Page 14 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he follows right after you. I won’t separate mother from child,” I hissed and leaned to her ear. “I am not cruel like that.”

“Have mercy,” she pleaded, grabbing hold of my wrist. “Have mercy.”

Funny this one. “That was one. Only twelve more to go.” Dragging her to the far wall of the dungeon room, I tied an iron chain connected to the healing stone of the valley to her hand and let the ancient magic do its work to heal her. Slowly, it would mend her insides, replacing the lost blood, too. But ever so slow—so slow that you felt each fibre of you knit back just how it tore in the first place. “Perhaps I’ll find where I’ve lost my mercy and forgive you then. Perhaps not.” I crossed my fingers before her face. “Best of luck to you.”

When I turned back to face the room, everyone gathered themselves tight, hiding their faces from me. Sigh. “You’re all boring me.” With that, I decide to explore the surface above the dungeons. See if anyone missed me much.

Memphis was waiting for me behind the doors, licking her paws. She looked bored as I was. When she’d been trapped in my father’s dungeons her mood had been infectious, her playfulness, too. Even the day I’d broken her cage and sneaked her out she had been vibrant. A creature like her was meant to be surrounded and adored, it was in the nature of a morph. After the night of our bond something had settled in her, making her the creature she was never meant to be. Recluse and distant. Overly protective of me and unforgiving.

I bent down to scratch that spot behind her ears that she liked but stopped when I saw my bare hand in the much brighter light of the corridors. Blood had matted and crusted to my skin, folding between each raised scar on my palm. The only one who could give her pets and scratches was always too bloodied to do so.

She pushed up and rested her snout on the crook of my neck, seeking the affection herself. “Why isn’t it enough, M?”

My bonded nudged my head with hers, and for a moment I was her. I could taste the sweet air, feel the breeze around me as she had. My senses tickled as the paradise of vivid juniper and vibrant flowers, a heaven of varicoloured creatures became sharp in my head. It soon murked with smoke and pained shrieks and cries, it blurred with fleeing burnt and terrified animals hurrying towards the Hollow waters where a worst fate found them—my father’s army, waiting to capture and imprison them. She’d been afraid at the time—I could feel that too.

Her gentle voice resonated in my head, Because what we want is gone and we can never get it back.

Visions of the moment where my father had ruined her home flashed through one last time before it all turned to black.

I basked in the calm she offered me for a little while, the comfort she’d never denied me even before we were bonded. “I need to bathe, I stink.”

She huffed in agreement, making me giggle.

The cold bath I took and all the skin damage I’d done attempting to scratch the blood away didn’t wake me up as much as colliding with a sturdy body on the way out of my room. Son of a b—

“My queen,” Lazarus purred, his eyes raking my dishevelled form with too much relish. Once I’d been flattered by his attention considering he was the crop of his sort. Now, all I felt was an ick. The general was a good lover. The good kind you abandon right after the deed and forget till your next desires strike. Clearly his ears were stuffed with feathers because he still loomed over me like we were divinely fated to be with one another.

He raised a hand to pull up the dress strap that had slipped down my shoulder, and I jerked back. Uhm…why did I do that?

He seemed surprised too, his hand still elated mid-way. “I was on the way to call you. The Hanaian queen is here as is Lord Arynth and Sebastian.” He lowered his hand and gave me an assessing look from the tip of my hair to my cold toes.

“Whatever you wish to say, save it.”

Lazarus’s expression hardened. “You have not seeked me since your return.”

“I can entertain myself just as efficiently. Perhaps better sometimes.” Yet, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. Actually, I could remember my last attempt at that which ended with me tossing and turning in bed unsatisfied and even more bothered than before. All because the only thing I could think with my hand between my legs was him and his touch. He’d ruined another thing for me. But the last thing I had in mind was this one.

“One truth you ought to tell me. Does it have to do with him?”

I rolled my eyes. “You forget your place, Lazarus.”

His wings ruffled and expanded a little as they often did when he used his biceps to think, not his brains. “My place was right beside you.”

Heavenly hells. “Keyword being was.” I pushed past him and climbed the stairway to my chambers.

“Snow,” Nia called, meeting me midway in the corridor. She frowned at something behind me. “Why were you with that pigeon?” Nia couldn’t stand the man. “Please tell me you didn’t—”

“Nia, the only taste I have now for bird is perhaps skewered.”

She scrunched her face. “You don’t eat meat.”

“Exactly, I’d rather eat meat at this moment.” The issue with Lazarus was not only that my taste for bird had changed or that the bird had never properly satisfied me, but that he’d grown some form of delusionality from our few…get-togethers.

“Adriatian girl,” the Volantian general said in greeting. And there was the reason why Nia Drava had once in her life considered murder by arson.

“Bird boy,” she greeted back with a polite bow of her head. “Like for me to show you just how Adriatian I am?” Like that, shadows rose taller around us, and I could swear Lazarus flinched just a little.

Throwing an arm around her neck, I gave her a kiss. “Don’t make him soil himself in my corridors, Nia.”