“I haven’t conquered yet.”
“Yet. It will come to pass. And I’d like to be at the front with you when it does. What do you think of that?” She turned under his hands, her skin warm, supple, and shimmering in the dark water.
He studied the slant of her mouth, the edge to her teeth as she bit her lip. “I think you’ll do just fine,” he said, his voice tight.
She laughed loudly at that, then kissed his ear, taking time to nip the lobe. Moving so that her body lined up with his, she stared into his eyes like she might cast some unheard of spell with only her piercing gaze. He hated Astraea, but he admired her too. If anyone could do such spellwork, it would be her. Running her hands up his bare chest, she grinned. He couldn’t hide the chills of pleasure.
Maybe he did love her. He kissed her soundly on the mouth, tasting the tideberries’ sour bite. As usual, he forgot about what he should be feeling or what he wanted out of life. He simply fell into their routine and let her drown him in the sense of touch.
Until the words of the Jade dragon flashed through his memory.
He needed to talk to her about what he’d heard of the Earth Queen. But surely it was only the dragon’s ruse, a bluff to get one over on them. Surely it was nothing. And if he brought it up now, Astraea would keep him in her chambers the rest of the night, going over strategy and the details of her deal with the King of the elves.
No, he would keep quiet for now, he thought as he bid her goodnight and swam off to his home on the outcropping near Scar Chasm. He could not have stayed alert for another night of endless plotting.
Chasing an errant shark from his front door with a wave of his spear and a touch of tide magic, Ryton took to his home and shut the door on the war if only for a few hours.
Chapter Thirteen
Vahly woke and thought, yes, perhaps she had died.
No, the pain was still there. Definitely there.
So why was the world like a dream? Beams of golden light drifted through a canopy of oak leaves to touch the exposed roots of trees larger than any she ever could have imagined. Larger than two dragons wide, these oaks spread their limbs over a gently undulating ground of curling ferns, bronze-hued flowers, and carpets of moss thick as winter wool. The air held the scent of sage, mint, and sun-warmed leaves, and despite the pain in her shoulder, drew her into a peace that sang through her bones and told her that all would be well.
She breathed the place in, taking in the smell of forest earth, black and full of last year’s autumn. If it weren’t for the gaping wound, she’d have been happy to stay in that spot, lying on the ground for eternity.
“Vahly?” A deep voice spoke behind her.
She turned her head, nose swiping a clutch of tiny mushrooms, to see an elf. Something stirred in the back of her mind. She knew him. Didn’t she?
“I’m Arcturus. You’re Vahly. We came here to find out how you can rouse your powers as Earth Queen. Do you remember? Are you hurting too badly? I don’t know why we’re here, on the forest floor, beyond the court and alone. I don’t recall the circumstances. But I have a mighty knot on my head and I’m guessing we were injured on our way here. I think I came to find you…”
Vahly thought about sitting up, then decided against it when pain lanced through her shoulder. “Yes,” she croaked. “You came for me. I found you in the Fire Marshes.”
A shock ran through her. She was speaking elvish.
“How am I speaking elvish? I grew up with…” She tried to finish the thought. “I grew up with dragons. Yes, dragons.”
Arcturus smiled and put his large, strong hands on Vahly’s wound. “You did, yes. And you learned elvish in your studies as a child.”
“Of course. Yes.”
“I am trying to heal you, but my own injuries limit me.”
He closed his eyes. It was only then Vahly noticed how their outer edges tilted upward slightly and the way a pale purple hue tinged his eyelids. She imagined if she ran a fingertip over the sensitive skin there, it might feel like velvet.
Then his magic began to work.
Pinpricks of heat skipped along Vahly’s wound, the sensation oddly pleasant. She looked down, moving her shirt and the edge of her vest aside. The wound was closed, but the skin remained puckered and sensitive to touch.
“Thank you, Arc. The pain is no longer screaming Toss this human off the nearest cliff please and be done with it.”
Arc chuckled, a low sound that suited his good nature. “You lost a great deal of blood.” He helped her up. “You’ll still need to take it easy. We’ll hurry to the court and someone there will complete your healing.”
