“How did you even hear about it?”
“We had an informant. You get all kinds at the Realm Market – and someone – my mom wouldn’t say who – tipped the location of this egg. Right down to the room it lay in.”
Garek could see their captor’s minds whirring at the information. Such detail likely meant a traitor in their own castle, and no one liked traitors. The baby dragon, which didn’t have a name, was nuzzling into his mind from behind its pen, and he wondered if it could hear its thoughts – if it even had the capacity to understand the images and strings of words layered over his brain.
He wondered why Elena had chosen to reveal it in front of the captors. Some things needed to stay private. They didn’t care about these people, and whatever grand plan they had engineered for themselves.
“And you?” Elena said, after a pause where they did nothing but stare.
Then again, it wasn’t like he particularly cared about his clients, either. Not when he was likely being written off by the Smuggler’s Den right now for his capture.
“Contracted by the dragons,” Garek said, eyeing Yvonne stiffening, her hand twitching towards her gourd. “You could say they’re livid about their queen egg being stolen.”
“What, they actually hired you?” Elena’s busy eyebrows popped up in interest. “I thought they hated working with humans.”
“I’m a unicirim,” Garek added absently. “But same thing, I suppose.”
Elena blinked rapidly. “Uh, no, it’s not. Because one’s a human, and another turns into a feathery horse with a stabby on its head.”
“Yeah but I can look human, so it doesn’t count.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, they do interact with humans – mostly through the smaller dragons who can shapeshift. The big ones can’t, so they have intermediaries. Some of their contacts came to Smuggler’s Den where I worked, offering… a lot. To get the queen back.”
“Is that the coastal community outside of River’s End?” Yvonne interrupted, still looking slightly murderous. Garek shrugged.
“No. Ours is somewhere else.” Like he was going to tell her where. “Plenty of smugglers making a living from the unhappy and miserable.” Garek tapped his feet on the carpet floor, vaguely disappointed at how softened the sound was. “So you’ve never lived long anywhere outside of the Realm Market?” he redirected to Elena. Again, there was that faint, irritating suggestion of a lost memory. Like he should have known her. Perhaps in their past, they’d bumped into one another at the Realm Market. Though it’d have to be childhood, because he’d left the place well alone once getting his apprenticeship. Still wore the ring signet, in case he ever wanted to return. “Who ended up training you in your magic? Didn’t think there were many witches living there.”
“My mother,” Elena said. “She….” Elena gave a hasty glance to her listening captors, “knows enough about magic to be able to help me out with it. We did spend a lot of time on earth, though, where magic doesn’t really work there for long. We liked earth for that reason, as magic can royally screw things up, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” Garek said with a laugh, enjoying the way her own lips curled upward in response, and the flash in her light brown eyes. His attention occasionally wandered over her jawline, broad and strong, and the tufts of hair behind her ears. “Well, you know I used to be there, from the orphanage. Less noble circumstances. Begged for scraps on the streets. Worked with the little child gangs there, tried to hit the quotas they imposed.”
“Oh.” Elena chewed her bottom lip, face momentarily clouding over, as if chasing a memory. “I still feel like I might have met you at some point. But there’s… it keeps escaping me.”
Do you feel nausea, like I do? “I’m sure I’d remember meeting someone like you,” Garek said sincerely, not failing to notice the faint dust of red on her cheeks.
“Oh, you would, huh.” She stared dumbly for a moment, before shaking her head. “Okay, that’s sweet and all, but are we not going to talk about the big, stupid coincidence that resulted in both of us stealing the egg at the same time? I mean, Christ, we’re both shadow witches, and we chose the exact same time to take something. What the shit.”
“Lotta crass words coming from that mouth of yours,” Garek said with a slight drawl, though he whole-heartedly agreed with her confusion, and the bizarre coincidence that had smashed them together. “You wash out that mouth often?”
“Fuck you,” was her reply. He recognized the words – popular earth curses that kids adopted in the markets. They adopted all sorts of phrases, and he now employed one.
