Page 33 of The Dragon Queen
I squeezed through the crack then watched him pull it back until it blocked the crack in the cliff once again.
Instead of hitting me with all the questions so close to the storage room, he headed down the path back toward the waterfall, and the second we were near the pool with the falling water as a sound buffer, he turned on me. “What did you hear?”
It was so much information that I didn’t know where to begin. I paused as I tried to find the words. We’d been apart for ten days, and my heart and body missed him like a parched mouth missed water, but it was obvious that he was more desperate for answers than he was for me.
“Calista?”
“I don’t know where to begin?—”
“Just start.”
“I saw your cousins Jairo and Kael. They told their father that the kingdom is dead and if they don’t do something soon, then the citizens will die…or kill them.” I started there and shared all the details that came afterward. I told him about the deal King Barron made with Astaroth and everything else they’d discussed.
Talon’s expression was intense the entire time, full of rage that built with every passing second. His breathing was elevated, and his skin was flushed with the blood that pounded in his temples.
I thought when I finished the tale I would feel better rather than worse, but now, I felt the stress from his body, the ferocity that burned like an eternal flame.
He hadn’t blinked the entire time, just staring in a mixture of anger and horror. “He killed my family and damned my people…just to destroy the kingdom.” His eyes flicked away first, then the rest of his body followed. He paced in the cave near the waterfall, rubbing his hand up and down the back of his head, the veins in his temples popping from the tightness in his entire body. “He burned my entire family…for this?” He turned back to me and threw his arm out in the direction of the city. “For this?” This time, he yelled, his scream echoing off the rock that comprised the cliff.
The kingdom was gray like the dark elf Astaroth, a hollow shell compared to what it’d been. I’d never witnessed the spectacle with my own eyes, but I knew Talon’s family had ruled it with an altruistic passion. “He knows you’re the Death King.”
“HesuspectsI’m the Death King. He was dumb enough to run this kingdom into the fucking ground, but he’s not dumb enough to be fooled.” His hands went to his hips as he stood there before me.
“What do we do now?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and fell into silence, one that was as heavy as rain clouds. “They’re preparing for war, so the timing isn’t ideal. But we can’t retreat because he’ll be at our backs the whole way. We have to move in—and move in now.”
“Now I wish we would have waited for him to come to us.”
“He’ll still be surprised by the dragons we have in our army. And as much as I hate to say this, the fact that his people are hungry works in our favor.”
“It sounds like the soldiers are well-fed. That’s why they continue to serve him.”
“That’s still better than the rest of the citizens of the kingdom. If we give them weapons, I’m sure they’ll fight for us.”
“And I’m sure some of them will know your face, and if not, they’ll know your name. Tell them you’ve come to reclaim what’s yours and free them from their oppression. They’ll fight harder than any trained soldier.”
He was so angry he didn’t seem to care about those words. “It seems like this fight was inevitable for Queen Eldinar and the elves.”
“It was inevitable for all of us. Why do they want to reach Caelum?”
“The same reason as the other dark elves.”
“But why would Barron help him?” I asked. “Why would he let those fiends control the afterlife?”
He considered the question with the same hard gaze. The silence started off small then slowly grew into a crescendo of emptiness. “Because they expect to live forever. They don’t care what happens to mortals.”
It was the most selfish and despicable thing I’d ever heard. “Have they no friends? No family?”
“They only care for themselves—and no one else.” He turned to his pack on the ground and threw it over his shoulder. “We need to return. If we launch our attack after they’ve sailed to the north, then this will all be for nothing.”
I opened my pack and retrieved the clothes I’d arrived in. I made a quick change and stuffed the maid’s outfit into the pack because I felt bad just leaving it there. My heart hadn’t slowed since the revelations I’d overheard. Our mission had felt real every step of the way, but now it had reached a new level of seriousness. “Then let’s hurry.”
We climbed down to where the boat was hidden along the cliffside, and then I rowed us out to sea where the galleon was anchored. It had sat there for ten days and may have looked suspicious to anyone who watched, but since there was nothing on the ship to loot, it seemed safe in the cove.
We climbed aboard and began the three-day journey back to the Hideaway. That time was spent in mostly silence, Talon burdened by the revelations I had shared. His eyes alwaysseemed distant, and his mind seemed to be in a whole different place.
Whenever I woke up in the middle of the night, he was already awake, staring across the room in the dark. Whenever I joined him on deck, his eyes were out to sea like there was something there, when it was just the open ocean.