by Jessica Gunn
“Fair,” Tharin said.
He, too, bowed his head a little as he approached, then turned and leaned back against the wall next to me. In fact, I was now noticing everyone who passed me had also bowed to varying degrees. Nothing dramatic like in the movies, but enough to notice.
Dread sloshed in my stomach. There it was again, that feeling of never being good enough. What if I failed these people and dragons like I had Maddie?
Tharin laughed suddenly and turned. “Relax, Vera.”
“I’m fine.”
He leveled me with a look, his green eyes catching the magic lights above us, little baubles of energy hovering in the air. “No, you’re not. You’re wound tighter than Elena is all the time. Everyone is here for you. You’re kind of a big deal.”
“I’m me,” I said. “Vera Varrone. A human until recently. I’m not special, and you guys have been doing just fine on your own now for a while. Or so it appears.”
Zezza swung her head down and stared right at me. Earlier today, I’d been much more confident. But seeing this entire room full of people showing signs of respect—no, reverence—for me was… awkward. Especially after receiving a number of suspicious and wary looks from the older shifters in the village when I’d first arrived.
Now, I felt guilty, like an imposter. Because until that poker game, I’d been no one and I hadn’t been connected to anyone anymore. And I’d liked it that way.
“Vera, listen,” Tharin said as he gestured to the room. “You think this is my thing, either? Parties and parading around like a noble simply because I was born one? No, this is not my idea of a good time. And as much as I can, I try to forget the fact that that I’m high-born. But we all have parts to play, and yours isn’t such a bad one. Besides.” He went back to leaning against the wall, like nothing was happening and even less mattered. “Everyone already knows you’re here. All the king and queen are going to do is bring you up in front of everyone and show you off. It’s for them. They found you and they brought you here. Aren’t they great?”
“Eli found me,” I said. “Then you and Elena were with him. They didn’t do anything.”
Tharin lifted a finger. “And that’s the point. The Warden of the Storm is a huge deal, don’t get me wrong. And historically, the Warden has saved the entirety of dragonkind. But that was before, with the Old Gods and the old wars. The stuff history turns into legends. You’re powerful, but the savior bit is a bit much. And everyone knows it.”
My brows furrowed. Eli had talked about destiny. Bux had made the Warden sound important. And here was Tharin telling me to relax and just enjoy it because the title was superficial.
“What’s your point?” I asked him.
He smiled warmly and gestured to the room at large again. “My point is that you should always enjoy a party thrown in your favor. When it’s over and we all wake up tomorrow, things will be back to normal.”
“I don’t know what normal is for me anymore.”
He shrugged. “Normal is the absence of chaos. And I’d say we’re there.”
Normal is the absence of chaos. “You know what, Tharin?”
“Hmm?” he asked with a knowing look.
“You’re right.”
He smiled. “I know.”
At that moment, the music changed to something more regal and everyone hurried to take a seat. Tharin guided me toward the front of the room, where the dais was, and sat me next to whom I had to assume were his parents. Tharin shared his mother’s eyes, and his father’s built figure and friendly but firm expression. The two middle-aged shifters were dressed in fine emerald robes and tunics and they looked at me with the same reverence everyone else was starting to. I nodded in return, still uncomfortable with the whole thing, and turned to the back door.
On the crescendos of music, the door opened and Eli and Elena entered, dressed in even finer robes than Tharin’s parents. Behind them, the king and queen followed. The entire room seemed to bow at once. I belatedly joined, not wanting to offend anyone, but having a hard time keeping up with all of the formalities. The royal family filed to the front of the room with grace and poise.
Eli and Elena took their seats first, in the outer two chairs, and then their parents in the center. Their mother was beautiful, with blonde hair neither of them possessed, and an air of true grace about her. The queen’s blue scales seemed to glow beneath the magical lighting of the space, and she appeared young. Almost unnaturally so. His father, too.
Eli had said that Wardens were born, not made. And he’d had some knowledge of the last one. Eli appeared to be around my age, which meant his parents looked at first glance almost too young to have known a previous Warden if that Warden had lived twenty-plus years ago.
Did dragonkind all age slowly the same way vampires did? Exactly how old did that make Eli’s parents?
When the music finally stopped, the king stood and opened his arms in front of him. He had long, dark hair that fell unbound down his shoulders. Golden scales trailed over his face and bare collarbones before dipping down the front of his tunic.
“Welcome. We hope you enjoy this celebration tonight,” he said. “The Warden of the Storm has returned to us.”
There was a round of applause, but all I heard beyond that was sound dissipating, as though I’d stuffed cotton in my ears. The next thing I knew, the king was gesturing for me to come forward, although he wasn’t making eye contact with me. Eli, sitting beside his mother, smiled in a forced way, looking directly at me.
“Right,” I mumbled as I scrambled out of my seat. Zezza brushed her tail against my back in reassurance. Together, we’d be fine. We could do anything.
Even stand up in front of the entirety of dragonkind.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to talk.
