She’d always insisted she loved her daughter. But Elena remembered great chunks of her life when her mother was absent, simply vanishing for months on projects, and her father didn’t really know how to speak to a little girl. He tried in his own way, but he was just so busy with the market stall all the time, collecting information from traders, finding new missions for her mother to go onto. At least when Elena’s powers blossomed, she was able to go with her mother to places. When she was useful, and went to great lengths to achieve their goals, she got more attention, more praise than before. And it felt good.
“I’ll have to leave you,” Sue said, regret on her features. “But I’ll find a way to get those bracers off you, so I can take you with me. I’ll look for a master key or seek out an enchanter in the market. Just… sit tight. Your mama’s got this. You know who holds the key to your chains?”
“No,” Elena said, truthfully. Ever since Yvonne had locked her up, she knew the woman didn’t carry anything valuable around on her. It could be anywhere, her key out.
“Pity. Well, I’ll have a look all the same, see if I can’t figure something out.”
“Mom,” Elena said, determined to squeeze out the next sentence before her mother vanished, “The other shadow witch – he said he used to live in the Realm Market. I used to play with the children there, didn’t I? But I don’t recognize him. I feel like I should, but I don’t.”
Elena was not prepared for the look of horror painting over her mother’s face. It quickly smoothed over in blank calm, the same expression Sue pulled when acting as professional as possible for her customers. “There’s a lot of children in the markets, my darling. You’ve played with many of them. Maybe you have met this person before, but people come and go all the time, don’t they?”
Her mother’s behavior seemed… odd. She searched through her memory, to a long-ago conversation where her mother and father were discussing plans for their future. They were always seeking ways to change things. “I remember you saying you wanted to look for magic users in the orphans, perhaps give them a new home with us. Didn’t you… didn’t you find a shadow witch?” As soon as she said the word shadow witch in that context, her memory fuzzed, and that strange, inky blackness entered her skull again.
Oh no…
“I’m afraid not,” her mother said evasively. “Yes, we were looking, of course. But ultimately, we thought we’d be better off alone, you know.”
“What aren’t you telling me, mom?” Elena didn’t mean to sound so panicked, but that nauseating sensation that came with her shouldn’t be appearing outside of sleep.
Her mother sighed. She cupped Elena’s face with one calloused hand. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible. And… I can’t say much. But just… be careful around that other shadow witch, okay? He’s dangerous.”
He’s dangerous?
What made her say that? A million questions wanted to vault off her tongue, but before she could ask a single one, her mother’s face froze, as if realizing her mistake, and vanished into the shadows, unable to take Elena with her.
Elena stared dumbly at the spot where her mother had stood, where the lingering aroma of her grassy perfume remained.
She knows more than she’s letting on.
The implication terrified and angered Elena, because it meant that her mother might have a lot more secrets than she’d previously admitted, and it meant maybe her mother had done something cruel to her, rather than saved her.
The other mistake her mother made as well was the fact that Elena wouldn’t be staying away from Garek now. Not with such a cryptic way of stating it. Hell, her mother might as well have placed a big red button in front of Elena and told her not to push it.
So, naturally, she intended to push it. Because it had something to do with those dreams. That darkness. Something her mother did a long time ago, and never talked about. Something Elena didn’t originally push her on, either, because she didn’t remember anything, and she trusted her mother. Maybe a little too much.
Her door swung open, and Yvonne stepped inside, yawning and appearing thoroughly irritated. “Hey, sneak-thief. You’re following me up to the nursery. Your baby dragon awaits.”
Tensed at first, Elena relaxed when she registered that Yvonne had no clue of her mother’s visit, wasn’t coming in to check for disturbances. Breathing easier, Elena grumbled and put up a protest as she prepared to follow, when in fact, she was eager to do something other than sit around in her room, trapped in the vortex of her own thoughts, doubting the intentions of her own flesh and blood.
* * *
Turned out, baby dragons were quite the cuddlers. Actually, they were less about the cuddling, and more about the being near a constant source of warmth, and since Elena and Garek’s conveniently near human bodies ran at a constant warm temperature, the baby dragon was just fine with that. Elena’s new role as dragon babysitter was not exactly the kind of role she’d ever imagined performing in her long and less than illustrious career of taking things that didn’t belong to her, but the dragon inexplicably wanted her, and the death glares she and Garek received from the Bastion keep soldiers and witches was enough to stop her doing anything rash and pointless.
The other thing that confused Elena was that, in all intent and purpose, this dragon was a child.
Her child.
It hatched for her (and Garek), bonded to them, and slowly ran through the malleable contents of their mind like a mountain stream, absorbing ideas, feelings, concepts at an alarming rate, though not quite the trappings of human language.
Elena never planned to have a child. Rather, she never really thought about it beyond the vague I’m getting older and I still don’t have someone. Maybe I should think about settling down soon. My time’s ticking away, and I’m still working with my parents in their little stall, still going on illicit missions, and visiting earth but never settling upon it. Worries that congregated inside, all piling up and saving themselves for the days when she didn’t feel quite as strong in her convictions that her life was good and stable.
