Chapter 132: Chapter 132: Reunion

When Millia, Valentina, Rai, and fifty others from the Shadow-Blood Legion arrived at the Land of Dragons on the backs of their rescuers, everyone watched the passing mountains and dragons with awe in their eyes.

“I have never seen anything like this. This place is truly amazing!” Valentina commented.

“Neither have I. Dragons were basically myths to me until now,” Millia added.

“Mistress, did our Master truly become the King of Dragons?” one of their younger members muttered in disbelief.

Rai replied on their behalf, “Well, he was always different from everyone else. If my guess is correct, he has likely married the Dragon Queen by now.”

Millia and Valentina both flinched visibly.

“That could very well be true,” Valentina added, looking at Millia’s face for a reaction.

But contrary to her expectations, Millia showed a mature expression.

“Adonis is strong and capable. It is unavoidable for him to build a Harem, whether out of necessity or for diplomatic ties. I am not bothered by this. But we will need to be careful about the Queen’s motives. His safety is our utmost priority.”

“Hey, hey, human girl,” the red dragon suddenly responded from below. “Do not assume things among yourselves. Our Queen is kind and strong.”

Valentina laughed softly. “We will have to see things for ourselves, will we not?”

—

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The dragons landed at the outer edge of the palace grounds, folding their wings and lowering themselves to allow their passengers to dismount with considerably more dignity than most of the Legion members felt internally.

They stepped onto the pale stone of the Dragon Kingdom and looked around with the wide, slightly overwhelmed expressions of people whose understanding of the world had just been permanently revised.

The palace ahead of them was exactly as extraordinary as it had looked from the air.

Several of the younger Legion members had stopped walking entirely and were simply standing with their heads tilted back, looking at the luminescent walls and the enormous natural archways and the dragons moving unhurried through the air above.

“Move,” Rai ordered flatly, and they moved.

“Welcome, esteemed guests.”

Dragon maids met them at the entrance with bows and the composed efficiency of people accustomed to unusual arrivals, guiding them through the wide corridors toward the inner courtyard where they had been told the reception would take place.

Millia walked at the front of the group and said nothing.

She had been saying nothing for the last hour of the journey, which Valentina had noted and chosen not to comment on, because there were varieties of Millia’s silence, and this particular one was the kind that needed to be left alone until it resolved itself.

They entered the inner courtyard.

He was already there.

Adonis stood at the center of the courtyard in the afternoon light, and beside him stood a woman with sapphire blue hair and eyes like the deep ocean, watching the new arrivals with the composed attention of someone taking an accurate measure of everything in her field of vision.

Millia stopped walking.

The courtyard, the dragon maids, the fifty Legion members behind her, Valentina at her shoulder, and the extraordinary landscape visible above the courtyard walls—all of it reduced to background noise in the space of a single exhale.

He was alive.

She had known it. The dragon had told her.

But knowing it and seeing it were entirely different things.

“Millia,” Adonis said.

That was all he managed before she crossed the courtyard.

Woosh…

She did not run. She disappeared, and then she was there, her arms around him, her face pressed against his chest.

Her mind replayed the seven days of blood and burning estates shedding tears in sleepless nights, and that single terrible moment of watching the blue dragon carry him away into the eastern sky

She cried, “Haa… haa… sob… sob…”

A broken melody.

There was no dignity she maintained in front of the Legion as a matter of professional necessity.

She cried with the full, unguarded desperation of someone who had been holding a very large and very heavy thing alone for a very long time and had finally found somewhere safe to set it down.

Her hands gripped the back of his robe and did not let go.

Adonis held her without speaking, one hand on the back of her head, the way he held things he had already decided he was not releasing.

The courtyard turned very quiet.

The Legion members stood in a respectful stillness behind her. Valentina looked at the sky above the courtyard walls with her hands clasped and her expression doing several complicated things simultaneously.

Rai Calder stood exactly as he always stood, composed and still, but the line of his jaw was slightly less rigid than usual.

After a long moment, Sapphira spoke.

“Who is she?”

Adonis looked up from the top of Millia’s head.

“Her name is Millia,” he replied. “She was the first person who accepted me when I had nothing. When I was the illegitimate bastard with no name worth keeping and no future worth planning for.

She was my first love.”

Sapphira went silent for a moment. Her sapphire eyes moved between the young woman still holding onto her husband’s robe in the center of the courtyard and Adonis’s face above her.

She said nothing further. Because she was mature enough to understand.

She turned slightly and looked at Valentina, who had lowered her gaze from the sky and was now watching the Dragon Queen with careful attention.

Sapphira’s eyes flashed with surprise as she had seen something she shouldn’t have.

Valentina, after a brief surprised pause, inclined hers in return.

In the center of the courtyard, Millia finally loosened her grip. Just enough to tilt her head back and look up at Adonis’s face with red-rimmed dark eyes that were still wet but considerably steadier than they had been thirty seconds ago.

“You look so well. I thought you died,” she said.

“I’m very much alive. And it’s all thanks to her,” he replied, indicating at Sapphira.

“But you look terrible, Millia. What happened to you?”

She laughed, a short broken sound. “Seven days of war will do that.”

“Seven days of war? But with whom?” he asked curiously.

Valentina answered, “Against King Magnus. Adonis, Millia was so broken after assuming you were dead that she had declared Shadow War on the kingdom itself.”

“What! Why were you so reckless, Millia?” Aodnis said, wiping her tears away.

Millia smiled. “I had to let them know the price, Adonis. How can I let them go just like that? You said it yourself: I’m your first love.”

He placed a hand over her head.

“I’m proud, Millia, truly. But don’t do this again. Even if I die someday, I want all of my women to live. Even if you marry someone else, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t believe you Adonis. You would never want your woman to hang around with another man. Even after death,” Millia replied.

Adonis laughed and pinched her cheeks. “You know me so well.”

“Ahem, can you two restrain yourselves? We’re in public,” Rai said, interrupting the duo.

Adonis looked at Rai and noticed the bruises on his skin.

“You looked beaten, Rai.”

“All thanks to your girl,” Rai replied, but a brotherly expression crossed onto his face.

Millia turned to Sapphira.

“Dragon Queen,” she said.

“Yes? My husband’s first love,” Sapphira replied, smiling elegantly.

They looked at each other across the courtyard with the particular attention of two people who understand that the relationship they are about to establish has no existing template to follow and will need to be built from the beginning.

“Thank you for saving him.”

Sapphira replied smoothly, “I didn’t do anything special. He brought himself back. I simply ensured he had somewhere to land.”

Millia considered this for a moment.

Then she nodded once, as if she had just decided something important.

“Then we should understand each other well.”

“I believe we are already beginning to,” Sapphira replied.

“But first, you should all go and get freshened up. A fine human delicacy has been arranged for you.”

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