Her pink and purple eyes are clear as she shifts her gaze to me, but her flowing brown hair is slightly messy after she ran her hands through it and whipped her head back and forth like that earlier. The scar that cuts across her cheek and jaw is otherwise the only thing that distracts from her incredibly beautiful face.
I’m still having trouble remembering that this is the Seelie Queen’s second daughter. The actual daughter of the last Seelie Queen. A six-thousand-year-old fae who fought in the great war against the dragon shifters. An actual member of our royal family. Which means that Lavendera isn’t just another fae. As theonly living female with royal blood, she is the de facto Seelie Queen.
Technically, I should be treating her the way that Hana and Haldia and everyone in the Unseelie Court is treating Orion. With deference and subservience. But I just can’t seem to reconcile that truth with the person that I got to know her as. First a friend. Then a traitor. And now… as someone who has been through a hell worse than any of us can even imagine.
Lavendera watched her sister die in the war and her mother be executed afterwards. She watched almost her entire race be rounded up and slaughtered. She watched the children she knew from her realm be trapped alone in a city surrounded by a forest of thorns that she was forced to create. She was betrayed by her own friends, tortured, and fused with an immortal dryad. Then she was made a slave while her mind deteriorated due to both the long millennia and the fact that she has another being trapped inside her head.
To be honest, I’m not sure if I could have survived the things she has endured.
“I’ve already told you,” Lavendera replies, though not unkindly. She sounds more desperate than angry. “First, you need to get me the Soul of Trees.”
“We know where it is,” I say.
Her eyes widen, and a devastating amount of hope crashes over her features.
“Orion was able to find the location in Bane’s memories before he died,” I explain. “So now, we just need to retrieve it. But to do that, we need all the power we can get. So please, you need to teach us.”
For a while, she just looks back at us all in silence. Indecision swirls in her eyes, and she bites her lip slightly. Then she at last draws in a long, bracing breath.
“Alright. I will teach you how to bond with dragons.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Winds wash over the grasslands outside the Unseelie Court. Since Draven needs to be in dragon form for this to work, we had to go outside the wards so that he will actually be able to shift. I stare out at the open landscape, trying to compose myself.
After Grey died, we decided to end the meeting and take some time to rest so that we could start fresh again today. We had already fought an entire battle and killed Emperor Bane by the time Orion saved the dryads and we lost Grey, so we were already exhausted. And after that, it was all just too much.
But now, after lots of food and an entire night of undisturbed rest, we all feel better. Well, most of us, anyway.
After using my magic so much during the battle yesterday, the need to keep using it is even stronger. I flex my hand several times as I try to resist the urge to create emotions just to feel that comforting pleasure instead of this awful tension. And it’s not exactly helping that everyone is staring at me, Draven, and Lavendera.
Dragging in a deep breath, I turn back to face the mass of people who all have their attention on the three of us.
“So do they have to do this ritual thing you mentioned every time?” Rin asks, her black eyes on Lavendera. “It sounds very inconvenient in the middle of battle.”
Lavendera has so far only told us that we need to perform some kind of ritual to establish this union bond between fae and dragon shifter.
“No, they only have to do this first ritual part once,” Lavendera answers. Her eyes are focused and clear as she looks out at the rest of our allies. “After that, the bond is established, and they can open and close the bond at any time.”
“Well, that’s good.”
All of our friends are here. Isera, Alistair, Orion, Galen, and Lyra. And all three clan leaders and their people who came through the portals to help us fight Bane and Jessina earlier. The only one of our allies who isn’t in attendance for this momentous occasion is the Dryad Queen, who instead chose to help get her people settled temporarily in the forests of the Unseelie Court.
“How comewedon’t know how to do this?” Ejnare Amarok asks. Light from the late summer sun glints in his turquoise eyes and makes his blue dragon scale armor shimmer like water. “I get whyyoudon’t know.” He nods to us before motioning to the dragon clan leaders. “But why is it that none of our clans know either?”
“The Green Clan,” Lavendera simply replies.
“I have a hard time believing that the Green Clan would just wipe our memories. They’re honorable. They always have been.”
“Not when their archives are threatened.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “Oh, if we had only seen that danger first. But we didn’t. We never thought…” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” Rin adds, but her voice is soft rather than accusing. “This is our history. I would like to know what really happened.”
Lavendera tilts her head back and draws her fingers through her hair while letting out a long breath. Then she tips her head back down again and looks from face to face. “Jessina and Bane realized that they couldn’t launch their true war, the massive war that they really wanted in order to punish us all, without the help of the other dragon clans. But you would never have joined them of your own free will, because you were our allies. At that point, practically the entire adult population of the Seelie Court had formed a partnership with a dragon shifter.”
“Why? Why were the partnerships needed? Was there another war happening?”
“From our side, we mostly formed partnerships because we wanted to strengthen our position against the Unseelie Court.” She glances at Orion, who smirks, before looking back at the dragon shifters before her. “But it was mostly becauseyouwanted help. There was a lot of jostling for power between the different dragon clans back then.” Her gaze slides to Draven. “Well, between the clans on the mainland anyway. Your clan sort of always stayed out of their bickering.”
