If I’d had to, I would have thrown myself out of a window and hoped to hell I still knew how to sprout wings. But I didn’t want to take that risk if I didn’t have to.
I stepped up beside the door and flattened myself up against the wall, hoping they would walk right past me when they came into the bedroom.
To my surprise, it actually worked. They threw the door open wide and strode in. The two men were in my bedroom and headed toward my bed as I slipped out the door into the living room. I raced out, pausing only long enough to grab my keys—and at the last minute, the card the dragons had left me that evening.
I hit the hallway at almost full speed, dashing to the end to the window and shoving it open. As I clattered down the stairs outside, a commotion behind me alerted me that the intruders had figured out I was gone.
Even when I heard the men above me, following me down the fire escape, I didn’t pause to look up.
Fenwick had instilled that in me from the very beginning. I could almost hear his voice, even now.
When you run, you run fast and hard. Don’t look back. Get to safety first.
The problem was, I didn’t know where safety existed anymore. Once upon a time, I had believed I was safe with Fenwick. But he had not been safe at all—he was ultimately unable to protect even himself.
Since his death, I had pinned my hopes for safety on my ability to hide among the humans. But the Queen’s Guard had found me, and if they did, then who was to say I couldn’t be found easily by anyone at all?
From the second-floor landing, I jumped down and hit the ground running. As a dragon shifter, even one who hadn’t shifted in years, I was stronger and faster than almost any human, so I hoped that would throw off my pursuers. The fact that the intruders were hot on my heels convinced me that even if they were not dragon shifters, they certainly were not human.
I leaned in and added a burst of speed to my running. The whole time, I tried to calculate a way to safety. But I was quickly becoming convinced that there was no way to find someplace safe.
If I could hit the lights of one of the main streets, there would be people around—New York never really slept—but that didn’t mean much at all. The dragonsrealm ran parallel to the human world. And although very few humans had ever figured out how to move between them, almost all dragon shifters could do so at will.
All they have to do is grab me and flash into the dragonsrealm.
Fenwick had always impressed upon me that we weren’t allowed to do that in front of other people. We were supposed to move between worlds in ways that didn’t allow humans to figure out what was going on.
I didn’t know if these shifters chasing me held to the same rules.
But just in case they did, I knew of one place they might be unlikely to try anything.
The human police station.
It wasn’t far from my apartment. I just had to make it to the local precinct. First, though, I had to remember where it was.
I almost made it, too. But I made a wrong turn. Instead of turning down the street that would lead me to the brightly lit entrance, I turned one street too soon—down the one that would also lead to a police station entrance, but the back entrance, the one that was, at night, darker and even more full of shadows than my own street.
Dammit. If I’d had the breath to say it, I would have repeated it three or four times. Instead, I tried to put on more speed. But I was out of energy, unable to do so.
All the way there, I’d heard the pounding footsteps gaining on me. But as soon as I turned down that street, the instant there were no humans around, the footsteps stopped, and I heard the leathery swish of dragon wings.
One of the two men flashed into view in front of me, moving through the dragonsrealm to get to me faster, halfway shifted from his dragon form and folding his wings in around him as he settled to the ground on his human feet.
“You need to come with us,” he said.
I spun around, only to find his companion waiting behind me, his expression just as implacable.
I couldn’t even gasp out my refusal. Despair welled up inside me, circling through my stomach and clenching my heart.
“No,” I finally whispered.
No, my heart agreed.
My voice grew louder. “No.”
I stood there gasping for breath, tears running down my face. I didn’t know how they had found me, but I was not going to allow them to capture me. I spun around and inhaled. I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I knew I couldn’t let them take me.
The only thing I could think to do was attempt to shift. So I began trying to push out my wings, attempting to convince my body to remember what it had been like to fly.
Nothing happened to me, but all the lights up and down the street went out with a pop and a tinkling of glass.
“What the hell?” one of my pursuers said.
“Dude, grab her,” the other one commanded.
This time I screamed at the top of my lungs. “No!”
At that moment, a huge wind gusted down the street, swirling dust and debris along with it, slamming into the two men who had followed me, hitting them hard and lifting them up by the wings they had just popped out, pushing them back down the street, away from me.
Miraculously, I was left untouched, the wind serving only to swirl my hair around me.
The dragon shifters slid past me, then all the way down the to the end of the street. And when they tried to pursue me again, they were knocked over by the wind.
I didn’t wait to find out what they would do. I turned and ran to the police station. With any luck, there would be enough people around to keep them from following me inside.
And if there aren’t? a tiny voice inside me whispered.
Well, if there weren’t, I’d have to deal with it later.
Chapter 4
It felt like something of a miracle that when I got into the police station, I still had that card crumpled inside my fist.
