I had dreams of Blaze. They were nothing but dreams and I shared them with Lucille. I did not expect my dreams to be made reality any more than I expected Lucille to do such a thing to me. She was supposed to be my best friend. She listened to me talk about him all the time. She teased me with his name. Meanwhile, they were having an affair.
Knowing Blaze had a woman in his life did not hurt as much as knowing that woman was my best friend who never said a word about him, who encouraged me in my love for him. On days when I got overwhelmed, she came with talk of him. I sat with her to talk of all the stupid things I could do with him and she smiled and chirped in.
My arms hurt. The house seemed like a reflection of my dreary state. If I could not ease my fresh sting of betrayal, I could clean. When my mind got too chaotic to dwell in, I escaped to a world of labour. I worked till my arms ached and my legs could not hold me up.
This house could not get any cleaner. Not without a team armed with brushes and soap and a river of water. But I cleaned anyway. I cleaned and scrubbed while he sat before me, watching me break my back trying to clean his house to ease the pain in my heart.
“Are you crying?” He asked when I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. What else would I be doing?
My best friend had listened to me gush about a man she slept with. Were they in love? Did they have plans on mating? She kept this from me for years. I told her everything. My hopes and dreams. My fears, my wishes, my desires. God, I even spent hours describing how good his voice made me feel. Did she laugh at that? Maybe she told him and they laughed together.
“Yes,” I answered, wiping my cheeks again.
“Because of pretty boy?” He snorted, crossing his leg as I wiped the dust eaten chair he sat on.
Yes, Blaze was pretty. The Drakii said he looked like his mother who had been one of the fairest women in the Dragon Mountains.
“I loved him.” The prince probably did not care. How could he? What did he know about love? My suspicions were correct when he chuckled to himself.
“Have you stopped?” I looked up at him. He had a straight face but there could be no separating him from the mischief always twinkling in his eyes. Like he had done something awful and awaited the minute his shenanigans would be discovered.
“No?” I doubted myself for a minute as his eyes seemed to laugh at me.
“You should. He has no spine.” He uncrossed his leg, dusted his thighs then crossed them again. I watched him in annoyance. How could he say such s thing about Blaze? My instincts were to defend Blaze at all times so I did.
“If you mean him keeping his relationship with Lucille a secret, then you should know that your brother would kill him if he finds out,” I snapped.
“No need to scratch, kitten. I am only making an observation.” He chuckled.
The Drakii said the Prince had some loose nuts in his head. Rumour had it that his mother had been a crazy, red-eyed demon who seduced the king and sired the third prince before running back to hell.
As a child, he had wreaked more havoc than ten children combined. They said some even called him the devil thanks to his red eyes and as an adult, he hadn’t gotten any better. He seemed to glory in chaos. If the Drakii had any issues, best believe they had somehow been instigated by Mikhail Pendragon.
“When a true dragon wants something, he goes for it. He does not let fear stand in his way.” He admonished.
I felt irritation rise in my chest. How dare this man castigate Blaze like that. Blaze was perfect and did not deserve the words coming out of Mikhail mouth against him. Being the dragons king’s First was a powerful and dangerous position and he fit right into in. When there was battle, he charged right along with his king into it. How dare this man that knew nothing asides his barbaric ways castigate Blaze in such a manner!
“You mean like you have pursued vengeance all these years?” I sneered. He blinked and the mischief in his eyes was replaced with the fire of a dragon ready to tear down his adversaries.
I had crossed a lot of lines with him. I had to remember my place. Who I was, where I stood and in his words, how fast he could snap my neck. Just because he found me too fascinating to kill one minute did not mean he would not find me too obnoxious to keep alive in the next. He was, after all, the prince of chaos.
“Yes. Exactly as I have pursued vengeance for as long as you have existed,” He answered, rising.
I squeezed my eyes, waiting for him to step closer and burn me to a crisp or rip me apart limb by limb. When a minute passed and my heart still beat inside my chest, I opened my eyes.
“Are you afraid?” My throat did not work as it should have, prompting me to shake my head, terrified of the quietness of his voice.
“Good.” His eyes did not leave mine for the longest time. When they finally did, he strode away from the dust-filled room.
I had a pile of dirt at the corner of the entrance; dust, parchments that had been littered by rats, other things that could have been belongings of those who had died in this very castle.
