“I sealed the portal. They can’t come after us. We’re safe, little honey. We’re safe.”
“You remember?” I said. He hadn’t called me that since they stole his memories.
“I remember everything.”
My sobs came twice as hard, rocking me with the intensity of my relief and hope. He rocked with me, gently stroking my hair and shushing me as if I were a small child in pain.
He was here.
He was mine.
He was here.
Chapter Ten
It was long minutes before I could speak. We just stood there together in the velvet dark, clinging to each other like two lost souls – maybe we were lost souls – though I felt like I’d come home now that I was in his arms again.
“I thought they’d killed you,” I said eventually, my voice thick with emotion.
“When they took us all at the Kah’deem, the Troglodytes attempted a rescue right away. They retrieved most of us, but there were too many Draven. The losses were too high and they had to pull back and abandon you. I begged them not to, but there were only a few Troglodytes left. They couldn’t risk Nasataa to keep fighting for you.”
I nodded then. I still couldn’t believe any of this. If my loved ones – Nasataa and Heron – were alive, could it be possible that others had survived, too?
“I would have done the same. Does that mean he’s okay? My baby dragon is safe?”
I could just make out his smile in the blue-green half-light. “He’s with the Blue Dragons in their land. So are Olfijum and Bareena. We’ll join him there. In a moment. When we’ve recovered.”
It was going to take longer than that for me to recover. I still felt each of those memories stitched to my soul.
“And the portal,” I said, stunned by all of this. “You really destroyed it? The Draven can’t get through?”
“The Troglodytes showed me how – made me swear that I would destroy it on our way out. It’s just a matter of pressing the right symbol.”
I shivered. I’d always pressed those at random. I could have destroyed a portal every time.
“And you really have all your memories back?” I had to keep asking. It was just too good to be true.
“I remember sitting on the driftwood with you when I was still no higher than my father’s waist,” he said in reply, leaning his forehead against mine. “I remember you pitching a fit because the shells on my sandcastle were prettier than yours.”
I laughed and snuggled in closer. He leaned his chin on the top of my head. His warmth was like the sun. I opened up to it, warmed to it, began to hope again.
“I remember when you made your first shell necklace to sell at Abergande and Renny was so proud. He showed it to everyone. He didn’t even sell it – did you know that? He stashed it somewhere and just paid you himself. Couldn’t bring himself to sell it to anyone else.”
“He did?” there was a tinge of sadness to my tone.
“That makes you sad?”
“Branson said that the Draven overran our islands and destroyed them. He said my parents are dead.”
Heron clucked his tongue. “And you believe him?”
“They’ve destroyed everywhere else, why not there?”
“Because the Havenwind Isles are in the middle of nowhere and there are no special keys or Chosen Ones there. I don’t believe it. I think he was trying to make you suffer.”
He’d succeeded.
Heron drew me closer, wiping my eyes with his thumbs – his touch feather-light.
“Whatever they did to you, Seleska, you’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll protect you with my life.”
He couldn’t really keep me safe. Not if I was going to help Nasataa save the world. But I wanted to be taken care of right now. I wanted to be saved. I wanted to be rescued. I leaned into his warm hug and just reveled in his absolute devotion. If I only had it for a short time, I was going to soak in it.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” I whispered. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you more.” He kissed the top of my head lightly, but behind his voice was a torrent of emotion. I almost believed those impossible words.
“You know you can’t keep me safe forever, right?”
“I can keep you safe for as long as I breathe. And for me, that will be enough.”
I didn’t deserve a love like that. I did the only thing I could think of. I tilted my head up and kissed his dark lips as thoroughly as I knew how.
When – eventually – I had to break away, it was with regret.
“Come here,” he said, eventually, drawing me toward that blue-green glow. As we drew nearer, I realized it was another pool with another portal. “The Troglodytes called this room we’re in a passageway. A place made only for travel. Here, there is food and water.”
He led me to a room beside the pool, carved from the rock.
“I thought Troglodytes ate lichen,” I said confused.
“Oh, this isn’t just a place for them. It’s maintained by some people called the Lightbringers. They’re like Bareena. They devote themselves to the prophecies. And they help keep refuges like this stocked,” he said as he offered me a waterskin and a small packet of dried meat in oilskin cloth.
I drank deeply and then attacked the meat. I hadn’t realized I was so hungry but before I even paused, I was out of meat.
“Oops,” I said guiltily. “There’s none left for you.”
He smiled and brushed the corner of my mouth. “I ate a few hours ago. Do you need more, or would you like to go and see the lands where the Blue Dragons reign?”
I smiled. “I think I can wait to eat if that is what we have to look forward to.”
He smiled back. “Just grant me one last request first.”
“Anything.”
He didn’t ask me so much as show me as his strong arms drew me close again and he kissed away my tears.
Chapter Eleven
It was long minutes before we made our way to the glowing pool. I swallowed, worried, gripping Heron’s hand in mine.
