Too fucking close.
Flustered and all at once pissed at myself, my traitorous body, and at the scion, I spin to leave. I need to get out of here and as far away from Aeson Noctis as I can get. But something sparkly suddenly catches my eye, and my steps slow despite myself. The wall we were up against isn’t a wall. Well, it was when I was next to it before, but it must have some kind of cloaking tech on it, because now it’sa glass-encased cabinet filled with shelves and…treasure.
Holy shit, this must be Aeson’s trove.
Immediately I tell myself to look away. A dragon’s trove is not something to fuck with, but I can’t pull my stare from what’s sitting front and center in the middle of all the shelves. And then I can’t stop my steps as they carry me closer.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s some kind of jeweled flower, but the breathtaking bloom looks as though it was plucked from the deepest reaches of space itself. Glimmering, crystalized stars speckle the delicate surface of the petals, and the stamen in the middle can only be described as a small bouquet of gossamer galaxies.
“It’s a constellation lily,” Aeson tells me, and I freeze and hold my breath as he draws closer. “It was my grandmother’s. The pride of her trove. I could stare at it for hours every time we’d visit her when I was young. Surprisingly, she always let me, even though she wasn’t otherwise prone to those kinds of soft indulgences.”
I dart a glance toward Aeson, but he doesn’t look protective or offended by the covetous way I’m staring at something he, no doubt, considers precious.
“No one was more shocked than I was when she gifted it to me the day I moved into my own tower and officially started my own trove. I was speechless. I’d never felt so excited and so worried that any second, she would tell me she made a mistake and take it back. But she set it in my hands and then told me that every dragon deserved to fill their life with treasures that they’ll cherish, revere, and protect. She brushed my hair out of my face and cupped my cheek and said that one day I would discover something infinitely more precious than this breathtaking flower. And when that day came, only then would I start to understand just how much she loved me, because seeing me admire and appreciate her beloved constellation lily brought her more joy and contentment than the flower itself ever did.”
I can’t help the small smile that slips across my face. I never met the Noctis Matriarch, but her stout and ferocious personality was legendary even out in The Scorch.
“She died shortly after my mother did,” Aeson tells me, his voice growing soft and sad.
I remember hearing about the queen and how she died trying to bring a third son into the world. The baby didn’t make it either. Back then, the information was nothing more than a fact added to files about the Noctis monarchy. But standing here now, with Aeson so close I can feel his heat and sorrow, it adds an element of reality to it all. Suddenly what the commander went through and the grief he feels isn’t just intel, it’s a piece of his story, a part of who he is. And for the first time since I heard about what happened, I feel for what he lost.
There are a finite number of people in each of our lives who truly love us. That love warms us against the frigid toll life can take. It’s a light that guides us and fortifies us, and losing it leaves us dimmer, leaves our lives darker.
I lost myself in the black abyss for a while. But like the petals of the constellation lily, pinpricks of light have speckled their way through my darkness. My sister. The other Syphons. The wyverns that helped protect and raise all of us.
I study the commander’s reflection in the pane of glass in front of me. His stare is sorrowful and fixed on the beautiful flower that caught my eye. He looks up and our gazes meet in the glass. We stare at one another, and for a flicker of a second, it feels like…everything.
“I’m sorry,” I offer, but I don’t know exactly what I’m apologizing for.
Am I sorry for his loss? His sadness? Mine? For this fucked-up game we’re playing? Or for what I’m really here to do?
A wistful smile tips the corners of his mouth up. “Don’t be. After her rare declaration of love, she cuffed me on the back of the head and told me not to break it or else.”
A small laugh sneaks out of me, and I straighten, pulling my gaze from the display case and stepping back. Aeson waves and once again the glass shelves and the glimmering collections they hold disappear behind the facade of a dragon stone wall.
I haven’t seen this kind of tech before. The wall feels solid. I knock on it, and it doesn’t even sound hollow. There isn’t the slightest hint that anything else could exist here aside from carved stone.
I don’t know if trove tech like this existed back in my father’s day. Maybe it didn’t, or maybe my father was just old school. Older beings can be like that, distrustful or resistant to change. My father had a spelled armoire for his trove, but thank fuck for that, or Enslee and I wouldn’t have had anywhere to hide the night our world ended.
“I have to go,” Aeson tells me after another drawn out moment where our thoughts wander to different times and places.
I clear my throat, giving him a nod, and then I once again move for the door that separates our rooms. I realize as I go that Aeson’s space is a mirror of mine. Bed fixed against the same wall, same sitting area and large archways leading outside. His space is more masculine, darker woods, more leather, bulkier furniture built to be comfortable for someone of his massive stature.
“This isn’t over, Claws. It’s to be continued,” Aeson calls to my back as I twist the knob and open the door that separates our spaces. A door that, until now, has always remained closed.
I try not to read into that while I step from his room into mine.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at your Naming,” he tells me, the promise and warning in that statement dangling on a tantalizing string.
I escape without a word in response or a look over my shoulder. I close the door behind me and press my forehead against the dragons carved into it and sigh.
What the fuck was that?I demand, but of course, no answer is forthcoming.
Aeson and I can never be anything but enemies. He may not know that yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Yes, he burns bright and hot, and the cold dark parts of my broken soul crave that heat, but it could never work. A moth will never survive its love for fire. Ice will always bow to the sun. And I can never be Aeson Noctis’s mate, not when I’m here to become his reckoning.
Chapter 31
THE SKY IS A BLOODY battlefield of red. It’s as though the day is fighting off the night, and their fury has left dusk covered in gashes of scarlet and ruby, rust and vermillion. The last of the day’s light stretches as far as it can reach, but night’s oppressive claim proves too powerful. It smothers twilight’s desperate glow, stealing the last of its hope until tomorrow when the battle begins once again.