I didn’t know exactly what else to do, so I filed a police report about someone breaking into my apartment and chasing me. I knew the NYPD would never catch the guys, but it gave me something to do while I waited for Rayce, Draven, and Lanzo to show up—the very first thing I’d done when I started talking to one of the officers was ask for a chance to call my friends.
The officer I spoke to sent a unit over to check out my apartment. Those officers radioed in to let him know that yes, it looked like my place been broken into.
I sat at a desk in a big room in the precinct, surrounded by people coming and going. The officer I’d been speaking to leaned toward me, running a hand over his short-cut hair. “The patrol officers who checked the place out said it looked like it had been tossed—like someone had been searching through it for something specific. You have any idea what that might be?”
I frowned and blinked. “Searching my apartment? No idea at all.” I shook my head. “I don’t own anything valuable.”
Apparently, I sounded believable—and the few belongings I had in my apartment would certainly support my claim.
It was the technical truth. I didn’t own the valuable item I suspected they were searching for.
But I was certain they’d trashed my apartment in search of the Queen’s Diadem—the traditional crown of the dragonsrealm.
It had been in my possession—more or less—since I was five years old. According to Fenwick, when they discovered Nico’s treachery, my mother had ripped the Diadem off her head, shoved it at him, and ordered him to get me and keep it and me safe.
I knew exactly where that crown was. It was in a safety deposit box in the Bank of New York City, midtown branch. There never been any indication that the shifters who had killed Fenwick had gotten him to confess to where it might be, so I hadn’t bothered to move it. I’d always been listed as one of the owners. I simply kept up the payments after Fenwick’s murder.
But it sounded like whatever Nico was up to these days was causing a lot of dragonkin to
consider rebellion.
And the Queen’s Diadem wasn’t simply a symbol of rulership. It was also the setting for the Dragon heartstone—a blood-red gem that tradition claimed connected the ruler of dragonsrealm to the very blood of the land.
It definitely carried some kind of magic. Fenwick had insisted we complete the necessary rituals to pass the Diadem’s power to me when we learned of the certainty of my parents’ deaths. I would never forget the way it had zapped me, like an electrical shock that wound through my body, burying itself in every part of me.
I had no idea what else it could do, but I was certain that if he could get his hands on it, Nico could cement his role as king.
And if anyone else got hold of it, they might be able to make a credible play for the throne.
Even though I was the heir.
But I don’t want to be queen, I reminded myself.
I was still considering whether or not to tell my self-appointed Queen’s Guard about the Diadem when they showed up at the precinct, much sooner than I expected.
I realized as Rayce made his way toward me, followed by the other two dragon shifters, that their arrival made me feel safer than I had since Fenwick’s death.
Part of me wanted to shake that feeling off, to assert my independence and go back to living my life all by myself.
But another part of me was willing to admit that the last ten years had been hard. I had been on my own since I was not quite seventeen, constantly looking over my shoulder, half expecting someone to pop out of the shadows and grab me.
Now that two shifters had actually tried that, I was glad to have these three dragons in my court. So to speak.
I don’t want to be queen.
When they reached me, Rayce dropped to one knee in front of me, taking both my hands in his. “Are you okay?”
I was surprised to realize I was shaking. It was as if their presence allowed me to feel the reaction I was having to the night’s events.
“They broke into my home. Chased me, tried to—” I was shaking too hard by then to finish the sentence.
Rayce leaned forward and enfolded me in his arms, half-standing to wrap me up in the comfort he offered. “It’s okay. You’re safe now,” he murmured. He propped his hip on the armrest of the chair I sat in and stroked my hair with one hand until I quit shivering.
When I had calmed down some, he glanced up at Officer Smith, who still sat at his desk. “Do you need her for anything else? Or can we take her home with us?”
“I just need Ms. O’Neill’s signature on a couple of forms, and we will be done,” the officer assured us.
“I can’t go home,” I almost wailed. “The lock is broken, I think.”
“We have a hotel room,” Rayce reassured me. “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
A hotel room, while not necessarily my first choice, might be my safest option at the moment. And being surrounded by three enormous dragon shifters definitely was.
I nodded, and when Officer Smith brought them over, I signed the report with a shaky hand without even reading it.
“We need to decide what to do,” I said to Rayce as we walked out the precinct door and into the Manhattan night.
“Yes. But not until tomorrow. Tonight, you need to sleep.”
I wasn’t sure that would make me feel better, but I was also too tired to care.
“Do we need to take a taxi?” I asked.
“No,” Lanzo said. “We just need to wait until there aren’t so many people around.”
So we continued walking down the sidewalk until we had to skirt some bushes outside a building. That stretch of sidewalk fell into a shadow, and as we stepped into it, all three men took my arms and moved us through the dragonsrealm for just a few moments—long enough for them to use it as a shortcut to their hotel room.
I’d almost forgotten how convenient that form of travel could be.
We landed in the middle of the room, and they all folded their wings back in, turning to look at me expectantly.
“What?” I asked suspiciously.