“Only if you want, sweetcakes.”
Yvonne let out a sound of disgust, and Elena scowled, not exactly impressed either.
“Let’s get this back on track,” the royal called Janus said, clapping his hands. “Talk, don’t antagonize.”
The baby golden dragon huffed and tried to wriggle through the bars of her pen to reach them, but she was gently restrained by the third shadow witch, Thorn. Even if the baby wanted Garek and Elena there, none of these people trusted them. Which was fair. Garek would have held little respect for them otherwise. Trust was a dangerous commodity, easily abused.
“What is there to talk about?” Garek challenged, slouched insolently on his hard, wooden chair. “None of us want to be here. Only reason we are is because the shiny newborn lizard over there decided to hatch. And you’d be right not to trust us, because we’ve got some contractual obligations hanging over our heads. Isn’t that right, Elena darling?”
“Completely,” Elena said, after a pause. “Honey.” The word was clumsy in her mouth. “Can only make so much money selling condoms.”
Garek snorted, unable to help himself, gathering another spate of unimpressed looks.
“You seem to think this situation is awfully funny, don’t you?” Yvonne said, her voice low and menacing.
His shaking laughter cut off abruptly when water lanced down his throat, flushing down into his lungs, swelling, filling…
He scrabbled at his throat and fell off the chair, hitting the floor hard, gasping, trying to speak, though it came out in gurgles. The awful, contracting sensation of trying to draw in air, failing, with the water flooding his lungs made his brain fuzz, body jerk.
I’m going to die, he managed, through sheer, animal panic, grasping for air that wouldn’t come.
The cold sloshing inside abruptly siphoned out of his throat, and his watery gurgles were replaced with huge, air-blessed lungfuls. He lay there on the floor, curled up, gasping like a fish.
“Like I said,” Yvonne’s voice came from far away, “this isn’t a laughing matter. We’re in the middle of a war. Our biggest bargaining chip has hatched to you two clowns, and I don’t have time for either of you pissing about.”
“Yvonne...” It sounded like Janus. “Don’t you think you were a little harsh?”
Garek crawled into a sitting position, his shoulder throbbing, rubbing fingers over his throat. The first thing he saw was Elena, eyes as wide as saucers in horror.
“That was… nothing,” Garek rasped. “I’ve felt worse. Barely tickled me.”
“Good to know,” Yvonne said sweetly. “Because I’ll do it again if I have to. Skies, I need a pay rise if I’m going to add ‘knocking sense into idiots’ in my daytime routine.”
Garek glared at the water witch, who glared back at him impassively. The memory of his drowning lungs sent a fresh shiver of fear through him, but he’d be damned before he let them see it. The golden dragon, however, sent little frissons of panic into his brain, and she strained against the bars, trying to reach him.
For some reason, seeing that little creature act so scared sent a little pang of something into Garek, though he couldn’t pinpoint why. Maybe it was to do with the fact he could feel a tiny sliver of its consciousness in his brain.
He could almost imagine the guys in Smuggler’s Den laughing themselves sick at the predicament he was in. But right now, stripped of magic, ringed i
n by the enemy, he had no choice but to endure this imprisonment. Not that he intended to endure it for long, if he had his way.
“I really think this is too unreliable,” one of the guards spoke up, then. “We simply can’t trust them. They have no reason to ally to our cause. We will be better off eliminating them.”
“Which will ensure that the little one here dies of a broken heart,” Thorn said, voice brittle.
“It’s just a dragon. We don’t need one. We can win without it.”
The royal princess held up her hand. Her blonde hair seemed frazzled, her eyes stony. “We won’t kill the dragon if we can help it. She might be the best way to secure our future, to ensure the dragons don’t retaliate in the future.”
“Can’t retaliate if they’re all dead.” A sullen grunt from an equally sullen guard.
