The Ocean's Heart (The Dragons of Flareia Book 2)

Chapter 28 - Davri

           

The Umbrassi Crypts

26th Year of the Ocean

Last Day of the Fifth Moon

The bonfire may have been a little extravagant, even Davri had to admit, but Varille had asked. Too many things had begun to haunt him wherever the young Queen was considered — her lack of a childhood though she dreamed of simplicity, the assassination attempt he was too foolish to see coming in Venteer, the assassination attempt he should have prepared for in Umbrassé. Four years old, and Varille had stared death in the face too many times for someone of even his own age. And Davri, who'd been put in charge of her safety, had prevented none.

A small, cruel part of himself wanted to hate Corrian for being her saviour, but the larger, more logical part of him was too grateful. He would not hate another for his own shortcomings. Especially not Corrian, who had been forced to change himself so much purely to keep them all safe. Instead, he would make it up to Varille – to all the princesses under his protection. The first step was allowing them to have a bonfire to celebrate their last night in the crypts. The second step was getting them — all of them — to safety with Flae of the Ember in Ignisia. But that depended on Kylan.

Every flicker of shadow around the bonfire had become a flicker of hope, a symbol of the Umbrassi Dragonheir coming to their aid. Davri seemed to be the only one still wary of the shadows that danced around the flames.

One of the princesses — Catalina, Davri corrected, reminding himself of his promise to learn all of their names — had started singing an old Venti folk song, and the others had started clapping along. Varille sat with them, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips as she mouthed the lyrics.

Davri knew the song well, but something stopped him from joining the princesses. Perhaps it was how they all looked like a family. Perhaps it was the song's relation to his own.

It told the story of a princess who had suitors from across the mountains begging for her hand in marriage, though she accepted none of them, for since she had been a child, she had been in love with the boy who brought the snow. The King insisted, eventually, that she would be cast out should she not choose a husband, for there was no man who brought the snow. They were Venti. They knew weather patterns, knew it wasn't work of the divine. But still the princess refused, sneaking out of the palace and making her way to the mountains – the very same mountains Davri and the princesses passed through to reach Umbrassé. And there, she met the boy who brought the snow, who was invisible to everyone but the girl he'd loved from afar. And the two of them lived together in the mountains, and they made their own destiny.

Davri's mother had sung it to him when he was young and couldn't sleep, though his father insisted she wouldn't. In hindsight, Davri realised it as because his father had never wanted him to make his own destiny. He would become a Head Scholar like his father, and his father's father, and his father before that. He could still remember the absurd look on Stephan Scholl's face when he'd said he'd volunteered for the Trial of Wind. Disgust. Anger. Disappointment. But Davri hadn't mentioned that his mother had suggested it, so he was thankful — for those emotions would not be directed at her. So Davri would not wake the next morning to find his mother with a split lip she would claim was from the cold, and a hastily covered-up bruise on her cheekbone, purple blooming past her cheap powder.

Davri couldn't remember when the bruises had started dotting his mother's skin like ink blotches from a rusted fountain pen, but he would never forget the day he'd thrown his arms out to hug his mother only to have her flinch away.

That was when he'd started paying attention, taking note of her bruises, her flinches, the sobs through the walls when she thought no one else was home. And he swore that one day, his father would suffer much worse.