“You can’t stay in New York any longer,” Rayce announced. “It’s not safe. And there’s nowhere else to hide. If the dragonking’s men can track you down in Manhattan—if we can track you down in Manhattan—then you are no longer safe.”
He didn’t say anything I hadn’t already been thinking, but it still felt like he’s punched me in the stomach.
“Fine.” I blinked back tears. “I’ll join your crusade. But I get to say goodbye to all my New York friends first.”
Chapter 5
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. After Rayce bundled me into the bathroom with an oversized T-shirt and instructions to get ready for bed, I heard them arguing out in the room.
“She can’t simply wander around New York City saying goodbye to her friends,” Lanzo argued.
“Not without at least one of us ending up killing someone, almost certainly,” Draven said in his deep voice.
“We can’t allow it,” Lanzo said firmly.
“We have to,” Rayce interjected in a measured tone. “If we don’t, it’s likely she’ll never forgive us. And we have to be there with her when she takes back the throne. Both for her sake and for the sake of all dragonkin.”
I backed away from my post by the closed bathroom door, turning on the shower and stepping inside the warm stream.
They were right, course. Checking in with the friends I’d made in New York over the last ten years certainly seemed like the last thing I needed to be doing.
Assuming, of course, saying goodbye was all I had planned.
There were things about the human world that these three dragons—my Queen’s Guard, I finally allowed myself to think—did not understand. For one, I needed to make sure that no one put out a missing person alert for me. I could not afford to have my image plastered all over New York City if we were truly going to attempt to take back my kingdom. I needed to try to maintain some anonymity until we made our move.
I don’t want to be queen.
I shook off the thought. Fenwick had chosen New York because it was one of the places I was least likely to be found hiding.
There were other, more crowded cities—but in most of those, I would’ve stood out, with my long blonde hair and my height. Here, I looked like just another New Yorker.
If I’d been tracked down here—at least once, and assuming the shifters who’d broken into my home really had not followed my Guard, then quite probably twice—there was no place in the human world where I’d be truly safe.
I didn’t have many other choices.
After all, I held the Diadem’s power.
Fenwick had tried to prepare me for this day. The fact that I’d hidden for a decade after his murder, trying to create safety in complete anonymity, didn’t change anything.
It merely meant I had more lost time to make up for.
It meant I’d left my people abandoned to a despotic ruler for that time.
And every dragon shifter Nico had killed during those ten years meant more blood on my hands.
I couldn’t do the same thing to my human friends.
I was absolutely certain that if Nico figured out who I’d become close to during my time in this city, he would destroy them to get at me. So in addition to actually saying goodbye to the few people I’d become friends with, I also needed to leave a false trail to confuse the issue.
And finally, I needed to get the Diadem out of the safety deposit bank without anyone knowing what I’d done.
Not even, if I could help it, the Queen’s Guard dragons who were making plans to protect me from everyone and everything. Including myself.
I fell asleep that night in one of the two hotel-room beds to the sound of my Queen’s Guard making plans, knowing that I was likely to disrupt those plans as soon as I woke the next morning.
When I did finally awake, it was to warmth and comfort, and to the surprising realization that I was surrounded by two of the dragon shifter
s—Rayce and Lanzo.
Sitting up, I glanced over at the other bed and realized why they’d joined me. All by himself, Draven took up almost as much room as the rest of us together.
It did put a hitch in my plan to leave before anyone else stirred. Getting out from between these two without waking them wasn’t going to be easy. I was completely under the covers, including the top sheet, whereas the two dragons had slipped under the comforter only, effectively pinning me down in the bed.
Finally, I slid down far under the sheet and began wriggling my way toward the foot of the bed and out the other end.
I gathered up my clothes and went back into the bathroom. As I stared at my reflection in the mirror, I realized there was a distinct problem with my plan to sneak off and get the Diadem out of its safe deposit box.
I had run out of my apartment without my wallet. I had no identification. And in my clothes from the night before, I looked like the sort of person who wouldn’t have ID.
Crap. I’m going to have to include my Guard in my plan.
I paused, startled to realize I was already comfortable calling them my Guard, at least in my own mind.
With one final, deep breath, I moved back into the bedroom, where I considered the three sleeping dragons, wondering if I could wake Rayce without disturbing the other two. We would all have to work together in the end, but Rayce was their leader, and he was definitely the one I’d have to talk to first.
Sitting on the bed next to him, I hesitantly reached out one hand to brush it against his arm.
He opened his eyes and spoke quietly. “I wondered if you were going to say anything before you tried to leave.”
I noted the word tried but didn’t comment on it. If I was going to accept them as my Guard, I would have to get used to being actually, well, guarded.
“We need to talk,” I said. “About the Diadem.”
That got his attention. He sat up straight in bed and said, “The Diadem? Do you know where it is?”
“Of course. It’s mine, after all.”
Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 28
