Chapter 4

They said all who hail from the Twilight Dynasty

have the power of fire in their blood…

Z iven lands first in the clearing, and he knocks over every bit of forgotten gardens left. His dragon digs his claws into the dirt at his feet, roaring at the fae in front of the mansion. Maeve smoothly lands next to him, half on the gate I once ran through before getting trapped in the mansion. Our dragons fly well together, and I found it easier to hold onto Maeve as she kept up with Brythan. I know Ziven and Brythan were friends, and their dragons must have flown together before, because they act too natural in the sky. Am I jealous of Atilia? Am I jealous of a dead woman? I don't know, but something feels horrid in my stomach at the idea of them spending any time together. I keep thinking of the diary, of how she was so in love with Ziven, and how he turned his back on her. Or at least, that is what she felt happened. Will he do that to me? Did he already?

Daegan abandoned her altogether, and I think they had a relationship.

I manage to dismount a little bit easier this time with my torn dress before she takes off and Brythan joins her in the skies. Watching them, I still can't get over the amazement of seeing dragons in the sky. I need some training on how to be a dragon rider, but something about it feels natural, and I wonder if my connection to the princess is that reason. It might explain why I learnt to fight quicker than Ziven expected, why the stones glowed red for me and not yellow like everyone else. I need to ask Ziven or Maeve about the stones.

Outside of the mansion is filled with fae, and so many of them are touching the ground, staring at the sky and just breathing in the air. They were trapped and even if it was my blood spilled to get them out, I like seeing them happy. Even as fucked up as that is. Calix and his dragon are still on top of the mansion, watching everything, and he nods to Ziven. Ziven pulls his eyes down and watches the fae with a coldness I'm used to seeing from him. He moves to stand on a rock and claps his hands once to attract attention. I know if I stood up there and clapped, no one would bother stopping what they are doing, but when Ziven does it, his natural commanding presence draws every pair of eyes to him like a moth to a flame.

"Everyone needs to get back inside. This is fucking war, not a chance to smell flowers or dance about like we are fairies from the tales your parents told you. We survived in there for hundreds of years, and unless you want to be a vampyre's lunch, get the fuck back inside." Whispers break out and everyone goes silent as they look to Ziven and are shocked by his bluntness. I internally wince, knowing he really needs to work on his speeches. Many of them turn their eyes to me, and some are clearly surprised I'm alive.

I clear my throat. Here it goes. "There are still vampyres out here who will be escaping into the forest and looking for any fae to kill. King Ziven is offering to protect you inside the mansion while the royals make a plan for our freedom."

Ziven takes over at my pause, and my stomach finally stops feeling like it's rising up my throat. "As you are all aware, these are my lands, and while you're here in them, you follow my command. The rule of Moon stands, and I order you back into the mansion."

"Where is King Daegan?" Someone shouts out, followed by a few agreements. They love Daegan, their blessed Sun king who is a fucking manipulative monster. If only they knew what he was really like. I stare at all the people around me and hate that everyone here knew I was destined to die as a price for their freedom. And they were all fine with that.

Ziven waves his hands out, but I know him well enough to see he is pissed. "Fucked off somewhere. Stay out here if you want to die. I'm done convincing you to save your own lives. Wait for your Sun king if you want." He jumps off the rock and offers me his hand. "Come with me." I take his hand even when I'm not sure where we stand at this point, but I know I don't want to be left alone with this many Sun Dynasty people staring at me.

Even though most of the people here are from the Sun Dynasty, they all start walking back inside with the threat of the vampyres and with Daegan nowhere to be seen. I don't blame them for wanting to stay outside though, after all those years of being trapped in there. I spot Catherine standing to the right of the doors, and when she sees me, she waves me over. I stare at my first female friend and see all the times she lied, all the times she looked like she wanted to say more and all the times she tried with Mazzis to show me the truth. She is rubbing her arm as I stare at her, digging my feet into the stone.

