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“You knew he would die.” My voice isn’t recognizable again. It’s dark, cold, and detached. A monster unfurling its wings deep in my soul.
“Every colony is bound by an ancient magic to never speak of the prophecy to those that are in it.” She dips her head. “We had no choice.” Everything inside of me feels like it’s decaying. Shrinking, shriveling, becoming dry and papery. To know that someone could have warned us. Someone could have saved him.
“Memories will reveal why we kept secrets. Ya journey is only just beginnin’.”
She’s saying that the prophecy will make sense to me if I keep sifting through these painful memories? Do I even want to know after what I just saw?
I pick up my dripping dagger and turn to walk away.
“Wait,” she calls, crunching through the snow to face me again. “Let me make ya a fire. Give ya a cloak.”
Her words make me realize my bare arms are covered in goose bumps. This archer’s dress is sleeveless, with long slits around my legs covered in tight black trousers. There, essentially, isn’t anything keeping me from freezing to death.
I jerk my chin, a quick yes to her offer.
Asena removes a second cloak, black with a green tint and sleek fur. It weighs a ton as she drapes it gingerly over my shoulders.
I sit on a log, watching her assemble a fire. Her long fingers are quick to create sparks over the wood and dried moss. A small flame catches over the wood, eating through the moss until it roars to life.
“I can make ya food,” she offers next, dusting her hands on her wool pants.
I shake my head. “You’ve done enough.”And yet you didn’t save him. You chose to watch us leave your home and enter a slaughter.
Asena waits next to me, shifting on her feet with a new thought. “Let me brush and braid ya hair before I go then, dashna.” She kneels next to me without waiting for confirmation.
I’ve lost the energy to argue as she begins working on the knots and tangled strands. The fire thaws my toes, spreading up my legs through my numbness. My hollow being.
After the sharp pain in my scalp eases, once the knots are brushed out, she caresses my hair with her fingers. A shiver spreads over every hair follicle, and for a moment, I close my eyes, pretending Kane is with me. The way he’d hold me close, running a hand through my long hair. And I’d breathe in his scent from the crook of his neck. It was peace. It was heaven. I never needed anything more than that.
I just want to see him smile one more time. Hear his deep, rumbling laugh. Touch the scratchy scruff along his sharp jawline. Did I ever thank him for breaking me out of the cage that was the Chandelier City? Or bringing me into the only life I wanted? One where we sleep under the stars every night. Hike through the tallest trees, and bathe under waterfalls.
I was so angry with him before it all happened. The lies. The secrets. Aurick’s identity revealed. I couldn’t forgive him. He died knowing that.
And I’m ashamed.
“Ya have always let men rule ya life, dashna,” Asena says as she ties off another braid.
I take a deep, controlled breath.
“Either letting ’em hit ya or hidin’ under their protection.” Her fingers stroke the side of my neck. “It’s time ya bury that notion that men are stronger. Ya were born to lead men, not cower under their egos.”
I tilt my head to look at her from the corner of my eye. “Don’t you dare speak poorly of him.” Dessin may have had an ego, but he needed the confidence to do the impossible. To walk where no man has ever stepped.
“I meant no offense.” Her hands still. “But women are dragons kept in chains, convinced that they are helpless little birds. But that’s a lie, dashna. It’s time someone told ya that ya can breathe fire.”
My back and arms erupt in icy chills. Lately, I’ve been feeling that way. Never in my life have I felt so destructive, so hateful, so… beastly.
Asena pats me on the shoulder after she finishes the last braid. My hand instinctively reaches up to my scalp, patting my way down the intricate way she pulled the hair from my face. One big braid is laced together on top of my head, only using the upper half of my hair. And then there are a few small ones that fall along the sides of my head, on top of the smooth unbraided, brushed hair.
My hand falls back to my lap, and Asena moves to kneel in front of me before she leaves, looking over her work with silent pride. She smiles, her almond eyes lighting up.
“Be the dragon that flies over men, dashna.”
17. “I wasn’t always a monster to her…”
I stare idly into the fire until the cloak falls from my shoulders, leaving my arms stinging in the frosty wind.
Plans for where I’ll go next skitter across my thoughts. My father’s house, the Red Oaks, then maybe the hill Scarlett’s house used to sit on.