“I’ll look after her,” Elena said quickly, rocking on the balls of her feet as she straddled the chair. “I might be a thief, but I do like being alive.” She looked at the princess, and Garek figured that to be the best person to implore to, as well. The princess seemed quite soft in comparison to the others in the room. And, well, if he was the princess, he might be inclined to listen to a face like that, too. His palm itched, and he scratched at the mark.
The more he examined Elena, the more he felt some kind of inherent… wrongness, somehow. That pesky little gut instinct of his, tugged at his stomach. It gave no explanation why. It could have been anything from hunger to disliking Yvonne to thinking in another time, another place, he might have been interested in speaking to that woman in a marginally better environment.
Though the type of women he met were always in inns and bars, swaying to the rhythm of drink, of desperate lust, of whispered flings and lips that tasted of mead and whiskey. All of them nice, but not quite right.
“You shouldn’t trust her...” Yvonne reached out a hand to Tara’s shoulder, and the princess smiled at the witch. “She’d say anything at this point.”
“We’ll find a way to make this work,” Tara said confidently. “There’s a reason for this. Just like there’s a reason we’ve all been finding our Bonded, that everything’s falling into place for us to take back our home… these two will be important. I know it.”
“Wish I could share your sentiment, princess,” Yvonne said. “I mean, sheer hope and positivity’s a good look on you, but...”
Tara gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Oh, shush.”
Garek narrowed his eyes at them. Was something going on, there?
Squeaks drew him back to the dragon, which had given up its efforts to reach him. Against his better judgment, he got up, wobbling over to the pen. He felt the hostility radiating off the others, the nervousness from Elena. “I won’t do anything. I just… I think she just wants to make sure I’m okay.” He crouched and let the dragon nuzzle into his hand. The snout was rough and soft at the same time, smooth at the tip, rough at the edges. Simple, childish joy bubbled in his skull, all from the dragon, and it tugged up his own lips, and squashed some of the simmering resentment growing in him from his confinement, and the treatment he’d endured.
Treatment he planned to get revenge for. But not now.
Good things came to those who waited.
3
Elena
It was the dream again. The one where black inked the edges of her vision, creeping over her eyeballs, swallowing words and images and something so, so important. Something deep in her soul that never should have been touched.
Sometimes she screamed at her mother in it, even as darkness covered everything. Other times she wept as if her heart had been crushed and scattered.
And other times, she half-remembered conversations. Her mother’s voice overlapping, fragmenting with words such as I’m sorry, for the best – and another voice, laughing with the giddy excitement of a child. A voice she knew she was supposed to remember, because it was important, so, so important…
But then nothing.
Waking up, Elena lay there in her new room, which was a vast improvement on the prison cell. The bindings on her wrists were still there, stubbornly preventing her magic. Only one person had the key, and it sure as hell wasn’t her.
What does the dream mean? She lightly probed at her mind, noting the tightness in her chest, the empty, hollow feeling. Like there was something missing. Usually it didn’t hit her so strongly, but in the wee hours of the night, with nothing but her own thoughts and silence around her, it reared its ugly head. Reminding her of that inherent sense of wrongness.
She did know her mother had something to do with it. Namely because about four years back, during a temporary break up with Elena’s father, her mother decided to drown all her problems in drink, though it did nothing for the hole in her heart. The drinking wrung out a sputtered, pleading confession that she hoped Elena found it in her heart to forgive.
Forgive for what? Elena had asked.
I had to save your life, her mother had replied, with red weepy eyes, and a face blotched in crimson. But I used a dangerous enchantment. It was… necessary. But I know you’ve been having the nightmares.
He said that’d be a part of the cost. Whoever “he” was.
Try as she might, Elena failed to wrangle any additional information out of her mother. Not about the person responsible for enchanting her, what danger Elena had endured, or why it gave her nightmares. When her mother cleaned up her act, and her father rejoined their Realm Market nest, any attempt to broach the subject was met with ignorance, silence, or an obvious and frankly infuriating change of subject.