Zezza and I climbed to the dais and I took the king’s outstretched hand. He moved me beside him as though we were dancing.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said to me while the applause calmed down. Although, he still wasn’t looking right at me. Instead, his gaze seemed to settle on a point far beyond my head. To anyone behind us, it’d look normal. But I knew the truth.
I wasn’t dumb enough to call him out on it right here and now, though.
“And you as well.” I even managed to remember to bow a little.
“If you see her amongst us on the streets or the beach, or in the nursery, welcome her,” the king said. “She is not of our realm, but it is now her home.”
Murmurs flooded the space, but they were hushed by the guards as quickly as they started.
Guess I wasn’t so welcomed after all.
The king’s words went on, and luckily I didn’t have to speak. But I did have to try hard to keep myself from fainting. Because assuming most of dragonkind really had shown up for this celebration, their numbers were startlingly low.
Eli had said many had died during the Supernatural War and that none had hatched since, except for this day-old brood.
Looking out, I saw a few hundred dragon shifters and a number of babies. But only a dozen or so full-grown dragons.
It was possible not all had come. But even then…
If another war broke out, they’d be done for. Their entire race wiped out.
It was in that moment I realized that it didn’t matter if I really was the Warden of the Storm. Or if I was fated to save them. Or if they had entirely the wrong person.
They needed help. Some level of protection.
If not, there would soon be no more dragonkind at all.
Chapter 20
Eventually, the royal family let me return to Tharin’s side and out of the spotlight. I’d never been so grateful to be sat amongst mostly strangers, as anonymous as possible once more. Except, that was a lie. I’d never be anonymous again. I was the Warden in this weave, and a fugitive back home.
Crap.
After dinner and way more dancing than I’d expected, I wandered outside to get some air. Zezza followed, ever my guard
ian and my shadow.
“That was something, wasn’t it?” I asked her as we leaned against a railing. There was a bit of a cliff below us that overlooked the rainforest canopy and the distant ocean beyond. Music from inside floated out.
Zezza flew up to perch on the railing beside me. She nuzzled her head against my hand and showed me an image of the room applauding us when we were on the stage.
“Exactly, that was terrifying.”
Zezza made a noise that almost sounded like a chuckle before she swung upside down and stayed there, more like a bat than a dragon. At least she was feeling much better now. When we’d first arrived at the Lair and she was still bleeding, I’d been scared she wasn’t going to make it at all. Looking at her now, I realized dragons were much more resilient than I’d previously thought.
“Glad to know you think our traditions are terrifying.”
I jolted. I thought Zezza and I were out here alone. Instead, I turned to find Elena standing in the doorway. “That’s not—”
She waved me off and came to stand beside me. “It’s fine. The old ways are antiquated. At least parading you around was all my father did.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Usually there are more trials,” she said as she adjusted the long braid her hair was in. Now that she was closer, I could see some armor built in to her outfit too. Which was weird for a place that was supposed to be secluded. It was like she was always dressed to fight. “And speeches.”
“Well, I’m happy I missed one of those opportunities.” I watched her carefully for a moment. She kept her eyes on me, too. “Why did you come out here?”
“Air,” she said. “Same as you.”
“I thought you wanted all the royal stuff.”
She smirked. “Who told you that? Eli? He thinks he knows so much.” Her fists clenched at her sides.
“Okay, see,” I said, pointing to her fists. “That right there. Why are you so angry about me mentioning Eli?”
Elena scoffed and crossed her arms. “It’s not just Eli.”
“Then what is it?” I asked. “Ever since we’ve met, your attitude toward me has been—I don’t even know. I know we’re not friends or really even acquaintances. But what is your problem with me? And why do I feel like it has to do with Eli?”
I couldn’t go on forever not knowing, especially if I was going to be working with the royal family, and thus her, a lot for training and whatever other duties being the Warden entailed. This tension needed to have a reason behind it and I was tired of not being in the know.
Elena’s jaw slid open, her tongue pressed into her cheek. She lifted a finger. “Your power. Who you are. That’s my problem with you.”
“What?” My brow furrowed. Was she serious? I crossed my arms. Zezza shifted to my shoulder in response. I felt her body tense up, though she didn’t growl just yet. “What does my power have to do with anything?”
“You didn’t earn it. You didn’t earn your place here, either. We literally rescued you from walking with Kristian Kane into his Night Court and losing your dragon and your life in the same night. You risked your life to win her and then almost lost her just as quickly.” Elena looked me up and down with a disgusted expression. “Some of us work our whole lives for what we have here.”
I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. It’s not like I asked for any of this.”
“No,” she said. “It’s destiny, remember? I heard you and Eli talking last night.”
So this really had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with her relationship with Eli. Although the Speaker’s assistant had addressed them both with royal names, and although Elena was set to inherit the crown for whatever it meant here, she still felt… inadequate?
“Listen, I don’t want to make trouble between you and your brother,” I said. “I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you two and Tharin.”
