Andon sprinted toward them, a trail of soldiers and Elemental Guards on his tail as soon as they saw him. Veria rushed after them, and felt Pascha right behind her. One by one, the soldiers and Guards fell, crumpling to the ground as the three sprinted toward the hooded figures—some knocked out by Andon's natural state, some frozen by Pascha, and a few taken out by planks that Veria pulled from the gallows and hurled at their heads.
More soldiers poured out of the castle, and the Guard surrounded them. She heard a shout behind her and the thunder of running boots. Looking back to see who had just started chasing her, Veria tripped on a rock and slammed into the ground on her chest.
Andon whipped around and ran back to her, helping her up from the ground. They started to run again, but it was too late...a familiar icy ache crept through her skin and tightened her muscles.
“Raken,” Andon groaned as they struggled against the freezing of their bodies. Veria fell back to the ground and shivered uncontrollably, every inch of her so stung by the cold it felt like she was actually on fire. Andon fell to his hands and knees just a bit in front of her, gasping for breath and groaning in pain.
Suddenly, the ice was replaced by warmth, and Andon jumped up, whipping around to face Raken. Veria scrambled to her feet and took a quick look around. To her left was Pascha, staring down her husband, and to her right was a hooded figure, but the glimpse of neatly trimmed white whiskers and sandy skin that peeked out from the shadow of the hood gave Turqa away. They were counteracting Raken's freeze.
Andon stormed toward Raken, rage in eyes.
“Andon, no!” came Turqa's voice. “Leave him—we all need to get out of here—now!”
Reluctantly, Andon turned around and resumed his sprint toward the other hooded figures. Veria grabbed Pascha's arm and they followed him.
When they reached the others, a fresh wave of soldiers approached, and a flurry of arrows rained down on them. Four of the five hooded figures crouched down and maneuvered the flames towards the soldiers. One remained standing, and with a dramatic wave of a cloaked arm, the volley of arrows flipped around and darted back to their archers.
Strelzar.
The others were all Fire Magers, Veria figured—Tanisca, Sarco, Aslay and Cadit—watching them as they swarmed their pillars of flame across a line of approaching Guards. Dirt flew up from the ground and snuffed out one flame, and water came up from the roots beneath the dirt and extinguished another.
“They're fighting back, Strelzar,” Andon barked, grabbing a black cloak from him once they were close enough. “What's your plan to get out of here?”
“You three, of course,” Strelzar replied matter-of-factly. “Or, four, counting Coriant here.”
“What do you want us to do?” Pascha asked, taking another cloak from Strelzar that he had just produced from a pocket inside his own.
“The Water ones freeze, the Diamond one incapacitates, and the Dragon one...she takes my hand and we send that so-called King a warning. A reminder, who we are...what he made,” Strelzar said, pulling his hood back to reveal his face and handing her a cloak like the rest.
Veria slipped it on, but left her hood off, and grabbed Strelzar's hand. His Fire energy flooded her body immediately, pleasantly hot after Raken's freeze. Everyone was fighting around them, she even felt the disturbances in the dirt where no one could be seen, but someone was definitely moving—there were surely Wind Magers on both sides, cloaked in invisibility instead of black.
“The balcony,” Strelzar muttered softly to her. “Can you reach it?”
Veria closed her eyes and tried to ignore the dense flurry of both Earth and Fire energy near her, feeling for just the old, static stone of the castle, running up the wall in her head until she was latched onto the smooth, decorative marble pillars of the balcony.
“Yes,” she said. “The marble—it's dense, easy to pick out.”
“I feel it—oooh,” Strelzar hummed appreciatively, “a marble dragon! How distinguished and extravagant.”
“Will you two get on with it?!” Andon snapped.
“Ready when you are, Birdie,” Strelzar purred.
“Go,” Veria said.
She latched onto the pieces of marble and pulled them toward her, hearing the crumble of stone from the balcony as she did. As soon as she had enough, she found the dead embers of Fire within them, awaking them until she could morph the marble into what she wanted. A familiar shape, one she had done many times before.
