Her face, her eyes, her wings and her name — they became hard to forget the longer he stayed out of the forest. He had walked home with a sense of humility in his steps and then further a bubble of guilt at having possibly hurt her. It was odd that he thought about her and what he had encountered with her this much but there was nothing else he could have done short of apologising.

And to apologise, he would need to see her again.

It didn't appeal to him that he had to look for her, so the long lived sense of adventure that had burned within him since young was now nothing but a dim light glowing in his chest. The ache to know beyond the borders of what he had grown up in didn't seem exciting anymore.

Didn't fascinate him as much as it once did.

Perhaps he could blame her for what she had done to him.

Her presence had made him excited because he had met a creature he had never seen before — but then reality sunk in quickly when she laid before him the history of his kind and what they had done.

He had been foolish to think what his ancestors had done wouldn't follow him.

Glancing at his hands on his lap, now with nails and not claws, all he could hear was her words echoing in his mind with such malice. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he slouched further into his seat, zoning back into the tedious talks of politics.

At a long, rectangular table with a grand red velvet table topper were various types of food and drinks and amongst it were papers and quills with ink pots. Dragonkind of all shapes and sizes occupied the twelve seats and at the thirteenth at the end of the table was Father, looking proud with a smile on his face and mead in his right hand.

What an image he made with the crown on his head as if it mattered when at the end of the day, he bowed to Sire and to her every stupid whims.

To think they were all pretending to be all powerful.

It was almost hilarious if not infuriating.

Her face appeared before his eyes once more. Perhaps this was what she had meant when she had called him arrogant and ignorant. Being in this place amongst this kind of a crowd only proved what kind of a creature he was, didn't it?

Someone who was greedy for power, greedy for more even if he wanted nothing more but to be free and away from responsibilities.

She had every right to hate him.

And his heart tightened in his chest at that very thought. How odd, how weird that that very idea of Ilayda disliking him sent a flurry of uneasiness settling in his bones. He had just met her, and yet he was attached to her.

He almost frowned before he caught himself.

The last thing he needed were nosy bastards trying to get into his business.

"This would be the greatest conquest yet," one of the creatures said, his eyes were golden and pupils slit vertically. He was not a fan of glamour, it seemed but it would be nice if Aryzath was not sitting directly in front of his ugly face. "One just have to lure them out."

"Luring their kind out in the open is difficult," another creature spoke. "We've been trying for years and with many failures."

"Perhaps we should try a different tactic for once," Father said. "Instead of ambush, we go for direct retaliation."

Aryzath had no clue what they were referring to. He reached forward to grab his own goblet of mead when the creature next to him said, "Tünders are hard to catch because they're highly skilled in arts of magic and concealment. Disguise. Unlike the other creatures, they could very well have camouflaged themselves to the most intricate detail."

His fingers froze on its way touching the golden metal, pausing to let the words sink into his head. For the first time since the meeting started, he was paying full attention to what was happening. Leaning forward to the table, he thinned his lips and swept his gaze across the excited faces. Disgust wormed its way into his chest, settling there like a heavy rock.

So, this was their next mission?

Aryzath resisted the urge to sneer, his fists on his lap.

"Why must we go after the Tünders?" he said, catching the attention of the creatures and his father. Some had surprised etched on their features and he couldn't blame them. He never was one to participate in these matters. But the talk of this species, one where Ilayda was from forced his muscles to lock up and him to speak. If he had the time to ponder, he would have done so at this sudden reaction of his. "We've just expanded our lands to the Werewolf community not long ago."

"Our lands need to keep expanding, Aryzath," Father said, a smile on his face. "How will we be of any use to Her Majesty if we've yet to bring every land under our heel?"

Aryzath thinned his lips. "Perhaps we don't need to," he said. "Taking over every single land would produce nothing in the long run."

"Nonsense," Father said, placing his goblet on the table. "Have you forgotten what our lineage has pledged to our Sire?"

He almost rolled his eyes at that, a familiar tantrum building within him at the thought of her. She had them all underneath her thumb, forcing them to play to her tunes. But Aryzath would not be swayed with her gentle words that held such cruelness behind them. He had only seen her once before but it had been enough for him to never want to see her again.

"Our lineage will no longer need to heed to her if she keeps using us however she likes," Aryzath mentioned and immediately as the words come out of his mouth, a slam on the table startled the whole place into silence.

"Do not speak about her that way," Father said, face now covered with a stern mask that he recognised carried threat. "She has blessed us with more things than you could ever imagine."