I tug on Ziven's hand to stop him before he pulls me along. "I'll catch up."

Ziven follows my line of sight to Catherine, and he leans down. "I'll wait by the door where I can see you. Remember, you're the one person in the way of Daegan's freedom, and you're not safe."

I nod at him before heading towards Catherine. She is wearing a brown cloak from her shoulders down that matches the colour of her hair, which is in a messy bun like she threw it up at the last second. The sun mark on her neck seems to flash at me as I stop a few steps away. "Do you hate me?" Tears brim in her eyes, and her voice cracks. "Because I would if I were you. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. I promise if I could have found a way around the magic or a way to make sure you were not harmed, I would have. I couldn't even speak out about King Daegan to warn you; it felt like the magic only wrapped tighter around me the more I became your friend. Like it knew I'd tell you."

"I know all that, but…" I pause, a sob working its way up my throat. I push it down. "I thought you were my best friend, and you let me get close to Daegan, knowing he wanted me dead. You could have said anything! Anything, Catherine."

"I couldn't," she whispers back, taking a step forward. "I was going to say something, but Daegan knew we were friends and made it clear, if I said a word against him, he would murder my family as traitors to our race. His power is stronger than any of us, and any time I tried to tell you about any of it, I felt like I was being strangled. I was a kid when I was brought here, and I never saw you in another life, but my parents did. They said you were a spitting image of her, and many in there call you a goddess for protecting them. They don't see you as trapping them but saving them."

"I'm not her!" I all but shout. "I don't have her memories, I don't?—"

"I know," she interrupts, brushing a lock of her stray hair to the side. "You're not a spoiled princess like my parents remember. You're someone that's fierce and brave and courageous. Someone who defended me when they definitely didn't have to. Someone who loves to read and escape within books. Someone who became friends with the outcast and saved her life."

The wind blows around us as she waits for me to say anything to that. I didn't know she saw me that way, and I'm not the hero she is painting me as.

"Everyone has lied to me, and I don't know who to trust anymore." I finish this for her. "I can't blame you when it wasn't you that made that choice to not tell me. It was Daegan, it was the book's magic, and I'm well aware what he is like now."

She looks down. "I should have found a way to fight against the magic, or figured something out, or done something for you."

Etena's voice nearly makes me jump. "If I couldn't fight it to tell her, then you wouldn't have been able to, Catherine."

We both turn to face Etena, who is black with ash and blood marks in her hands. The ash makes her blonde hair look silver and her skin so much paler than before. Calix's dragon roars, and she looks up at her entwined mate for a moment before dipping her gaze to me. "Daegan isn't evil, but the book is, and it has changed him over the years. Every time he opens it…" She stops, like she wanted to tell me something else. "I need your help to stop him from opening that book again. I need you to steal it and fucking leave, Story. Take the book the princess brought here and take it far away so my king can be free."

"You're not going to get help from me," I snap, anger making me clench my fists. "You're asking me to do something for Daegan? Fuck you and fuck him! He used me and nearly killed me, Etena!"

I am done being a victim for the Sun Dynasty or its king. I'm just done with them.

"I fucking know that, Story, but everything has changed! We can't fight between each other when?—"

"Why can't we?" I ask, lifting my head. "Go back to Daegan and his lies. I want nothing to do with either of you." I touch Catherine's hand and soften my voice when I see her trembling. "See you around."

Ziven is watching me from the doorway, the same doors that I squeezed through all those months ago, and I hold my head high as I walk to him, feeling Etena burning daggers into the back of my head. As I stand in front of the open doors, it feels like yesterday that I entered, seeing my dragon statue in the entrance hall. Everything changed when I ran in here last time, and I know so much more will change now that they are free. Dragons mean hope for the fae. We have been losing against the vampyres for so long that I think most fae have forgotten what it is like to actually be free.

