Aeva’s Challenge – VI

A tale of angels, demons and dragons…

For a brief time they stood handfast before Aeva spoke again.
“Will it offend you to stand behind me? Close enough so I can lean on your strength.”
“If you tell me that is what you need, how should I be offended?”
“Thank you.”
Aeva took up a position on the hot white sand with Adamo behind her.
“Closer,” she murmured.
He closed the space between them so her back rested against the hard wall of his muscles.
“Ware downdraught.”
As Aeva spoke, the sky darkened and it seemed that a vicious wind picked up around them, spinning sand into vortices and flattening the trees about the oasis. Aeva was pleased that Adamo stood firm at her back while she narrowed her eyes and studied the skyline to the south.
The seeming wind died down, and the sky overhead took on the hue of molten copper. A fiery comet in the sky slowly came closer, and took draconic form. It was a Queen Dragon and she was as metallic and gleaming as the sky from which she came. Lower and lower she spiralled, until it would have been easy to believe her about to bury her aristocratic snout in the sand. But she pulled back at the last second, cupping her wings and landing with minimal disturbance.
“Aeva Darkstar. What brings you to the singing sands?”
“Guardian business, bright one.”
“How so?”
“They have mislaid a Messenger and his draca partner.”
“I have heard of no missing draca.”
“Precisely…”
The dragon chewed on that one for a moment, then she snarled deep in her chest.
“This Messenger is a mortal male?”
“He is.”
The dragon growled again.
“Do you suggest that the draca have borrowed it?”
“I suggest nothing. I merely offer a possible explanation for the disappearance of the Messenger.”
The saurian head dropped to the sand so that the dragon’s multi-faceted eyes were level with Aeva’s.
“Tell me, Invigilator, why is a Messenger of sufficient value to have the Guardians send one such as you to hunt for it?”
“Because it is the only male offspring of Freja Gunnarssen.”
The dragon recoiled as if slapped, and huffed out a gout of flame which set a burning bunch of twigs and tumbleweed rolling across the desert. Aeva pointed a single finger and the flames died. As the dragon gathered herself to leap into the air she spoke one word.
“Tomorrow.”
Then she was gone, upwards into the unforgiving sky.
Aeva turned to face Adamo.
“Now we wait?” he asked.
“Aye. We wait, and hope the draca don’t grow bored with their plaything.”
“Because?”
“Because if they do they are liable to eat him.”
Adamo winced. “That really would not be a good outcome.”
“No indeed. But for now we had best rescue your men from Gudrun’s evil fingers and see about setting up camp for the night.”
By the time the sun fell beneath the horizon Adamo’s fighters had set up an encampment around a biggish fire in a pit lined with rocks. After a meal of campfire bread, and honey from the fighters’ seemingly bottomless packs, supplemented with desert creatures roasted on twigs from a certain tree that gave the meat a delicate smoky flavour, Gudrun and most of the half-demon males sat on the floor playing a game of chance with pebbles and sticks. Aeva watched for a few moments – long enough to decide that nobody was going to come to any harm – before slipping out of camp and heading to the edge of the trees.
It was dark in the thicket, but the desert itself was bathed in silver light. For a brief while, the beauty of it calmed her, but not enough so that she could ignore the worm of unease that wriggled in her gut. She shivered and wrapped her arms about herself. A change in the texture of the air told her she was no longer alone and, for the second time in a very few hours, she allowed herself to lean on another’s strength. Of course it was Adamo, and he rubbed his chin on the top of her head. She shivered and burrowed into the warmth that he carried.
“Are you cold Aeva Belladonna?”
She turned in his arms and lifted her face to better see how the moonlight gilded his skin.
“I am cold,” she admitted, “cold to my soul. Will you warm me?”
He put a gentle hand on the back of her head.
“Do you know what you are asking?”
“I do. The question is whether you will or will not.”
He laughed and bent to find her mouth in the moonlight.
Much later, as she lay across him he stroked her shaven head with a tender hand.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“That you are my first?”
“Yes. That. I would have been more careful with you.”
“That’s part of the reason why I didn’t say. I didn’t want careful. I wanted unbearable heat. I wanted teeth and sliding sweat. I wanted everything you gave me. Thank you.”
His hands moved down to her back and his fingertips lightly touched the scars where her wings had been. “It is I who should be thanking you for such a precious gift.”
And that should have been that, but it seemed he had other ideas, though she made no argument when he stood up with her still clasped to his chest and walked to where his blankets were laid out ready.
Aeva slept like a babe, waking with the sounds of those small creatures who ventured out of their burrows before the sun rose high enough to fry the unwary. She turned her head to see Adamo feeding a mouselike animal with crumbs. Aeva laughed, and the creature looked at her with accusation in its eyes.
“My apologies, desert dweller, I meant no offence.”
This seemed to pacify the little visitor sufficiently to finish its meal before scuttling off about its business.
Aeva looked at her lover to see his face shuttered and bleak. “What? Why do you look at me so?”
“Because you do not believe me capable of kindness to a harmless creature.”
She understood immediately, having lived most of her own life under the very same stigma. But how could she break through years of hurt and mistrust?
“Adamo. Look at me.” He did as she asked, although she could feel the rawness of hurt in him. “My handsome lover, it pains me to see you so hurt. And I need to make you understand that I am not like whoever hurt you. I know how kind and tender you can be. I have trust for you in my breast.”
“Then why did you laugh at me?”
“I did not laugh at you. It was the small one’s enjoyment of his meal. Made me remember that there is more on earth than the affairs of monsters and mortals.”
She felt him weighing the truth of her words and saw the moment he understood that she was sincere. He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips.
“Tell me what kind of a fool I am, bright lady.”
“All kinds. But perhaps…”
“Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps not so much a fool as a soul damaged by life.”
“Perhaps indeed. And will you hold that soul in your tender hand?”
Aeva was demon enough to understand the importance of that question, and to find, to her surprise, that her own damaged heart leapt towards him. She lowered her head as a tear crept down her cheek.
“I will hold thee dear, if thou wilt be my strength and safe harbour.”
He bent his knee and placed his hand on her breast. She reciprocated and they were joined. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that. To Aeva’s surprise, his fighters gathered about him punching his shoulders and ducking their heads to hide emotion.
“He has been too long lonely.” Gudrun spoke from behind Aeva. “His fighters revere him, but they fear his beast. Are you strong enough to bear his burdens as well as your own?”
“I have to be. He is mine.”
And with that admission Aeva Belladonna Darkstar sealed her fate.

Aeva’s Challenge by Jane Jago will continue next week.