Hidden Mage

by Sophie Stern

  When he was done marching from room to room, tearing things up, Felix went back outside and sat down in his dragon form. Sitting felt awkward and strange, but he was suddenly very, very tired, and the sitting felt necessary.

  That was fun, the dragon said to him.

  Yeah, fun. Felix wasn’t so sure about that. He had a question, though. Does every shifter talk to their dragon like this?

  There was a pause.

  There was a long, crazy pause, and then the dragon spoke to him once more. The dragon didn’t appear like a voice. It was more like...a feeling that he could totally, wholly understand.

  No, the dragon finally answered. Not everyone feels the need to talk to their dragon. Not like you and I are talking. Some people only communicate with their dragons when they are in danger. Others never speak to their dragons at all.

  Felix wasn’t sure how to feel about that information. He’d never really spoken to his dragon out loud. Not really. He hadn’t really communicated with it the way he was now, but he could already tell that if this was taken from him, he’d mourn the loss terribly.

  Felix was silent, sitting there for a long time.

  He had a lot to think about.

  The dragon part of him seemed to think Tabitha wasn’t just a random mage on a quest for revenge. That part of him thought she was their soul mate: their fated mate.

  Felix had no idea whether he believed in such things or not, but he did know that Tabitha was sitting on the side of the creek, and he had to get back to her.

  Soon night would fall, and he didn’t want her to be wandering through the perilous jungles on her own. So, he leapt back into the air, and he started flying, and he made his way back to where they’d made love.

  He needed to get to her, to talk to her. He needed to explain to her that he hadn’t known he was a dragon shifter. He had forgotten. There were so many memories that were trapped: locked away. He wondered if she would be patient with him. Would she help him?

  Or was Felix too lost to be saved?

  He soared, flying, and soon he reached the place where they’d been. He dropped down, expecting to see Tabitha sitting by the trees or dipping her toes in the water, but that wasn’t what he saw.

  Not even close.

  His clothes were there: right where he had left them, but Tabitha wasn’t.

  The mage was gone.

  He looked around, trying to figure out if she was just hiding, but she wasn’t. She had left, and judging by the fact that her scent had faded from the area, he’d say she’d been gone for quite awhile.

  Well, shit.

  What was he supposed to do now?

  We have to find her.

  Luckily for Felix, his dragon seemed to know what to do even when he didn’t.

  She left us, Felix whispered to his dragon, hurt. She’d left. He’d only been gone for a little while, hadn’t he? Only, he knew he’d been gone more than a few minutes. It had probably been an hour: maybe two. He had needed to let off some steam, which he had, but apparently, Tabitha hadn’t felt the need to sit around while Felix had his temper tantrum.

  It’s not too late, the dragon whispered right back to Felix. It’s never too late when it’s about your mate. We can find her, Felix. We have to find her.

  Despite the fact that Felix had only just discovered he had a dragon side, he knew that the voice he was hearing was right.

  He had to find Tabitha.

  He had to find his mate.

  Chapter 13

  She should have fucking known.

  What was that saying?

  Too good to be true?

  Well, Felix had definitely been the best guy she’d ever been with, and apparently, he really was too good to be true.

  A dragon.

  He was a fucking dragon!

  She hadn’t known. He hadn’t told her. Judging by the way he’d simply leapt up and flown away, he hadn’t really cared to explain, either. He’d just looked at her, and then he’d left.

  Now she was alone, wandering through what amounted to be the world’s worst jungle, and she was alone.

  She’d thought of this as a forest when she’d first began her journey, but considering just how much undergrowth there was, she was certain now that “jungle” was a better term. Not that it mattered. No matter what the place was that she was climbing through, it sucked.

  All of it sucked.

  She sucked, too, Tabitha knew.

  She shouldn’t have gotten drawn into the handsome man.

  Fucking dragons.

  As soon as she’d seen him fly off, she’d known their journey together was over. Whatever. She didn’t care. She didn’t need him.

  She was already most of the way through the dense shrubbery of the island. That’s how she would refer to the jungle-forest-swamp she’d been trekking through: shitty shrubbery. There were trees and bushes and fallen logs and all sorts of crap to climb over, but she didn’t care.

  She’d gotten dressed in her own clothes, and she’d slipped on the shoes Felix had given her. It didn’t matter that they were a little too big, or that she could imagine him having worn these in the past. Nope. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like that bother her.

  Instead, she was just going to keep going.

  She’d been feeling her powers coming back to her. Despite the fact that she’d basically drained them dry, she was beginning to realize that something on the island was recharging her.

  She was almost certain it was Felix.

  There was a legend among the mages about this sort of thing. It was a legend that people didn’t really talk about, but Tabitha had always been both sneaky and nosy, and she’d managed to overhear it on multiple occasions.

  The rumor was that if you had sex with your one true mate, they would recharge your magical powers, no matter what kind of creature they might be.

  So if a wizard and a non-magical human had sex, the wizard could get a recharge from that.