She opened her eyes and saw that Strelzar had done the same, and two marble dragons hovered in the air in front of the broken balcony.
Several soldiers shouted “the Twin Dragons!” and ran to hide, leaving only a handful of Elemental Guards that hadn't been incapacitated yet, and a few braver soldiers—or possibly just ones who hadn't yet heard the stories.
“Dragons!” Browan bellowed, hovering from the doorway into the castle from the shattered remains of the balcony. “I will see you dead in all this! I swear to you!”
“Well, what do you say about that?” Strelzar asked.
Veria pulled at the Fire energy until she had a spray of flame which she angled at the stone wall just a few feet above Browan's head, and Strelzar followed suit with his dragon.
“What do you say Browan?” Veria shouted, and everyone on the ground froze, everything silent except for her voice. “Does it feel like a good day to die to you? It didn't to me!”
She angled her dragon's mouth to stare him down and made sparks hiss and crack in the marble beast's gaping maw. Strelzar laughed maniacally next to her.
After a moment of thought, Browan finally answered. “Let them go!” Browan yelled. “We will hunt them down like the vermin they are later.”
The remaining soldiers and Guards did not move, whether reluctant to give up or frozen in fear, Veria did not know.
“Retreat, damnit! Retreat!” Browan roared, and within a matter of minutes, everyone was gone, back inside the castle.
“Scurrying away like the cowardly mouse he is,” Aslay spat in disgust as she approached Veria and Strelzar. “Impressive display,” she added with a bright flash of her shining teeth.
“I-I've never seen anything like that,” Tanisca laughed in shock, her eyes wide with awe.
“Me either,” Sarco echoed with pride.
“I have...” Cadit groaned, and everyone laughed.
Everyone except Andon. “Where are we going? We should get out of here now,” he snapped impatiently at Strelzar, not looking at Veria at all.
“Goodness, we can take thirty seconds to celebrate a small victory—you know, the one where you and two exquisitely beautiful and immensely talented women didn't just hang at the gallows,” Strelzar scoffed.
“Where are my daughters?” Andon barked at Tanisca.
“Irea and the baby are both with Willis, at the hideout,” Tanisca replied. “We will see them as soon as we get there.”
“Ava,” Andon said curtly.
“Ava,” Tanisca echoed softly with a nod.
“Well,” Andon grumbled, “let's get on with it.”
“Go on,” Strelzar said, rolling his eyes. “You heard the man. This party is over. Back to the depressing reality of impending war!”
They walked for an hour, Veria's body aching and drained, until they came upon a stable owner who was expecting them, and had a dozen horses ready. They rode the rest of the way to their destination, which happened to be the Pasrect Estate. The Pasrect family had been high-end smugglers of many foreign goods, especially during the Tal'lean Wars, when trade was limited. Strelzar, of course, knew this fact, having been alive for it, and had contacted Lord Pasrect many months prior to see if the old underground smuggling tunnels from the Estate into the village were still open.
They walked through the dimly lit, dank corridor as Lord Pasrect explained his little known family history and pointed out alcove after alcove, each empty of goods now and filled with cots and bundles of clothing for their use.
�
��This one used to hold the finest silk in the world,” Lord Pasrect said as they rounded a corner in the tunnel and came upon a large chamber on their right. Sitting on the cots in the old silk alcove were Irea and Willis, who held Ava in his arms. Andon shoved through the group and rushed to them, taking all three of them in his arms and littering them with kisses on their cheeks and foreheads. Veria walked slowly into the room and dropped to her knees and held her arms out as Irea wiggled out of her father's embrace and ran toward her.
“Momma! What happened?” she squeaked as she flung herself into Veria's arms. “You and Dada are hurt!”
“We are fine now, darling,” Veria whispered, clutching Irea as tightly against her chest as she could. “Don't worry about us.”
“Where's Aleon?” Irea muttered. “I thought he was going to the castle to be with you.”
Veria watched as Andon's entire body went rigid and tense. He pulled away from his father and stood up straight, glaring down at her.
“Your mother left him,” he said coldly.