“Good plan.”
He placed a hand on her arm, and the gentle, intimate brush of his thumb over her wrist threatened to overwhelm her. Her breath hitched.
“You can also ask King Mattin all your questions.” Arc paused, his brow furrowing. Pieces of sunlight and small, violet shadows swam around his head and fingers. “I remembered something.”
She shook off her strange feelings. This was progress. “Good! What?”
“I’m the King’s cousin.”
“So you are a royal.” He looked the part with his strong features and powerful build.
Ferns and various types of grasses covered the forest floor. Vahly bent to run her fingers over a light green grass soft as feathers. As they walked, the ground rose subtly. Arc held Vahly so she didn’t fall when she stumbled, because she was still lightheaded. A circle of shimmering mushrooms and slender flowers gave way to a sandy path of flagstones bordered by what appeared to be an herb garden. Lavender bushes taller than Vahly boasted purple buds, mint reached over earthen pots, and pale yarrow flowered between patches of sturdy rosemary and dusky sage.
Orbs of light floated over the plants, edging every leaf in gold.
It was so lovely that Vahly’s pain faded to the back of her mind again.
The path turned beneath more towering oaks. The greenery was so thick, it was like being inside a cave, yet the light was nothing like a cave. Soft and bright at the same time, it limned Arc’s hand and forearm as he helped her along. If she’d thought he was beautiful before, now he was beyond words. This was truly his home, where he belonged, and his magic-suffused flesh and bone shone with the truth of it.
“The garden. It’s perfect.” She paused to pluck a sprig of lavender and inhaled the pure scent. “How do you keep the sunlight here, like this?”
The spheres of light over the garden floated on the breeze like soap bubbles. The outer surface of each orb was clear as glass and each one held a shining sun of its own inside. Once in a while, the contained, sunny luminescence shifted slightly. Miniature rays hit the glassy barrier before scattering into a crowd of tiny, golden stars.
Arc's eyes sparkled, and he graced Vahly with a genuine smile. “Watch this.”
He lifted the arm that wasn’t holding her up, his muscles churning beneath his seemingly polished skin, and his fingers moved in a pattern that reminded Vahly’s of braiding. The purple shadows around his thumb and index finger expanded like spilled ink. The tendrils spun through the air, slow and sure, until the shadows from his thumb met up with the ones from his finger. The light faded behind this weave of darkness, and suddenly twilight had descended onto the ancient forest.
Vahly gasped, taken aback by this strange magic. She reached for the mint, beyond where the weaving had stopped, but the plant joined them in the sphere of twilight, or rather, the darkness expanded to include it. Even the insects chirruped inside their nighttime.
“Would you like to embrace the day again?” Arc’s eyebrow lifted. He seemed to be enjoying this power of his.
He spread his hands and the purple shadow of near dark reversed itself, drawing back into his thumb and forefinger. Pinpoints of illumination spun from his fingers then and suffused the air. The twilight fled, and in its place, the warmth and ease of sunlight blanketed Vahly’s shoulders and head.
She pointed to the half moon, half sun
image on his surcoat before continuing their progress, this time on her own and without his aid. “I’m beginning to understand this. What else can you elves manage with your mysterious magic?”
“We hold the power of air and so the wind sometimes speaks to us, tells us stories. If I were wholly well, I could work the wind and ask it to carry me a good distance.”
“Great. I am the only highbeast on land who cannot fly.”
“And the only one capable of keeping the rest of us alive to do the flying.”
“We’ll see.”
Arc nudged her gently with an elbow. “During our journey here, you claimed to enjoy making bets. Care to wager on yourself?”
A laugh bubbled out of Vahly. “I’ll do that.” It was a dark joke, but funny all the same. “I bet one piece of lapis lazuli stone the length and breadth of my palm. Now what exactly are we betting on regarding me?”
The corner of Arc’s mouth lifted as he watched the path wind eastward under their feet. “That you will wake your magic and become a true Earth Queen.” He met her gaze then, eyes full of mischief, and held out his forearm. “I believe in you.”
