Chapter 54 Elena Heart- POV
Outside, I could hear the village beginning to stir, the creak of doors, the low murmur of voices, the sharp cry of a rooster. Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a world that had continued turning while I lay tangled in dream and desperate hope.
I rose slowly, my body aching in ways that felt borrowed from the dream, phantom tenderness, ghost pleasure.
The makeshift bed creaked as I shifted my weight, and the sound sent a shiver through me, memory surfacing unbidden: Xavier's weight pressing me down, the rhythm of his hips, the broken sound of my own voice crying out.
I dressed quickly, roughly, as if I could outpace the images. But they followed me—his mouth on my neck, his fingers between my thighs, the way he'd looked at me when he'd commanded me to find him.
The hut felt smaller than it had yesterday, the walls pressing close. I needed air. I needed to move, to do something with the energy coiling in my chest—the fierce, desperate certainty that had woken with me and refused to be quieted.
I stepped outside into the gray morning, and the chill air hit my face like a slap. The village was already awake, smoke rising from chimneys, the sound of axes against wood, the lowing of livestock. Normal. All of it so painfully normal.
“Xavier? Can you understand me?” I asked the dragonian beast…. It looked at me with knowing eyes…
And somewhere, in a palace I could barely imagine, behind walls of stone and shadow and political games I didn't understand, Xavier was waking too. I held the dragonian small body in my chest and kissed its little head. Was he remembering? Did dreams linger for him as they did for me, phantom sensations ghosting across his skin?
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the steady thump of my heart, and made myself a promise in the gray morning light.
I would find his core back. “I promised to help you Xavier. We will find your core back, I promised.”
Whatever it took. However long. Through whatever trials the world set in my path.
The dream had been more than fantasy. It had been a message, a map, a promise written in flesh and breath and the kind of desperate, aching need that transcended the boundaries of sleep.
I would find his core.
And when I did, I would make sure he never had to ask me to remember again.
The morning sun was a pale, honeyed disc hanging over the charred horizon as we prepared to depart. I looked at our reflection in a puddle of rainwater—we were the perfect picture of "destitute but trying."
I wore a simple, travel-worn merchant’s tunic of rough brown linen, a cotton mask pulled up to my nose to ward off the "ash-fever," and a hooded cape that smelled faintly of the cedar chest it had been stored in.
Beside me, Alla looked every bit the weary maid in her drab wool dress, her dark hair tucked tightly under a cap. Jerald sat atop the bench, his hands steady on the reins of our two shaggy, tired-looking ponies.
The carriage groaned as I stepped inside. It was a pathetic little box, but the floorboards hidden beneath the hay held a pouch of mana stones that could buy the very palace we were heading toward.
As we began to roll, the wheels creaking in a rhythmic protest-protest-protest, the villagers lined the dirt road.
"Don't forget the peppermint, Lady!" a little girl named Kaka shouted, running alongside the wheel, her face smudged with soot but glowing with hope. "Buy the sweet candy! The ones that turn your tongue blue!"
I leaned out the window, a genuine smile tugging at the corners of my mouth behind the mask. "Blue tongues for everyone, Kaka! I promise!"
James had claimed the window ledge, his neon-yellow body vivid against the gray wood, while Xavier was a warm, heavy weight in my lap, hiding beneath the folds of my cloak.
"Stay tucked in," I whispered to the dragon, whose tail was twitching with excitement. "You're a 'very rare lizard' today, not a King. Try to act... small."
Xavier let out a huff of smoky air that smelled of singed cinnamon, which I took as his version of a sassy eye-roll.
By noon, the sun was high and surprisingly warm, baking the scent of dry earth into the air. We stopped in a clearing where the trees were only half-burnt, their skeletal branches reaching up like jagged fingers.
"Lunch break!" Jerald called out, hopping down. He looked back at the road we’d traveled, his eyes narrowing. "They're still there, My Lady."
I hopped out of the carriage, stretching my stiff limbs. "I know."
I turned toward the tree line. To any ordinary traveler, the forest looked empty. But I could see the flickers of silver fur, the massive, dark silhouettes of the orcs, and the glint of multiple eyes in the shadows. High above, two massive birds—their wingspans wide enough to eclipse the sun—spiraled in the thermals.
"Alright, everyone! Family meeting!" I shouted toward the woods, hands on my hips.
A massive orc stepped into the light, looking like a guilty mountain. The lead wolf-kin trotted out beside him, head tilted.
"Look, I love the devotion, really," I said, a sassy tilt to my head. "But if a 'poor merchant' shows up at the capital gates with a literal army of nightmares behind her, the 'undercover' part of this mission is going to fail spectacularly."
The orc let out a low, guttural rumble. Jerald translated with a smirk. "He says they’re just... patrolling."
"Patrol somewhere I can't see you," I laughed. "Go. Stay in the shadows. If I whistle or if James starts glowing like a sun-fevered star, come running. But until then, you are ghosts. Understood?"
The silver-furred alpha let out a soft yip, bowing its head, and within seconds, the forest "emptied." The heavy thuds of the behemoths faded into the distance.
"They're worse than overprotective brothers," Alla muttered, handing me a piece of dried fruit and some water.