Chapter 2 Back To The Past

Raven's pov

Blinding light struck me like a thunderbolt; dragged air out of my lungs.

My very fibre was unthreaded, whirled around a hurricane and slapped back together, pulling the air straight from my lungs.

"Ah,"I gasped, knees buckled as my boots hit solid earth.

First thing that struck the ground hard. The next was this heavy scent of pine and flora. I flicked my eyes upward and the muddied sky was now a brilliant blue.

"Where are we? What did you do, Dragon?!" I shot one question after the other like arrows.

"Breathe, Trinker, I'll explain in a second." He growled from behind me.

I whipped my head around, nearly snapping it like a twig. A barrage of screams waited at the back of my throat, but I was aghast by what I saw.

His cloak had been knocked off, scarlet eyes staring at me through curls of coal-black hair.

"I can't believe it, you're a member of the royal dragon family?" I said with this cost rather than the reverence he was probably used to.

He wiped off the moss from his silk cloak, "By technicality, yes, but I'm the Grand Duke,"

"Third in line to the throne still," I insisted venomously, standing up," . . . Were you trying to usurp the throne? Was that why the royal dogs were after you?"

"That . . ." He paused, studying me with his eyes, "I can't say."

Rage coiled in the pit of my stomach, and he either didn't notice or care because he just trudged over to a canopy and left me like forgotten luggage.

I followed after him and his obnoxiously long legs.

"Fine, keep your dragon business to yourself, but by the gods should you at least tell me where we are? Is it a royal reserve? How far are we from the capital?"

"We never left," he replied and my eyes expanded.

"Don't kid me, this looks nothing like the capital!"

And I was right. It looked too lush, green and full of hope, the direct opposite of everything the capital was.

No jagged towers that reached the sky like black claws, hard cobblestone streets and air so thick with smoke and dirt that you swallow rather than breathe it in.

I scoffed, planting my hands on my hips.

"I need answers dragon, that's the least I deserve after you almost got me killed."

He came, held me by my shoulders without asking and pointed down the mountain slope.

"Look," he said.

Before I could argue, I was star struck by the valley that sprawled below, cradled in a forest beside a glass-like lake. Smoke whispered from thatched roofs, and a far off echo of a blacksmith’s hammer was carried with the ever light breeze.

It seized my chest, this was a sight I'd only experienced from paintings and yearly visits to reserves.

The distraction was almost enough for me to forget a dragon had his fingers on my shoulder.

Almost.

"I don't get what you want me to look at exactly, this is-"

"It's Willowind," he said without warning, and my breath was held again.

"Willowind," My palms flew to my mouth," . . .that's impossible. Willowind became Axelon, the capital over forty years ago. Are we under some illusion magic?"

"We're not," he said, straightening his shoulders, "We time."

A year is all you get, a year is all you have, enough to right the wrong before all is gone.

Those words rank in my head again like a bell.

This was before the decades of war that would bring the kingdom to its knees before the dragons.

Far long before my grandmother was reduced to ashes.

Realization struck me like a slap.

Grandmother was here . . .still here … Alive.

My legs folded to move before I could sink in another thought. Mid-sprint, the dragon noble clamped his steel grip on my wrist.

"Unhand me you dragon fiend!"

"I can't, you were about to run into town."

"And if I was?" I snarled. "My grandmother is there!"

"That would be a foolish move, Trinker," he said quietly, disturbing red eyes skimming every inch of the place, then he gestured between the two of us.

"Anyone can take one look at us and tell us immediately that we're an anomaly in the timeline."

Tears burned in my eyes, my grandmother was down there, and he was getting in my way.

"My grandmother is down there. She took care of me when I had nobody!"

Abandoning your child was a norm in the Kingdom of Vlade, the cut-throat. Infertility herbs cost an arm and a leg, nightly embraces were one of the only entertainment the poor could afford. Sadly, children weren't. Grandmother saved me from the unspeakable perils that marked the childhood of most children.

"She's not your grandmother, yet," he told me bluntly. "I doubt she is even a mother right now. She will just be a young, confused woman approached by stranger babbling nonsense."

The struggle in my body withered away, but I glared at him, hating spiteful that he was insufferable but right.

I yank my hand away, stepping from his scent.

"Why now? We hide here?"

He pulled out his golden pocket watch, that time thing that had brought us here. It was a miniscule difference, but I was paid to notice miniscule differences.

"It moved," I told him.

He looked at it, "Are you sure about that?" He squints his eyes and frustration makes me stomp over, pointing at it with my finger.

"There's not much, but I'm trained for this kind of stuff."

"I'll take your word for it," he said, setting the pocket watch back, his eyes strolled down the valley again, and he said," If we're going down to Willowind, we need a cover that lets us blend into the common folk without raising eyebrows."

"If any cover involves you calling me your servant, I'm not in," I warned him in advance.

His eyes blink with a flicker of shock, as if that was exactly what he was about to suggest. Then he says, "What else can explain a man and woman side by side?" As soon as he said the words, an evil smile curled up that wickedly handsome face of his.

"No, no . . ." I was stepping away, but he clipped the distance with those leg of his.

"It's the perfect cover. Nobody would think of doubting us," he says. "Wouldn't you say 'wife'?”