I looked around me, marvelled at the change I had managed in my hours of cleaning. Not a single spot shined. Not a single corner looked like any attempt had been made in making it a bit more presentable.
I looked around me. Everything looked just as I felt inside. Dead.
I found him in a hallway standing beside a portrait of a man. The only clean piece in this dustbin of a castle.
They bore no resemblance but the reverence with which he stared at the painting, anyone who knew him would know who the man was.
Valiant Pendragon had been king for a short while. He had died in war a short while after his father, making his younger brother king. I never knew him but again, if we were to go by stories, he had been Mikhail’s best friend. They said once, the duo had pulled a stunt so big it almost destroyed Dracoberg.
“Do you miss him?” I did not know much. I had no schooling. But I knew pain and I could feel the waves of it pouring off him. Misery loves company.
“Should I not?”
He did not offer a direct response but he could not deny he missed his partner in crime. I thought of Olivia and smiled rather than cry. Everything in my life was bound to fall apart. My mother had died. The girl who called me her sister had died. My best friend betrayed me. Soon, I too would die. My only hope was to find a bit of happiness in this world before I went into another that could be much worse.
“Did you love him?” I asked.
I loved Olivia with all my heart. Though I often got cross with her, there would be no mistaking my affections for the chattering girl that took me in and loved me like her own family. She gave me something I had never known I needed. The love of a sister. And now she was gone. Could it be the same for the prince? Could he love another as he loved his wars?
“Is today the day to ask stupid questions?” He snapped, turning to me with a glare. For once, it did not scare me. I had seen the full force of his glare and this one could not compare.
“If I could hate the humans, I would,” I muttered. “They killed Olivia.” His expression morphed from anger to confusion.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“But I too, am human.” I finished. “He is dead, Mikhail. Richard Hunter is dead. Why do you still pursue vengeance when for once, you can be happy?” I burst out.
He wore hatred like a second skin. Upon his garment of hatred, there were patches of pain, of sorrow and of regret. One would think the death of the vilest human would make him rest but he had still been stirring up trouble.
“Happy? When your kind still leave a few kilometres away? Richard Hunter took from me. I have taken nothing from him. I will never be happy until I ruin everything he has ever worked to protect.” He vowed. I saw a bit of the insanity people whispered about. How his eyes turned a deeper shade of red, how they bounced about the place, his fist tight and lips parted like it hurt to breathe. But then, in a mere second, within the blink of an eye, he was back to being unruffled. “I vowed it on Valiant’s grave.”
“But Richard Hunter is gone. You cannot hurt him from the grave.” I watched him closely, looking out for a second explosion. “Do you –“ I cleared my throat. I entered this dangerous territory to assuage my curiosity. How did a man with buckets of blood on his hands think? “Maybe Valiant would want you to take a break. Maybe try to be happy.”
“You did not know him.” He stared at me. I shook my head. “He would have wanted me to be happy.”
“So be happy.”
“I will be when the lasts of you are gone.” I swallowed. He said it with so much conviction, I knew he dedicated his life to it. Dragons were very nearly immortal. He had years upon years to plan and plot and destroy.
I looked at the man in the painting before us. The only clean one. Others had moulds of dust sitting on them, obscuring the faces on them. This one gleamed like it had just been made.
Valiant had hair the colour of an ocean’s sand, light stubble that covered his jaw and chin with the eyes of a man who committed an atrocity while the painting was being made. He did not look like the other Prince’s but the gleam of mischief in his eyes was all too familiar.
“How many have you killed? How many more till you are satisfied?”
“A world more. Eric Hunter still walks the streets. His daughter calls herself queen of the Drakii. I will never be satisfied till I am done.”
“Even you must know that you cannot kill Missy. You know that the king will not hesitate to end anyone who makes her shed a tear, brother or not. You know her father is under protection, with or without the king’s orders.” He winced like a sword had pierced his heart.
“Thank you for such a reminder. I needed nothing more than a human reminding me of all my obstacles.” He sneered.
“Why do you not let go! I want – I need to understand. Sometimes I know not to hold on to my bitterness and other times I cannot let go of my rage. I need to know how you can hold on to anger and hatred for decades.”
“There will be no understanding for you, Kitten. You have not lost everything. You have no fire in your veins. If you had, the fire in your veins would keep you awake for weeks on end and you will have nothing but the thought of vengeance. Then you would not need to learn to hold on to something that pumps from your heart.”