“Why, Momma?” Irea asked, cocking her head and twirling a strand of Veria's hair in her fingers.
“Alright, I think that's enough,” Strelzar said behind them in the opening of the silk alcove. Veria looked behind her to see that everyone else had moved on, surely to their respective rooms and cots. Everyone except Strelzar, who stared Andon down with a critical eye. “We have business to attend to. Family time can resume later.”
“I am sure I am not needed,” Andon spat, returning Strelzar's glare. “Seems to me the Twin Dragons can handle everything themselves.”
“You know what?” Strelzar grinned. “You are entirely correct. We can. Come, Birdie.”
Veria stood slowly, a lump forming in her throat when Andon shifted his angry gaze from Strelzar to her. She knew her face expressed her remorse and begged for his forgiveness—it had every time he had looked at her since she had done the terrible thing he hated her for—but his stayed cold and unflinching.
She turned and followed Strelzar out of the alcove, traversing the dank underground corridor in silence for several moments until he finally spoke. “This is because of Aleon?” he asked.
“Yes,” Veria sighed. “I shouldn't have—”
“From what Pascha tells me, Browan would have killed Andon on the spot if you hadn't,” Strelzar cut her off. “You saved his life. And Browan would never hurt his own heir. Aleon is safest where he is, for now, and when the time is right, we will get him back.”
Strelzar gestured into a small chamber that looked as though it had once been an office of sorts. Along with a cot, a desk sat in the middle of the room, and stacks and rolls of parchment littering the whole back wall. It was the only room that featured a door that Veria had seen so far, and Strelzar closed it once Veria was inside. He gestured to the cot and she sat, her body slumping in defeat.
“That's what I keep trying to tell him, Strelzar, but...he won't listen—he's hardly uttered a word to me since last night, and he looks at me like I killed one of our children,” she muttered.
“In his eyes, you did,” Strelzar said. “You killed the idea that Aleon was his child by revealing the truth to Browan. All this time, everyone has treated Aleon as Andon's child, and you destroyed that.”
Veria buried her head in her hands and sobbed. “I know! It was terrible, and I feel awful—Andon is Aleon's father to me! He has raised him, he has loved him and taken care of him, he was the one who was there for us—but I couldn't let Browan kill him! I panicked! I-I...I didn't know what else to do!”
“Veria...” Strelzar sighed, sitting next to her on the cot and wrapping an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. “You don't have to explain yourself to me. I understand.”
“But he never will,” Veria cried.
“Yes, he will,” Strelzar assured her. “He will calm down and he will realize that if he had been in your situation, he would have done anything to protect you.”
“What if he doesn't?” Veria wailed in a panic, her body heaving and jolting with each sob and gasp for breath.
Strelzar placed a hand on each of her shoulders and turned her toward him, wiping the streaming tears from her tender face. “Then he is an idiot, and he will lose the greatest woman in the world.”
“Strelzar, stop it,” Veria sniffled, quelling her sobs. “I am not that great.”
“You are to me,” he rebutted, “and you should be to him—he should be remembering every day when he wakes up that he's a lucky bastard you chose him and that he doesn't deserve you. Nobody does. Not him, not me, and especially not Browan.”
“If anything happens to Aleon, he will never forgive me,” Veria whimpered. “He will hate me forever.”
“I won't let anything happen to any of you,” Strelzar declared. “I promise.”
“Why is it so hard with him?” she whispered. “Everything is always so easy with you.”
“I am not going to pretend to understand him, Birdie,” he sighed and shook his head. “He confuses me as much as he does you. If I were him...”
His flawless, ageless face softened and his eyes bore into hers as he trailed off.
“What?” Veria questioned, cocking her head at him.
“If I were him, I'd be doing what I'm doing right now,” he murmured, stroking her face gently with his thumb. “You need comfort right now, you need support. You need reassurance and warmth. You need love.”
Veria stared at him in an awkward silence for several moments, but his gentle gaze never faltered.
“Pascha says she thinks I'm the only woman you will ever love,” Veria whispered.
“Unfortunately for Pascha, she's entirely correct,” he replied, matching her soft volume.
