Chapter 160: Why especially you?
~Ava's POV~
Three days later, just as she had promised, Alexis returned. I was waiting for her in the main hall, a circular room with tall windows that looked out over the valley below. The magical compass she had given me was still glowing softly in my palm.
"I'm glad you're safe," Alexis said as she sat across from me. "I was worried after we had to separate so quickly."
"It was a false alarm," I told her. "But we need to finish our conversation. What you were saying about time magic... and finding Raphael and Drogon."
Alexis nodded seriously. "Yes, but first I need to understand more about what happened. When did you last see the king? What brought about everything that caused this downfall?"
I set down my cup of tea and stared out the window. The question I had been avoiding for three years hung heavy in the air between us.
"I don't know exactly what happened," I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. "All I know is that Raphael and Drogon stepped out to the Northeast kingdom. They said they would be back in a few days. That was three years ago, in three months, that would be year four."
Alexis leaned forward, her Fae features filled with concern. "Do you still feel him through your mate bond?"
My hand moved to my chest without thinking, pressing against the place where the bond lived inside me. "I do, but it's very faint. I've tried following it, tried tracing it back to him, but I never could. It's like something is blocking it, making it impossible to find the source."
The memories came flooding back, just like they always did when I talked about that time.
One moment, we were safe in the palace, planning our future, and the next, we were fighting for our lives at the palace gates. No one coming to our rescue. If not for Grandmother Lorraine, we would have likely died like they wanted.
After Gwen's eyes changed from their usual bright green to that strange golden color, we knew something big had happened.
The change had scared us all at first, but Grandmother explained it meant Drogon was in trouble and at the edge of death. We needed to find him, she had even said something about Raphael falling into a trap.
With our new reality clear, we made the difficult decision to search for Raphael and Drogon ourselves.
Following Lorraine's instructions, we had disguised ourselves completely before traveling to the Northeast kingdom.
It was there we found our faces plastered on wanted posters in every town square across all the kingdoms that had once been under Raphael's protection in the Second Realm.
We wore simple clothes, Lorraine had insisted we do it that way. Since she had been in the game for a long while, we listened to her.
We covered our hair with Gwen's flaming red hair and Anastasia's vivid black and my silver hair; we stood no chance if we didn't change our hair colors and of course our identities.
There we found out, the king, who had been Raphael's trusted ally and dear friend for many years, had died suddenly under mysterious circumstances.
No one could explain how a healthy man in his young four hundred years had simply collapsed one morning in his throne room and never woken up.
Even stranger was the disappearance of the queen. Rumors had it that she had left behind only empty rooms and unanswered questions.
The king's son, barely eighteen hundred years old and unprepared, had been crowned immediately after his father's death.
But it became clear from the moment we saw him from afar that he wasn't really ruling his kingdom. His ministers surrounded him constantly, whispering in his ears and making all the important decisions for him.
Of course, the people of the Northeast Kingdom were suffering terribly under this new arrangement.
Heavy taxes were crushing them, and most of the money was being sent directly to the Lystra court to fund the temple's sudden heavy taste.
Families were losing their homes, children were going hungry, and there was nothing their puppet king could do to help them.
Callie came into the room quietly, bringing fresh tea for both of us. Ellis and Iris followed behind her, playing with their wooden toys.
"What do you know about Queen Isla?" Alexis asked suddenly, her voice snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Not much," I said slowly, feeling like the name carried some terrible omen I didn't understand. "Except that my grandmother has mentioned her recently. Why do you ask?"
Alexis's eyes grew darker, and I could see she was very disturbed by the name. "I think she might be more important to all of this than any of us realized."
" You might be right," I said, remembering the expression of Lorraine when she mentioned her name some days ago.
"Actually, now that I think about it, three years ago, not long after the king disappeared, something strange happened. A man fell into our province, badly injured."
"What happened to him?" I asked, leaning closer.
"We found him near the eastern border, barely alive," she continued. "We brought to our kingdom and used our healing powers on him. But even after his physical wounds were healed, he was so confused and upset about something. He seemed terrified."
Emma looked up from her toys and tilted her head. "Like when someone has a bad dream?"
"Yes, sweetheart, exactly like that," I said gently before turning back to Alexis.
"For days after he woke up, he could barely speak clearly," she went on. "His mind seemed scattered, like he was trying to remember something very important but couldn't quite grasp it. When he finally started talking normally, all he could say was that Isla had planned everything."
It seems the memory was still vivid in her mind with the way she described the man. According to her, the man had been tall and strong, with silver hair that had grown long during his recovery. His red eyes held a constant worry that never seemed to go away, even when he smiled at the children.
"He kept saying the king and dragon were in terrible trouble," she continued. "That we had to find them before it was too late. He said Isla had set some kind of trap, that everything that had happened to our Northeast kingdom was part of her plan."
I was listening carefully, picking up every important detail I needed to find Raphael.
"After he was fully healed and his strength returned, and then he left us," she said. "He promised he was going to search for the king himself. He said he would repay us for saving his life, especially me."
"Why especially you?" I asked, my eyebrows raised.
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