He stared at his mug of tea and the steam rising from the liquid. The Silvers moving made him think of his own dragons. Kiril often went into the cavern that held the Silvers to see them. There was a chance he might never see his own dragons again, never see the burnt orange of their scales glistening in the moonlight.
Kiril shook his head and closed off those memories. He had to focus on the Dark Fae and their obsession with capturing a Dragon King. It would help if he knew what it was they searched for, what it was that they believed the Kings hid. There was little doubt that Con could have hidden something away if he felt it would cause other beings to gain the upper hand on another race.
The Dragon Kings had been charged with keeping the humans safe. Even with the dragons gone, the Kings kept to their mission—despite how difficult it was at times.
The Kings went out of their way protecting the humans for millennia, fighting wars they never knew about, and yet if the humans discovered them, they would capture the Kings and dissect them.
Kiril often wondered if it might not have been worthwhile to let the humans destroy themselves so the dragons could return and Earth would once more be the beacon of light in the universe.
Though his appetite was gone, he ate the plate of food and drank two cups of tea before he made his way to his office. It was going to be a long day waiting for night to fall so he could see Shara again.
*
Shara puffed out her cheeks and blew out a breath of air as she tossed aside the book she was trying to read. The hours crept by slower than a slug. It was worse now that night had descended, because she wondered what Kiril was doing. Did he go back to the place they’d first met? Did he walk the streets looking for her? Did she stay on his mind as he remained on hers?
The questions were driving her insane. She rose from her bed and paced the confines of her room. She was no longer locked inside, but there was nowhere else in the grand house that she wanted to go. Unlike humans who struck out on their own as soon as they could, Fae families—both Dark and Light—tended to remain together.
However, this was one time that Shara wished she didn’t reside in the same house as her brother, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t just crowded, but everyone’s eyes were on her, watching what she did—or didn’t do.
Shara looked around at the walls of her spacious bedroom. They were painted a deep red, as was the rest of the house. The Dark Fae preferred darker colors, shying away from pastel colors because they associated weakness with such colors.
She walked to the mirror hanging on her wall and looked at herself. The red eyes staring back at her didn’t hold the cruelty or the malice that her brother’s did. Not yet at least. They would eventually if she continued on the path her family had set before her.
It was a path she hadn’t thought twice about as she was essentially forgotten while her parents and older siblings played the game of politics and joined in the never-ending wars. Shara had been born nearly a century after Farrell, and her parents quickly thrust her into the care of a nanny.
Shara remembered those days of freedom. Not a care in the world touched her. She was good at her studies, which gave her ample time whenever she wanted. She spent the majority of her younger years right there on Earth soaking up the different cultures and all they had to offer.
She honed her magic, making her tutors proud, even if she never received so much as a message from her parents. They rarely returned to their home on Earth as they schemed the family higher and higher into the social hierarchy of the Dark Fae world.
An already powerful family, the Blackwoods connived and plotted their way right onto the council of the king of the Darks. Now the name Blackwood struck terror in many Dark, though Shara hadn’t known that. All she knew was that she never wanted for anything.
She had human friends, and as she grew older, human male lovers. Her tutors taught her the code of a Dark Fae, and the few Fae friends she had never understood why she befriended the humans. Shara hadn’t thought anything about it. Until her parents returned.
For over a thousand years she had been ignored, overlooked by the accomplishments of her elder siblings. Shara woke each day hoping it would be the day her family returned to her and took her with them. She hadn’t realized how much independence she had until her wish was fulfilled.
Five of her elder siblings had been killed in a war, and their family had returned to Earth to grieve and regroup. Shara had sat excitedly in her mother’s parlor waiting for her to finally bring her into the fold.
She had been beside herself with joy to receive her first assignment. She hadn’t blinked an eye when she was ordered to kidnap five human males. That night she completed her task and saw her eyes change from silver to red.