Then this. This mess of a situation, with a man she didn’t know, but thought she should. Because he did feel familiar, somehow.
It was during their fourth babysitting session in the space of a week that Garek finally deigned to engage Elena in conversation more than aggravating his captors and muttering about who was going to manhandle the (not so small) dragon. The dragon herself now resembled the size of a large dog within a week, and showed absolutely no signs of slowing down.
“When did your powers first emerge?” Garek lay completely flat on the floor, and the dragon had her head resting on his chest. He absently stroked it – his movements no longer so clunky and awkward as when the dragon first did this to him. His long fingers trailed behind the frills upon the golden dragon’s head, and she was quite audibly purring, sending a pleasant vibration in Elena’s mind.
“I’d say… early teens,” Elena said, wondering how much to share. After all, other people were listening in. Yvonne and Thorn sat together, both reading books, and four guards watched them with significantly less attention than previous visits. The nursery itself had more ruined toys and clothes from where the dragon chewed and raked them, and the corner of one side of the wooden pen had burn marks. A fire breather. Not concerning at all, since that last bout of fire breathing promptly had both Garek and Elena in the room within moments. To calm the young one down, so she didn’t accidentally on purpose burn down everything.
“Early teens. Same for me,” Garek said in his baritone, stretching like an eel. He looked rather absurd on the floor, with the golden dragon draped around him. “Though I sometimes wonder if I had it earlier, you know. Because I was able to do things almost straight away, and my Zorin tutors in the Smuggler’s Den didn’t understand it. Should have taken years, they said, to perfect shadow magic.”
Elena considered this, even as she moved closer to give the demanding dragon a snout-rub. The golden dragon
blew a hard breath out of her nostrils, before relaxing. They should name the dragon, Elena thought. But according to the exiles, the dragons preferred to name themselves. Dragons had all sorts of customs Elena was completely oblivious to. It also seemed the unicirim and humans in Bastion also had no clue about dragon culture whatsoever, since they were understandably, a little obsessed with taking back River’s End and flushing the dragons out of it.
The queen dragon presented to this cause a unique opportunity.
“That’s similar to me, actually. My mother’s a shadow witch, though, and she never made a big deal about it. But I do remember some of our regular customers being surprised that I was so skilled from a young age. My mother said it was because I’d grown up watching her use it.” And Elena accepted the explanation. Garek’s words, however, shone light on the fact that maybe the explanation wasn’t quite as foolproof as her mother believed.
“Strange, isn’t it,” Garek said with a low rumble, now turning those caramel brown eyes of his upon her. At the angle upon the floor, his features seemed accentuated, somehow, and his gaze lazy and hooded. “Both of us here. Both of us with the same magic, being skilled with it early on. Both of us having been in the Realm Market at some point. Yet we don’t remember each other at all.”
Elena’s gaze remained transfixed upon Garek’s. Her body stilled, and she became acutely aware of his long eyelashes, the thickness of his bottom lip, and the dusting of freckles just under each eye. “No. I don’t.”
The baby dragon nudged at her mind, brimming with curiosity. Did it have a concept of their language already? Did it understand thoughts, feelings, words?
Whatever it understood, she got a clear sense that it wanted her to ask the next question. The one building up in her throat, but not finding a way out of it.
Because her question went somewhere she wasn’t sure she wanted to explore the answer to. “I have nightmares,” she said.
There. The words were out. Blurted, garbled, before she’d had time to filter them, and she averted her gaze, struggling to control her sudden blush. I have nightmares. Come on, Elena, add to this. She didn’t, and the silence turned from languid to awkward. She also vaguely noticed Thorn and Yvonne still, having not turned the page in their books for quite some time.
“Nightmares, you say?” Garek sounded oddly choked. “Care to elaborate?”
Shit. Shit shit. Okay, well… taking a deep breath, unsure where to even start, she said, “The same one. I’ve had it for years.”
There was no mistaking it this time. Garek was alert, holding his breath, eyes wider than usual. The baby dragon cracked open her golden eyes to fix one on Elena, and her purring stopped. She shuffled her lanky bat-like wings closer into her sturdy frame.
“Funny you should mention that,” he said, playing himself off as calm, when he was everything but. Elena was close enough to sense his lack of ease, after all. “I’ve had a nightmare for a long time, too. But we all have nightmares, don’t we? Nothing special about that.”
“No, nothing special,” Elena echoed. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of nightmare you have?”
“You first,” he offered.
Really, Elena thought. “You’re gonna be like that?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. Which earned him a punch from Elena to the shoulder. “Ow! Fine. I have a reoccurring nightmare where it feels like I’ve forgotten something, and then this kind of blackness rushes from all corners of the room or wherever I am. Like it’ll drown me.” His gaze went distant, dredging into the memories. “There’s always a feeling like there’s something wrong, and if I let that black stuff completely cover me, then I’m gone.”
Oh, shit.
He had the exact same dream as her. She could no longer chalk all this up to coincidence. “Shit,” she also said out loud. He snapped out of his reminiscent stature and queried her with one raised eyebrow. “Same.”
Too tongue tied to come up with anything else, she left it at that. Shit; same. I’m such a fucking great conversationalist.
