Daybreak (63 page)

Kyleigh couldn’t stand it. She kissed him roughly, hoping to bring those familiar fires back …

It was a mistake.

Kael had her by the lips, now. She could do nothing to stop the flames as they crawled down her chest and soaked into her blood. She moaned against them as they reached the edges of her soul, as they tested the strength of those towering walls. Their power frightened her. But she could do nothing to stop them.

A dragon rose from the depths of her heart. She carried with her all of the things she felt for Kael, all of the things she swore she would never say aloud. He was human, after all. And she was certain humans couldn’t love like this. 

Her love might overwhelm him. He wouldn’t understand — it would be a burden to him, to know how deeply she felt.
That
was the thing that frightened her, the secret hidden behind the walls. 

Still, Kael pressed — unaware of the monster he’d woken. The world turned as he rolled her gently onto her back. He lay down beside her. His lips never left. He slid one arm beneath her head and draped the other across her middle.

Kyleigh was defenseless. Her body had already betrayed her. It’d given in to his kisses, his touch … her strength had melted in his hold a long while ago. Only her heart still beat defiantly. It thudded to life when he reached for her belt.

“Wait — let me.” Her voice was every bit as weak as her limbs, and she hated that. Still, she was determined not to say the things she felt aloud. 

He pulled her hand away. “Don’t you trust me?”

With everything. There’s no part of me I wouldn’t place in your hands
, the dragon in her murmured. But Kyleigh choked it back. “Yes.”

It was painful, how slowly he moved. He could’ve worked the clasp in half a blink, if he wanted to. But Kael seemed insistent on making her wait. His eyes stayed fixed upon his work as he slid the belt free and lay Harbinger aside — and he might as well have been a thousand miles away.

The air felt bitterly cold without his touch, without his lips — without his eyes upon her. It was strange how the world could feel so cold while the fires inside her burned with an agonizing heat. They blazed until she could hardly stand it. 

When Kael’s lips came back, the world disappeared. Her last defense fell as he coaxed her heart into a hum. It sang for him in a way it’d never sung before … and for a moment, she worried he might be able to hear it. But he conquered those worries, as well. Soon the only things she felt were his lips.

Beneath her was a nothingness without end.

Her eyes opened when he pulled away. She could see his face hovering just above hers. She wanted to reach for him, but her arms were too weak to move. No, she was totally and completely at his mercy.

And she knew what he wanted her to say.

“Kyleigh …”

You can’t
, her fear moaned. But its cries faded into the darkness beyond, and Kyleigh lay suspended. 

He said her name again, whispered it roughly in her ear. She could tell by how his voice broke that he wanted her to say it badly … and she wanted that, too. Finally, she pushed her fears aside.

“I love you, Kael.”

His face came closer. “How much?”

The words were out before she could stop them, bursting free with all the force of the dragon’s wings: “More than the sun loves the dawn. You are my sky — my whole horizon.”

The earth fell silent with a
whoosh
. Though Kyleigh felt her heart thudding inside her ears, all she could hear was the echo of the words that hung in the air between them. They held bits of her soul inside their letters, between their pauses and breaks. She felt as if she’d been pulled from her flesh and now lay trembling, exposed before Kael. 

Once, she’d worried that her second shape would be the monster that drove him away. But now she feared it was this — these inhuman things she’d cried that probably sounded foolish to him. She knew they’d sounded foolish.

It was impossible to put the
valtas
into words.

The silence seemed to last an age. Kael’s face twisted into a glare; his lips pulled back from his teeth. But just when she thought he was about to scold her, he gasped.

His head sank to her chest for a moment and he breathed like he’d been stabbed. Kyleigh reached for his face, her heart screaming about what a fool she’d been. “I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have said it like that! Dragons feel differently about love, Kael. I don’t expect you to …”

Her words died. She’d managed to pry his head from her chest only to be frozen by his eyes:

Their walls were gone. They’d been stripped of their spines and all of the little lights within them shone unfettered. She’d caught glimpses of them before, flickering with his laugh, his thoughts. She loved the fact that they were hidden. She loved to guess the sort of things that might draw them out. But that was before she’d seen them like this.

