Chapter 22

CHAPTER22

Her heart hurt.

Every inch of her body felt wrong. She could feel the rage and anger crawling underneath her skin like another person had slipped inside her.

Lore wasn’t a monster. She didn’t kill everyone and anything who stood in her way. In fact, she’d fought her entire life against doing that.

But then she remembered that elf who had hurt Zephyr all over again. She remembered the man’s expression as he’d enjoyed hurting a young man who had done nothing but good in his life. She’d realized in that moment that there was no saving people like that.

Or maybe there was saving them, but she didn’t have the patience or the time for their nonsense. All those elves stood between her and the boy who meant something to her. Zephyr, her little brother, a young man who sometimes felt like her son.

They had taken him from her, from his home, from the young woman who loved him. They had turned his life into something horrific and terrifying and she refused to let them continue doing so, even if that meant they had to die.

And so she let them die. She would usher them to that dark place with a smile on her face and a swift flick of her wrist.

The moment she saw Zephyr laying on the ground, she saw red again. Lore wanted to tear the stars from the very sky and rip it to shreds. She wanted to set this entire kingdom on fire because it was full of people just like them.

She saw the madness of this realm inside them. And worse, she saw her own childhood full of pain and hunger and sadness because no one would help a little girl who was left by her mother. No one cared for a half elf who had fought her entire life for scraps of food.

An entire kingdom had avoided her. Looked the other way when she was struggling because no one wanted to be the person with the soft touch who took her in. No one wanted to be the person responsible for her.

Lore recognized them as a group of people who thought maybe, just maybe, they had a choice. A group of people who would stop at nothing for equality and instead went too far, suddenly tearing the kingdom apart again.

Her heart ripped with each memory. It tore and shredded and blew into pieces because there was nothing she could do to stop them. At least, she hadn’t been able to back then.

Now? Now she could rip this kingdom apart and do exactly what the prophecy said she would. She would piece it back together after she tore it to shreds.

Abraxas knelt beside Zephyr and put his fingers on his neck. “Alive.”

“Good.” She hadn’t thought there was much of a chance for Margaret to kill the young man. After all, everyone still needed him alive. There were more humans to gather up, more people to prove that she was still a trustworthy person while murdering and stealing from the humans. “Can you carry him?”

“I can.” Abraxas gathered Zephyr up easily, arms underneath his knees and shoulders. Though it might not be the most comfortable for Zephyr’s wounds, it was the easiest position to get him out of here. “Shall we?”

They had likely already run out of time. Even now, Margaret was likely storming the castle. They were stealing her greatest chess piece, and if they didn’t move...

“Let’s go.” Lore didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Margaret caught them. Though she was quite confident she could fight the other elf, she didn’t know how well it would go for either of them.

Something deep inside her said that now was not the time to fight. They still had a long way to go. They still had more to this story that they needed to fix.

Striding out of the cell, she led the way with her dagger in her hand and her eyes on the shadows. There were two elves who had fled, and they could easily linger for a better moment to attack.

Except they weren’t.

The other cells, however, were lively. All kinds of creatures wrapped their hands around the bars and begged for their release.

“Please!” a dwarf called out. “My family knows where I am. Surely the dwarves told you where we were?”

They did not. But she still waved a hand and released them.

The humans cried out. “I remember you! We were there, together. Don’t you remember?”

She did, and she remembered how terrible they were. How most of those women were willing to be cutthroat to get their hands on a throne. But still, she unlocked their doors because she could.

That left the elves.

They stood in their cell, stoic as always. They watched as Lore paused in front of them and she felt something twist hard in her chest. A familiar feeling. A desire to want to be part of their group and their family, even though none of them had ever wanted her.

Because at her very core, Lore still wanted them to acknowledge her. She still needed them to see her and tell her that she was wanted.

She turned only her head toward them. “Do you not have any reason for me to release you?”

The elves all looked at a single elderly man who approached the bars. He wore an outfit that marked him as their leader. But the faded blue cloak with golden edges was moth eaten and worn.

“Would begging really make you release us?” He tilted his head to the side. “You were never part of our family. I will not lie to be released.”

“So you still see me as nothing more than a half elf.” Her heart stuttered once, twice, then thundered in her chest.

“I see you for what you are. I know the prophecy and I know more about your story that has likely never been told.” He reached through the bars, his hand outstretched as though she might touch him. “I call tell you all that you never knew about yourself. I can tell you so much about your story and it would give you more power than you ever dreamed of.”

Lore wanted to suck the air from his lungs. She wanted to put her hand through his chest and feel his heart beating against her palm.

“You know nothing of what I dream.” Her voice thickened with emotion, her palms sweaty and her words stumbling she spoke so quickly. “I was a little girl who wanted a family. The only people I ever knew were my mother’s people. You. I wanted to go home to the elves and have someone read me the same bedtime stories that I was raised on. I wanted to hear the songs of our people and the sound of our language. I wanted to learn how to speak, act, and eat like all of you. And you denied me that.”

She drew closer to the cell until her face was nearly pressed to the bars. She wanted him to see her pain. Needed him to realize that he was the one who had done this to her. He and all his people who refused to see a little girl when all they saw was an abomination.

The elder drew back from the bars, not in fear, but in disgust. “You were born this way for a reason. We saw you as the creature who would destroy our home. You wanted us to deny the truth of your existence.”

