Page 69 of Foundling

But what about a dragon?

Loquacious as Attalus was, he’d never said anything about Savrakae forming such a connection. Their bond was so new, it could hardly be capable of affecting her so when such distance separated them. Right?

That pain in her chest would disagree. The aching in her joints and mild fever below her skin, too.

What if she wasn’t sick? What if all of these were echoes of Attalus’s own symptoms as he fought the venom in his blood?

“Damn him,” she muttered under her breath. Why would he lie about such a thing? And why hadn’t her magic cleared it from his blood when she’d healed him?

Leita’s legs almost gave out from under her to think that her own magic had failed not only her, but her azai. Her true mate, the only one she’d ever find. The one she’d been waiting centuries for.

The one she’d left behind in a cave to suffer alone.

The ground rushed up to meet her, and Leita just barely caught herself on her hands and knees. It was a rough landing, jarring her palms and kneecaps, but she could hardly feel the blunt pain over her own trembling fear.

“My Queen…?” Ondra called.

“What have I done?”

The question echoed dully off the stone tiles and into her ears, where it rattled round in her skull.

Her breathing came in quick, shallow bursts, black spots appearing at the edge of her vision. She didn’t hear the door open, nor Carenza rush to her side. She barely felt her attendant’s worried touch as Carenza tried to gather her off the floor.

“My Queen, what’s happened?” she asked Leita. To Ondra she cried, “Fetch Chancellor Charis!”

Leita clutched blindly, desperately at the hands reaching for her. Her despair threatened to pull her under, down into the sucking whirlpool of her own making.

I can’t lose him.

“Who, my Queen?”

She hadn’t realized she spoke aloud.

Grasping Carenza by the shoulders, Leita cried, “I can’t lose him!”

To her credit, Carenza didn’t shudder away despite how disturbed she seemed by Leita’s outburst. Instead, she held Leita close and stroked her hair, rocking them as they waited for Charis and Ondra.

“It’s all right, my lady. It’ll be all right. Whoever it is, you won’t lose him. You can do anything.”

Leita wanted to believe that. She wished she could do all that was asked of her.

What’d she done instead? Turned away from the one thing she said she wanted.

Something had gone her way, but rather than accept him for the gift he was, she’d kept him at arm’s length. She could tell herself it was for both their safety and that of the faelands. She could console herself that anyone with her circumstances would struggle at first with an azai so sudden and different. All this could be true, but it was also true that Leita had run away. Just like the scared little girl who’d run from the faelands, she’d turned her back and run.

Leita had never been more scared in her life. Not even running as she did into the unknown, without her mother and sister.

For this time, Leita knew exactly what awaited her if she lost Attalus. She would only be blessed with one azai. If she lost him, if he succumbed, she wouldn’t get another.

Although some Queens had taken second, even third lovers or consorts, Leita had only ever wanted the one. A mate is supposed to be forever. That’s what she’d told Attalus. As she’d roamed the southern wilds alongside Thalia, surviving for a time she might truly live, the hope of an azai, a forever love, a family, had kept her going. She’d already eaten bugs for him, scratched the earth for roots for him, forded rivers and battled boars and been taken prisoner for him.

She’d helped kill a Queen and taken her throne for him.

Leita hadn’t known who, couldn’t have imagined Attalus’s face as she blasted her rage and magic into Amaranthe’s guts, but it’d been for him.

Now, because of her folly and his lie, she might very well sit the throne alone. A future lay before her more barren and dreadful than she could bear. No one to share her life, her bed, her burden. There would be no hope, just endless duty until the faelands sucked the life from her and she outlived her usefulness.

“I don’t want to be alone.”