His brows fell and his lips pulled back not in anger, but in desperation. Though the lights had broken free, he was still desperate to protect them. He guarded them as fiercely as she’d guarded her words — she understood this, now.

Kael had bared his soul to her, as well.

“No, dragons aren’t the only ones who feel differently,” he muttered, pressing against her hands. “I just can’t say it as well as you.”

Kyleigh knew it was time to give up another secret — one she’d planned to hold forever. “You say it well enough. You tell me every night when you think I’ve fallen asleep, even when you’re cross with me. I listen for it,” she added, smiling when his brows rose in surprise. “I can’t sleep until I’ve heard you say you love me.”

She kissed the red before it could stretch too far across his face … and for a while, they spoke no more. The sky churned above them and the breeze stirred the forests’ roof, but Kyleigh was oblivious to it all.

There was no longer any doubting it. Kael woke the next morning with his heart already steeled against what needed to be done, against the fact that he stood upon the threshold of a final battle with Midlan — and aside from Kyleigh, he stood there alone.

A few weeks ago, this realization would’ve crushed him. He would’ve been a mass of nerves, a tangle of worry. But now … well, he wasn’t sure if it was the power of Daybreak, or the sheer ridiculousness of every dragon he’d encountered thus far. But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to worry.

Kael was certain they would win.

He struggled out from beneath Kyleigh’s iron grip and fumbled in the pale morning light for his clothes. The trousers went on stiffly. He tried to be quiet, but something in them kept crinkling each time he slid them an inch. He’d reached down to pull whatever it was out of his pocket when he suddenly remembered that it was the letter Baird had given him — and his hand froze.

He decided no to touch it. He couldn’t risk falling to its whispercraft. The moment he had the chance to make a new set of trousers, he’d burn the old pair — and Baird’s cursed letter along with it.

Kael’s eyes were still too heavy to even think about donning his armor. It simply wasn’t going to happen. Even after a couple of washings, his tunic was still covered in brownish spatter stains from the fight in the Valley. But it was the closest thing to a blanket he had to offer.

He stepped very lightly over to where Kyleigh slept — well, he supposed it was more like a
hobble
than steps. He had to hold his right leg out at such a ridiculous angle that he didn’t think anybody could’ve possibly mistaken it for a walk.

But somehow, the letter still managed to crinkle.

With the tunic’s buttons undone, it draped across her shoulders and past her knees. He moved fractions at a time as he covered her, careful not to breathe too loudly. He’d begun to creep away and had even allowed himself the faintest sigh of relief when Kyleigh muttered:

“What in Fate’s name have you got in your pocket?”

“It’s nothing — just something Baird gave me.”

“Fitting.” Kyleigh’s eyes cracked open with a soft smile. “How did you sleep, whisperer?”

Like the night watched over them while the world stopped turning — like the stars sang to him while he dreamed. The feeling he’d had as his eyes closed was one of the ultimate calm. Had he never faced another dawn, his heart would’ve stopped peacefully: content in the knowing that it’d already struck a perfect beat …

Blast it all. Even in his head, those words sounded completely ridiculous.
 

“I slept well enough,” he said after a moment. “You?”

Her eyes blazed as she murmured: “Very well, indeed.”

A pair of hums blasted across his ears, startling his eyes from her smile — otherwise, the morning might well have been lost.

Kael watched through the gap in the canopy above them as the moss-colored dragon fell from the high reaches of the clouds, his body tangled with his mate’s. They formed a spiral of green and white, one that twisted with a terrible speed until it became nothing more than a blur.
 

Even from where he stood, Kael could hear the wind shrieking off their wings. They were falling too quickly; they screamed for the earth with a force that not even a dragon’s scales could withstand. And for half a moment, he was certain they would be crushed.

Their wings opened and they blasted apart with mere feet to spare them from the forest’s top. Their bodies tore in opposite directions, bending the trees back in their wake. When his mate took off towards the east, the moss-colored dragon followed with a loop and an earth-trembling roar.

Even after they’d gone, Kael’s lungs were still frozen in shock. “What in Kingdom’s name were they doing?”