Vahly rolled her eyes to hide how much his statement touched her. “But if I’m betting on myself, then you'd be betting against me.”
“It’s not what I would choose,” he said, “but someone must spur you to cheer yourself onward. We will make a heart promise of this bet.”
“You’d risk your life on a bet? I knew there was a reason I like you.”
Arc gripped her forearm.
“Fine,” she said, agreeing. “I promise to pay you one lapis lazuli stone the length and breadth of my palm if I don’t manage to wake my powers.”
He repeated his own version of the promise.
She returned the hold, curling her fingers around his arm. The tingle and sizzle of a promise made warmed her heart.
She held two now.
Both simmered there, deep inside, and if she broke them, they would sear their way into the organ that pumped her Touched blood through her veins and kill her in seconds.
But she couldn’t remember what the other promise involved.
Her palms began to sweat.
“Arcturus. I made another promise. I can feel it.” Her fingers tapped her upper ribs where the oath sat waiting. “I can’t recall anything about it.” She shook her head, the ground unsteady beneath her boots.
“You must’ve made an oath to the Matriarch who raised you.”
Yes. Amona. Her mysterious injury and the blood loss truly had messed with her head. She’d completely forgotten about Amona.
Breathing slowly to dispel panic, she walked beside Arc and focused on the fact that she would soon get the answers she needed to save Amona and the rest of the Lapis from the Sea Queen.
“How do you think I received this wound? It almost looks like I angered an archer.”
Arc nodded. “I don’t understand it either. Perhaps you fell from a precipice and landed on a broken tree limb? My mind can’t bring it forward. But we’ll be at the court soon and we’ll get all of our answers from my kynd.”
Vahly forced herself to be content for the moment. It wasn’t like she had a choice.
The canopy of great oaks clustered even more thickly and shadowed an area bordered by vines. Slim white flowers graced the trailing vines and tangled at the foot of what appeared to be a high-backed throne. The throne looked as though it had simply grown out of the towering oak above it. The tree’s gnarled limbs cascaded inward to form a seat.
The light and shadow shifted. A male elf sat on the throne.
Chapter Fourteen
The elf on the throne had hair that fell to his shoulders, similar in length to Arc’s. Eyes like a falcon’s stared from his face. His features, sharp as cut stone, twitched at their arrival. A crown woven of tiny, brilliant suns and coiling purple-gray fingers of darkness twisted, ever-moving, around the elf’s head. His expression gave absolutely nothing away.
Vahly’s first thought was that he would be fabulous at cards. Her second was that this elf had a presence similar to Arcturus. Her skin buzzed as they approached the throne and her stomach dipped like she had leaped off a ledge.
Arc bowed, an arm against his trim stomach. “My King, my cousin.”
Vahly echoed the demonstration of submission. “King Mattin.”
Twenty or more elves shimmered into view around the dais and throne of tree roots. All were tall and elegant, glowing and beautiful, but none increased that simmering beneath her skin. It seemed one had to have royal elven blood to cause such a reaction in a human. She wondered at the purpose. Was it the magic in their veins calling to her?
A whip-thin female with a head full of thick, pale tresses hurried to greet Arc. She touched his shoulder and smiled like a sister. “Arc. My friend. I’m so glad you are alive.”
“Cassiopeia.” Arc kissed her on both cheeks.
A shorter elf with acorn-brown hair approached, hands held out. “I knew you had not lost your mind and wandered away. Not our Arcturus.” He patted Arc on the back with a force that would probably have brought Vahly to her knees, but merely jostled Arc.
“I hope you didn’t injure yourself searching for me, Haldus.”
A group of elves calling themselves elders came forward dipping their silver, black, and brown heads in greeting.
One barrel-chested male elder smiled at Vahly, but his eyes were cautious and wise. “I look forward to hearing your story, Arcturus.”
“Thank you, General Regulus,” Arc answered.