“I can’t believe that I have you back,” I said. “It feels like a dream come true.”
He smiled. “It was all coming back to me – slowly. The Troglodytes just sped up the process.”
He looked wistfully over his shoulder at the ruined portal and I felt a twinge of guilt. They had died to save me from that torture. I shouldn’t be delaying.
I shoved the key – still in my hand after all this time – into my belt pouch. I wasn’t sure why I was still carrying it, but some part of me couldn’t let it go, even if it was useless.
I took another step, letting my toes hang over the edge of the rock above the pool. I wasn’t ready to go through it. I wasn’t ready to go back to fighting for every inch of survival. I just wanted to stay right here in this in between place with Heron where we were safe – together.
“Nasataa is waiting for you,” Heron said gently.
And, of course, he was right. I smiled up at him, trying to be brave, trying to push aside the trauma of what I’d just been through. If I didn’t step up right now and take this battle on, then there would be thousands more with the same memories that had nearly broken me. Thousands more people with lives full of pain and loss all because I didn’t have the courage to jump back in and fight for them.
I clenched my jaw as Heron affixed a breathing patch. I forced myself to be brave – to do what made me shiver in the core of my being.
Heron took my hand and his warm palm gave me the last bit of courage that I needed.
I leapt with him into the portal.
We sank through the water and swam through the glowing rock ring to the other side.
The portal opened up to a world that took my breath away.
What in the ...
We were deep underwater in a place where the light pierced down from the surface in bright rays, shooting through the bluest of blue water. And in the distance, tall structures – complet
ely submerged in water – rose up from the seabed encrusted with coral. Small sinuous creatures swam from one rising rock structure to the next.
The song I always heard in the sea rolled through me, surrounded me, filled me. I let my mind follow the song as I swam beside Heron. He seemed almost giddy with delight as he drew me after him.
It was long minutes before I realize how massive those structures in the distance were. The small sinuous creatures weren’t small at all. They were huge Blue dragons moving from one of their underwater castles to the next.
I gasped as I realized that – and as I began to realize how many of them there were. I had thought that Blue dragons were rare. They were so elusive in the world above. They weren’t even really represented in the Lands of Haz’drazen, but here under the waves, there were hundreds – no, thousands of them. They swirled in eddies and sailed through clouds of fish, congregating, meeting, dispersing, and coming into and out of what I realized was probably a dragon city – or maybe a Drazenloft like the one we’d seen in Ko’Torenth – only finished and full of grown dragons.
It was enough to take anyone’s breath away – especially mine.
Here I’d thought all this time that I was a special friend to the few Blue dragons that existed, only to discover that there were so many of them that they probably had no idea who I was.
I felt as small as the shells lying on the bottom of the ocean floor. This was crazy! Why would they help us?
I grew more nervous as one of the Blue dragons broke off from a group in the city and swam toward us, his fins rippling as he swam, the dorsal fin flying behind him like a flag.
He drew near quickly – faster than a dragon in the air as he swam through the water. Why did dragons have anything to do with humans when they were so magnificent and we were just so ... average?
We like to be admired.
Was that him speaking to me? I thought Heron might have heard him, too, because the grin he shared with me was mischievous.
I was instructed to wait for you to emerge and to immediately bring you to the meeting of the High Council. Please, find a place on my back. I don’t want to spend all day waiting for you to catch up.
He was going to let us ride him to this meeting?
Try to avoid my dorsal fin. I don’t like the current being blocked. It’s better if it waves free.
We swam forward, finding a convenient strap had been secured around his body just in front of the dorsal fin. There were handholds attached to the leather. I felt an ache as Heron let go of my hand to grab the handholds. I copied him, but it didn’t feel right to let go of him now that I had him back. Not even for a few minutes.
He must have felt the same, because, after a moment, he let go of one handhold to place his hand over mine.
Much better!
The Blue dragon spun in the water and lunged toward his home. Around us, the water streaked quickly past, leaving a stream of bubbles in our wake.
Excitement filled me. With so many free dragons here, maybe we weren’t completely beaten after all.
I strained forward, hoping for the first glimpse of Nasataa. He had to be in here somewhere, right? Would he forgive me for leaving him? Would he understand?
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t have enough time to appreciate the glory of the underwater Drazenloft. It would have taken days – no, months – to study the careful placement of coral and the other waving plants, to study the murals painted in colored lichen on the sides of the buildings. Just one building large enough to accommodate a dragon as large as the Blues were would be larger than a palace for humans. There were hundreds of those buildings here. And they weren’t made for just one dragon.
The Blue carrying us led us through a maze of what I could only think of as streets – though they were more like tunnels at various heights between buildings. Plants waved lazily in the current above or below, seashell encrusted arches and carefully carved balustrades and flat rock porches all slid through my mind one after another until I was so overwhelmed by beauty and architecture that what should have amazed me hardly seemed significant next to the last ten things that had amazed me.