Ziven walks with me into the entrance hall, silent and protective, as we go through the crowded pathways that are covered in glass and stone. The staircase that was around Maeve is now gone, nothing but rubble at the bottom level. He leads me back down to the Moon Dynasty rooms, and I follow him into the back where I've never been. Ziven opens a door to a purple bedroom, where Hettie is in bed sleeping and Ruelle is in a chair watching her. Her chair is rocking slightly, a purple blanket covering her from the neck down, and her tired eyes run over my body from head to toe. A healer assessment.

She looks right into my eyes and smirks like Ziven does sometimes. "You're not too easy to kill, then?"

"The sun has to try harder next time," I mutter, not ready to joke about it, even with Ruelle. I watch Hettie as Ziven goes to her, kissing her pale forehead. Her arm is bandaged up, and there are red marks seeping through the fabric that make my stomach turn. "What happened to her?"

"The Sun king lured her away from me. When she tried to run away from him, he burnt her arm with sunlight, and it's hard for me to heal it. I don't have dragon tears lying around, but she will heal. Some scars will remain." Ruelle barely notices my fury and rage and the way my body shakes from it. Daegan, he hurt this little girl. "Ziven was looking for you because the Sun king took you, breaking the agreement that was put into place, and then he found Hettie crying alone in the middle of the mansion. He brought her back here for my healing when the glass shattered along with the magic. I'd never seen Ziven look so pale or the roar that came from him. He sounded like a dragon."

This was my fault. He needed to distract Ziven because of me. Ziven touches my arm like he can read my thoughts and wraps his hand around it, tugging me close to him. "If you're thinking this is your fault, fucking stop it. Daegan did this, and he will pay for touching both of you."

I tug my arm out of his grip and make space between us so I can think. I can't think straight when I'm around Ziven. I walk past him to Hettie and softly kiss her cheek. "I'm sorry this happened. When you wake up, I'll take you outside the mansion. You can see everything, Hettie. Everything I told you is out there. The doors are open."

Ziven walks out as I rise up and tuck her in. Ruelle looks between the door and me. "Give him a chance to tell you everything. The time for you two pretending to be enemies is over, and it's up to you what comes next. Just know you belong to the Moon Dynasty king, girl, and nothing will change that." She sighs at the stubbornness in my gaze. "I've known that boy since he was a toddler, and he never claimed anything but his dragon as his own. He told me the first day he met you that you were his." She chuckles even when my heart races. "He said it in a way he meant you'd be his decision on what to do in consideration of the book and the magic, but I knew he'd met his match. The deities do not make mistakes."

I can't make myself reply to Ruelle, but I leave her with Hettie and go out to find Ziven, which speaks volumes. I should leave. I should run out of this mansion and get on Maeve and just fucking leave. It's a mansion of traps, and I fell into each and every one of them so perfectly that I never noticed my heart was stolen along the way. Ziven is in a cosy room opposite, which I've also never seen. It has a big dollhouse nestled between bookcases jammed with books I want to read, and three large sofas around a fireplace. Thick cream rugs line the floors, and Ziven is standing in front of the flames, watching me over his shoulder as I stop in the doorway.

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning. I need you to let me go, and it's best for both of us." He crosses his thick arms and turns to face me. "I can't trust Daegan not to stab me in the back at the first chance he gets, and I want to find my mother. I want to make sure she is safe, and I haven't thought past that. I know while I'm here, I'm not safe. I never told you everything about my past, Ziven, but just know I went through hell, mentally and physically, and my best friend died to get me out. I didn't tell you that I had given up. I had broken." I linger on the word broken because it doesn't feel like a big enough word for how I felt. "I broke and shattered until there was nothing left. Kyrell, he loved me like a brother I never had. He believed in me from the beginning, and he never once gave up on me. When he died, I promised myself I would never give up. That I would live and fight for all things life had to offer me." My voice breaks. "And if I stay here with you, I'd be giving up everything he died for. I'd be staying with a man who used and lied to me, who could have told me the truth and didn't. I'd be letting myself be used again, and I can't do that."