"Right," Aryzath said, resisting the urge to toss out a bitter laugh. "Just like how she had taken away Mother, deeming her as a traitor without any proof."

"You will not speak any further on this," Father said, voice loud as his eyes flashed into gold, overtaking his usual brown. "Do not cross me."

Aryzath stood up then, his chair scraped loudly on the floor. "Excuse me then," he said, hoping the irritation at having been silenced in his own court was palpable in his words.

He stormed out of the meeting hall, anger now thrumming within his veins. Her Majesty had been nothing but a vile beast, wanting them to tackle every creature their eyes could catch for her own nefarious plans. Aryzath had no idea what she was planning but he didn't want any part of it.

Yet, his family, his councilmen, those creatures that had no right to look at another life so fleetingly, were planning to continue on with their loyalty to Sire.

It burned him.

It made him want to transform into the true form of his and take flight high in the sky and away from this place. He did not care for what would happen to his people or Father. Just as he rounded a corner in the castle, he came face to face with his sister, standing in front of a large window and facing outside.

She had her arms crossed against her chest and a relaxed stance, a gentle smile on her face. It was a complete opposite to when he had seen her during her banquet. He remained standing far from her before he tilted his head to one side, lessening the distance between them.

"Arya," he said, catching his sister's attention. She didn't make a movement to acknowledge him, but she did glance at him before her lips curled upwards further. He shifted his gaze to the window, trying to see what she had been staring at. "What are you doing here?"

"Just thinking about some things."

"Such as?" Aryzath took a step back and turned his body slightly to face her.

"Such as," she said, but she didn't continue her sentence. Instead, she pointed at something outside. He squinted his eyes, trying to figure out what she was doing especially when the direction she was pointing was at a patch of grass between two beds of roses. "Right between them is a snail."

"Alright?" Aryzath frowned. "What about the snail?"

"It's so small and yet it continues to thrive alone out there," Arya said, dropping her hand. "They're not the top of the food chain yet they continue to survive — their species survives despite the various threats on them."

Aryzath hummed. "And so?"

"And so," she said with a sigh. "And so, I wonder why is it we could not learn to accept the fact that we may not always be the strongest and just adapt and... live."

It was a little weird how she was talking to him in riddles. His eyes widened when she glanced downwards and a teardrop fell from her eyes. "Arya, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she whispered. Yet, her inhaling a breath, shakily, spoke anything but nothing. After a second of silence, she said, "I'm being sent to the Grandr Empire tomorrow for the next two years."

Aryzath almost stopped breathing. He grabbed her arm, his claws threatened to appear and accidentally hurt her skin at what he had heard. "Grandr Empire? That's Sire's place. Her territory. Why are you going there?"

Her bottom lip wobbled and fear struck a cord in his chest. "I'm a Seer."

As if he had touched fire, he let her go and took a step back. A Seer. His sister was a Seer. "Someone who could see the future?"

"Someone who could predict the future," she said, gently correcting him.

"You aren't a Seer." Aryzath refused to believe so. Seers were precious to Sire and while the royal blood in him as part of Dragonkind would give them a certain form of powers, there hadn't been any Seers in their lineage. "It makes no sense."

"Well," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hands. "I exist so it has to make sense somehow, Brother."

He shook his head, his mind now a jumbled mess at the news. "How did Father find out?"

"He didn't," she said. "Well, he did... but Her Majesty found out first. And so she beckoned me to see her through a letter to Father." Arya touched her right arm, right near her shoulder. "After all, we've been marked by her. So, she'd know if... we've come to our powers."

And wasn't that a kicker. Marked since they were a fledgling so she could ascertain their loyalty to her — he had always hated that fact. There were times after Mother's death that he would wish to cut off his skin that bore Sire's mark just so she could no longer hold him in his grip.

He despised her.

"Arya," he said, unable to find the right words to say to her that wasn't out of anger. Our of the burning desire to drag her into his arms and ask her to abandon this land. He knew she would not... unlike him. "How did it manifest?"

After a beat she said, "It was a dream."

"Of what?" Aryzath asked, hushed.

"Of a war."

Those words pierced through his heart in a way that made him breathless and aching. It didn't use to faze him, the idea of his country being destroyed under the pressures of battles but at this very moment, it felt as if he had been given boulders to carry on his shoulders.

Especially when her eyes teared up again.

"There's more," he said.

She shook her head, glancing out of the window. "I cannot say anything more for the future cannot change no matter what."

"But you speak of a war. What kind of a war?" He grabbed her arm again when she refused to look at him. "Arya."

