Dragons and Princes - [COMPLETE]

14. Faeana

"So remember, Faeana," Faeana’s father had told her, "never to trust the Fenrir." She was young when he’d concluded her lesson so, and every lesson after had ended much the same.

The Freyja princess felt her world closing in on her. In a week she would become queen, and she could not escape because even Fae could not leave the confines of the Den. Neither of them could ground; they were trapped in the safety of the trees.

Faeana meandered the great staircases the master carpenters were at work with, observing the delicate lines and elegant curves of the spiraling walkways that were taking shape within the giant trees, wandering until she came to older halls whose raw wood had oozed a protective layer of sap that had hardened like a resin. The resin had been cut smooth and polished so that the walls looked like glass encasing and preserving the beautiful carvings. New shoots of green were growing in several places, and several of the trees that had been carved a few decades ago were bridging together where encouraged, to become one entity with two roots, rather than two trees.

Faeana had always loved to watch the master carpenters work, and when she was a child, she had joined them, her first blade being a carving knife used lovingly on wood rather than in fear or anger within a warrior’s flesh. The area being carved and grown was to be the Vivaldi District, and it would be complete in around twenty or thirty years. Their ancestors grew and carved at a much faster pace, before sorrow had become so prevalent, before hate and fear had festered within the Freyja because of the Fenrir. They’d had only love, and they were able to lift their calm for a short time to usher to life beautiful things.

It made Faeana sad, looking upon the oldest parts of the Den’s heart. What they now achieved within thirty years, their ancestors could raise within a fortnight. Back then, the Freyja didn’t have warriors, and even the children helped. They had no need for armor or weapons of war, then, they had only need of tools with which they could carve. Their people were good to the earth, and the earth was good to them.

Below the Den, there once sprawled miles and miles of earthbound homes, grown from the roots and carved from the stones, where her people thrived in peace. Those homes were abandoned so many years ago, many of which were razed to the ground. Most Freyja were cautious among the ruins just as they were of the Lora. They never forgot their history as sorrow crept into them like a long shadow as the sun sank.

In the war zone, the patrols were revealing no sign of the Fenrir, and panic was rising among her people because soldiers were still dying, being slain every few nights. One Freyja soldier had come to her father with a wild tale of Marquis Morganthe fighting off a black dragon. He was ridiculed, but something about what he’d said chilled her.

Then, more reports began to turn up of a black creature that killed Fenrir and Freyja alike in the dark of the night. They knew it could be no dragon, for no dragons had been seen for nigh on a century or longer, and the Ajatar would never come so far south.

Unease began to spread among her people. It was as though the superstitions of the Lora had come alive and moved into the open, a faceless fear with a malevolent, invisible smile.

And always, Marquis’s words came back to her.

Her fingers dug into her scalp as she leaned against the railing of the arena. Fae was climbing up the wooden beams, chasing down a bright blue and bronze tigerbird, a native inhabitant of the Giant’s Forest with an eight-foot wingspan and dazzling, brilliant feathers. At the ends of its wings and tail were spots that oddly looked like the eyes painted upon peacock feathers, but they glowed in the dark of the night. The tigerbird’s eyes, beaks and feet were pure white, like the color of mist, and like the eyes upon their wings and tails, the eyes upon their heads shone in dim light.