We flew east for an entire day and continued all through the night. My body ached. My skin was raw from the series of burns I had acquired over the past couple of days, now aggravated by the constant scrape of wind on dragon-back. Every gust dragged over me like sandpaper, and I clenched my jaw to keep from crying out.
Antonias had given me his outer shirt to wear; to cover the ritual outfit the acolytes had dressed me in. Even with the added layer, I was still freezing—especially when the sun set and the chill of the night sky seeped into my bones. The cold found every crack in my exhaustion and settled there.
But as uncomfortable as I was, it was nothing compared to what Titus had endured—what he was undoubtedly still going through. He lay behind me on his back, and I became fixated on the small rises and falls of his chest, obsessed with needing to know how closely he walked the line between life and death. I kept my fingers laced through his, terrified that if I were to let go, even a second, he would slip away.
“Just stay with me Titus, hold on for me.” I whispered to him as I held his hand.
Antonias said it was too soon to tell if he would pull through or not, but he was taking us to his hometown on the eastern coast, to a city known as Ashenport. There, in his family’s estate, a mender could see to him.
During our flight, conversation was extremely difficult over the roaring winds, so I saved the bulk of my questions for when we arrived in Ashenport.
The sun had just begun to rise at the kingdom’s edge, and its warm rays made the blue coastline sparkle.
Amarilies, Antonias’s dragon, was a gentle-hearted female beast covered in shimmering yellow scales that almost looked gold in the radiance of the morning sun. She had let me talk to her on the flight, using my ability. She told me that I could trust Antonias, and for some reason, I would trust the word of a dragon over that of a Fae any day.
The landscape shifted from the jagged black and gray rock and mountains of Embris to gray-brown, desolate flatlands by Ickeriss that then blended into bright greens, lush foliage, and a glistening ocean. This was the coastal region—dramatic, where rugged mountain ranges collided with hundreds of miles of turquoise coastline. It challenged everything I had come to know about the Kingdom of Flame.
How could a region so luminous exist in a kingdom otherwise covered in ash and rock?
The land was extreme in its contrasts—from sunbaked white sand beaches and sheer seaside cliffs to dark, dense forests and alpine plateaus.
A sizable city appeared on the horizon with pastel homes clustered so close to the water’s edge that the lapping sea against their foundations created canals where skinny boats navigated narrow streets. It looked unreal, like something lifted out of another realm entirely.
Being this far east meant the Council’s influence thinned. Ashenport was closer to the Kingdom of Seas than to Embris, and it showed.
Beyond the clusters of homes and buildings, acres and acres of vineyards stretched across the horizon.
We landed gracefully on a dragon platform outside a sizable beige, speckled estate with red clay shingles and crawling vines. A fountain with a bronze, snake-like dragon statue—its head pointed toward the sky—blasted a beam of water upward that cascaded into the tiled pool below.
Antonias wasted no time. “Summon the mender, and bring a med cart!” he shouted at the doorkeepers.
Within minutes, a group of Fire Fae servants carefully moved Titus’s unconscious body onto the cart. My stomach clenched as his scorched skin shifted under the blankets, and I swallowed the panic threatening to rise.
“Oh my master Antonias! Whatever happened to the poor male?” a short, older Fire Fae male in a brown robe asked.
“Love,” Antonias replied plainly.
The old male squinted through glasses sliding down his nose, blinked curiously, then pushed them back up. “Ah, yes…that will do it—come, the infirmary is right this way.”
“Thank you Sanaris, it’s good to see you.”
In the infirmary, I sat and watched as Sanaris the mender started slicing the skin from the large fish servants brought in. The sharp, briny smell turned my stomach, but I forced myself to keep watching.
“Fish?” I asked Antonias in a hushed voice, brow raised. “It’s a coastal-region method to treat burns, it’s very effective,” he replied.
Curiously, I watched the mender lay fish skins across the entirety of Titus’s body. The sight was strange, almost grotesque, yet my chest loosened a fraction when I saw the careful way Sanaris handled him, like Titus was precious. Because he was.
“I’ll need to give him some crushed Velarian root to sleep and some fluids, but he must be powerful because some wounds have already begun to self-heal. It’s hard to say what the male’s prognosis is. To me, I wouldn’t have thought him to survive the trip—but he has, and now his power is slowly healing his body. In time, we should know more…eh, who is he anyway Antonias…your new…?”
“No…no,” Antonias replied quickly, shaking his head. “This is actually his mate, Lady Delilah.” He said, gesturing to me.
Sanaris looked to the council member with a flicker of disappointment, then shifted his attention to me. He smiled warmly and bowed his head. “It is very lovely to meet you Lady Delilah, I am Sanaris head mender on staff. Please make yourself at home, here at the Viscount’s estate while your mate recovers, I shall see to it the staff makes a room ready for you.”
The thought of leaving Titus’s side in this strange place flooded my chest with panic. It seemed safe enough—clean, bright, and calm—but I was not going to abandon him, especially not after he had nearly given his life for me.
“Oh, thank you but that won’t be necessary, I would rather just sleep in here, in case he wakes up.” I said politely, gesturing to a chair beside the bed Titus slept. “You’re a mender not a high healer? What’s the difference?”
“As a mender I use a more holistic approach to healing as opposed to magic provided through ancient blood, high healers are so very rare you see, but I have summoned one from a few towns over to help, but it will take him some time to arrive, in the meantime I will do everything I can for your mate, Lady Delilah.”