"It is of destruction of this kingdom and all of its glory," she said. Gesturing with a hand swiping across the air, she added, "What we hold of now will collapse on its own if we seek out to expand our territory." Arya met his gaze. "And you know this kingdom will continue to enlarge no matter what."

And so, the future was inevitable.

He let her go, his heart heavy in his chest. "I wish I can do more," he said. "If only we weren't born with this cursed blood."

She could only lift the corner of her lips upwards. "What use of it to dwell now, Brother?"

"And you were so happy too," he said. "At the banquet."

"Yes, well," she said, hugging herself. "Things change in a blink of an eye."

He couldn't deny that. At the end, he could only hold her against his chest as she weeped. Having been sent to Sire would mean many uncertain things. Some were said to never return and others had come back with altered minds.

It had been a long — a very long — time since he felt this hopeless.

First, he had lost Mother to Sire.

And now, he was to lose his sister.

Every single person who he dared to care about was whisked away for her own plans.

When he had to let Arya retire to her room, her stature looking smaller and far different from the pride she used to carry on her shoulders, the building anger from the meeting with those awful creatures and at Sire cascaded through him in wild waves.

He needed an outlet, far from here and into a place where he could destroy things to his heart's content.

Without a destination in his mind, he let his feet carry him out of the castle and into the dense forest he often visited. It had been days since he last ventured here, but the air remained smelling the same — of grass and soil and the wind having its usual cold bite every time it caressed his skin.

Emotions tumbled together and clashed, fighting with each other and forming this horrible, sinking feeling that overtook his senses. Half a mind on the path he was taking, the other half of his attention was put towards hating himself and the family he was born into.

There was nothing he could do, and he hated it.

At a particular step on something, he tripped over nothing and found himself falling head first to the ground. Only, in a familiar haze, his surroundings vanished and gravity pulled him further downwards. His breath hitched in his throat and once more, his fight and flight senses kicked in and forced himself out of his human look to his Dragonkind. A partial form of his, at least.

A similar one when he had met Ilayda.

And just as her face flashed through his mind, he landed on the green grass, slightly wet. In front of him was the lake he had seen days ago. Immediately, he forced his body to stand up, turning around with expectations he would see her buzzing about right at his face in her insect-like form.

Yet... there was no one here.

At least, not at first. He turned his attention back to the lake and stopped when there was a glistening of familiar colours of cyan, purples and greens — shifting with every twitch of her wings. There was almost a thin strip of film glistening under the sun, as if she, and Aryzath was sure it was her, hidden behind her enchantment.

He held back from reaching out, curiously taking in any little glimpses of her wings every time the enchantment weakened. Aryzath remembered how she bristled at the idea of her magic being weak — but surely it was if he could peek through a clear spell of concealment.

Taking a step closer to the enchantment however turned out to be a wrong move when the film broke, revealing a scene before him that had his breath stuck in his throat and his eyes widening. For a terrifying second, he thought she had noticed him — but as the moment in front of him kept on going, it was clear she didn't.

Water droplets from the lake were formed into a circle around her, spinning along with bigger blobs of lake water and some flowers that he hadn't seen before from around here. They were spinning in a way that looked like they were dancing. She was levitating from the lake surface just an inch or two, but enough for her wings to flare out and the tips of her toes to poise downwards in an elegant posture.

Her arms were outstretched wide, her fingers danced as the water followed her every movement.

When she faced him, her eyes were closed and there was a triangular cyan mark on her face near her right eye that glowed. Her hair, now that he could take her in under the sun, were in dark blond, wavy and flowing similarly like water behind her. There were braids in her hair that resembled a sunset, blending with her base colour. Amongst the iridescent wings, she was almost mystical in existence.

Even more so when she smiled.

Looking so peaceful.

Unlike the turmoil in his chest.

At a particular flick of her fingers, the water arched above her head and spraying into multiple directions. Some droplets fell on him and he didn't mind it.

It felt warm.

"It's beautiful," he whispered.

And perhaps his voice hadn't been soft because she snapped open her eyes and the beautiful show ended abruptly. She landed on the surface water, tension breaking and rippling underneath her weight, staring right at him.

Aryzath didn't know what to do now that she had noticed he was here.

And he didn't know either why he did what he did next but he said, "I wish I wasn't a Dragonkind."

Her face broke into a surprised look with wide eyes and her lips parted slightly. "Sorry?"

"I wish," Aryzath said, finding his emotions gripping his chest tight and the weight on his shoulders almost forcing him to his knees. "I wish I wasn't a Dragonkind."