Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I always suspected Halikaara had hidden hallways, but until I was in one, I hadn't given much thought to the location of them.

The answer was simple: underneath.

Whit could have blindfolded us or made it so that we could not see while in these secret passageways, yet he had decided not to. It spoke volumes.

While Owen, Dex, and Whit exchanged small talk, I readied myself to see Esta. To remain calm. I was more than ready to commit to a lifetime next to her, but she was not. She needed time. So I needed to be there for her, while also giving her space to heal.

I wasn't sure how to do both of those things and not ache to be near her.

We turned to a stairwell which looked chipped and old, some of the stairs significantly worn in areas, and began heading up.

Afraid this is the worst part, Whit told us as his wolf paws silently lead the way. I'd offer to fly you up, but there are three of you and you're all heavy.

"Going to take that as a compliment," Owen muttered .

"You would," Dex snorted.

Out the top of the passageway, which looked like it could kill a person by just falling down the steep stairwell, I found that we were still a few hallways away from Esta's rooms. Of course, they wouldn't have a secret hallway heading directly to her rooms.

Not that it truly mattered. She could fly if she ever needed to flee.

A few minutes later, Whit must have spoken to the guards standing outside her rooms, as they quickly moved to open the massive doors for us.

"Really would like to pull out my dagger right about now," Owen whispered. "You know, just in case."

"Your magic is amply capable of handling things," I reminded over my shoulder.

"Yeah, but sometimes brute force is more fun."

I didn't even have time to answer or laugh because there she was. My dragon queen.

She was sitting on the couch, her mother beside her, a blanket around her while she drank something steaming. None of that was alarming, but the bruise which covered her eye made my magic flare to life with a vengeance. She was hurting. I saw it on her face, as well as in her eyes as they found home in my own.

She was moving, but so was I. I caught her easily, careful not to hold her too tightly because judging by her face alone she had to be sore.

"You're back," she gasped.

I inhaled deeply. The hint of amber I smelled in her hair was enough to settle a bit of my worry. She was here. She was alive. She smelled like her, like the spring breeze after a hard winter.

"You're back early," she added.

I did my best to keep my voice steady. "Kian arrived with news, and we left right away. "

Her forehead creased as she moved to look back up at me. "I didn't send him."

"Amory did."

She pressed her lips together tightly, a flicker of emotion crossing her face. I looked back to Dex and Owen, gave them a nod, and the guards started closing the door behind us.

"No you don't," Owen snapped. "I'm staying with the prince." He stepped just inside the doors, a role I had seen him do what felt like a thousand times. He was posting guard. For me.

"Esta," I offered gently, pulling her back into me and whispering into her hair, "I'm here." I swallowed hard. "And I'm sorry I ever left to begin with."

It was those words which unleashed the dam of tears welled up inside her. She started sobbing, holding onto me for dear life.

I stood there and allowed her to. Knowing her, she had set plans in motion for investigating and handling what happened. She likely took care of herself last, if at all. She needed time without running the country to process everything.

Over her head, I exchanged eye contact with her mother. I wanted her to disappear, but with the way she was inquisitively watching us, she seemed in no hurry to leave.

I let Esta get it all out, only repeating the words, "I'm here" as needed.

What had to be minutes later, she pulled back. This close, I took a good look at her, head to toe. How could so little change in one week of time, but at the same time so much? How had I ever found the will to leave her side at all?

As my eyes settled back on that bruising around her eye, I clenched my jaw tightly. I would tear apart the realm to make sure I never saw her look like this again. Not only bruised, but also defeated.

"Keir?" she asked, her hand coming up to my cheek. "Your magic. "

I pushed it down slightly, as much as I cared to, but my eyes stayed on hers. "I'd like to slowly kill whoever did this to you, that's all."

Her throat bobbed with her swallow. "I already did." A pause as if she were bracing herself. "I shifted, picked up the human in my teeth, and threw him to the rocks below the balcony."

I inhaled deeply.

"He screamed the entire way to the crunch which signaled his death."

"Good," I snapped. "That's my dragon queen." I was holding my jaw so tightly my teeth were sure to be sore tomorrow. "He deserved far more."

"I'm okay," she assured me.

"No," I countered. "You are bruised. You look exhausted. You got ambushed. None of that is okay. In no realm would any of that ever be okay with me."

"I am going to be okay though," she choked out. "They injured Malachi, and I lost it."

"Esta," I argued, "it isn't as if this was a meeting with your advisors. You were attacked. You are allowed to defend yourself. They deserved whatever they got."