“You’re serious? You have the same dream?” His mouth hung open, but she could tell he’d been wondering something similar. Ever since she’d laid eyes on him, and felt like she knew him, somehow. Perhaps it was the same for him.
“Didn’t you suspect?”
He fell silent a moment, before nodding slowly. “I… I did think there was far too much into our meeting.”
Before either of them added anything else to the matter, Thorn’s voice stole over them.
“Okay, show me your hands.” She sauntered over to them, followed by Yvonne, and Elena didn’t fancy the idea of getting on the wrong side of either. She turned both her palms upward, noticing how Thorn and Yvonne’s eyes fixed upon her smudged scar. Garek, eyebrows knitted together, exposed his palms as well, and to Helen’s shock, although they didn’t have marks on their palms – they both had the same zigzag pattern on their wrists.
Why the hell hadn’t she noticed this before? Her mind whirled through all their interactions, and none of them involved Garek waving his hand around, or her doing the same.
“Bonded,” Thorn said, grasping their hands and matching them to one another. “You’re Bonded to one another. This gets stranger and stranger.”
“What?” Elena gaped at the scarred older woman, struggling to register the words. Bonded. But how? Garek appeared equally dumbfounded.
“This is a birthmark,” Garek said weakly, not convincing anyone, least of all himself. “Isn’t the Bond supposed to happen on the palm?” He frowned. “And aren’t you supposed to remember it when it happens?”
“Here’s the crux of the mystery,” Yvonne said, folding her arms as she inspected them, Elena in particular. “You both claim to be strangers, yes?”
“Yes,” Garek insisted. “I don’t know this woman. I don’t know why she came here at the same time. Why we have the same powers, why we have the same dreams.”
The water witch gave a tight smile. “If that’s the case, then we have another question. Why don’t either of you remember your Bond?”
Elena was fresh out of words, of even attempting to formulate some kind of explanation she could get behind, because all of this was out of her ball park.
The man that felt familiar to her might just be the person she’d been looking for her entire life.
“I trained with other Zorin witches, and we’ve got a lot of strange magicks over in our swamps. Talking to frogs has to be my favorite useless one ever seen. But it seems we keep getting surprised by magic all the time as well, so what do I know?”
Bond? We’re Bonded? Elena and Garek’s eyes met from across the room, and something shifted in the atmosphere between them. Something fiery, crackling that charged the space left, leaving a kind of inexorable pull. Maybe he was a damn fridge, and she was a string of those alphabet magnets that spelled “shit,” before a cat knocked off some of the letters.
Bad comparison aside, she knew one thing.
She was in trouble if she kept going like this. These random tugs of feeling were inconvenient, inappropriate, and absurd. Because of the Bond?
No. She’d been telling herself not to develop attraction like an idiot. Sure, admiration was fine. People admired people, right? Sure, being interested in someone else was perfectly normal as well. Being intrigued by his presence, his demeanor, even if he did come across as cocksure and smug at times…
She just – she didn’t want complications with anyone. Especially the person who had sabotaged her mission and left her as a prisoner. Yvonne had to be lying. There was no way they were Bonded. Even if they did have the same mark on their palms…
Focusing on all the reasons she disliked him, she happily went back to glaring again, fueled by her conviction that he wouldn’t even blink when it came to escaping, and to leave her to the wolves.
That was just the way of a thief.
4
Garek
Impossible. How could
he have a Bond and not be aware of it? All unicirim were capable of one. He knew his mark looked like the type of mark that emerged upon the skin after a Bond had happened, but of course it wasn’t, because you felt your Bonded. You slipped into their heart, body, soul, heard each other’s thoughts, and shared everything intimate. That kind of intensity couldn’t be hidden.
Except… according to the witches hovering above him, and the narrowed, frozen glare on Elena’s face, that was precisely the case.
“I don’t feel anything,” he whispered, flashing an apologetic look to Elena. “I’ve had this mark for years. Surely… surely I would have felt something.”
Thorn’s dark eyes clouded over. “You did feel something though, didn’t you? You said she felt familiar.”
Reluctantly, Garek bobbed his head. “Well, yes. But…” How to explain? “It’s more like I should know her, but I don’t. Like something’s missing.”
Something flickered over Elena’s face, and it went from hard to soft. “Missing…” she said.
“Yes,” Garek replied. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Like there’s a hollow spot in your soul,” Elena said, voice barely above a whisper. Everyone turned to look at her for the rather dramatic statement. Her words, however, made a horrible kind of sense in Garek.
“Yes.” Like that. He studied her in more interest, daring himself to associate someone like her being the person who’d know his every emotion, and sink deep into his veins until neither of them knew which body part belonged to the other. “I don’t understand. How can I not know?”
And it was all so, so wrong.
“You really don’t feel any closeness with her?” Thorn asked. Garek’s eyes darted to Thorn’s hand, where he saw the faint white tracing of a scar.
“No. Nothing. Just…” Loss.
Elena was silent, though her breaths came slow and hard, and her slender finger pads rubbed lightly together, clearly trying to make sense of the whole impossible Bonded thing.
Captured By The Royals Page 4
