Chapter 11
SHOCK AND DISBELIEF FILL AESON’S eyes. I pull my head back, our faces mere inches apart as what I just said settles between us like kicked up mud in a pond.
“Dragons…” he repeats, like he needs to wrap his mouth around the words before he can wrap his mind around them. “Who?”
“Not here,” Lorn interjects, reproach darkening his tone. He looks around the corridor pointedly, and Aeson straightens in understanding. We start down the wide hallway again, the clomp of heavy footfall the only sound bouncing off the walls as we go.
Unease cloaks both scions, their furrowed brows and downturned mouths indicative of a typhoon of tumultuous thoughts. There’s something oddly satisfying in the way my revelation has rattled them. It feels karmic and remarkably affirming to witness their struggle to process something that I, myself, have had a hard time coming to grips with. It’s fucked up—I shouldn’t wish my pain on anyone, but I can’t find it in me to care. Betrayal is a nasty beast; why should I be the only one to wear its scars?
“We shouldn’t take her to the infirmary,” Lorn states, his mien contemplative and tense.
“The rookery is secure,” Aeson supplies, but there’s a splash of something in it that I can’t identify, like he’s unsure about that option but doesn’t proffer a better one.
With a nod from big brother, Aeson changes direction. He walks right for what looks like a wall. A wall that suddenly slides open at the commander’s approach, revealing another corridor, one that was completely hidden seconds ago.
I stare at the new opening, utterly gobsmacked. A queasy understanding clambers forward in my mind. On the off chance that someone escaped their cage down here and tried to run, they would never find the way out. It’s diabolical, and brilliant, and it makes my blood run cold.
What the hell was I thinking coming here?
On my best day, I am out of my league in this place, and today sure as shit isn’t my best day.
Aeson picks up his pace and we approach another elevator. I stiffen, nowhere near ready for round two. The commander must notice my reaction because his face dips and his eyes catch mine. Understanding dawns in his gaze, a keen comprehension I want to wipe away.
Why couldn’t he be pretty and dumb? This would be so much easier if he was all package and zero substance. But no, it’s just my luck that the fucker is clever, adept, and annoyingly observant.
Questions I have no intention of answering flash across the commander’s face. I flatten my lips into a scowl and look away from him, making it clear I’m not going to tell him shit about why the elevator puts me on edge.
“Your secrets aren’t going to be yours for much longer,” he warns as the group piles into a much bigger elevator car.
“Maybe, but they’re mine for now,” I contend, ignoring the glimmer of challenge I see in his eyes.
This time, no one presses a hand to a panel or does anything else before the elevator doors close and the box starts moving. I look around the group, trying to discern which one of them is controlling this thing, but everyone looks stiff and focused, making it impossible to tell.
I recognize Chastain, the big blond brute I first ran into back in Lairwood, and another drake from the lirocar ride, the one with purple scale armor whose name I still don’t know. A massive drake, the biggest I’ve ever seen, stands behind Aeson. His hair is black, his complexion tawny, and his scale armor is a rich dark brown. He’s a Thrasher, and his solemn cinnamon brown eyes are fixed steadily on me.
I meet the drake’s stare, neither one of us offering a challenge or grappling for dominance. We simply take one another in, like we’re trying to see where the other might fit in all the uncertainty and chaos that’s unfolded today. I just barely notice the black glyphs and bands on his arms. They’re almost camouflaged against the deep brown of his scale armor, but they irrefutably mark him as a member of the Royal Wing.
Chastain leans over and whispers something to him that I can’t hear, and I spot another set of bands and glyphs that I know for a fact weren’t on the Channeler’s night blue scale armor before. My gaze darts around the elevator, landing on one glyph-covered arm after another until I realize that they’re all marked as members of the Royal Wing. It shouldn’t be a surprise. I am standing in an elevator with the two Noctis scions, but it hammers home my precarious reality even more.
“Who is your mother?” Aeson asks out of nowhere.
The question spikes my adrenaline, which makes my head pulse even harder, but I pretend like nothing’s wrong as I look up into a shrewd pair of sky blue eyes. I get lost in the color for longer than is appropriate, and his hold suddenly tightens…almost possessively.
Why do I like that?
I study his face and find myself wondering things about the commander that I have no business wondering. This is my enemy. I shouldn’t want to know what he looks like when he smiles, or care what his laugh sounds like. I sure as shit shouldn’t be wondering what noises he makes when he comes.
A strange flutter starts in my core, and the oddest feeling washes over me. It’s as though I’m no longer the only one looking out of my eyes. My first thought is that it’s my dragon, floating just below the surface, taking everything in, assessing.
But somehow this is different.
The unfamiliar pressure doesn’t subside, and an undeniable touch of cognizance tickles my mind.
Is Aeson doing this?
Or is this me?
Or maybe this is the Source’s fault for getting me drunk?
