Page 42 of The Dragon Queen
It felt like a blessing to hear those words, to know she would cheer for my triumph from a distance, that my success meant as much to her. “I will.”
She moved into me, rested her cheek against my chest plate, and then squeezed the armor that surrounded my torso. She couldn’t touch my skin, just the tough scales that protected my body from both injury and fire.
I almost didn’t hug her back because it was too hard, too hard to say goodbye. But my arms found their life, and I hooked themaround her body and dropped my chin to her head, feeling the soft strands against my skin. I squeezed her against me and closed my eyes, knowing that this might be the last time I ever got to hold her, to look at her, to smell her.
The knowledge was heavy enough to break my spine and crush my lungs. Flashbacks moved across my mind, but instead of the horrible images of fire and ash, I saw her…waking up and seeing me beside her. The glow in her eyes and the smile on her lips. The way her palm cupped my cheek and she kissed me like she loved me. When I landed on the outskirts of the forest and defeated General Noose, she crumpled into my arms and vowed she would never leave me again. Sunsets spent on that beach in the Lands of Thalian, when she tried to tell me the feelings that burned in her heart and I tried to stop her.
I’d thought I could never love again, never care again, then Calista appeared in the Arid Sands with a fire that rivaled the flames inside Khazmuda’s belly, and she struck me down like a bolt of lightning. She changed my life in mere days, healed my heart with her words and her touch, fixed a broken man who refused to heal.
She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and if I didn’t choose Queen Eldinar to take my place, I would be the worst thing that had ever happened to her. I’d let her love me when I knew our time would be brief, when I would die before we could live. It was the single most horrific thing I’d ever done to anyone, especially a person so innocent, who had already suffered so much by my own hand.
She’d become a permanent fixture at my side, the two of us melding into a sculpture that would stand in the courtyard of a beautiful castle, withstanding the passage of time even though our story had ended long ago. She didn’t want to let me go.
I wanted to let her go even less.
Minutes passed. People on the boat dispersed to give us the privacy to savor a never-ending moment. Waves continued to lap at the galleon, and we slightly shifted from side to side, our arms locked around each other with an iron grip.
She was the first one to shift away…and I thought I would die.
With her face just inches from mine, she looked into my eyes with a sadness heavier than the anchor in the water. “Don’t die.”
I sucked in an involuntary breath, felt the sting of tears in my eyes, felt the ground rise up and hit me in the face. Unable to withstand the innocence in her green eyes, I clenched mine closed and let the self-loathing swallow me.
I could picture her devastation, the pain she would carry for the rest of her life. She would fall to her knees beside my body, cup my cheeks, and beg me to come back to her. Tears would splatter like raindrops across my corpse. She would shake me and shake me, doing her best to bring me back when she didn’t understand why I left in the first place.
That would be the end of our story…if I didn’t betray my friend.
When I opened my eyes again, I felt her soft palms cup my cheeks and look at me with a watery gaze. Her thumb brushed my cheeks the way mine had done to her so many times, catching a fallen tear.
Both of my hands dug into her hair before I cradled her face to mine and kissed her. Not a kiss that sparked fire, but one that dulled whatever flames we had left. The smoke died and the campfire went cold. Our passion had frozen like snow.
It was a goodbye.
I pulled away and looked at her, experiencing a rush of numbness that made everything feel dead. It masked all the emotion I didn’t want to feel, all the regrets and the remorse, the hatred that hit bone. “I love you, Calista Laurier.”
Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “And I you, Talon Rothschild.”
Chapter 7
Calista
My eyes were locked on the stars above, their brightness burning through the thin clouds that passed overhead. The warm breeze moved through my hair and pulled a strand from my face. It was gentle, soothing the aches in my heart.
“Do you need a moment, Calista?” Queen Eldinar appeared beside me, her two short blades at her hips, her cape flowing elegantly behind her. She didn’t look at me directly. Instead, she examined the stars with the same interest.
The dragons were grounded by the shore, while my uncle and the army sailed to the harbor under the cover of darkness. The plan was officially set in motion, and there was nothing left to do but follow it through. “I’m fine.”
“It’s okay not to be fine.”
I pulled my gaze away from the heavens to look at her. “You make it look so easy.”
“If that’s what you think, then I’m doing my job correctly,” she said. “The love I share with my husband is deeper than the rivers that run through Riviana Star, but we both understand there aremore important things than our love. I hope we will be reunited once this battle is over, but I understand we may not.”
I looked away. “I wish I could be as pragmatic.”
She continued to study me. “Talon has been working toward this moment for almost as long as you’ve been alive. To quell the sadness, focus on what’s about to come to pass. Focus on the accomplishment that’s been twenty years in the making. His family didn’t deserve such brutality—and Talon didn’t deserve to carry it. My focus may be on the dragons, but my heart continues to cheer for his success.”
“As does mine.”