Veria's stomach flipped nervously and her skin tingled under his soft, sturdy palm as he slid his hand down her face and caressed her neck.
“Until my final breath,” he added, dropping his forehead against hers and closing his eyes.
“Don't talk about that,” Veria sighed in protest, her lip quivering. “I don't need to think about that right now.”
“Who will be there for you when I'm gone, Birdie?” he murmured.
“I said stop talking about that!” Veria snapped, shoving her hands against his chest and pushing him away.
He grabbed her arms and her hands clutched into the fabric of his shirt and they locked eyes, their chests heaving as they breathed. Then he attacked, pulling her into him and crashing his lips against hers. She gasped as, to her surprise, flames of desire erupted in her chest. She had thought they had all but died for him, but they were alive and burning. Confusion flooded her head, crackling and thundering like a torrential storm, but her body knew what it wanted as his stony lips drank her in eagerly. An involuntary whimper of arousal sounded in her throat and he growled in response.
With one hand on her waist and the other on the nape of her neck, he pulled her even closer, and her heart pounded, her blood boiled with a mix of desire and anxiety.
Questions and doubt dizzied her as they swarmed through her head, but she couldn't pull away from him, still clutching at his chest. What was she doing? Why was this happening, now, after all this time? Even more reason for Andon to hate her...
Suddenly, Strelzar stopped and broke his lips from hers, pulling away just enough to lock eyes with her. They battled for breath in broken, labored gasps as they stared at each other. Veria searched his dark eyes, and the underground alcove around disappeared, replaced with the spacious cavern of Plazic Peak. Clear, vivid memories of their affair—the days and nights of passion, of rarely leaving his bed or his arms, the uncontrollable desire that had completely consumed them both—assaulted all of her senses. She pulled at his shirt, and he grabbed her hair above the nape of her neck and pulled her head back. A strangled, gasping moan broke from her throat as his fingers dug into her waist and his lips met with her ear.
“No,” he whispered, his stony lips brushed against her ear lobe.
Her h
eart pounded and her body ached, remembering how mad he had driven her by resisting her. She dug her fingers into the hard cliffs of his chest and he exhaled a broken sigh of frustrated want.
“No,” he repeated, but this time he let go and backed away, pulling her hands away from his chest slowly and gently placing them in her lap.
Without another word, he stood and walked out of the room.
The desire he had aroused in her washed away gradually until only the confusion remained. Not sure what time it even was in the windowless underground hideout, she let herself fall back on the cot and tried to rest, but rest eluded her for what felt like hours as she replayed the last day in her mind until she burst into silent tears and cried herself to sleep.
-XVIII-
The next week passed in a blur of activity and chaos, each day bringing with it another group of Magers from some corner of the world or another. The smuggling tunnels were extensive, covering miles of underground territory between the Pasrect Estate and the nearest village, but they were starting to run out of alcoves and had run out of cots rather quickly. Veria estimated there were nearly sixty of them now, and Strelzar assured them that dozens more would join them on the battlefield when the day came.
Other than daily meetings to discuss new developments, Andon and Strelzar both kept their distance from her. Strelzar was at least cordial and warm, despite an awkwardness between them that Veria had never experienced before. Andon was still gruff and cold, speaking to her only when absolutely necessary and rarely looking her in the eye. Every time she was around him, her blood turned to ice and her body went numb, and she felt as if the life were draining from her through her feet.
Her hope that he would forgive her lessened every day, and her dread that he would stop loving her entirely grew.
The Separatist Army, a unit that in its totality now measured in the thousands, was on its way, halfway through Govaland, a week away from the castle of Londess. The castle spies sent word daily that Browan's troops, along with reinforcements from Esperan and Govaland, amassed and prepared for battle. Tal'lea refused to send aid or soldiers, but had, at the news of the real identities of the Twin Dragons and their potential connection to Browan at the time of the attack on Tal'lean soil, declared war on Londess and sent troops by sea—troops that would arrive the same time as the Separatists.
Queen of the Earth: Book V in the Elementals Series Page 15
