Her eyes shifted to Ulrik who was rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. “Why? I know they told you about me.”
“I knew about you before them.” Though she hadn’t known all of it.
Ulrik raised a dark brow. “How is that?”
“I was inside your mind.”
His gaze went hard for a fraction of a second. “What did you see?”
“A lot. I know and understand why you are the way you are. However, there are two sides to every story. I listened as Warrick told me his.”
“And?”
She shrugged and pulled off a dead leaf from one of her plants. “Both of you are right and wrong.”
“It’s no’ that simple.”
“No bad situation is. You are too angry to see their side of the story, and they’re too stubborn to see yours. So you both gather hate around you and use it as a shield. Hate destroys from the inside out. It hardens the heart and maligns the soul.”
Ulrik closed the distance between them. He got so close she could see the darker ring of gold around his eyes. For once, he let her see the anger that sizzled just beneath the surface.
“They brought this war onto themselves.”
“Can you understand why they were angry at you?”
He gave her an annoyed look. “Were?”
“You know what I mean,” Darcy said with a roll of her eyes.
“Have you ever loved someone, Darcy?”
The change in topic and Ulrik’s soft voice threw her off guard. “My family.”
“Nay. Have you ever fallen in love?”
Warrick’s image instantly flashed in her head. “Not the kind of love you’re talking about, no.”
“You give everything to that person. Every shred of your soul, every breath that leaves your lungs. You trust them implicitly. You share everything with them. They are your entire world.”
She swallowed hard, chills rising on her arms, because she could tell how deeply Ulrik had loved his woman. It was so tangible, so physical that it brought tears to her eyes.
Ulrik took a deep breath and slowly released it. “Now, imagine that same person betrays you. They stomp all over the love you gave them, proving that they never cared. They were using you.”
Darcy could no longer hold his gaze. She looked down and sniffed.
“That would tear any being in two, be they human, dragon, or Fae,” Ulrik said softly.
She glanced up at him to see his gaze was directed elsewhere. It gave her time to look at him and see past the indifference he showed the world. The problem was, there was only callousness and nothing resembling anything close to kindness.
“You survived it.”
Ulrik smiled coldly. “If you believe that, Darcy, you’re more na?ve than I believed.”
She rubbed her hands over her arms. “If the humans discover the Dragon Kings, all of the Kings will be hunted—including you. They can hide on Dreagan. Where will you go?”
“They can have Dreagan,” he said through clenched teeth. Then he slid his gaze back to her. “Would you want to be with the people who turned their backs on you? Banished you? Bound your magic so you couldn’t be the very thing you were born to be?”
“No,” she answered honestly.
“Neither do I.”
“Con asked you to stop killing the mortals.”
Ulrik lifted one shoulder casually. “I wanted every trace of your kind wiped from the realm. I didna want to look at you again and be reminded of what happened.”
She knew in that instant his feelings for humans hadn’t changed. As soon as she unbound the rest of his magic, he would wipe the Earth clean.
“You’re no’ going to inquire if I still feel the same?” he asked into the silence.
“It’s obvious you do.”
His head tilted to the side slightly. “Had you known this before, would you have unbound my magic?”
Darcy didn’t need to look to the doorway to know that Warrick was there. How much of the conversation had he overheard, she wondered?
“What I know is that this world needs the Dragon Kings.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Thorn looked down at the shop with distaste. He still couldn’t believe what Warrick had just related to him. Ulrik was going to help them.
This could be the one thing that helped to mend old wounds.
Or it could all go up in a shit storm of lunacy.
Thorn might like to ride the wave of foolhardiness more times than not, but he hadn’t been one who sided with Ulrik and killed mortals.
Not even when he wanted to burn a few humans with dragon fire himself. A vow was a vow. Thorn wasn’t even one who hated mortals.
They were a huge pain in his ass, but they were part of the realm. The dragons were saved, even if they were on another realm now. Sitting around and bemoaning the fact that they were gone, or even hating the humans that were around now for something their ancestors did seemed stupid.