The doors creaked as they opened and in came Amory and Malachi, his arm in a cast.

"We heard you were back." A tight smile crossed her lips.

"You had your hands full," I responded. "I wasn't about to leave you to deal with it on your own."

She dropped her eyes a minute, and I realized she was almost in tears. How many times had the two women before me had to handle things for Dra Skor on their own?

"Dammit, come here," I demanded.

She shocked me by listening. I kept my right arm around Esta and wrapped my left around Amory .

"Sorry I didn't get here fast enough to be of use," I told Amory. "But thank you for sending for me."

"I—" she stopped, as if realizing between Esta's mother and Owen, we were far from alone. "You deserved to know. Kian wanted to go. Wanted to tell you."

"I believe an ass haunting is in order," Malachi joked from beside Owen with his signature smirk.

"Good thing you have a nice one then," I quipped, remembering our last conversation together. "Or so you've told me."

"Afraid it will be in this form for a week though," Amory said. "He is to heal in his human form and not shift for a while."

I looked to Malachi, wondering how that must feel.

He walked toward me and patted me on the shoulder with his free hand. "Could be worse. Stuck in my shifted form after being stuck in it for so long would have been harder. Not horrible, all things considered."

Like the fact that if they hadn't defended themselves as swiftly, we could be holding another funeral. Thinking of Serkan on that pyre made my blood chill. I would not be smelling the death of any of the people I loved.

"I will let you all get caught up," the queen's mother said. "Seems there is much to tell."

Two hours later, Esta was sleeping, her head on my thigh while I softly spoke with Malachi and Amory. Owen had left to head back to our rooms, and Dex still stood guard outside Esta's door along with her guards.

I was fully filled in on all the details of the attack. Including the gruesome one of how Malachi shifted into his human form and allowed his arm to be broken in order to drive a dagger into a lion shifter who had entered into the dining room the normal way .

Malachi might be jovial in his demeanor, but I also didn't want to face him as an enemy. He was likely as hot headed as Krew could get.

"There are never any leads," Amory began. "We are trying to find a shadow."

That had me thinking. There was only one person still alive which we had dealt with in all these moves. A land dragon in the holding cells, Obsidian, in the southernmost portion of Dra Skor. When was the last time that anyone had tried to reason with him?

"She has hardly slept since the attack," Amory said quietly, stealing my train of thought. "Can you stay with her tonight?"

"If that is what she wants," I answered. "I will not demand to stay."

"Did you get what you needed from Wylan?" Amory asked sweetly. Far too sweetly. She was fishing for information and we both knew it.

"I got exactly what I needed," I responded intentionally vague.

She opened her mouth then closed it before looking to Malachi for a brief moment. I wondered if his injury had caused the two of them to get any closer. The constant push and pull between the two of them was enough to drive us all to madness.

"I would tell you more, but I'd rather it be a surprise in the next advisor meeting."

Malachi gave me a smirk. "You do have a flair for the dramatic. Particularly in the war room."

"I don't want any of you to know in advance what I will be presenting because I would like for there to be honest reactions for John to watch." Specifically, I wanted him to watch Esta's family. I had already requested Reyald Mallick be in attendance.

Amory nodded as if she understood entirely.

Malachi leaned back and took a sip of his bourbon. "You aren't going to be making any grand gestures, are you? Esta has had a hell of a week and I am not sure she would be in the headspace to publicly decide anything."

So he thought I would be fool enough to propose in front of the advisors? "Hell no. Not in the way you are thinking. A grand gesture of sorts is in order, but it is not at this juncture a proposal. Nor would I care to do so in front of all the advisors. Not really my style."

"Well, aren't you a jack of all trades?" Malachi joked.

I shot him a grin. "I am, if nothing else, a diplomat, am I not?"

Amory shifted her feet before saying, "Before said advisor meeting, it might be helpful for you to know as our most trusted diplomat that there are theories the shifter found impaled after the attack did so himself, but we have reason to believe he did not."

So he escaped and someone else killed him? "Why?" Why would anyone who knew that shifter immediately kill him rather than question him? When he was the only lead?

"My gut tells me whoever they were working for didn't like having any loose ends," Malachi explained. "And Conan was a large, winged wolf shifter. So it's not like it was a small animal to force onto the tree trunk."

"So we are dealing with a large enough shifter to have caused it?"

None of us had to voice it, but we were all thinking it. Dragons. A dragon with a personal vendetta.

I could think of only one, but it couldn't have been him.