Chapter 138 Aella’s Journey
That night, once the children were in bed, Aella planned to pay her debts to the dragons they housed. She arranged blankets on the roof as a large nest, taking every blanket she could, every spare pillow she could find. She asked one of the house guards to clear the top of the tower of the slushy snow that made everything feel grey and wet. She bundled Damara up in layers of wool so she’d be warm. Nereida was amused by her antics until she realized why Aella was building a nest on the roof. Her amusement drained away, and she stood in their doorway, her arms crossed, while Damara lay bundled up in a basket nearby, sleeping.
“We might be seen,” she protested. “They might be seen!”
“Cat’s out of the bag now, love. And we haven’t given them what they want.”
“Why should we?” Nereida demanded, her tone suddenly sharp. She uncrossed her arms and slammed her fist into the wood frame. The sound made Damara stir, but the resilient baby did not wake up. “She didn’t come when I begged her to help me save Camina!”
Aella closed the distance between them, holding her wife as she angrily sobbed.
“I begged,” Nereida managed. “She didn’t come.”
“Maybe she couldn’t.” Aella very gently wiped the tears from her wife’s cheeks. She placed a kiss on each tear track, tasting the salty tears. “You had just been blasted by fire… the same thing that tore her apart the first time. Maybe she was frightened.” Nereida’s sobs abated, but there was still anger and hurt in her eyes. Aella took her wife’s hands, entwining their fingers. “We don’t have to do this tonight, love. I can put the blankets away.”
Nereida hesitated, then dropped her chin.
“No… I… I don’t want them to come when it would be worse. Let them have the night.” She closed her eyes, shrinking in on herself. Aella pulled her wife in tighter, holding her firmly.
“I have you,” she whispered. “You don’t have to be strong right now. You can fall apart.” Nereida nodded miserably, but did not cry any longer. Instead, she picked up the basket with their sleeping daughter, and headed out of the room.
There were so, so many pillows. She had at least two dozen spread into a nest-like shape on the stone rooftop, a blanket tossed over them to keep out the chill and two more to wrap them up in. Aella helped her wife get comfortable in the pillows, pulling the blanket around her as if she were tucking in one of the children. Nereida smiled a broken little smile, but it was something. The Admiral placed their daughter in between them, and then she shimmied under the blankets as well.
The night air was cool, and there were no clouds in the sky. The moon was a waning crescent, so there was not much light. But Aella did not need the light to find Nereida’s hand beneath the blankets.
“I knew I loved you,” Aella said softly, “after the mutineer tried to hurt you. When you watched me order the death of a man I had known for five years, and you didn’t flinch, you didn’t run… you just wanted to make sure my heart wasn’t broken.” Nereida squeezed her hand under the blanket, but was otherwise still. “You have always been my harbour, love. But now it is my turn; I know you are not alright. I won’t waste the words in the asking. But I am here and I love you more now than I did then.” Sells could hear Nereida breathe in and out, slow, measured, her hand tightening. She began to cry once again, but these were soft, silent tears.
Aella did not push. She had learned what her wife needed, and while, often, the push was required, now it was time to be the waiting harbour. So Aella held her wife’s hand as she cried, but did not speak. She stared up at the stars in the sky, watching them twinkle. She went through the constellations in her mind, wondering if Epelda was able to see the stars now, if she thought of them on clear nights.
“I knew I loved you,” Nereida’s voice cut through the still air, her tone barely above a whisper, “when I was willing to let you see me, knowing you could hate me. I knew you loved me when you took us into siren waters.” Her voice broke. “I want… I want to go back to the ship. This… this isn’t home. It's just…. smoke.”
“We will,” Aella promised, stroking her wife’s hand softly. She felt her magic pull at her, offering her more, but she denied it. She wouldn’t lock them in with a prophecy. Because if she spoke it, Nereida would believe it, and would work for it. She couldn’t trap her wife like that. Instead, Aella curled toward her wife, with the baby nestled safely between them in her basket.
They stayed like that a long while, their breath visible in the dim light, before Nereida’s gentle tears stopped. She leaned in, and kissed Aella gently on the cheek.
“I love you,” she whispered. “And I’m ready now.” And hand in hand, they both surrendered to the goddesses in their bodies, with no more than the hope that they’d get their bodies back come dawn.