“No,” she whispered. “I wanted you to see me. But you could only find it in your heart to be cruel to a child, and that spoke volumes about you and your people. This castle is empty. Find your own way out.”

She started to leave, but the old man lunged forward and grabbed onto her arm. His ancient fingers felt like shackles around her bicep.

“Wait!” His voice was filled with desperation. “Don’t you want to know more about your prophecy?”

Her spine straightened, stiffened, and her heart hardened into ice. She turned her full attention to him again, and this time, he shrank away from her in fear. “No. I have no interest in learning about the prophecy. Five hundred years ago, elves saw into the future and knew it had changed. Fear spread throughout them because they were not the catalyst of such change, and they knew they could not control me. Perhaps what they saw scared them not because it was bad, but because it was different. I have no use for prophecy. I make my own life, and my own steps forward. You would do well to remember that.”

The crowd of elves surrounded him, pulling them into the safety of their arms and their family. But the old man had eyes only for her. “You walk the path of destiny, half elf. Even you cannot step off that path.”

She shrugged. “Then the path will bend to my whim.”

She turned away from the elves who were meant to be her family, her safety, her people. She left them with only the sight of her back and a dragon who snarled at them as he trailed up the stairs after her.

Everything ached. Her soul whispered that she should return to those people and set them free. It would take them a long time to be freed from that prison, if they were not all left there to rot. Perhaps they could unlock it eventually, or perhaps they would remain as skeletons in that horrible place.

But an equally loud part of her said that they got what they deserved. They would not have taken her in as a child, nor did they care if she survived. They only wanted to control her. To see that she led them into a life only the elves would know and that... was wrong.

All of this was wrong.

She stumbled out of the dungeon and into the sunlight with a gasp. Heat played across her frozen cheeks and thawed the ache in her chest. Even though it smelled like blood and guts and all the other scents that came with death, at least they weren’t down there any longer.

Abraxas stopped beside her, staring up at the clouds in the sky as well. “Lore?”

She hummed low under her breath.

“They were never your family.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. I never had family either, but at least they told me that. They didn’t string me along or give me any kind of hope. I knew my people were dead and that let me move on.” He nudged her shoulder with his own, his arms still full with Zephyr. “Letting them go was brave. I hope you see that for what it is.”

She didn’t.

It took no bravery to walk away from them, not when they had done so much to her that it made her want to scream.

“Someday I might regret what I did,” she whispered. “Someday, I might look back on this moment and see only evil in what we have done here.”

“Or perhaps you will see this as the first moment you allowed yourself to be free.” The sun slanted across his eyes, and he squinted down at her as he tried very hard to understand how she was feeling. “You are known by many names throughout this kingdom, Lore. And the name half-elf is not one of them. Not anymore.”

But should she be known that way? Should she deny who she was when there were so many other children like her out there? So many children who just wanted to be accepted and find a family that wouldn’t look down on them?

“I am a woman who has lived between worlds,” she said. “I have spent a lifetime looking through windows and wishing for the family that lived beyond the glass. But now I have you. I have Beauty and Zephyr and yes, Draven, even though you hate it. I have our children and so much more on the dragon isle waiting for us. Letting those elves go was easy compared to losing any of you.”

Her soul settled back in place. It was the truth. She’d never wanted anything more than all the people who were already in her life. Going back in time and getting the elves’ approval? It was unnecessary.

She had already found her family and her happiness. Why would she need to work to change anyone’s mind about her, when her chosen family already accepted her the way she was?

Turning toward Abraxas, she held out her arms for Zephyr. “Give him here.”

“Are you sure you can carry him?”

Lore leveled Abraxas with a look. “How else are we going to get him on your back? I think we both know I have to carry him out of here. Otherwise, I’ll try straddling you while you change, but who knows where I’d end up.”

Or if she’d end up impaled on one of his spines. Lore didn’t want to try that, or test her magic to see how much it would do to keep her alive.

Glowering at Abraxas, she waited until he handed the young man over. And he wasn’t that heavy. Not even remotely. The bones of his ribs stuck out and dug into her palms and shoulder where she tucked him. His legs were mere sticks that weighed next to nothing.

Her boy, her poor, sweet boy who had grown up in a crypt and looked to her for guidance, had suffered too much.

She sighed, staring down into his limp face that was already swollen and covered in bruises. “I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.”

But really, what had she thought would happen when she left? Of course he would be the easy target. This was all her fault, and she was the only one who could fix it.

A warmth tingled through her body as she started the healing process. Her magic traveled through him, seeking all the hurts and trying to fix what it could. But there was a lot more damage internally than any of them could see. This would take some time to heal, and she couldn’t do it on dragon back.

Still, she could make him a little more comfortable and send him to rest with a little more ease.

“Ready?” Abraxas asked, his eyes still on Zephyr. “He looks like he’s getting worse.”

“I’ll hold him in this state for as long as we need.” But they couldn’t go back to the dwarven kingdom, could they? Margaret would hunt them, and she’d suspect the dwarves. “We need to move.”

Abraxas changed, his dragon bursting out of his skin with more speed than she’d seen from him in a while.

And yet, as she carried the young man up Abraxas’s wing and sat down with him, Lore couldn’t for the life of her see a better way forward than the dwarves. They were officially on the run now.

But at least Zephyr was safe.