“Can I ask what that entails?” Kieran asks.
“Nope.” Vanessa leans in and kisses my cheek, disappearing in the next moment.
Kieran slowly walks over and sits on the stool. “So that was...”
“Vanessa.” I turn to him. “They’re coming for me?”
“So are we.” He palms my face.
“Oh no.” My eyes widen. “Your sister.”
Kestra. Tiana. The plan. I left them in Kieran’s quarters with a half-formed rescue mission, I must have closed my eyes for a second when Kestra said to rest.
“What about her?”
I wake with a gasp.
15
Kieran
“Fucking dragons.”
I wake gasping, the bond at my wrist burning hot. The dream lingers. Vanessa’s slitted eyes. The bar that smelled like hops and human sweat. Ash’s face when I appeared.
I drag my hands down my face. Try to breathe through the knot in my chest. Ash is awake. Afraid. Or maybe that’s me. The bond pulses with something I can’t name, bleeding between us until I don’t know where she ends and I begin.
Your sister.
“Oh, tell me more.” Chewing tickles the hairs of my ear. I know it’s Whispen.
“Flame lord says you snore.” He crunches. “Personally I find it soothing.”
“Get out.”
He doesn’t move. Just crunches louder.
The words from the dream won’t leave me alone. Kestra is in that court. With Ash. And whatever Ash was trying to tell me before I woke, I didn’t get to hear it.
“What do you know of dragons?” I roll onto my back, scrubbing sleep from my eyes.
“Oh, I know a great many things about dragons.” He drops the popcorn to perch on the edge of the bed. “Why?”
“Because one just threatened to eat me.” I flip the covers off and grab a shirt. “Specifics.”
“Well, they aren’t quite all there.” He taps his temple with wide eyes. “If you know what I mean.”
“I do.” I draw the word out. “Fae?”
“Dragons?” He blinks. “Depends. Some are Fae, some are not. But they can give Fae a true death.”
A true death. Not just a sleeping for years, but death.
“This is an unhelpful conversation, Whispen.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Gods? Fae? Witches? Shifters? What are they?”
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. My muscles ache. My eyes burn. Three weeks of jerking awake every time the bond pulses with her nightmares. I haven’t slept. Not really.
“D, all of the above.” He smirks that pointy smile. “Did you meet one? We haven’t had a dragon in Faerie in a long time. Not since your mother queen”
