Chapter Six
Scashra
The council room was as empty as I had ever seen it.
But this time it wasn’t me slipping in, hoping for an audience with my ever-present father. This time it was just me. Waiting.
The breaths were slipping in and out of my lungs like lightning, rapid and hot. My whole body was vibrating with sick. I stared out the immense windows at the fog that swept over Renden island, like somehow the world knew not to be cheerful: that she was gone.
I didn’t turn, not even when my father stepped in behind me.
He didn’t say a word: just watched me watching the clouds.
We stayed like that for what felt like hours but must have only been a handful of minutes. Until Fenris entered the room in haste. I swallowed hard, and my breathing sped up once more as he walked up next to me, looking in between my father and myself.
My eyes glistened with fury as he looked into them.
The Dendren looked at me, finally, and said, “What’s the status of the breeders?”
Not ‘how’s my daughter?’ and not a word about Pash.
He was a coward, my father.
“Recovered,” I said tersely, staring at the dark gray clouds that scored the sky.
He nodded, pleased so long as he could stay blissfully in the dark about Amlodesh.
“Have a placement ceremony set up for tomorrow,” he said quietly, unwilling to ask me the question that was plaguing him.
Fenris looked between us again like we were madmen and grabbed me by my shoulders, turning me forcefully away from the window. “How is Amlodesh? I can’t reach anyone.”
“Dead,” I said, and the word almost sent me crashing down into a wild fury.
Fenris let out a screeching bellow: echoing through the hollow council chamber so tortured that the timber of it would stay with me forever.
My father stood there, useless without someone telling him what to do, and then he spun on his heel and headed for the door.
Fenris fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands, and suddenly I was right back where I was when our mother died. The bearer of bad news.
I swallowed the sob that was edging up my throat, unsure if I should leave him. The Dendren made his way toward the door and stopped as Fenris’ mate stood to the left of the towering double doors.
She had dark skin and tender, beautiful eyes. I’d met her in passing only a couple of times. Fenris and I hadn’t been on good terms, so getting to know her wasn’t a priority. But at that moment, I was jealous of him.
Someone would come to his aid. When I left this room, she would sweep in and tell him everything would be alright, and he would believe her.
That was something I didn’t have.
“Father,” I called to him, and he turned in surprise at my address. We were to refer to him as Dendren at all times, family or not.
He turned with his wise, tired eyes and nodded toward me.
I licked my lips, now laser-focused as I enunciated, “Where’s Pash?”
He looked at me curiously then and lowered a brow. Then something seemed to click, and he gave a slow nod as he said, “She’s in the gardens.”
I didn’t remember leaving the buildings after that. My body took over and let my mind rest, my body morphing to my full form. I spread my wings out and sped to the gardens: sprawling fauna and flora down by the mainland.
My body stretched through the obstacle course my father had set in place: the sky a training ground for his warriors. Narrow rings lined the path to the gardens, and I flattened my body to race through them, never missing one.
When I reached the gardens, I felt exhausted: my head spinning in a crowd of emotions: fury ranking in the top now. It didn’t take long to find her, my love.
She was standing with Illox, holding his hand and wrenching away as she saw me near. I looked down at her clothes: a pale pink shirt that clung to the smallest, roundest belly.
My breath sped up, and I watched a look of terror wash over Illox’s face as he quickly took to the sky without her.
You’d better run.
“You lied to me,” Pash spat, holding her hand up to stop me as I marched toward her.
I reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders, squeezing until I couldn’t feel my hands anymore: my eyes filling with tears and a wild rage crawling up my throat as I pictured the black ink spilling out of Amlodesh’s mouth.
“You’re pregnant?” I whispered out with such pain that I could barely stand to hear my own voice.
Pash looked up at me with calculated, fearful eyes as they traced back and forth from mine. She tried to broaden her shoulders and loosen herself from my grasp but I only squeezed harder.
“You told me the breeders were dead,” she spat back, seeming just as furious as I was. “Now I hear they’ve been released to Renden!”