  If a mage had sex with, say, a dragon who happened to be their fated mate, the same thing could happen.

  That was assuming Felix was her mate.

  Honestly, she wasn’t even sure if she believed in such things.

  Tabitha kept moving. She thought she saw him flying over the trees, and she dropped to her belly almost instantly. She didn’t really want him to find her.

  There wasn’t much of a reason for it except that she felt used and betrayed.

  He’d fucked her, and then he’d left.

  He’d shifted before he’d even told her that he was a dragon, and then he’d left.

  She’d been with enough people – magical and nonmagical – to know that if you were going to shift into a paranormal creature, it was simply good manners to give the other person a heads-up.

  It at least would have been appreciated, but no.

  He couldn’t do that for her.

  Well, fuck him.

  “I already did,” she muttered, kicking a stone.

  Tabitha kept walking, pissed off and irritated with the sudden turn of events. She pushed through some vines that were blocking her path. It was getting darker as she approached the castle, and the trees seemed to be closer together.

  Maybe the witch did it on purpose.

  Felix had casually mentioned Ursula’s affinity for spells, and Tabitha wouldn’t be surprised if there was something super messed up at play here. Maybe, for example, Ursula had cast a spell over the forest so that everything grew really thick, or maybe she’d done something to screw with how the plants grew.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tabitha said out loud. “Stay focused.”

  Suddenly, she heard a huge thump from behind her, and she spun around to see a large lion with bright green eyes staring at her.

  “Another fucking shifter,” she growled, pissed.

  She didn’t have to wait very long to decide whether to fight or run because the lion immediately charged at her. It didn’t even hold back or wait.

  Tabitha cast an
energy ball and the lion jumped right into it. Instantly, the creature was trapped, and she held it there. The lion seemed both confused and irritated by this turn of events.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, did I forget to mention that I’m a super powerful mage?”

  Luckily, she really had been recharged by that sex.

  The lion pawed at the energy ball.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told it. “No matter how much you meow in there, you won’t be able to escape until I let you. Are you a shifter? Change back. Let me see you.”

  The lion stared at her.

  “That’s fine,” Tabitha shrugged. “I’ve got all day.”

  She sat down and crossed her legs, careful to hold one hand out. That hand kept the energy ball working perfectly well. The lion was hanging in the air and trying to paw at the sides of the ball, but nothing happened.

  And nothing would happen.

  Not until she wanted it to.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Tabitha asked the lion.

  It opened its mouth and roared as loud as it could, but Tabitha was unfazed.

  “My trainers at the Mages Guild yelled louder than that,” she told the lion. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to scare me.”

  Another roar.

  Tabitha yawned.

  She was bored of this. She wanted to hurry up and get to the castle, but this lion had distracted her. Well, the lion and the dragon.

  Why hadn’t she known?

  She’d suspected, sure. She’d had a feeling that there was something more to Felix than he was letting on. He was powerful. He was strong. He exuded energy like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  He’d tricked her.

  He’d tricked her, and he’d fucked her, and he’d left.

  And that hurt.

  A tear slid down Tabitha’s cheek, and the energy ball flickered. The lion wasn’t having some sort of personal crisis, and it used that moment of weakness to leap through the flickering energy wall that surrounded it. The lion leapt over to her, stopping just in front of her, and it roared again.

  “Fuck off, lion,” she said. “I’m no good to you.”

  She looked up at it sadly. Another tear slid. Fuck. She so hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected to cry. Not like this.

  Once more, the lion growled in her face, but it didn’t try to attack her.

  It also didn’t shift back to its human form.

  “Wait a minute,” Tabitha said, scrambling to her feet. She shook her head. How could she have made such a silly mistake?

  The lion looked at her.

  “You aren’t a shifter at all, are you?”

  The lion blinked.

  “You also aren’t trying to eat me,” she said, considering the creature in front of her.

  Another blink.

  “Are you injured?”

  The lion seemed to understand her question, and it held up its paw. Sure enough, he was wounded.

  “You know,” she muttered, sitting back down, “I read a fairytale about this once.”

  The lion only looked at her.

  “Come on, then. Lie down.” Tabitha gestured to the ground, and the lion dropped to the grass in front of her. Its paws were in front of it, and she looked at him carefully. It was a male lion. She knew that much. He was big and lovely, and he had a nice, big mane that surrounded his face.

  She reached for his paw, and he flinched, but he let her take it.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” Tabitha looked at his paw. “You know, when I read a story about this once. Long ago, I read a tale. Do you want to hear it?”

  The lion looked at her, but made no noise. It said nothing at all. Perhaps that was for the best. What would she even do if there were two shifters on this island? One, she could handle. Well, maybe she could.

  Two, though?

  That might be a bit much.

  “Once upon a time, there was a lion who was very grumpy. He kept attacking people and everyone was scared of him. Sound familiar?”

  The lion had the decency to look ashamed.

  “One day, he broke into a monastery, and everyone fled. All of the monks ran away. All except for one.”