"Storm." He whispers that nickname for me that I used to hate, but now it makes my heart jump. It makes me feel alive and loved…wanted. I'm desperate to be wanted by him. The man I screamed was my enemy, who I slept with and hated as much as I enjoyed. "Stay here with me. I know I don't deserve to ask that of you, but please, stay." He walks to me, and my heart pounds as he goes to his knees. The Moon king is kneeling in front of me. "Let me tell you everything, and let me fix it. I will beg you, I will plead and grovel. Fuck, I'd do anything for you. Just don't leave."

"I know I can't trust you. You lied a lot, Ziven. Daegan told me all these things that you did for me in the Decidere, and I thought you were trying to kill me. It's almost funny how blind I was to this." Neither of us laughs and my hands itch to run through his dark hair. "How getting your friend to throw me off the bridge was actually you helping me get to the better pillars, how you sent your dragon in to help me that one time, how you came in and you helped me that other time. I want to believe that you're on my side, that it's me and you, but you've hated me since the beginning. You called me a traitor and, in the same breath, you saved me. I'm not Atilia, but I'm paying her debts."

He still doesn't say anything, and I can't stop the words from getting out. "I've read the book, the princess's own diary, everything she said. She was obsessed with you, and I don't think you felt the same from what she wrote. I'm. Not. Her. I won't die in here because she loved you and Daegan, and she wanted to save you all. I'm not a traitor, or a liar, or any of the names you've called me."

"You are a storm, sent from the deities to smack into my world with the face of my dead best friend. You are the storm I never wanted but I needed, and I won't let you run away from me. Fuck." He pauses and rises to his feet. "I looked at you in the beginning and saw her. I called you a traitor because it's what she deserved to be called for what she did."

Tears fall down my cheeks. "She saved you."

"She doomed us. I was never given a chance to fight for my family and this place… We became shells of our former selves by being locked in here. We forgot who and what we were, where time stopped and the world carried on. This wasn't good for us," Ziven finishes. "She was a spoiled princess who got everything from anyone she ever wanted, without care or need for it, except from me. Fucking hell, Story, I wanted to hate you from the beginning when we met. I lost nearly everything. My kingdom, my dynasty, my parents, my people in the wars here, and being trapped in this fucking mansion cost me the life of my sister in the end. I've never been able to show Hettie anything outside of these mansion doors, and we are trapped here, endlessly trapped, immortally trapped, and your soul was the very reason. When I first I saw you, fuck, I hated her and blamed you."

I wince at the fury in his voice, but his voice softens, softer than I think he's ever spoken to me. "Then you stole my heart on that first night when I kidnapped you, when you kicked me in the balls and stared into my face like a true warrior. I was done for. I knew right then and there you were everything I had been waiting for. I felt a connection between us then, and I kept trying to convince myself that helping you was my foolish way of keeping you alive. Daegan called a council meeting between Mazzis, him, and me to agree that killing you when the time was right was the only way, but I didn't agree to it." He comes to me, cupping my cheek with his hand. "There is so much history to tell you, so much I want to explain, but know that you're safe when you're with me. I would never let any harm come to you ever again. The magic would never have broken this place if you didn't love me."

He moves an inch closer, and I breathe in his burning jasmine scent. This is the man who has been inside my body, claimed every inch of me, and he's the first man I have ever wanted for myself. "You're the reason that I want a future, Story. I'd given up before you, too. We found each other, and I want everything with you. Don't leave, because I love you. I will love you until we are sparks of embers floating into the skies to dance with the dragons."

"Story…you're alive." I turn round to see Kyrell standing a few feet away in the doorway. If Ziven claiming to love me wasn't enough to stop my heart with shock, seeing my dead best friend is. Gone is his brown hair, the sun-kissed tan and bright eyes… What is left is a vampyre standing in the home of the dragon-riding fae.