I let her go, shoving her backward and watching her stumble as I fumed, “And you told me you’d be mine when I returned.”
“Then I guess we’re both liars.” Her words were venomous as she literally spat toward me.
I turned from her, overwhelmed by my anger and needing a release. Pash shifted, only halfway, letting out her beautiful, feathery wings and vaulted toward me. Now I was the one being shoved.
“I had the opportunity to test whether I could conceive,” she said. “You should be happy for me.”
My eyes went wide then, and she fluttered backward, leading me into a garden maze: high walls of green and purple trees that we could both get out of as easily.
“I’m elated,” I hissed. “Can’t you tell?”
She lurched forward once more and tried to touch my hand, but I ripped it away.
“I’m not concerned with you any longer,” I seethed through clenched teeth.
“This is all I ever wanted,” she said, now on the verge of tears. Real or fake, I couldn’t be sure. “And you can’t even muster up a smile. You really are a selfish prick; you know that?”
I felt heat tense in my stomach, and I pierced a stare through her that made her twitch. “Should I? Should I be happy for you?” I enunciated. “You would have eight humans murdered for their ability to get pregnant when all along you could do the same?” My eerily calm tone turned into outright screaming by the end of my sentence.
For her sake, I needed to get away from her.
“What should you care what the humans feel?” she yelled back, her blue eyes darkening. “I thought you were on my side, always, Scashra! Otherwise, I never would have done this!”
“You wanted them dead!”
She shook her hand and threw her hand out in front of her. “Say what you’re really mad about!”
“You!” I yelled. “Fucking Illox!”
She winced at that and fixed a lock of long, silky hair behind her ear, willing to accept her scold.
“You,” came another sharp jab. “Using me.”
Pash swallowed, and her heaving breaths began to slow as she carefully began walking toward me. I went to speak but snapped my mouth shut, and she gave me a stare that was suddenly sweet and tempered.
Conniving.
“What?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Please, Scashra. We used to tell each other everything.”
I cocked a brow at that and shook my head in disgust. “Is that right? How about we try this. How long have you been with Illox?”
“A year,” she sighed.
“A year?” I repeated in shock. All this time I’d be fawning over her, and she was already claimed by someone else. I’d just been too stupid to see it. I laughed miserably to myself and shook my head.
She took a long breath in and shared, “You should be happy that I can have dragonlings.”
I was shocked. That was her argument?
“Excuse me?” I asked, incredulous.
“I said…” she began nervously. “If we’re to be together, then you should be happy that I’m one of the eniwan who can still have children. How could I ever have been worthy of being your chosen if I couldn’t give you children?”
Her eyes looked sad then, and it only filled me with more anger.
“So you did this for me then?” I raged. “The audacity… that you think we would ever be together now? After this? After you betrayed me?”
“Scashra,” she snipped at me. “I said I would be yours when you became Dendren, not when you came back!”
“No,” I said sharply, “When I came back was the entire… deal.”
“I said when you were Dendren!” she screamed, holding a protective hand over her belly.
I looked down at it, and my eyes went wide once more: hands trembling in fury. “I’m not… in line… for the throne.”
“Don’t be so blind, Scashra! The king wants to hold you back in the council room tomorrow. Why do you think that is? He already told me he’s choosing you to be his heir.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why over Fenris?”
“Because you aren’t with a human,” she snapped. “No one creating a half-breed can be a king. The only way Fenris can take the throne is if you, the Dendren, and Amlodesh all die.”
A rush of numbness shot through my center, and I looked up at her as though I’d already forgotten.
“Well then he’s one down already,” I said.
Pash’s eyes twitched, and she searched my eyes, shaking her head no. My lip began to shake, and she breathed, “Not Amlodesh?”
“Get away from me,” I said tersely as I turned away from her.
I could hear her crying in the maze but couldn’t bring myself to turn around. She used me. The whole time she’d been with Illox: probably tried to con him into killing those girls as well, and when he wouldn’t, she came to me.
Her willing slave.