The Phoenix and the Dragon

Part One - Chapter Eleven

(A/N: This part is in third person, I'm sorry for the constant changing! I can't find one style to suit.)

Part One - Fire and Ice

Chapter Eleven - Princess Lost

Gavryn paced the ballroom, his stomach as tight as a knot as he tried not to give in to a bout of shallow breathes and laid his head against a sandstone pillar.

Ardere was gone.

He had been angry at her, angry, jealous and proud. 

They really were two sides of the same coin.

Sucking in a deep breathe he rubbed at his temples, shaking his head.

He had been to this ballroom and the one that was set a floor lower on the opening to the gardens. When she had show up at neither, he had ran to her rooms, heard pounding a million miles an hour.

Empty.

So he had returned to the ballroom, panicked and fists clenched.

She had left without him.

He ran his hands through his hair, usually Ashryver gold but now a bright white that practically glowed in the shadowed room.

As his fingers passed over each strand, they faded back to normal, and with it slowed his breathing. 

She would be back, she had to be. Perhaps all of this was just a trick, to make him feel guilty for his outburst. It was working, if it really was some ploy to make him apologise.

But deep in his gut, Gavryn knew it was no trick. Just like he had known Ardere didn't love Bran, or that their marriage would actually happen. But it hurt nonetheless, to hear her say the words. Hissing he rubbed harder at his temples, eyes closed tight. 

What is she was dead? What if she had gotten stuck in a different realm? What if, and this burned him most of all, what if she spent enough time in this other world and decided to stay?

The thought sent his eyes shooting open, and body giving a quick shudder as he chased away the thought. She was just getting Goldryn back. It was nothing to worry about, she could look after herself. Besides, at her age her mother was the worlds greatest assassin, a god wearing human skin, and her father was a warrior of legend.

The finest shafts of sunlight however, were not nothing to worry about, as they started to creep across the windows.

Because the fact of the matter was Ardere was no longer anywhere upon this earth, and her parents, the god and the warrior would probably tear apart the universe itself and its inhabitant to find her.

And he had let her get away.

"Shit."

He had perhaps a half hour before the servants would before delivering breakfast to Ardere's chambers, and then mere minutes whilst they ran to Aunt Aelin's quarters to tell her that her wayward daughter had disappeared.

Gavryn dropped his hands, tapping against the trousers. He had thirty minutes. Less if the servants on this shift were early birds.

Thirty minutes.

A plan formed in his mind, separate pieces of the puzzle falling in like a jigsaw.

And his mind running circles, his feet carried him as fast as they could towards his rooms.

~~~~

It had only been twenty five minutes.

Gavryn had his signature battleaxes across his shoulder blades, a travel pack filled with coin, food and a few potions at his side- the rest of his outfit the kind one might use for long horse rides. A warrior by birth and by training, pledged to protect his cousin and heir Ardere. Since she obviously could not protect herself.

As he was tightening the last strap he heard her.

Queen Aelin.

"FIND MY DAUGHTER!" was shouted from behind the doors to his rooms, his fae ears picking it up despite her being a good few metres away.

Turning on a dime, he jumped into action, throwing open his doors to the balcony, and using one hand to push himself onto the stone barrier, a looming drop on one side of him.

He was still crouching when his Aunt burst into the room, quickly followed her gaggle of handmaids.

She was wearing a long nightgown, robe barely tied around her. She was missing her crown, which shouldn't surprise him as she barely wore it anyway outside of court functions.

Her eyes met his, the same blue ringed by gold.

She had always terrified him, her and his own mother.

"Hi Auntie." Gavryn said, rising to stand on the wall, his back to the long drop on the other side. He could not help a saccrine smile.

"Where is she?" Aelin snapped, golden hair fizzing around her head- uncombed.

Gavryn risked a glance over his shoulder, then snapped his focus back to his aunt.

She was a queen, a warrior, an assassin, a full-blooded fae.

But he wasn't without his own merit.

And she could not catch him from across his room.

Looking at her, frustration and anger and ... worry in her eyes.

"I'll find her. I promise." The words pushed past his lips, and he saw her arms rise as if to stop him or use her abilities he could not tell, but Gavryn took a step back into the empty air, falling out of her reach.

~~~~

Aelin cursed, running with her fae speed to the wall where she bent over, hands gripping the stone so that fissures appeared.

There was no half-fae falling to his doom, and she was greeted with a tremendous billow of air as a dark, huge, scaled body rose from the air below.

Taking a step back so not to be caught in the great vacuums caused by those beating wings, Aelin watched her -well he wasn't her nephew but it was close enough- nephew, now in the body of a great wyvern, spiked tail and all soaring into the sky, before turning to the south.

He better find her daughter. 

One hand unclutched itself, Ardere's favourite silk scarf she used to tie up hair wound around her fingers.

Bringing it up to her nose she sniffed it, her daughters scent still mingling with the fabric.

Aelin puffed out a breath, shaking her head as her handmaids scurried around her- talking about dressing her before she made a speech.

It was not that she was a fussing nursemaid, but when she really thought about Ardere, she knew she was pampered. Never truly exposed to any kind of hardship, or trials that she had been. Aelin was not of the mind that she wished to teach Ardere as she had been, in the ways of deceit and dark doorways and death- but the girl was no warrior. Even with lessons in sworsmanship, archery and the like.

A hothead yes, but all she knew was violence as a game, an art form. Not a survival tactic.

Aelin pressed her head into her hands, then hissed, looking up to stare daggers at her nephew who's great booming wings had caused the groundsmen to look up and shout.

Ardere was not Aelin. And Aelin knew that despite having an unexplored amass of power within herself, one Aelin often wondered on and mused if it might have been the kind of legendary power she herself once posessed, that the girl was too afraid of it- and what she had already done to ever wield it's true depth.

The mother let her mask fall into place, and it was the Queen who let her ladies usher her away back to her own rooms, and put her in fine clothes so that she could meet with her Queensguard and order them to find her nephew. 

And her daughter.