Chapter 54

MILA

I was underwater.

Floating, drifting, utterly weightless. Everything felt hazy. I couldn’t remember my name, who I was, or how I came to be here. Everything felt distant and quiet. It was almost peaceful.

I was vaguely aware of a sound in the distance, someone shouting out over and over, but the sound faded before it got to me, disappearing into the waves.

But then I heard it: one word, over and over, repeated like a prayer: “Mila.”

Someone was calling my name.

I swam upwards, trying to find the surface of the water, desperate to reach whoever was calling me. Their voice sounded closer and closer. I reached out, waiting to be pulled from the water…

I opened my eyes.

A few blinks revealed that I had somehow ended up in a hospital bed. Several IVs connected me to machines surrounding the bed, and I had a heart monitor attached to one of my fingers.

Next to me, a handsome man with concerned eyes leaned over my bed. He smiled, in relief, and stroked the hair away from my forehead.

“Mila, thank god you’re awake.”

Felix. Felix, my fiancé. Felix, my prince.

Felix, who had been doubled over with a bleeding wound to his side last time I saw him.

I sat straight up in bed, aware of the heart monitor going crazy around me.

“Felix!” I exclaimed. “How are you here? I thought you were dead! I thought we were both dead!”

Felix gently kissed my cheek and tried to settle me back in the bed. “I’m fine. Esmeralda healed me. Mila, I’m just glad you’re alright.”

I frowned, searching my memories for any mention of Esmeralda’s profession in the medical field. “Is she a doctor? I don’t remember her being a doctor.”

He shrugged halfheartedly. “Of sorts.”

“What happened?” I asked. “The last thing I remember is getting stabbed by one of those guys and then–”

Felix’s face was pained. “Joseph and I managed to fight off the rest of the gang, and we were rescued by helicopter shortly after. Mila, Charles was the one behind your kidnapping.”

I shuddered. “Charles?”

Felix nodded sadly. “He hired those men to kidnap you as a way to force me into handing over the throne. He got away, but he’s been banished from Fresonia forever.”

Scraps of memories came back: watching Charles, Joseph, and Felix duel; watching Felix defend his friend while bleeding out; watching the dragons fight in the sky above us–

I froze. The dragons. Felix pleading with me about magic. His wound only appearing after I was stabbed.

“And what happened to the dragons?” I asked, staring directly into his eyes.

Felix’s face turned pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He was lying. This was the man who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and he was lying to me.

“Please, Felix,” I begged. “Tell me the truth. I saw dragons, tell me about the dragons–and, oh god, you somehow got hurt the same way I got hurt at the exact same time, and that’s not normal, Felix–”

Felix looked at me. The desperation in his eyes was obvious. “That’s just a hallucination from the pain medication, Mila, there were no dragons, there’s no such thing as dragons–”

I grabbed one of the pairs of scissors from the medical tray next to me and made a small, shallow cut on my hand. Felix yelped and tried to grab his own hand, but it was too late. I watched as the same cut sliced across his hand, as if by magic.

My eyes narrowed at him. “Tell me the truth. Now.”

Felix hung his head. He let out a deep sigh. I could tell that he was warring with himself in his own head, debating what to tell me.

I tried one more time. “I just want the truth, Felix. I won’t be angry.”

He shook his head. “No, Mila. I can’t talk to you about this. It will ruin us. You’ll never look at me the same way.”

I touched his cheek with my fingertips, in an effort to soothe his distress. “Nothing could ever change my feelings for you, Felix. I promise.”

He ran his hands through his hair–a nervous tic, I’d come to realize–and exhaled.

“Do you remember the book you were reading in my chambers a few weeks ago? The one about Dragon Knights?”

As if I could ever forget the strange feeling I’d had reading those pages. “Of course.”

“Well…” Felix’s voice was unsure, but he continued on. “It was true. I’m a Dragon Knight. So is the entire Fresonian royal family, and most of the nobility. That book isn’t some fantasy, Mila, it’s our history.”

I crinkled my nose. “What the hell is a Dragon Knight? Are dragons real?”

Felix continued. “Dragons are real. They keep to themselves, mostly, but they are controlled and ridden by Dragon Knights. Each knight gets a dragon at birth, one that was hatched around the same time he was born. And they are bonded for life. My dragon is Ignatius. You saw him yesterday.”

I spoke slowly. “There were two dragons.”

“The other one was Hades. He belongs to Charles.”

I wanted to curl up and scream. “So you have magic?”

“Some enhanced abilities and powers, yes,” Felix admitted. “I have speed and strength unlike any human. I can summon my dragon through magic, and have shielding abilities against dragonfire. I can’t do magic spells or anything, those are skills usually reserved for witches. I do have a curse, though–”

“A curse?”

Felix chuckled nervously. “It’s kind of a funny story, actually. I was born with this strange stone around my neck–the one that ended up in your bag, as you may recall. Esmeralda–sorry, she’s a witch–she examined it and told me that I had been cursed with an ancient magic. My soul was connected to that of an unknown woman, my Destined Bride, and I had to find and marry her before I turned 30 or else I would grow paralyzed and die. My whole life, Mila, I’ve been feeling your feelings, seeing your injuries appear on my own body, even before we met. And then when we did, everything just got… more intense. That’s why I was also injured when you were stabbed, because of our connection.”

My jaw dropped. It was like I was back in that underwater place in my mind.

“Am I…?”

“You are,” Felix said, taking my hand. “You are my Destined Bride. I was so thrilled to finally find you, Mila. You’re the one who can save my life.”

I dropped his hand like it was poisonous.

This whole time, I was nothing more than a pawn to him. A piece in a chess match. A woman with no value, just simply the magical solution to his curse. Of course he didn’t tell me the truth sooner, because that would have ruined his ability to trick me into falling in love with him.

I felt sick to my stomach. Our whole relationship had been a lie, and I had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

“I guess I have to apologize to you then. I lied too,” I said, my voice deadly calm. “This does change my feelings for you.”

“It does?” he sounded like a little boy, practically whimpering. I couldn’t stand to hear the sound.

I looked at him dead-on, aware of the fury and rage on my face. Good. Let him see what he had done to me.

“My feelings for you have changed. I could never love a liar.”