Strange that she’d get a nightmare after that meeting, and getting to witness her fellow thief in question. He’d been so nonchalant and uncaring during that discussion about the fate of the queen dragon. Mostly, Elena’s focus was on how to escape from this ridiculous position, but something about Garek also caught her attention.
Like somewhere, somehow, she should know him. That she’d met him somewhere before, but could no way in heaven or hell figure out just where that gut feeling came from.
Who was he? Where the hell did he come from?
And why couldn’t that idiot have chosen another time to rob the egg?
Ugh. Elena kicked her feet in a sudden burst of anger, and a grunt of annoyance slipped her throat.
Nothing seemed to be going right for her nowadays. Sure, she knew the risks, going in. Christ, you didn’t become a thief without being fully aware of the risks. Still, it was another thing to be face to face with the consequences of her own actions.
Shadows flickered. Elena’s attention fixed on the flicker, just in time to see her mother pop out of the darkness, shaking her head like a dog shedding water. Pepper and salt colored hair bounced with the motion.
“Mom, what the fuck,” Elena said, though it probably wasn’t the best way to start a sentence with her mother. “I thought you were past using your magic to sneak around.”
“Well, I can hardly sit still when my own daughter ends up being kidnapped, can I?” her mother replied tartly, before approaching Elena and swooping her up into a rough hug. “It was all over the Realm Market, sweetie. How they’d caught two shadow witches attempting to steal the egg.”
“News sure travels fast,” Elena said wryly, wrapping her own arms around her mother. She breathed in the familiar scent of her mother. Sue Rivers drew after a rather extended hugging session, and now Elena saw her mother inspecting the antimagic bands.
“Oh, those will provide a problem. I can’t transport you if you’re holding those.” Sue frowned. “Damnit, I was hoping I’d be able to just haul you right back to the market and slip you into Earth. I was thinking you could lay low in Vienna for a few months.”
“You think I couldn’t have done that myself, mother?” Elena smiled wryly, immensely glad to see her mother, but also concerned that at any moment, a guard or witch might check in on them and promptly mess up their union. “Don’t try and heroics with me. These people aren’t planning to hurt me.
It’s only if I fuck up that they will.”
“You can’t trust them.” Sue’s eyes narrowed. “You’re their prisoner. What happened with the egg, anyway?”
“It hatched. So I don’t think we’ll be able to use it for money anymore, mom.”
Something tightened in her mother’s features, and now a small nugget of worry teased itself into Elena. Her mother had been dedicated to both her main and side jobs for years. She liked money, but didn’t do a great job of squirelling it away, since she preferred to use it to visit places in luxurious conditions. Maybe her mother wasn’t really here for her, but for the dragon.
“It hatched, really?” Sue’s face twisted in worry. “Oh, that bit of news didn’t spread to the market.”
“Yeah, well, they want to keep the fact they have a queen dragon under wraps, don’t they?” Elena pried herself away from her mother’s grip, hating her own disappointment. Of course, it made sense, if someone failed the mission, someone else needed to pick up the slack. But it would have been nice if her mother had arrived just for her. “You’re still not thinking of snatching the baby, are you? Because that won’t work. It has magic of its own.” Plus, she could feel the queen nudging at her mind, dimly aware of someone else interacting with the human she was connected with.
What will happen if I leave now? Elena wanted to. But she also didn’t think she could endure that crying and wailing in the back of her head. It’d drive her insane. This dragon, for whatever reason, wanted her. Elena didn’t want the dragon, but since when did her choice matter when it came to other people’s decisions?
“Dragons grow too fast,” Sue said, her voice sad. “And as much as I’m disinterested in the war effort of Albalon, I can… appreciate that having a queen dragon will be quite the advantage for the royals. No. I want to rescue you, darling, but I had to check in about the egg too, okay?” She patted Elena’s face, and Elena nodded, accepting. A little relief toppled into her, too. It was stupid, a small thing, but sometimes those insecurities welled up in her, unbidden. Usually when she felt her mother was paying a little bit too much attention to everything else but her.
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