The Fae World: Arkal: Art: Freedom (part 2)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

“What happened?” Rhonwen asked, as they started walking along the hallway together.

“There was a girl.” Art vaguely remembered seeing her before, but almost all of his memories from the time he spent in the collar were blurry. “It looked like she came here uncollared, got tossed into a room with Draven, and chose to set him free.” He shook his head. “Either she had no idea what he was or she was brave enough to hope that freeing him would be the best way to make sure she was never collared.”

“She will be though.”

Art shrugged. “Our return is going to change Arkal again and maybe working with the inhabitants will work better than taking over entirely. We have no idea how long we were collared or what’s happened in that time, so she’s going to be a useful source of information that will allow us to decide our next move.”

“Is Draven truly King?”

Biting hard on his lip Art tried not to think about the battle that came before the collars. “Yes, he is,” he said finally, nodding. “When the King died Draven chose to surrender, knowing it was better to live to fight another day. If he hadn’t we wouldn’t be here now.”

“That day was…” As Rhonwen trailed off Art looked at her and could see that she was fighting the same memories. “Draven made the right choice. I’m happy to be alive, even though there are so many of us that didn’t survive.”

“Have you any idea how many of us there are left?”

“I can’t be certain, but I know on the day before that last battle less than half our number had survived. A few Dragons hid themselves, like the Princess, and it’s entirely possible that there are children out there with Dragon blood who will find out what they are in the next few days.”

Sighing, Art tried to focus on what needed to be done next, instead of thinking too far into the future. The Princess, he hoped, would return when she found out that the Dragons had survived, but there was no guarantee of that. When she’d disappeared she’d done it for a reason and he could understand why she’d made the choices she had. Just because they needed her to be the voice of reason if Draven did decide to follow in his father’s footsteps didn’t mean that was what she’d want to do.

The new Dragons were his biggest worry. Art didn’t know how many women had been pregnant with Dragons, even if their children hadn’t been born able to shapeshift, because he had no idea where the family trees had ended up. It had always been important to the King to keep track of every child that had Dragon blood as the ability to shift from one form to another could miss generations. He allowed a certain number of Dragons to have children every year, knowing that their immortality meant that they had little option but to be careful about numbers. Unfortunately they hadn’t been impervious to harm when the battles started.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.