“Playing,” Kyleigh said.

He didn’t understand her smile. “Well, there are safer ways to play. They could’ve been killed!”

She inclined her head. “Perhaps. But I’ve always thought that
love
is well worth a bit of danger.” Her grin only widened at his bewildered look. “In fact, I think you may have … inspired them.”

She nodded at the hole in the canopy — and with a horror that nearly made his skin burst into flame, Kael understood.
 

“Oh, no.” He stared up, a part of him hoping she was wrong. But when he saw just how much of the sky was visible, he knew there was no way she could be. “Oh, for mercy’s sake! Have they got nothing better to do than stare at us? And
you
,” he snapped over Kyleigh’s laughter, “you knew they were watching — and you didn’t say a blasted thing! You didn’t stop me! You just let me keep on —”

“I wouldn’t have stopped you for the Kingdom, Kael the Wright,” she growled, eyes blazing above her smile. “I don’t care how many dragons were watching.”

“Well, how many
were
…? Wait,” He froze as her words sunk in. “Really?”

“Yes.” In one fluid motion, she’d sprung from the ground and began striding towards him. Kyleigh slid the tunic across her shoulders — doing a button up for every step. When she stood before him, she brought her lips to his ear and whispered: “I didn’t care if the skies fell or the earth split beneath us. If Fate herself had drifted down from the clouds, I would’ve told her to clear off. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re about to force me to ruin my own tunic,” he managed to gasp.

When she kissed him, he felt her smile upon his lips.

Hello, humans
.

Kael jumped back and swore when he saw they weren’t alone: Rua and His-Rua watched from the edge of the clearing. Their great heads were stuck side-by-side, crammed beneath the branches of a tree.

Rua’s eyes went straight to his — and Kael hoped to mercy he hadn’t seen … anything. But the yellow flames danced so mischievously within his stare that he knew he’d seen a great deal more than that.

He pulled away from Kyleigh before the red dragon’s hum could reach his ears. “Have you told that them we plan to leave?” he said, looking pointedly at the trees beside him.

His-Rua must’ve protested, because Kyleigh shook her head. “I’m afraid we can’t. The Kingdom needs our help.”

Rua’s voice crackled next — his eyes all but burning a hole through the side of Kael’s head.

“Someday, perhaps,” Kyleigh answered him. “I think we’d like to come back.”

“Provided they
all
agree
to quit gawking at us every hour of the day and night,” Kael muttered — earning himself one of Rua’s tree-shaking chortles. An idea came to him suddenly. He moved his gaze to the branches above Rua’s head. “Now that we’re friends, I don’t supposed they’d follow us into the Kingdom, would they? A swarm of dragons would make short work of Midlan.”

They exchanged a long look before they hummed.

“It’s too dangerous — the dragons have no defense against the power of the mages. They won’t risk the lives they’ve only just gotten back,” Kyleigh said, squinting as she tried to pull their voices apart. “But they’ve all agreed that you can keep the knight’s sword.”

“Well, I was going to keep it anyways.”

“And Rua wants you to know that it’s a
smolder
of dragons, not a swarm.”

That couldn’t possibly be right. Kael glanced down to say as much and quickly found himself trapped in the dancing fires of Rua’s gaze.

The scales around his lips were bent into a smirk — and as Kael watched, one of his eyes closed in what could’ve only been a knowing wink.

*******

They were near the shores of the Kingdom.

Kael couldn’t see a thing through fog, so he had no choice but to trust Kyleigh when she said they were close. The thrill he’d felt as they left the Motherlands was far behind him. It was lost somewhere among the ice of the northern seas — no more present a thing than the white mist beneath him.

Spring had begun to win the fight against the cold. Now the seas and the land sweated against the growing heat, their labor rising in a dense fog. As Kael watched, a thin, grayish line appeared across the horizon. He stared at the sky above that line, but the mountains never appeared.

We’re going back a different way
, Kyleigh explained when he asked.
I’ve been giving it some thought, and I think it’s best if we cross over somewhere we haven’t crossed before. And besides … there’s something I wish you to see.