“You’re right,” she all but spat. “You wouldn’t be. So when you go back in there and they’re lauding over the coming of the next Warden of the Storm, just remember how you got here. And that you easily could have been dead instead.”
At this, Zezza did growl.
I reached up and grabbed her snout. “Zezza. No.”
She growled again, the sides of her mouth flapping with the ferociousness of it while I held her mouth shut.
Elena chuckled, her glare moving from me to Zezza and back again. “We should have let Kristian have you. If you only knew why he wanted you in the first place. Maybe it would have been better for us than bringing war to both our worlds.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. Kristian had wanted me because he wanted control over Zezza. At the time, I’d thought she was the only dragon left in existence. It was entirely possible Kristian had thought the same too.
Elena studied me for a few moments. “Wow. You really don’t know, do you?”
“I thought you guys were pretty cut off from the mortal weave?” I shot back. “If that’s true, how do you know so much about the King of the Night Court?”
Elena genuinely looked shocked. There wasn’t a hint of arrogance about her. “There is so much you don’t know.”
There it was: my olive branch moment.
“Then teach me?” I asked, leaning in. “I can’t learn if no one will help.”
Elena was about to respond, her expression unreadable, when a sudden, violent pink streak of energy arched across the sky. A second later, a thunderous crack so loud that it literally shook the ground beneath my feet filled the sky above. It reverberated within me. Zezza whined.
“What the hell was that?” I asked Elena. It hadn’t been natural. Lightning wasn’t pink. It had to have been magic.
Oh gods. It was like the night of the meteor strike all over again.
Elena’s eyes were wide, her jaw slack. Panic tore across her face. “No.”
I grabbed her shoulders as she stared, nearly catatonic, at the sky. Another arch of magical energy, forest green this time, splattered itself against the nighttime sky as if someone had thrown a water balloon against a glass dome. The magic from it seeped down along the horizon and into the waves of the ocean.
“Elena?”
“The… The walls,” she said, reaching for her waist as she snapped out of her stupor. She drew a short sword from a sheath hidden by her robes. “Someone’s breaking down the walls to this pocket-weave.”
“What? How?” I asked, my gaze hastily jumping between watching Elena for any orders she had for me and the sky as magic kept assaulting it in waves of pink and green, then orange and yellow.
She shook her head. “I… I don’t know. It takes great magic. Powerful magic. And a weave stone.”
I turned back to the sky as my stomach dropped so deep, I nearly collapsed against the railing.
There was only one person I knew who had a weave stone.
Keir.
“I know who it is.” But not how he figured out Zezza and I were here. Or why he was coming here anyway. Why risk the danger?
Elena turned to me, her face a mask of suspicion and accusation. “Excuse me?”
Another splash of magic impacted the domed sky of the pocket-weave, this time in neon yellow streaks. The kind of flourishing color you’d expect from the fae. Summer fae like Keir.
“There was this unescorted fae back on the mortal weave,” I explained, my words tumbling quickly out of my mouth. “He played in the poker game in which I won Zezza. He wanted her. Something about needing her to regain his honor.”
“And that equals him coming here why?” Elena asked, her voice edging on rage. “What did you do, Vera?”
My thoughts spun out of control. By forcing my way into a poker game in an attempt to win what I thought would be enough money to escape Boston and my old life for good, I’d caused this.
“He won a stone from me!” I said. “I-I was told it didn’t have much magic left, but that it was still valuable. So I bet it in the poker game. I bargained my way
into the last two rounds. I—”
Elena’s eyes narrowed and she gripped both of my shoulders so hard, I swore she’d leave bruises. “What kind of stone?”
“A weave stone.”
Her jaw slid open and her grip tightened. “You didn’t.”
Zezza growled again, another warning.
I nodded. I couldn’t deny it, not when fae magic was slamming into the walls of this pocket-weave as we spoke.
“You don’t know what you’ve done!”
Except I did know what I’d done. And now every dragon and shifter on this island might die because of it. This island I was, by destiny, supposed to protect.
Elena shoved me away and began running back into the banquet hall. I stood there, too stunned to act. After a few moments, the doors to this balcony flew open and a few dozen soldiers hurried out. Elena led the charge, running toward the railing before jumping up into the air. I dodged out of the way, pulling Zezza with me.
As Elena leapt, the scales covering one arm seemed to slide over the rest of her body, her form morphing into an elongated version. Her neck grew longer, her head narrower. Wings sprouted from her back as her hands turned into claws. Her clothes melded with her form, disappearing.
Within a few seconds, Elena was no longer human. Elena was a dragon.
She took off at high speeds into the sky, beating her wings ferociously as she flew down toward the beach. The soldiers that followed her did the same, leaping from the balcony and transforming in-flight.
I stood there, mouth agape at the beauty of it—and the fear. The dragon shifters were by no means true dragons. But they sure as hell looked like them when in dragon form.
I looked to where Zezza was still perched on my shoulder and let go of her snout. “What have I done?”
She touched her snout to my hand again and replayed the memory of me shoving away Keir with my magic on the train. Not as a reminder, but as a call to action.
