sound of her breathless voice made his ego swell — amongst other things.
Vael groaned when he pressed her back against the wall of the pool. It forced her chest against his, and when she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, he had to grip the concrete edge to hold himself still.
“Tell me,t?ht,”he gritted out, his ironclad control over his baser instincts slipping through his fingers. “Tell me how far this can go. Tell me what you want.”
She blinked owlishly up at him. The look in her eyes was glassy, her lips parted and swollen. “What I want?”
