Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 9

HAYVALA

I can't live on dreams, hopes and stories — but this is all we have now. Dreams. Hopes. Stories of another time, of our ancient ways.

Her shoes clacked against the tile while she stomped away from her Magistera's teachings, with familiar, heavier, metal footsteps following behind her with the sounds of dutiful loyalty. Her dress of furs and woven firesilk bloomed around her while she dug her fingers into the weaves of frustration. Hot-headed. Brash. It was how her Magistera described her, when she was nothing but a porcelain doll to play the Naveeran dance of ice.

But it was my dream. I wanted to be queen — but I wanted to be myself, and I realised I could not have both — nor was it ever mine to begin with.

Auras fluttered and danced from the white palace stone. Metal footsteps continued to echo her own as she rushed further from her lessons of sitting pretty and saying sweeter words. Words were thrown to imbalance her, and she longed to show her barbed tongue — her inner wyvern. "I hate dancing," she muttered as she led her scaled armoured shadow into the shrine for the Knights of the Round. "I hate having to pretend. I think I'd rather be stabbed with a dagger than honeyed words."

Shadows from the knights swallowed her, where each of their lances met the icy dias on the floor, shaped into a snowrose. In the center, the Snow Prince, their hero of eld, who brought Naveera into a golden age and fought against the Great Crimson Dusk. He raised his hand high, carrying the heart of their land, while the wings of Evyriaz bloomed along the mosaic behind him and shone the light of snow across the magelights. On either side, two knights. Ser Atoran of the Ice Glaive, and Ser Zahira of the Ice Shield. Ladies cooed over meeting their gleaming Atoran's, regaling in their distant affections and passing glances.

"My lady," a voice reminded her from both past and present.

Her fingers released her strangled silks of woven warmth, furs and white lace. It danced and wound around her arms and trapped her in her own duty of the dance, of the icy spins and snow-touched words. Zahira, the shield, no one cooed over meeting her, but her dream remained — to be a shield, to fight — and never a doll. Auras continued to dance when she turned to the closest thing she had to a knight in shining armor, and no one compared.

Not even the great Atoran Lotayrin.

He stood in the snowtouched magelights with a steady expression. His silver locks glowed with the light of the dream as his long feathers stretched across his ears. None of the knight's Father tasked for her 'protection' ever gazed upon her for who she was. Ser Yokonei never blinked, never wavered, and most of all, never bowed in reverence. He lifted his head to the knights she had taken him to with a thoughtful noise and a single ear flick when wind coursed through the stone.

"I know, I probably shouldn't have called her an ice wraith," she mumbled and folded her arms. "But she was acting like one."

Yokonei smiled, where his eyes and beautiful moonlit aura echoed the motion. "And she referred to you as a pixie spitting fire, my lady. It is, as we say in Irimount, throwing ice into the blizzard and getting it back in return." His smile turned from serene thought into a dash of mischief. "I shan't tell no one," he said in his distinct, Irimount dialect of their Navee song before he joined her on the dias, hands behind his back, laced over his ice glaive, decorated with ceremonial ribbons, but as lethal as freezing ice in the right hands. Her fingers itched for it, but she kept them folded across herself and dreamed.

Tell me a story, something different than what I've had to hear. Stuck in these palace walls having to dance to their tune.

Ser Yokonei looked upon each knight, and behind his fluttering aura of moonlit roses coalesced with thoughts and recollections of tales unspoken. It sorted through the flurry while he tried to pick one to satisfy her. Her silver-haired knight. He rested his gaze on Ser Zahira, then smiled at her. "You know the story of why they refer to Ser Zahira as the Shield of Naveera in Irimount?" He stepped between the Snow Prince's greatest knights. "It's said she raised the wall of mountains which stopped the tide of Derelicts upon our tundra. Some even say they stay frozen to this day from her powerful magick. Her shield." He bowed to the plaque at Ser Zahira's stone feet.