The Last Dragon King (Kings of Avalier #1)(45)

It was clear she was fishing for a compliment.

Drae sighed, reading into her need for attention. He sidestepped me and faced her, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You look beautiful,” he said.

She did look beautiful; it wasn’t a lie.

Joslyn placed her hands over his, beaming up at him, probably desperate for his touch, and a small ache formed in my chest as I watched Drae hover over her while she gazed up at him with adoration.

I wanted that. I wanted someone to touch and hold and… kiss.

I hadn’t kissed anyone since that day in the interrogation room with Drae, and now that I knew he was marrying Joslyn I wanted to move on. My sword trainer, Cal, and I had become close, and there had been multiple near misses where I thought he meant to kiss me, but something was holding him back. I decided that today I was going to ask him about it.

After my training with the king.

Drae pulled away from Joslyn and faced me. “You can spit fire in a stream of forty feet, throw fireballs from your hands five at a time. I think it’s time we mastered flight.”

Anxiety churned in my gut and Joslyn stood abruptly.

“My king, last time she—”

He cut Joslyn off. “If she is to fight beside me in battle, I must know she is a capable flier.”

Sick unease washed over me. I’d transformed a grand total of three times.

Once at my magic test. The second time in practice with Drae and Regina, and that time my arms and legs had transformed too. The third time was last week, when my entire body had transformed into a blue dragon and Drae had convinced me to go flying with him. It had been windy outside, so my wing caught the air wrong, buckled, and I fell in a dead fifty-foot drop. Although my dragon magic afforded me advanced healing, it took two days for me to walk again without pain, and I was not keen to relive that.

“I… I’m scared to. I can’t,” I admitted.

He shook his head. “You can and you will. If you let the fear take hold, you will never fly, and what use is a dragon who cannot fly?”

I groaned, looking up at the sky for any hint of wind.

There was none.

The Nightfall queen was constantly threatening our bridges at the Great River. They said it was only a matter of time before she broke through our defenses there again. She wanted the king and all the dragon-folk dead, not to mention to take over our fertile lands. Rumor had it that the majority of the Nightfall lands were hot and desolate in the summer months, and nothing grew there.

“You can do this,” Joslyn encouraged me. I could hear the shakiness in her voice.

She’d been there to witness my fall, seeing me lying broken and bleeding on the ground. At night, when I lay down to sleep, I could sometimes still hear her screams for help in my head.

The king stepped up to me, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I will fly under you so that if you fall I can catch you.”

Looking into his green eyes, hearing his promise, it made my stomach warm. I instantly felt guilty for these feelings, especially with Joslyn right here. The heat between our bodies was so intense that he stepped backwards. This happened often between us but we said nothing about it, ignoring it.

“Fine,” I growled. “But if I break a single bone, you owe me five hundred jade coins.”

He grinned. “Deal.”

“I would have gone for a thousand,” Joslyn told me as I walked over and handed her my sword, coin purse, and belt.

I smiled at her. “Your bones are far more valuable than mine,” I informed her, and then walked towards the creek where the brush was thick, so that I could change in privacy.

The king simply faced a tree and began to disrobe out in the open. That man didn’t care who saw him naked, and I was again currently transfixed by a view of his butt cheeks. With a chuckle, I peeled off my training clothes, which were covered in mud from my sparring session with Cal earlier, and when I stood fully naked I looked down at my body.

A variety of purple, blue, and yellowing bruises marred my hips and knees. I was proud of every single one of them. The muscled indentations in my stomach and thighs were the most pronounced and I was proud of that too.

Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and felt for my magic.

Transforming, as the king had taught me, was a different compartment of magic than throwing or breathing fire. It was deeper, and needed to really be pulled out with confidence. Reaching for my transformation magic, I pulled on it hard with as much strength as I could muster. Pain laced along my spine and I hunched forward as the sound of cracking bones began to ring throughout the bushes.

“He’s already done!” Joslyn trilled.

“Well, he has to wait!” I bellowed back in a painful growl.

The king was an impatient man, I’d learned, but that only made me want to make him wait longer on me.

After I finished my transformation, I stepped out of the thick bushes, breaking some of the branches on my way.

‘Perfect day for flying,’ the king said when he saw me.

I gave him the equivalent of a dragon snort and eyeroll. ‘Remember, my Royal Guard contract states that if I die, you must bring my body back to my mother in Cinder Village.’

He chuffed, ‘I would never let that happen, Arwen.’

I sidled next to him, giving him a long side look. ‘Now you care whether I live or die? You’ve come along way, my king.’