The king stood in one quick, graceful movement. “Arcturus. We had thought you dead.”
He rushed forward and clasped both of Arc’s forearms. Mattin was a few inches shorter than Arc, but they both seemed capable of strong magic. Their fingers and head displayed those barely visible tendrils and pinpoints of shadow and light that were becoming familiar to Vahly.
She knew now how to tip her head and glance at the play of day and night around them to see it more clearly. Her eyes fought to slide off the sight of it, but she kept her attention divided and beat the magic at its game.
The king, resplendent in a silver tunic embroidered with a black half sun, half moon on his chest, returned to his throne, and then accepted a ruby-encrusted goblet from an elf standing to his right.
This king’s assistant, or whatever he was, had white-gold hair and a smile like a red wound in his otherwise lovely face.
He was the first elf that got Vahly’s hackles up.
But he was an elf. With Blackwater in their very blood, they were inherently good, right? Despite what the dragons thought of them, and the feuds they’d had with the Lapis, elves weren’t evil. Arrogant, unyielding, possibly in error when they came up against the dragons at some points in history, but they weren’t evil. Except this one elf’s presence screamed I like to cut throats.
Did Arc feel that way about his king’s right hand too? Arc’s gaze traveled over the elf in question and his eyes cooled. So yes. Arc was aware of the foul energy that one was giving off.
“Thank you, Canopus,” the King said as he flipped the ends of his long-sleeved tunic out of the way and took his seat. “Now, please, Arcturus. Tell us where you have been and who this is.”
“Forgive me for not asking for help,” Arc said. “The wind told me an unbelievable story. I had thought to prove it true before risking more of my kynd to the dragons’ wrath. The wind spoke of a surviving human and that the individual was Touched. This was the tale of the rising Earth Queen, Vahly of the Lapis.”
Canopus hissed at the name of the dragon clan. “She is a human? But bonded to dragons? This is foul magic.”
He would know, Vahly thought wryly. There was definitely something off about that one. “I have no foul magic,” she said. “I have no magic at all, in fact. And that’s why I’m here.” She rubbed a hand over her Blackwater mark to show the gathered elves that she was indeed as Arc claimed.
“The idea that there might
be hope for us in the fight against the sea thrilled me,” Arc said. “I headed out to find Vahly, but fell to the evils of the Fire Marshes. The Earth Queen found me though my horse was lost. She believes we have information that will help her find her powers. We headed back, but were injured again along the way, although I can’t tell you how for the combination of whatever head injury and noxious gases the marshes inflicted upon us has tampered with our minds. I can’t seem to heal myself or Vahly completely.”
“Allow me.” Cassiopeia set her hands on Vahly first.
A warm breeze stirred the hairs around Vahly’s temples and light bloomed along the edges of the female’s slender fingers. Relief flooded Vahly’s shoulder and energy slipped into her veins, rejuvenating her. As Cassiopeia worked, Vahly explained the circumstances of her upbringing, including how Amona had rescued her from the Lost Valley floods and the teeth of the sea folk. Mattin asked numerous questions, all of which she answered with honesty.
“How was it, living with the fire kynd, with the dragons?” Mattin leaned forward and propped an elbow on the throne’s arm.
“Hot.”
The elves’ laughter filled the forest.
“Be assured, we will not ask you to live side by side with earthblood vents here. We air kynd do not enjoy such high temperatures.”
“That is a relief. I could do without sweating through my clothes during a feast.”
“You lost much blood, Earth Queen.” Cassiopeia stepped back.
“I feel like gold now though. Thank you.”
Cassiopeia bowed slightly and turned to heal Arc.
A steel-haired elf wearing a deep green tunic and brown trousers lifted a hand to Arc. “What answers do you seek, Vahly?”
“Greetings, Rigel,” Arc said. “I am glad to see your face again.”
“And I yours, Arcturus.”
The sunlight slid through the greenery above and danced over the elves’ smooth foreheads, arms, and hands. The scent of lavender and sap floated on a gentle breath of wind. It was enough to make Vahly want to have a seat and live there forever.
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