The morning sun crept over the parapet around them, finally breaking apart the shadows. Aella awoke sore, her nose dripping from the cold air. Beside her, Nereida was in her fully dragon form, curled around Damara, who was also draconic. The little baby dragon was gnawing on her mother’s scales, almost like a cat chewing furniture.
“Great One,” Aella began, eying her. “It’s dawn. Please do not give my wife reason to fear you.” She chose her words carefully, not wanting to offend the dragon. She had come to realize gods were much like toddlers; easy to offend, impossible to understand, driven by feelings and working on a logic only known to them.
“The sun’s light, while dazzling, has never held my attention like the moon’s soft rays,” the dragon replied, as if her words were an answer. She yawned, showing her sharp teeth. “Sun himself was a bit of a peacock. You’ll find that out once you return to your duty.”
“I will stay with Nereida, here, until she is ready to leave. She needs to grieve. Needs to be here for her brother.”
“The Stars dragon did it again, you know. Made more than one Scion, took more than his share.” She leaned over to nuzzle Damara, licking her. Did dragons clean their young like cats? “Perhaps we should have let him die.”
“You didn’t “let” him do anything. That was Nereida. And me, and Moon.” Aella stood, crossing her arms and attempting, futilely, to loom over the Great Dragon. The dragon chuckled, sounding much like a mother laughing at her child’s antics.
“So you say. Take your wife to the ocean’s edge, your little siren son too. They need my embrace to heal, not the pool.”
“That won’t help their hearts,” Aella replied, trying not to sound bitter.
“Oh child, I am sorry about the loss of a family member. Human life is fragile, even those who share the blood of the gods. You know this.”
“Why wasn’t Nereida’s magic enough? It always has been, before! And she is strong now!” The words tumbled from her before she could stop herself. The large dragon sat up, no longer content to lounge around. Her expressive eyes were filled with sorrow.
“Not all wounds can be healed, child. And your wife’s magic, while strong, while it is empowered by my presence, changed by me, is not infallible. She had been burned, the air was parched, and she was not aboard a ship, where I could surround her and fill her. She relies on me too much. You rely on Moon too little. Perhaps you should each take lessons from the other.” She looked down at Damara, who was now pulling on a blanket with her little sharp dragon teeth, as if trying to play tug of war. “My heart aches for the King, for I understand, somewhat, the grief he must feel. I would be less merciful than he was. The traitors have died, save the instigator, and she lives in comparable luxury.”
“She’ll die before she can name the child she grows,” Aella replied. “That’s not mercy.”
“The scion she grows, you mean,” the dragon eyed her, sniffing in derision.
“Traitor’s daughter and Stars reborn will grow in the same cradle.” Aella felt the words tear from her, unable to stop the flow of magic. The Dragon looked pleased by this. Aella continued speaking, parsing out her thoughts, the magic ebbing away. “He’ll raise them as twins. So that… so that no one knows…. That one is a dragon.”
“Like Damara and her anchoring siren, the one the King adopted. Yes… that IS a good idea. Well done.”
And suddenly, without warning, she was Nereida again, at least in body. But her eyes shone silver. She returned Damara to her human shape as well, and the little one cried at the sudden cold.
“Your wife will be in command in an hour or so,” the Dragon offered. She kissed the wailing child on her head and passed her to Aella. “Take care of the little one.”
“Where are you going?” Aella demanded. But the dragon-in-Nereida simply smiled a toothy grin, and, without warning of any kind, she leapt over the parapet. Aella rushed to the edge, only to see Nereida gliding down to the courtyard below on leathery blue wings. Guards stopped and stared, two servants actually fainted at the sight. Aella, stuck on the roof, could do nothing but go inside and hope that her wife’s passenger did not get them into too much trouble.
The children were waiting for her to come back inside. They were sticky messes, both covered in honey.
“Nurse made honey cakes for breakfast,” Alejo said instead of a greeting. He was grinning. It was the first smile she had seen on the boy’s face since he had watched his cousin die. Aella grinned back, forgetting her troubles with the dragon for the moment.
“Did you scamps save me any?”
“We saved one for Damara,” Egaz replied. Aella laughed at that.
“Sorry crewmen, but the rule is she has to have teeth before she can have cake.”
“Oh.” Both boys looked sad. Alejo crossed his arms in protest. “We were being nice though!”
