Page 74 of Taloned Heart

She’d thought she had gotten over this. That letting the elves go in that cell would have somehow made all this better. But their denial of her, their dismissal of someone they still called a goddess but wouldn’t see as anything other than a half elf, it still stung.

It hurt deep inside her soul. So deep that she feared she’d never be able to patch that wound or heal it because they had made it very clear they didn’t want her to heal.

After all this time, after all the fighting and surviving and power that coursed through her veins, she was still nothing to them. And she should never have shown them all that she could do.

Now they knew she could move the heavens if she wished. What limit was there to her power if she could do that?

And even knowing that terrified her. Lore shouldn’t be able to do that. No one should be able to reach into the sky and move the very moon itself! Yet here she was. Moving the moon. Blocking the sun from the sky until the entire kingdom was bathed in red.

Was she a goddess? Or a demon who had come to destroy them all?

Lore didn’t want to be this person anymore. She didn’t want the weight of the world on her shoulders and she didn’t want people to be frightened of her or even know she existed.

But then, by going back to that life of being nothing and no one, it meant that they had won. They’d reduced her to little more than a bug under their heel again and she couldn’t let them win.

Blinking away her tears, she realized they weren’t heading for the forest. They weren’t returning to the dark caverns that would make her heart turn cold once again. Instead, he’d wheeled them toward the sea.

He said nothing. Only skimmed his wings over the wave as he dipped them low, allowing the water to spray over her face and turn the air into a thousand prisms that cast rainbows all around her. He drifted over the salt air until she realized where he had brought them.

The island where they had first hatched their eggs. The sand was still turned to glass in places where the dragon eggs had burst through so their children could hatch.

And her soul clicked back into place.

Her children. They were waiting for her on the dragon isle and she couldn’t return to them until she finished what she had to do here. And in the end, it didn’t matter. Because the only people who did matter were those two dragon babes who had sat in her lap on these very sands and watched the waves with her as the moon hit the horizon and turned the water into silver.

How had he known what would ease her torment? Only Abraxas could see through her soul and the pain and know how to make her remember why they were here.

His wings beat at the air as he lowered them down onto the sands and then stretched out his wing for her to slide down.

Lore eased onto the ground, dropping onto her behind and digging her hands into the sand. She thought he would change back into his mortal form, but apparently, he was staying very true to this memory. Abraxas curled his giant body around her, draping his wing all around them until there was only a small sliver for her to see through. Everything was a cocoon of warm ruby.

A giant sigh stirred the sands in front of him as he rested his head beside her. “Do you think they miss us?”

It wasn’t the question she’d expected. Lore was so startled by the words that she actually laughed. “I think they do. I am certain that they wish their parents were there, considering how strict Tanis is.”

“And Draven,” he muttered. “If he’s touched her while we were not there, I will swallow him whole.”

“Just make sure he doesn’t have any knives on him, so he cannot carve himself a way out of you.” Lore patted Abraxas’s cheek and then leaned her entire body against it. “He would like to crawl out, all bloodied from battle.”

Abraxas snorted. “He would like the story, but not the truth of it. It would be much harder than he thinks. My stomach is thick.”

“And you have no small amount of ego when it comes to your ability to beat that elf in anything that he or you try.” Shaking her head, she marveled at his ability to turn her thoughts away from what just happened.

Abraxas knew how to distract her, but this was not something that would easily go away. Not even with the thoughts of their children. Although, the thoughts were much easier now that she had their souls to guide her.

At her sudden silence, and likely the way her expression fell, Abraxas sighed again. “You know your worth is not weighed by the opinion of elves?”

“I do.”

“But I also know that the sting of their rejection will never disappear. You can try to tell yourself that it will, Lore. And it may grow easier with time, but you will always have to deal with the disappointment of them. They are not worth your time, but I also know saying this doesn’t help you.”

“It doesn’t.” She hugged her knees into her chest, pressing more firmly against him. “I think there will always be a part of me that wishes they would change their mind. That they would see me for who I am and not for what they believe me to be.”

His tail shifted in the sands behind them, lashing for a moment in anger before he forced himself to still. “I wish that as well. But the old ways are hard to break. At least there are the Ashen Deep who have not yet lost their minds to power.”

“Because they’ve always had it.” Lore shook her head. “They’ve always guarded the grimdags and their dark caverns and their Matriarch who leads them. All the other clans barely even have our history, or language, or all that we sought to preserve. Those who fought lost everything. And they think in doing this, they will get it all back.”

“They are wrong.”

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