  The lion closed his eyes as Tabitha examined the wound on his paw. He’d been cut badly, but she could fix him. Luckily, she still had some magic left. Despite making that huge energy ball, she felt stronger than she had in years.

  Maybe ever.

  “The lion had a thorn in his paw,” she continued the story as she waved her hands in front of the lion’s paw. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, as she let her healing powers out. If Felix was here and not a total prick, she could have asked for a drop of his blood. Everyone knew that dragons had special blood with healing powers.

  She had always liked that story as a kid. It was strange now to be sitting in front of this lion. How long had he wandered around the island in pain? And what had happened to him? The wound in front of him looked painful, but it also looked magical.

  Had Ursula attacked him?

  “Once the thorn was out,” she whispered, “the lion felt better. He wasn’t mean or cruel after that.”

  The lion in front of Tabitha opened his eyes.

  “You’re okay now,” she told him.

  He was going to be just fine.

  He was going to be safe.

  As if on cue, the lion got to his feet. He nodded his head, looking at her, and then he turned and ran away. She didn’t follow. She watched as he ran off into the trees, disappearing from view.

  “Be happy,” she whispered.

  That was what she wanted for the creature.

  She wanted him to be happy.

  Safe.

  Free.

  She wanted him to know that no matter what happened to him, he was going to be just fine because Tabitha believed in him. Once he was gone from sight, she turned back toward the castle. She was close. She could see the towers peeking up from the tops of the trees, and she knew that she’d be there in less than an hour if she managed to keep the same pace.

  Ursula wasn’t going to know what hit her.

  Tabitha was coming at full force, and she was going to kill the witch no matter what it cost.

  No matter what it took.

  Her people deserved to be avenged.

  Her parents deserved to be avenged.

  And now Tabitha knew there were other creatures on the island. She knew she had to prepare to meet more than just Ursula. She had magic flowing through her veins now, and she felt different.

  In the past, when she’d used her powers, she’d felt drained and weak when she finished, but not this time. This time, she felt...energized.

  Strong.

  Healing the lion had given her something she hadn’t expected, just like sleeping with Felix had given her something she hadn’t expected. For years, Tabitha had been under the impression that using magic only made you weaker, but maybe there was something the mages didn’t know.

  Maybe using your powers for good gave you more of them.

  Maybe you were only drained when you used your powers to harm people.

  If that was true, then she was about to be drained dry because she was going to summon every fucking ounce of magic within herself to kill Ursula.

  “I’m coming for you, witch,” she growled, and Tabitha marched on.

  Chapter 14

  Felix was surprised to see that Tabitha had left.

  Perhaps that wasn’t fair. After all, he couldn’t expect a sweet witch like her to sit around waiting for him to return, but it was slightly annoying that she’d just ditched him.

  Hadn’t she known he was coming back?

  Miffed, he decided to try to find her. He leapt up and headed toward the castle. He flew, of course, because that was the way he was going to find her. He could see so much better in the air that it was crazy.

  Why hadn’t he been doing this entire life?

  Oh yeah. He hadn’t actually known he was a drag
on until less than an hour ago. Felix flew, soaring back toward the castle, but he flew low and close to the trees.

  He heard a voice and he slowed, hovering just above the treetops. He felt himself gliding through the air the way a fish glides through water. It was a strange sort of feeling, but he didn’t mind it.

  He paused there, listening. He didn’t have to strain himself to hear Tabitha talking. She wasn’t alone.

  Who was she with?

  He moved carefully, stealthily, peering through the branches of the trees, and then he spotted her. She wasn’t alone anymore, though. She was with someone: a lion.

  Maurice.

  Felix wished he could speak out loud in his dragon form.

  They wouldn’t be able to understand us even if you spoke, Felix’s dragon murmured to him.

  He knew it was true, but he still wished he could call out. He knew that lion. He just hadn’t seen him in a very long time.

  Maurice wasn’t supposed to be a lion at all. He wasn’t a shapeshifter, but he was enchanted. He’d been cursed long ago by Ursula after trying to free Felix. The witch had tried to turn Maurice into a toad, but Felix had thrown himself at Ursula before the spell was complete, and she’d accidentally turned him into a lion instead.

  It was one of the few mistakes the witch ever made, and it was one Felix had paid dearly for. She’d locked him up for over a month with nothing but water and porridge, and by the time he’d gotten out of the cage she’d kept him in, Felix had been just about willing to do anything.

  He’d certainly been willing to kill her when the chance arose.

  Maurice was hurt. Felix hadn’t seen the lion since he’d been transformed. In fact, he didn’t know the lion was even still alive. It had been at least a year since Maurice’s transformation, and Felix thought he knew everyone and everything that happened on the island.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one with secrets.

  Maurice had been injured somehow, and Tabitha was using her powers to heal him. Felix watched from above as Tabitha carefully used her mage’s energy to heal Maurice’s paw and bring the open skin back together again.