The Dragon's Match

XVI

XVI

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

She was smiling.

She was smiling and laughing- and the sound was mesmerizing.

Lillian was tripping through a field of wildflowers, the sunlight casting her in the gilded glow of summer. Her hair was unbound, her long tresses streaked with bronzes and deep golds, and hung in heavy, loose curls to her hips, spilling over her shoulders. There was a chain of daisies atop her crown as she looked over her shoulder, her crystalline blue eyes glinting with her laughter, with her humour.

There was a curl to her wide lips, the corners lifted into her cheeks, dimpling them unexpectedly, and they moved as if she were saying something... to him? Her words were distorted, the sound muffled as if she were trying to reach him through a barrier of water or something that prevented the sound from reaching the ears, but then she was turning and hitching her skirts, tripping away from him as her long legs carried her through the field.

Faeries and imps rose into the air around her, twirling in swirls of colourful feathers and blooms, and her long, brightly hued skirts billowed from behind her in long trains of silks. Her arms were mostly bare, the mark stark against her flesh, and his gaze fastened on it as she moved further and further from him, until she had almost vanished entirely.

And a deep sense of loss embedded itself into his chest, as one might a dagger.

➶

It had been several months since his last vision.

Which is probably why he woke up with a start, his hand clutching at his chest to quell the insurgent hammering of his heart, just as a bolt of lightning illuminated his chambers preceding the thunder that rattled the very panes of his windows.

It wasn't him, he told himself. The vision wasn't about him.

Another flash of lightning, the crack of thunder that followed it making him silently flinch as the rain pounded against the ruins with relentless abandon.

Still unnerved by what had been revealed to him, Aëghan threw the heavy fur covers from his person and swung his legs from the bed. The storm was bound to have repercussions and if he concentrated he could feel them as vividly as if needles were pressing into the mark circling his bicep. Even if she was attempting to valiantly conceal from him how unaffected she was, it would never be enough.

He'd be able to sense her distress from the other side of the world, and it would torment him until she was no longer distraught.

Just as the image of her, so carefree and wild and uninhibited, in a field full of wildflowers would torment him- for she was with someone, a male, but the signature or essence of the being was unidentifiable. It prevailed in her gaze as she had looked upon him, her adoration, her carefree happiness blazing through her with aching poignancy.

If he had been present in this particular vision, if it had indeed been him that was subjected to her smile, then it would be easy for Aëghan to sense it. His particular magical signature... he would be able to tell if it was indeed him that she was with, laughing with, smiling at, and a surge of jealousy roiled through him.

It did not matter who she was with in that field.

It was never meant to be him.

And it had been beyond stupid of him to kiss her earlier that day.

He needed to earn her trust, not make her so skittish of him that she asked him to return her to Ravensfield before he was even allotted the opportunity to present her to Dellanae. Ravaging her on the floor before his prized artworks was not the way to garner her confidence.