Chapter 116: Chapter 116: The Dragon Palace

Adonis followed the old man without argument.

They walked away from the cluster of cave shaped houses and arc dwellings, moving along a wide path of pale stone that wound gradually upward through the sky.

The old man set a comfortable pace, neither slow nor hurried, his white robes barely stirring despite the breeze moving through the valley below them.

“What is your name?” Adonis asked after a moment.

“Orvyn,” the old man replied, without looking away from the path ahead. “Elder of the Dragon Council. Keeper of the old records. Occasional rescuer of overwhelmed Progenitor successors from their own generosity.”

“You do that often?”

“Haha, You are the first Progenitor successor in seven thousand years,” Orvyn said amusedly. “So no. But the crowd management principles are universal.”

Adonis almost smiled.

They continued upward, and the path widened as it climbed, the cave shaped dwellings and nests of the lower settlement falling away behind them.

Then the path curved around a natural ridge of pale stone, and the Dragon Palace came into view.

Adonis stopped walking.

It was not a palace in any sense that the human kingdoms used the word. Those were structures built to project power outward, designed to impress through scale and ornamentation and the deliberate accumulation of visual authority. They were built to make the people approaching them feel small.

But this, this was something else entirely.

It had grown from the mountainside rather than been placed against it. Its walls and towers followed the natural contours of the rock as though the mountain had simply decided, over a very long period of time, to become something more intentional.

It was vast without being aggressive about its vastness. It was ancient without being ruined.

It looked, more than anything, like something that had been here long enough to simply belong.

Dragons moved around its upper reaches, some in full dragon form gliding between towers that were wide enough to serve as landing platforms, some in human form moving along the open corridors that connected the various sections of the structure in graceful, curved bridges.

“Your companion is in the east wing,” Orvyn said, watching Adonis take it in without comment. “The healers placed her near the window. She insisted on seeing you enter the palace personally.”

“That sounds like her,” Adonis said.

Orvyn gestured forward, and they continued along the path, which connected at its upper end to a broad entrance flanked by two dragons in human form standing with the composed stillness of guards who have been doing this long enough to have made peace with patience.

They bowed as Adonis passed.

Inside, the Palace was cooler and quieter.

But

Orvyn guided him left, then right, then through a section of corridor where the outer wall opened entirely into a series of arched windows overlooking the eastern valley.

Then he stopped before a door that was slightly ajar,

“I will leave you here, my lord,” Orvyn said respectfully.

“She was very persistent about seeing you. I recommend not keeping her waiting further.”

He turned and walked back the way they had come without another word.

Adonis stood before the door for a moment.

Then he pushed it open.

The room was larger than the one he had woken in.

The bed was positioned exactly as Orvyn had described, near the window, close enough that the person in it could see the sky and the valley without sitting up.

Mariana was sitting up anyway.

Her pink hair was loose around her shoulders, slightly disheveled in the way of someone who has been lying down for an extended period and has recently and determinedly stopped doing so.

She was pale, noticeably so.

Her eyes, when they found him in the doorway, did approximately nothing to conceal what was in them.

Relief so complete it was almost painful to look at directly.

“Hubby,” she said, smiling beautifully.

Adonis crossed the room.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her and looked at her face.

She looked tired. She looked pale. She looked like someone who had been went through a lot.

He placed a tender kiss on the cheek and said,

“You look terrible, my queen.”

She became very happy when he called her his queen. It made her feel complete, as if she were finally officially recognized.

“You have no right to say that, my king. I heard you were unconscious for two days.”

“Two days?” he repeated.

“Yes, two days,” she confirmed.

Adonis looked thoughtful. “I wonder how Millia, Valentina, and Rai are doing. I have given them some Ether cores, but they won’t last long. Their training will be halted. I need to reach them somehow.”

Mariana had already heard about this secret army he was building, and she had also funded the army with her own pocket.

Her left hand wrapped around his right one.

“Let your mind be free for a while, Adonis. Since we’re here, you should rest for a bit.”

Adonis nodded and lay on her bed.

“Orvyn mentioned your conviction,” Adonis said while trying to close his eyes.

“Yes. And I was very convincing,” she said, without apology.

He looked at her for a moment longer. Particularly at the chest area where the spear had been pierced through.

Imagining his incapability of saving her, he felt ashamed and angry.

But he buried all those emotions behind cold conviction.

“How is your chest?” he asked quietly.

Her expression changed a little.

She lifted one hand and pressed it briefly to the center of her chest, over the place where the spear had gone through.

“It aches sometimes,” she replied. “Less than yesterday. The Dragon’s Salve is extraordinary. I have never felt anything heal the way this does.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

She looked at him. Then she leaned forward slowly and pressed her forehead against his shoulder, and he felt the full weight of the past two days settle into the gesture, all of it, the fear and the waiting and the relief that was still working its way through her completely.

“Don’t be, my king. This queen can even die for you.”

After hearing this, he put one arm around her waist, pulling her to sleep beside.

Both of them lay side by side, gazing deep into each other’s eyes.

No kiss, no sex. Just raw emotional exchange.

Outside the columns, the eastern valley of the Land of Dragons stretched away beneath the deep blue sky, vast and ancient and entirely unbothered by the tenderness happening within its walls.

Which was, in its own way, exactly right.

“Where is he? Where is the impudent who made my heir blind?”

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