Chapter Nineteen
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“Are you ashamed that you’re with me?”
They were in her home now, and these were the first words Larissa had spoken since the end of battle. After their enemy was defeated, Terak had gathered her close and flew away, not giving the Guild members time to respond. She said nothing and cuddled close, burying herself in his arms.
“What?” Why would she ever think that?
She shrugged, the movement jerky, her shoulder half-hunched inward. “I’m useless. I sit on a wall surrounded by a magic barrier while Aislynn fires an arrow a second and Fallon slices through an army.”
He despised the beaten note that threaded her voice. “I would never be ashamed to be at your side. And you must stop comparing yourself to them. The world needs its warriors and it needs its peacemakers. You have experienced too much war these last weeks. It has you questioning your worth.” Why did the one woman he wished to keep far away from the brutal reality of this world find herself always buried in yet another battle?
Larissa unfurled her body and looked at him. Instead of fear or loathing clouding her gaze, he saw warmth.
Thankfulness.
Admiration.
“I know you’re right. No one can be all things.” She shrugged, her mouth flattening. “I never cared about fighting or… any of that. When I was a kid, I never wanted to play cops and robbers, though it was the only game my brothers would play. Too violent and I didn’t like all the fighting. I just wanted to read.”
“So you didn’t play with your siblings?” That didn’t seem to fit with the closeness he had witnessed between the siblings.
“Oh no, they forced me to play. They always made me the robber and would cuff me, though Dad said never to play with his handcuffs. Joke was on them, though.” She lifted her arm until her hand was in his line of vision and rotated her wrists. “Double-jointed. No matter how tight they made the cuffs, I could get out. Made them so mad.”
Her fondness for her siblings banished the last lingering traces of any self-doubt. Her eyes brightened with memory and glee before she banked both, her gaze now holding a question. “Back to tonight. You called Fallon Dragon Slayer. What did you mean by that?”
“Her sword, Tenro, is a sacred weapon and known as the Slayer of Dragons.”
“But I thought dragons didn’t exist – never existed – even in the Magic Realm.” His face must have betrayed his feelings because Larissa’s own eyebrows drew together and she asked in a hesitant voice, “Did they?”
“I have never seen any true record of their existence,” he conceded, letting the full weight of his misgivings play into his tone.
Her face still held the same hesitance. “But…?”
“But I cannot forget something my father once said. He said with all the terrible creatures we have that are real, why would anyone create the myth of the dragon? And if dragons are even half as powerful as they are portrayed, would it be any true test for them to disappear without a trace if they so wished?” Though he could only hope his father was wrong, and that dragons never existed, or if they did, they would stay far gone.
“What are the Seven Houses?”
It took a beat of time to follow the change in topic. “Where did you hear that?”
“When Fallon started threatening you. She asked if she should let the Seven Houses sort it out.”
“Ah.” Now he remembered. “They are connected to the New Realms.”
Larissa’s gaze went unfocused. “I remember when I was little and first heard the term New Realms. I thought that to get to those places, you needed to go through some magical door. For a long time, I opened every closet door in every house I entered.” Her gaze sharpened again as she came back to the present. “I was so disappointed when I found out it was just a term for the governments and lands of the different races. What’s the importance of the Seven Houses? I’m positive I’ve never heard that name before.”
“They are a shadow council which wields much power in the New Realms. They deal with matters outside the purview of any single race.”
“Any humans on this council?”
“Yes, one, though I do not know her name or status within the human world. The leader of the Guild is another member.”
“The Guild have their hands in lots of places, don’t they?” Larissa asked, though her tone made clear the question was rhetorical. She continued with barely a pause. “Why have this council? I thought the various races all kept their own ways of government, just as the human governments remained as they were from before the Great Collision.”