The Last Dragon King (Kings of Avalier #1)(46)

A month ago, he’d imprisoned me and threatened to kill me. I was determined to never let him live that down.

‘I told you, I regretted my actions from when we first met. I thought you were here to kill me!’ he snapped.

Shooting my wings open, I pumped them as I fast as I could. ‘Nope, just a girl from Cinder Village who can’t fly!’ I kicked off the ground at the last word before I could lose my nerve.

Terror shot through me as the wind resistance pushed against my wings. I faltered, but Drae’s voice was in my head to comfort me.

‘You’re doing great, just breathe and focus on your wingbeats.’

I sucked air in through my dragon nostrils and then looked down to see Drae directly under me.

‘I’ll catch you if you fall.’

Shaking my nerves off, I focused on what his wings were doing. Up, pause, down, pause, up, pause. I mimicked what we were doing, which was a lot slower, smoother, and controlled than my frantic fast flying.

‘That’s it,’ he said.

“Go, Arwen!” Joslyn’s voice from down below reached me and I grinned.

Drae veered to the left, heading for the farmland outside the palace gates, and I swallowed.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked him.

Only select members of the Royal Guard and house staff knew about my transformation powers. To fly over farms would get people talking. Only a full-blooded royal dragon could transform.

‘I’m prepared to address questions about you and your abilities,’ was all he said as we flew over the castle gates.

I’d never flown this far, or this long, but I pushed away my anxiety and followed him. We glided over rows and rows of wheat, then the golden fields turned to purple lavender, and finally he began to descend over a group of willow trees.

We were maybe a half hour walk from the castle. It had been a nice short flight. Not too long for me, but just enough that I felt confident and wanted more. As we lowered, I peered down to see where he was taking us and my heart leapt into my throat.

Between the circle of four giant weeping willows were a handful of gravestones. One was large, as you would have for an adult, and the other four were small.

Four children.

This was where Queen Amelia and his unborn children lay.

‘I don’t know why I brought you here,’ he said suddenly in my head as he landed before the small graves. A basket of clothes was beneath one of the trees, and I wondered if it was because he flew here often and then shifted into human form.

I swallowed hard, landing roughly next to him, trying not to fall over as landing was not yet something I had mastered.

I didn’t know what to say yet, so I just stood beside him, staring at the solid green jade headstone with gold engraved writing.

Her Majesty, Queen Amelia.

Beloved wife and mother.

Best Friend.

A sob formed in my throat, but it sounded like a hacking growl in my dragon form.

The king looked over at me, his black shiny scales in such contrast to his yellow burning eyes. ‘Don’t try to cry in dragon form. It sounds awful and will scare the local villagers nearby.’

He rarely joked with me, so it startled me and I snort-laughed, which again sounded awful in dragon form. Black smoke leaked from my nostrils.

His lips peeled back, displaying all of his dragon teeth. I was hoping it was a smile and not that he wanted to eat me for laughing at a time like this.

‘Amelia would have liked you. She liked to practice her sword with Regina any chance she got.’

‘Really?’ I asked, I never knew that about her. I’d only ever seen her in a dress with a delicate wave and feminine makeup. Imagining her practicing sword with Regina brought a smile to my lips.

‘After we lost our first child, Amelia ran from the castle crying and I found her here, in the center of the trees weeping. I asked her to come back and that I would build a mausoleum for our lost little one that was bigger than a house, but she said no.’

‘Why?’ I stepped closer to him, hanging on his every word.

‘She said that the trees looked like they were crying too, and she wanted to share her grief with them to lessen the burden. So we buried our first one here.’

My chest ached as sorrow overcame me. It was a beautiful thing to say. The trees did indeed look like they were crying, hence the name “weeping willow.”

What he didn’t have to say was that another child passed, and another, and finally another, along with his wife. And he’d brought them all out here.

‘Thank you for bringing me here. It is a very special place.’

He started to shift into his human form then and I turned, giving him privacy as he put on clothes. Walking over to a field of wildflowers, he pulled a handful of them and placed them on Amelia’s grave. Then he pulled another bunch and I decided to shift as well. Shifting back into my human form felt like pulling the plug on a bathtub drain. You were holding everything in and suddenly it all rushed out. It took me a moment to transform, then I ran over to the basket, putting on a long tunic that hung past my knees and smelled of Drae. It hung well past my knees so I didn’t bother with the trousers.

Drae was laying flowers on the third child’s grave when I pulled a bunch of purple and white blooms, bunching them together, and then met him at the fourth. Without a word, I handed them to him and he placed them on top of the little mound.