I was glad we were holding onto the dragon.
Saerdes.
I was glad we were holding onto Saerdes. Not only would I have been hopelessly lost in a world where streets could go in any direction including up, down, sort of up and sort of down, but it also would have taken me days to swim over the ground he covered.
Unlike human cities which were often built on hills slowly rising to the top at the center of the city, this city was built in the opposite manner. We were slowly deepening our plunge into the ocean and the apex we aimed for was at the lowest point of the underwater city.
We emerged from a tunnel-like street to a swirling mass of busy Blue dragons moving in every direction. It took me a moment to realize that this was like a city square before Saerdes plunged downward and I could see that under us was a massive open space much like an amphitheater and it was filled with Blue dragons, swirling or resting around the center area which was covered by a tangled roof of carefully arranged coral. I strained my eyes trying to see what was under that roof, but I couldn’t see.
When we arrive, you will both be fitted with items that will allow you to speak in a way we can hear more easily – and for the male, it will allow him to breathe without a patch on his face.
I shared a glance with Heron. What could do that? It would change everything to be able to speak freely under the water. But as nice as that might be, what I really wanted was to see Nasataa again. Was he here? Would he be okay?
I’m here!
His small voice shot through me, making my heart leap in a way I hadn’t prepared for. I felt like someone had lifted a heavy burden from my back. He was okay! He had survived it all!
We swam down among the bodies of the waiting Blue dragons and my breath caught at the waving tails passing inches from us, at the membrane-like wings meant more for diving than flying, at the sleek shapes of their heads, perfect for parting the water of the sea.
I caught Heron’s eye and smiled with the sheer delight of this. Despite everything, all the danger, all the fears – just seeing this place, just being surrounded by such majestic beings – it was amazing. It was something I’d never expected to see. It didn’t make up for what had already come, but it did make it all more bearable, somehow. As if, it was fuelling me with the courage to go on. As if it was reminding me that there were people all over the world who once had happy, bountiful homes like this – people we were fighting for – people worth fighting for.
We swam down through the masses and into the coral covered pavilion where a pair of Blue dragons scintillated around Nasataa, Olfijum, and Bareena. Bareena and Olfijum wore intricate contraptions on their necks that looked like high-standing collars made of woven ivory. Above the collars, a bubble formed around their heads that wavered slightly like a bubble in a breeze, misshaping and then going back to perfectly round, and then shifting again.
Bareena stepped forward and placed one over Heron’s head, ripping the patch from his mouth as the two of us let go of the handles on Saerdes’ collar.
Bareena put one of the collars over my head and I spoke into the bubble.
“Thank you for the ride, Saerdes.”
He winked a huge eye at me.
The Guardian has arrived.
The way the two Blue dragons around us wove around each other – tails intertwining and then slipping apart and wrapping around each other’s bodies as they both circled the pavilion in opposite directions – made it impossible to tell who was speaking – or even what part of which dragon I was looking at as it passed.
The time has come to test the Chosen One against the prophecies.
Bareena leaned in so that her bubble touched ours. “They think he’s their Chosen One, but they have to be sure.”
“What is there to doubt?” I asked, frustrated at yet another test. “We’ve proven he is the
one by the very trials we’ve been through. The Draven just finished torturing me to get the keys for the Haroc! Now is not the time for more tests. Now is the time for action! We need to get Nasataa to the Haroc and seat him on it before the rest of the world falls to the Draven and everything is lost!”
Quiet, Guardian.
“I will not be quiet,” I said boldly, looking at the dragons now instead of Bareena. “I watched the life drain from the eyes of innocents and held them as they passed from this life. I will not sit still another moment while more people die. We need to get Nasataa to the Haroc!”
You will be silent as we test.
“These tests are wasting time!”
Do you know what will happen if you open the Haroc and place the wrong dragonlet on it?
I didn’t know.
The Haroc won’t close again. The Draven will simply pull the sham dragonlet out and put their Manticore in his place. And that’s why there is time to do this test. Because if we choose wrong, it really will be the end of everything. So. Be. Quiet.
Chapter Thirteen
I can do this, Nasataa told me.
I was sort of surprised that he hadn’t run to me to greet me like he usually did. A pang ripped through my heart. Maybe my baby dragon didn’t need me anymore.
Of course I need you, Sela. But this is my test. I need to do it. You’ve done all those other tests for me, but I’m ready now.
I wanted to run to him and pick him up and hug him.
His eyes got really wide.
Please, don’t embarrass me.
I could feel my cheeks flushing even under the water as I wrapped my arms around myself to keep from running to him and helping him.
Seriously, you need to calm down. He doesn’t need a nervous mother right now.
Olfijum. I’d missed him. I turned to smile at the Purple dragon, and he winked at me.
Did you know that I am only the third dragon who is not Blue to come to this city?
Really? That sounded like an honor.
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