Chapter 11:
Aurlauc
Seeing Athena was like seeing someone brought back from the dead.
There was a joy that twisted in my stomach intermingled with something rotting. I’d told her to run; told her I would find her. And now here she was, back in The Tower in worse straits than before.
Tower guards had stormed into the spire of captivity in the late hours with her, alerting everyone that they had returned the prisoner. It was like the rest of the world celebrated, and I looked on in horror.
Her mind was wracked with pain. She was so delirious, she had no idea how she had even gotten back to The Tower.
The only comfort I took in her state was that she wasn’t dead.
I stepped in to her cell and felt a sob elbow its way up my throat. I swallowed it down hard and looked over the object of my affections for cycles now. The blonde was laying on the table splayed open like a flower, blood dripping down her leg.
“It’s okay,” a human nurse said as she eagerly stitched at the flesh that had fallen on Athena’s thigh. A huge spike jutted out from the left side of her left thigh; the nurse stitched around it and waited for assistance from a shifter to pull the thorn out in one single motion.
I could feel the gravity of the room rise and suddenly there was a tense, fearful electricity in the air. I took a single breath to myself before walking up next to the girl.
“Hi,” she said weakly and burst out into a sob.
I set my jaw at the greeting and ran my hands through her red-stained hair.
Athena gripped my hand hard in hers and shuddered against the pressure being applied to her leg. And then I watched as panic washed over her entire body, for once displaying her capabilities to effectively lie as she made calm eye contact with me and in a calm whisper requested: “Where’s Vaikrand? Can you get him?”
I narrowed my brows at her and my heart sank hard. I squeezed her hand back despite my emotional protest of her request, making haste into the next room to fetch the shifter.
The red shifter and lead guard of The Tower, Kayldreon, grinned at me as I entered, Vaikrand sitting across from him. I looked between them both and felt utterly sickened.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate our little stowaway?” Kayldreon asked with the perfect mixture between crass enjoyment and spite. “Seems Vaikrand finally found a deal worth bringing him home for.”
I felt the red shifter’s words needle up my spine and I looked to Vaikrand in disgust.
“This is how you would bring her back to us?” I asked with a seething rage. I spat at the yellow shifter’s feet and scorned him. “Stay banished, I say.”
“But it’s not for you to say,” Kayldreon argued, as though he spoke for the other Weredragon in the room. “It is the D’Karr’s will that she be brought back to The Tower. Now, how did she ever get out in the first place?” he questioned in a way that said it was a warning.
Finally, Vaikrand spoke. He looked at me with pathetic, sad eyes and asked, “Is she alright?”
I felt my wings span out in a rage, my tail whipping furiously behind me in flicks as I approached the thief.
“She asks for you!” I yelled through the irony. “She must not know it was you who brought this fate on her!”
“I didn’t expect it to happen like…” Vaikrand shook his head and then looked back up at me. “Like this.”
“She asks for you,” I repeated dangerously and the yellow shifter stood and followed me back into her cell.
I could practically feel her body overwhelmed with the pain: a shared sensation that caused a tingling throughout my body. I looked over and saw that Vaikrand could feel it too.
A human nurse, Patience, attended to her. She was tall with an athletic frame. Her hair was short and dark. She was accompanied by one of the D’Karr’s personal medics, Araimal. It would be easy enough for both to remove the massive thorn from Athena’s leg, but it would be hard on her body, especially if Araimal was going to rip it out as he might a thorn stuck in some… beast.
I regarded Araimal’s eyes and leaned over the bed with a pointed gaze. With nothing more than a grunt, the orange shifter immediately relented to the reprimand: be gentle with her.
With the start of his pull came Athena’s first scream. I inhaled sharply at the sound: her squall falling into heavy breaths as Patience maneuvered the thorn slowly through her thigh. Athena clenched her eyes shut and steadied her breaths only for a moment, whispering curses before gritting her teeth and resuming a loud, painful moan.
Vaikrand was quick to reach her, regarding me with a passing disdain as he made his way to the side of the bed. Athena still had her eyes clenched shut, letting out howls of pain until Vaikrand’s hand found its way into hers.
And then she went quiet.
Her hand was weak inside of his, grabbing his fingers with all she could muster. She opened her eyes and met his: the two just staring at one another with a shared silence, which I was both fascinated with and made jealous of—the familiarity between the two that flourished even despite their environment.
Vaikrand? My mind was puzzled and I winced at the sudden realization.
Of all the Weredragons she could have used to get her closer to leaving Dobromia… she chose him? A petty thief? It didn’t seem long ago now that Tredorphen and I had done all we could to get the yellow shifter banished. And here he was. All he had to do was look at her and her whole body was instantly calmed, as if with a switch.
“You this desperate to see me?” the yellow shifter gave a wry smile and squeezed her hand.
She offered a weak smile.
“Well aren’t you sweet. But uh, hey, next time how about we just call instead of putting on this whole performance, huh?” He wrinkled his nose. “Less bloody that way.”
I felt my stomach flip with fury. He was just going to pretend he wasn’t a part of this?
Her eyes grew heavy as she looked up at the shifter, tears brimming against her lashes as she whispered, “Come here.”
“Athena, no,” I said firmly and strode toward the pair. “You don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Leave us,” Vaikrand seethed, and I shoved him out of the way with my side.
Athena cried out again and reached for him. I watched with a furious rage as the yellow shifter leaned down to her face, squeezing her hand as if an unspoken exchange of strength were occurring between them. She groaned through gritted teeth as the spike was finally removed from her leg, the spike falling down to the makeshift mattress as Araimal lacked any further use for it and thus released it from his grips. The orange shifter reapplied pressure to the wound as Patience finished stitching the girl.
The gradient of pink and red from her shirt, and blood mixed with it was like the sunset: like a sunset on the water, shaking and unclear.
“Listen to me,” I said, kneeling down to Athena and taking her hands into mine. “He did this to you, Thena. He’s the one who sold you out to the shifters. To save his own skin.”
The blonde looked at me as though she barely comprehended what I was saying and narrowed her eyes scornfully.
“What?” she asked groggily: angrily.
“You’re delirious,” Vaikrand said smoothly, slipping in between us once more.
“You…” the blonde winced and looked at me, searching my eyes as deeply as she could.
“Vaikrand sold you out,” I enunciated and her eyes went wide.
Her hand slipped quickly from the yellow shifters and I smiled victoriously. With what strength she had left she looked down at her wound and then back up at Vaikrand, her eyes hollow.
“You sold me out,” she said to Vaikrand, slow words moving from her lovely lips.
Vaikrand glared at me and I felt a smirk form at the corner of my mouth. He locked his gaze with mine and stormed out from the tiny cell. So long as it was in my power, he would not be able to turn his back on Athena and then stick around to reap the benefits of her capture. Not on my watch.