“You were. But she still needs teeth to eat food.” She ruffled each boys’ hair. “Off to the bathhouse with you both, and change into clean clothing. I’ll not have you looking like miniature storms.” They hugged her, getting their sticky mess onto her, before they ran off, Aeljo challenging his brother to a race.
“It’s fair, cause my foot still hurts,” he declared. Aella chuckled and looked down at Darama in her arms.
“You going to make a mess of mommy too?” The infant answered by sneezing in Aella’s face while somehow simultaneously wetting her nappy. “I supposed I asked for that. Come on, let's clean us both up.”
Once the baby, the boys and the Admiral were all cleaned up, she set them up in the living space to do some reading with them. The boys had found a book about a pirate captain who was secretly able to command fire, and she was almost as interested as they were in the story. So they cuddled on the couch, Egaz on her right, Alejo on her left. The older boy held his baby sister in his lap. They’d each take turns reading a page. Even though Egaz’s words were halting, he still tried to make voices for the characters. Alejo’s reading was stronger, but Aella had to take Damara from him because he would fling his hands about wildly as he spoke, as if he was the one doing epic sword battles against the great squid. The couch was a little small for all four of them, but the closeness made her heart ache less for the sea, for the ship.
They had just reached a pivotal moment in the book, where the pirate was forced to either reveal himself or let a crewmate die, when Nereida returned. She was pale and drawn, limping to keep pressure off of her injured, human foot. Guards escorted her, but they did not have their weapons pointed at her.
“She lost consciousness in the main courtyard,” the smaller one reported to Aella, his unshaven, youthful face full of concern. “Said she fainted from skipping meals.” That was the most “princessy” excuse Aella had ever heard, and so she knew it was complete dragon shite.
“We did miss breakfast,” Aella admitted. “Come on, Ner, let’s get you settled.” She looked back at the guards. “Anything else?” The guards exchanged glances, but the larger one shook his head, and the smaller one’s shoulders drooped.
“No ma’am,” he replied. And he scurried away, before pulling the door shut. Aella wrinkled her nose in distaste. She could not wait for the freedom of the seas. Having guards constantly about was too much, even if they didn’t work for a bitter old man any more.
Aella placed Damara in her brother’s arms, and then helped Nereida to sit on the fainting couch. She brushed some of Nereida’s wild hair off her face. Nereida had dark circles under her stormy eyes, and they were red as if she’d been crying.
“Alejo, give us the room, would you, lad?”
“Yes mom.” The boy carried his sister out, Egaz following with their heavy book clutched in his thin little arms. Once the boys were well and truly clear of the room, Aella leaned in to kiss her wife gently on the cheek.
“What really happened, love?”
Nereida leaned in to the touch, shivering despite the warmth from the hearth. Aella looked around for a blanket, but recalled belatedly that they were all still on the roof. She’d have to clean that up. The servants would hate her with how much laundry they’d likely need to do if it sleeted before she could bring the blankets back in. She looked at Nereida, trying to focus solely on her wife, and not anything else. She gently brushed some mud from Nereida’s cheek that had been missed.
“Ocean did… something… to the baby and her traitor mother,” Nereida whispered, her voice shaking. “I don’t know what she did to the baby… but she cursed the mother.” Aella noticed Nereida wasn’t using the traitor’s name. She would ask her wife why another day. Now, she was too worried about how upset her wife seemed. She wasn’t crying, but her hands and voice were unsteady. “Her magic is feeding her baby now… the more it grows, the weaker she will be. Eventually, the baby will consume her magic entirely. She’ll die powerless.”
“A fitting end,” Aella muttered. “I’d have thrown her in the sea and let her have a one way ticket to hell.”
“A fine idea.” Basiano stepped into the room, his tone resonating through the room as if he was holding court. Aella looked up in sudden worry. She had not heard him come in. He looked horrible, his skin pale, his beard and hair unkept, his eyes red from crying. Still, he carried himself with the presence of a king, not a tired, grieving father, and Aella stood out of reflex. She gave him a little half-bow before she was even aware she was doing it. Nereida, however, remained on the fainting couch. She scowled up at Aella. The Admiral ignored her wife (at her own peril, she knew) to look at Basiano as he continued to speak. “I need the room, Aella. My sister and I need to have words.”