Shadow Wings (The Darkest Drae Book 2)(40)

“Tyrrik,” I corrected with an edge to my tone. “His name is Tyrrik.”

Queen Alani’s gaze snapped from Kamoi to me, her eyes now bright and focused. She studied me, her expression hardening. “Indeed?” she asked, returning her attention to Kamoi.

“Indeed,” he repeated with a nod.

The queen shifted in the bed, asking, “What did the tree show you, child?”

Clearly they didn’t care about Tyrrik’s name. Or mine. I smiled at her, pushing my lips up in a meaningless motion as I replied, “I’m not a child.”

Dyter cleared his throat, but I ignored his unsubtle hint to mind my manners.

“You are surely not older than two decades—” she said, her fists gripping the bedcovers.

“Eighteen.”

Her violet eyes flashed at my interruption, and she raised her chin. “Eighteen, you say? Then I was right: just a child. Here, we are considered children until seventy. My son has only recently entered adulthood at one hundred and fifty years.”

Kamoi was one hundred and fifty? He’d aged really well.

“I am only half Phaetyn,” I replied. “So, I repeat. I’m not a child.”

“That is what every child would say,” the queen said with a condescending smile.

I opened my mouth and Dyter took my hand, squeezing it gently.

“Good,” the queen said, observing my simmering silence. “Now, what did you see when you touched the Ash Tree?”

Right. She expected me to divulge my secrets after being that rude? “There is a river two miles west of here,” I replied, cocking a hip out. “That’s what the tree showed me.”

We held each other’s gaze, and I ignored the squeeze from Dyter, another hint for me to pull my head in.

She sunk into her pillows and closed her eyes. “I have upset you,” she said, stating the obvious. “Let me begin then by telling you why I am so weak. Perhaps then you will trust me with what you saw.”

I didn’t answer, a creeping sensation filling me. I was beginning to realize entering this place might have been a terrible idea. I may have an enemy in a place I’d never expected to have one.

“Phaetyn used to roam throughout the Draconian realm,” she began. “It is only in the last century we were forced to confine ourselves in the heart of our familial forest where we are strongest. When the Veraldian King and Emperor sought to destroy us, my sister, then the Queen of Phaetyn, erected an unbreakable protection around our home which fed off her ancestral power.”

“Queen Luna,” I said. “She left this place.”

The temperature in the room dropped.

“She did,” Kaelan, Kamoi’s father, said, stepping closer. “In answer to the emperor’s summons, and she took her ancestral power with her, leaving us vulnerable. The emperor forced her, as he had with other Phaetyn, to use her powers in experiments on Drae women he’d impregnated. Drae cannot reproduce unless it is with their mate, but the emperor wanted more Drae, and none of the women he’d forced himself upon would carry to term. He drained Luna’s power over the years in an attempt to keep the pregnancies viable, without success. He killed many of our kind in this way. Years later, we heard rumors Luna had died—drained of her power completely.”

My lips numbed as I guessed the rest. “She healed my mother?”

The queen shrugged. “I would assume so, given your nature.”

Dyter neared, but I shot him a look to let him know I was okay. I’d put some of the pieces together myself since learning the Emperor was my father. My mother had run from him to hide in Verald; it didn’t take a genius to piece together she hadn’t liked him. But, since learning I was Drae and Phaetyn, I’d wondered how such a thing had happened with two Drae for parents. If what the queen said was correct, I was only Phaetyn because of Luna’s power.

The emperor hadn’t wanted a child with both sets of powers, just another Drae. If I’d been there, if he’d known what he was doing, he would’ve gotten way more than he bargained for. I blinked several times, processing. Remembering what the elm tree showed me earlier, I realized some of their story wasn’t quite true. They’d made it sound like Luna chose to leave the forest for selfish reasons, but that’s not what the tree had told me.

“Why did you encourage Queen Luna to leave the forest?” I asked.





17





The queen didn’t look well to begin with, but her color worsened, and she sagged against the headboard of her massive bed, her head lolling to the side. She took several deep breaths with her eyes closed as if she were trying to garner more strength.

This time, Dyter dug his nails in hard, and I inhaled sharply at the pinching pain before noticing all three Phaetyn had stilled.

Queen Alani’s breathing stuttered. “You have no idea how that memory tortures me, child.”

Not a child.

“We thought Luna could reason with the Emperor. The land was already showing signs of dying. My sister hoped to show Emperor Draedyn we were indispensable and use this as a bargaining chip.”

That’s not how the trees remembered the conversation going down, but I had enough wits about me now to interpret Dyter’s unsubtle warnings. We’d wandered into something deeper here, and my skin was crawling.