As Razer predicted, the five dozen or so who marched from Algorath appeared at the edges of camp a couple of hours later. His smugness rippled through the vinculums, making Almandine snarky with her responses and Ariadne oddly protective of the small dragon.
“How is she supposed to understand time like us yet?” she asked.
Razer poked back without hesitation. “If she wants to be a know-it-all,then she had better learn it all quickly.”
“That’s rich coming from someone who gotlostin anice tundrawhen he was a couple of weeks old,” Azriel cut in as he tore into a piece of sourdough bread. He had been interrupted so many times during his meal that he had yet to make it through a single serving of soup.
The huff from Razer was audible across the camp, causing some dhemons to stop and turn in his direction. “Everything looks the same up there!”
“And time feels differently after thousands of years in an egg,” Almandine snapped.
Ariadne could not help but grin. Getting to know Razer on an entirely different level had become one of the highlights of gaining a bondheart—even if he refused to speak to her most of the time. The dragon was every bit as sassy as Azriel hadpreviously complained about. It did not stop her from enjoying their bickering. It was an odd comfort to hear them argue like siblings.
Standing from her position near the fire, Ariadne craned her head in search of her sister. Phulan appeared first, speaking in the dhemon tongue to an unfamiliar woman with a scar that curved up from the corner of her dark blue lips. After acknowledging Ariadne with a nod, she pointed behind her to where Emillie wove from between tents with her huge lycan mate by her side.
How strange for them both to end up bonded to two very different races of fae. The thought never ceased to amaze Ariadne. Did they bear fae heritage as she suspected? Or were the lines between kingdoms so solidly drawn that would-be mates merely never met? She may never gain the true answer—nor did she care to search.
After all…she had seen enough to determine it to be possible. No one could refute that, not even the dhemon woman who had previously been held in the dungeons ofAuhlaand now journeyed with them in the hopes of reconnecting her to Keon to aid her broken bond.
“It appears you were successful,” Ariadne said as she embraced her sister. “There are far more than I expected.”
“I have quite the tale to tell,” Emillie breathed and looked over her shoulder to where Revelie stood with none other than Jakhov, the rather wicked-looking dhemon who sat beside Ariadne for her first meal at the Caldwell Estate.
Ariadne raised her brows. “About the break-out? Or that?”
Blowing out a long breath, Emillie shook her head. “All of it.”
“It looks as though you were successful.” Ariadne counted a handful of ex-prisoners veering straight for Azriel. Their instructions would have been clear: pledge a blood oath to the Dhemon King and walk free. She had listened to his husbandmumbling the words under his breath for the last hour in preparation.
“With magic-nulling blood from Rev and me,” Emillie said, “it was a rather simple matter of accurately nicking the guards with laced arrows.”
Watching their friend pause and look Jakhov very seriously in the eyes before walking away from him, Ariadne’s stomach dropped. “How did Jakhov take to that?”
Her sister grimaced. “He and Luce had to go for a walk.”
“I would never have asked him to go if I had known.” Ariadne studied the dhemon whose eyes never left Revelie as she approached. She turned her attention back to the Caersan woman and raised her brows. “Are you well?”
“How do you do it?” Revelie craned to look over Ariadne’s shoulder at Azriel. “I never realized just how…” Her mouth twisted as she searched for the correct words.
“Emotional?” Ariadne offered.
“Volatile?” Emillie added.
With a sigh, Revelie’s shoulders sagged. “Well…yes.”
Talk turned to comparing their different bonded fae with the latest of them devouring their words in the hope of gathering some semblance of understanding when it came to Jakhov. That he appeared to be having just as much difficulty adjusting to the bond as Azriel had Ariadne wondering if it was a dhemon problem…or a male problem. Luce, though overly protective in her own way, did not seem to struggle with her bond to Emillie quite as much as either dhemon despite not having it reciprocated.
Whatever the cause, Ariadne knew one thing to be certain when it came to Revelie: the Caersan would take on Jakhov’s emotions whether she wanted to or not, now that she knew she was the cause of his unease. Despite reassuring her that, no, she didnotneed to begin looking at the dhemon as a partner,Revelie seemed just as determined as she always did to be exactly what he needed.
“No one expects that of you,” Ariadne assured her. “Not me. Not Azriel. No one.”
Revelie, however, raised her head in that previous Golden Rose fashion and said, “Perhaps not, but I am willing to spend time with him and see if any…feelings…develop.”
“There is always the ritual,” Emillie suggested. “It could cause the bond to complete by linking you to him also.”
With a grumble, Ariadne said, “It had better or all of this is for naught, and I will speak with Keon personally about this issue.”
The two laughed at that, and for a moment, everything felt as it once had. Normality was a far reach from where Ariadne now stood, yet being there with her friends was like a glimpse of what could be. What their lives could become, given the chance for the war to end.
