Draconess

Chapter 6

2 days later

A day of isolation and sorrow had followed the death of my fellow priestesses.

Then, a day later I was experiencing overriding and numb defeat.

I could not leave my tower, as I was forbidden too. Yet, I had not seen Zarcar since that disastrous night after I fainted. All I knew was that I had awoken in my bed the day after, surrounded by maids cleaning and changing the layout of my bed chamber.

This morning I had awoken in my library, unable to sleep the night prior, nor face Zarcar last night. He seemed to show some 'respect' by leaving me alone to my solitude and grief.

Now, I stay on the bottom level of my stolen tower, which is opened up to his fellow war generals to converse in like a casual meeting area. The windows around my tower were open and filled with the thick green garden. The whole ground level hall was a messy overgrown greenhouse but there were gardeners coming through and cutting the natural growth.

I watched the men and women cut green vines and pull weeds while I sat in one window sill, my legs crossed, my palms cupping my knees.

I had been trying to meditate away all my emotion, but instead, it just felt dormant.

I watch as strangers sit on alters of sacred stone, sitting their disrespecting dusty asses on even more marble sculpted benches in the Library of Green. That is what I had called it.

But now it was being overtaken and pruned by invaders.

Just another blow to my heart.

"Enjoying the quiet?" I hear a guard speak behind my shoulder – one who had been keeping an eye on me the last two days. I turn to Holden and I just stare him down as he adds, "Just stay right where you are and you and I won't have any trouble."

Holden then proceeds to nod at me and slyly walks past, even though I can feel his eyes still always on me; a knowing in him that I could not be trusted.

Holden was a sweet soldier who worked for Zarcar, but I didn't trust Holden's charisma.

He was still the enemy.

A gardener comes closer to me and almost starts to prune the window I'm very obviously guarding.

"Don't," I hiss to the woman and her eyes widen as she looks at me, before backing off as if I am vermin.

I watch as she stumbles away to another area, before directing her head up in regards to the hush in my Library of Green.

I look up to see Zarcar has just slid his way in silently around noon, wearing his black hood.

I watch as he smiles bright white canines, clasping hands with other generals and giving some hugs. Masculine murmuring fills my feminine space and I get irked. I am pursing my lips so hard.

Mostly because I am barely keeping in a curse to bewitch the men into running from this Library as if they are being chased by their greatest nightmares; their wives, their ex-mistresses, a rabid dog, a shadow that talks... perhaps their dead friends who they couldn't save in battles long past.

I wanted to do it, but I bite my cheek.

It was too risky at this point in time. As far as I knew, if children were really spared in the Sun Tower from the burning – like sweet Salt... her and any other young females, could be the only priestesses left.

So, our magic had to be protected.

I stay still, hoping when Zarcar is finished with his greetings, he can simply go up to other levels of the tower and leave me be.