Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 116396 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 582(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116396 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 582(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Once I reached full consciousness, I felt it, the raw pain. It wasn’t just in the area of my wound, but everywhere, like my body had taken a hard beating. “Storm is alright?”
“Not a scratch.”
“Did we lose a lot of men?”
“Some,” he said. “Not a lot.”
“Ryker is okay?”
“I’m right here.” Ryker gave me a squeeze on the shoulder.
I turned to look at him, seeing his features in full focus for the first time. “I’m so relieved…”
“I wasn’t sure if you guys were going to make it in time,” Ryker said. “You have no idea how happy I was when I saw Pyre flying through the skies. The war would have been lost without you. First, Necrosis, and now this… You must be exhausted.”
Exhausted wasn’t a strong enough word. “Effie?”
“I left her in Delacroix with her family.”
“She found her family?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded, a slight smile moving on to his lips. “Yes.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
Ryker circled his arm around my shoulders and gave me a gentle hug. “I’ll give you two a moment. We’ll talk later.” He excused himself from where we sat together on the grass near the wall of the Capital. There were other tents around us, where the armies of the Kingdoms were stationed throughout the battle.
“Is it…really over?” I asked, unable to believe it.
Huntley just stared at me.
“You did it… You’re the King of Kingdoms.”
“And you’re the Queen.”
I didn’t feel like a queen. I just felt like his wife. That was the only title I cared about anyway. “It feels like just yesterday when you attacked my carriage and chased me through the woods…”
“Really? Feels like another lifetime to me. Hard to imagine a time when we weren’t this.”
Husband and wife. King and queen. Soul mates. “Now what?”
“I sent a letter to HeartHolme reporting our victory. I said you were injured but very likely to pull through. I’ve sent the armies back to their Kingdoms so they can return to their quiet lives. The castle here will need to be rebuilt, but that’s a process that will take at least a year.”
“So…nothing, basically.”
He chuckled. “We have a lot of stuff to do—but nothing that involves fighting.”
I could still see Pyre above us, just sitting there. “It’s the weirdest feeling, being finished. When we agreed to do all this, it seemed like an impossible mission. But we did it…”
Huntley stared at me, his hand resting on my hips, his eyes still a bit concerned. “I was thinking that we would live here, in the Capital, and allow Ryker to be the Duke of Delacroix, just as he would have been.”
“You don’t want to live in Delacroix? It’s your childhood home…”
“HeartHolme is my home. But I can’t live there anymore, so…”
“The Capital really is beautiful. You know, when it’s not on fire and the castle isn’t in ruins.”
“Yes, I remember,” he said with a smile. “Ian and I always loved our trips here. Chasing each other through the olive trees. Swimming in the ocean in the summer. Watching the sunset.”
“I’m fine with that, if that’s what you want.”
“It’ll take a long time to rebuild, so we’ll stay in Delacroix in the meantime.”
“And the dragons?” I asked. “Where will they live?”
Huntley shrugged. “Wherever they want. Harming a dragon will be against the laws of this land—so they’ll be protected wherever they are.”
“And they can eat all the yetis.”
Huntley chuckled again.
“I have an idea…what if we give them the Necrosis lands. It’s huge, so they’ll have their own space. They won’t have to share anything with humans, even look at another human if they don’t want to.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“You think Dunbar will hold up his end of the deal?”
“He knows he would have lost the battle if I hadn’t let him surrender. And he would have lost, whether it was at our gates or his. I’m not worried about it.”
I tilted my chin up and looked at Pyre. “What do you think? Will you still live here?”
If all the dragons are here, that’s where I want to be.
“Good. That means we can still see each other.” I reached for his leg and rubbed his hard scales, careful to avoid the horns that stuck out of his hide. “I think that’s the best part of all this…”
Epilogue
HUNTLEY
I sat in my study, the fire burning in the hearth across the room. A stack of letters was awaiting my attention, and one by one, I opened them and read. The ones that required my response got a quick reply with a sealed scroll, which was placed in a pile on the corner of my desk.
I opened the next letter and began to read.
My son,
The storm that struck HeartHolme was cruel. We lost most of our crops from the frost, and the temperatures were so low that our wells froze for a few days. Most of the outpost was destroyed, but your brother and I agree that it’s time to abandon that post. When the sun returned, everything felt right again, and no lasting harm was done.