Tears.
“She is gone, isn’t she?” Samar whispered.
Draven’s hand clenched around the horn. “Will you help me?” he asked softly.
Samar’s velvet touch lingered on his hand, and she nodded. “Anything.”
He asked her to turn the water to the waters that ran through the Forest of Darkness. He would need such waters to call on the Wyverdraki and Rhamocour. Samar poured the pail onto the floor, and she crouched down, her hands pressing into the wet stone as she muttered words Draven did not hear.
The water warmed beneath his feet. She stood and once more faced him. “Your hand,” she said, holding out her own. He placed his hand in hers, and she drew a deep cut into his palm.
“You are ready,” she told him.
Draven’s weight shifted. He curled his bleeding hand around the horn, and then he brought it to his lips.
The sound of the Wyverdraki call pulsed through the horn, followed by the great song of the Rhamocour.
And then he waited.
Samar sat across from him in the cell as Draven leaned his back against the wall. He wasn’t accustomed to her being so quiet, but he knew why. He knew she’d come to love Aydra during her time in the Forest.
All Draven could think about was the promise he’d made her.
It was two hours before he heard the cries of the Wyverdraki echo in the night air. His heart constricted as he was reminded of their song. The tears that stung his eyes, he pushed away.
Samar picked the lock on his door, and it creaked open.
“They await their orders, my King,” she said with a bow.
Draven’s hand tightened on the horn, and he remembered the bellow Duarb had taught him the night before. His lips pressed to the end of it, blood on his palm, and he closed his eyes as he blew through it.
Fire cut through the sky.
The tower shook, and he felt the Rhamocour wrap herself around it. Her great roar made a chill run down his spine. Purple flames erupted in the air above him. He could feel its heat on his skin, and he closed his eyes.
He blew through the horn again. Shrieks and screams filled his ears from the shops below. He stepped to the edge of the archway and looked out of it to watch the Wyverdraki family’s fire burn through the streets.
The Rhamocour curled her head down to him. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against her nose, his hand reaching up and stroking her face.
“For her,” he whispered.
The beast’s apple green eyes blinked deliberately at him, and then she lowered her head. Draven lifted himself to her neck. He pressed the horn to his lips again, and they dived into the darkness.
Draven had never ridden on the back of the Rhamocour before. It was a new sensation, feeling the wind on his scalp and wrapping around his body as the dragon’s wings cut into the air. He wondered if this was how Aydra felt when she would ride on the Aenean Orel.
The Rhamocour circled the kingdom. He watched people running in the streets, the same people he’d seen stone his love earlier in the day. An anger pulsed through him that he could not control, and he sent the fire bellow through the horn.
Her body heated beneath him, and purple flames filled the streets.
He had the Rhamocour drop him into the Throne Room after a few more turns around the kingdom.
His feet hit the stone floor. Arbina’s tree was blackened where Aydra had burned against it earlier. He brought the horn to his mouth—
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Arbina’s scream echoed off the Throne Room pillars. Draven tightened his fist around the horn, and he glared back at her.
“You’re the reason for all this,” he seethed. “The reason your children have all betrayed one another. The reason the love of my life had to die on the orders of her own brother’s… all because she loved me. All because you—you decided to take out your hatred for my giver on your own daughters.” A tear slipped down his face, and he swallowed hard. “How could you?”
Arbina’s arms wrapped around her chest, and she stared haughtily at him from the middle of her pool. “My daughters have never lived up to their full potentials. They—”
“Never lived up…” Draven shook his head at her, not believing what she was saying. “You are jealous of them. Of their strength. Of their freedom. So you had your sons torture them into thinking they were less than what they were.” He turned around full towards her as the Rhamocour’s cry filled the air, and a small smile spread on his lips. “I bet Aydra scared you senseless.”
Arbina’s nostrils flared. “Aydra should have learned her place.”
“What to sit on the throne as nothing more than a trophy? An accessory?” His jaw tightened, and his heart thudded in his chest. “She could have ruled over the entire Echelon.”
“Then maybe you should have kept your hands off her.”
“I loved her!” he cried out. His knees hit the rock floor at the edge of her pool, and his voice caught in his throat. “I loved her.” His words were barely a breath as the tears filled his eyes again. He could see Aydra’s face reflected back to him in the water, her smiling eyes…
As his hand clenched around the horn again, and he felt the emptiness of her death pour through him, Arbina’s slow laugh consumed his ears, and his body began to shake.
“You poor, poor, dear…” she mocked, now coming closer to him.
The Rhamocour circled the room.
“Begging for her life… You look just as your giver did before I had Haerland curse him.”
His eyes shot up to meet hers. “What?”
Arbina’s wicked smile filled her face. “He thought he could get away with what he did to me. With betraying our love for the love of his
