by Kira Nyte
“Miriam. I wasn’t expecting you to be awake.” Ariah narrowed her gaze on the woman. Satin robe and quilted slippers. Waist-length brown hair tumbled in wide waves over slender shoulders. Miriam would be a stunner if she weren’t also a devious snake. Ariah hated that her uncle remained married to her after all these years.
After what she did to Dad.
At least there were no pretenses between them.
“It’s hard to sleep when my husband is pacing the bedroom for hours, waiting for his misfit niece to arrive.” Miriam forced a smile. “I do anticipate that this unexpected visit will conclude quickly, and without event.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Ariah said, and not a moment too soon.
Uncle Mark came through the front door, his arms full of bags, and kicked the door closed. He rested the bags on the floor beside the curving staircase and brushed his hands on his tailored slacks.
“Miriam, take to bed. I’ll be up shortly.”
Ariah plastered a grin on her mouth, wiggled her fingers in a “bye-bye” motion, and watched the woman climb the stairs like a disgraced queen trying to hold on to a sliver of dignity. The satisfaction of Miriam’s dismissal was short-lived. Uncle Mark waited until his wife was out of sight before draping an arm around Ariah’s shoulders and leading her into his office. He pulled the pocket doors closed and dropped the latch lock in place.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“No.” Ariah released an exasperated sigh. “I’m sick with worry. Dad’s in jail.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “I shouldn’t have come down here until I spoke with someone at the police department. Spoke with Dad.”
“Ari, I’ll handle it. I promise you. Your father will be safe.”
“You and Dad don’t have a great track record.” She cast the door a sharp glance. “Or have you forgotten the reason you two fell out?”
“My brother is still my brother, and I will do everything in my power to help him.” A deep crease formed over his brow. He pinched the thin oversized shirt she wore beneath her hooded sweater jacket, followed by her waist. “Geez, honey. You’re wasting away.” He shook his head. “How bad have things been?”
Ariah shrugged, her anger fizzling beneath the weight of her exhaustion. “We’ve managed.”
“`We’ or you?” The sharp edge to his voice made her sigh. Uncle Mark groaned. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Sit down. Let me get you some water at the very least.”
“Thanks.”
Her uncle caught her by the shoulders, leaning down to hold her gaze steady. “Ariah, everything will be okay. I’ll do everything I can to help him.”
Ariah nodded, her shoulders sagging. Uncle Mark nodded and spread his hand toward one of the two leather chairs angled in front of his desk, inviting her to sit. Ariah took the seat and waited patiently for her uncle to pour himself a shot of some super expensive bourbon and take the seat beside her. He held out a textured glass filled with water he’d retrieved from a small bar fridge. She took the glass with another quiet thanks.
“Tell me what happened,” Uncle Mark said, his voice deep and calm, a strong and soothing sound after the horrors she experienced only a few hours earlier. Before the debacle with Miriam that split her father and uncle beyond repair, Ariah spent many summers in this house, with this man. She adored him as much as she adored her own father. It was like the ten years that separated them were no more than ten days.
Right now, she needed his reassurance and composure more than anything.
“I honestly don’t know. Dad and I had been job-hunting for him all day. We decided to head into town to grab some sandwiches from a cheap deli for dinner when he got all strange and crazy-eyed. I’d never seen him like that and it frightened me. He dragged me into an auction house, disrupting the event, and lost it.” Ariah took a long drink of water, avoiding her uncle’s penetrating gaze. “It was like he was possessed or something.”
She shivered at the potent memory of the muzzle pressed to her temple, closing her eyes against that painful fear that had struck her in the auction house.
“He, um, he turned me into a hostage.” Ariah shook her head, waving her empty hand. “I-I was so scared. I know he was shouting something, but I don’t know what. I couldn’t think about anything except the…”
“What, honey?”
Gosh, she couldn’t tell Uncle Mark that his brother, her own father, had threatened to shoot her.
I’m safe here now. He needs to know. Maybe he knows what happened to my dad. He’ll have the resources to help him where I can’t.
“He held me at gunpoint.” Ariah winced as she opened her eyes. Her uncle’s eyes were wide. “We struggled before I got free, or he released me, or something. Everything is still a blur. I escaped and hid in the alley until I heard his panicky thoughts telling me to run.”
“Did he say why?”
“He mentioned something about staring at a threat and that I needed to come here.” Ariah dug into her bag and removed the box. She pressed her lips together and held it up for her uncle to see. The big man’s reaction was anything but the incomprehension she expected. A spark flickered in his dark eyes. His tanned face paled before a light flush touched his cheeks. Beneath his neatly trimmed beard and mustache, his jaw worked, but he remained silent. “This is the box I told you about. I found it in my bag, but I’m sure it wasn’t there throughout the day. I think he might have slipped it into my bag at the auction house during our struggle.”
Uncle Mark stared at the box, unmoving. Unblinking. The tumbler in his hand began to tip at a dangerous angle.
“Uncle?”
Uncle Mark cleared his throat, gave his head a faint shake, and pressed to his feet. Ariah felt the furrow in her brow as she watched her uncle round his desk. He ran a finger across several of his antique leather-bound books, many of which she knew to be first editions a couple of hundred years old. He pulled one book from its designated spot, opened the cover, and tugged at a ribbon poking out from the spine.
Ariah’s furrow deepened when a small key dropped into her uncle’s hand. “Don’t you think we should be calling someone to help Dad? He doesn’t need jail. He needs help. Psychiatric help. He’d lost his mind.”
“I gave you my word.”
She sat in absolute silence as he moved to the far end of the bookcase, ran his finger over the intricately carved wood of one of the shelves.
He fit the small key into an unseen hole and turned it. A thin, narrow compartment popped out from the shelf. Her uncle pulled out an object Ariah could not see before closing the compartment back into the shelf and returning to his seat.
“You remember those summers long ago when I used to teach you about the dragons and the voices?” Uncle Mark asked.
“Why are we wasting time?”
“Do you, sweetheart?”
Ariah nodded, unsure what to make of his question. Her uncle used to fill her summers with stories about a rare breed of dragon—Fire-something—from riding the mythical creatures in a magical parallel realm to devastating wars that nearly wiped out this breed.
Uncle Mark had taught her how to control the voices she heard in her head. He said they were thoughts, a defense mechanism prominent in Keepers. That was the same summer he confided that he had a secret and with that secret came great responsibility, great sacrifice, and great danger.
“We have a gift, my sweet niece. I have not sired a child of my own, but my brother has. A female child, may it be a miracle.”
She learned that day she wasn’t the only one who heard strangers’ thoughts. Uncle Mark did, too. She learned he truly believed in dragons, and that he was a Keeper. That she was a Keeper, even though she was not his biological daughter.
She had been seventeen that summer, preparing to go into her senior year, graduate at the top of her class, and go to an Ivy League school to learn about ancient civilizations. The child inside her held Uncle Mark’s stories close to heart—a deep secreted drive to discover myths a
nd legends were actually true.
Fate had other things in store for her.
With reality came a sense of jadedness. Dragons didn’t exist. Beautiful worlds outside of this dark and desolate life did not exist. Magic didn’t exist.
Miriam might claim to be a witch, but Ariah had never seen her use magic. In Ariah’s book, the witch was nothing more than an—itch with the letter b.
As she drew herself from her memories, she saw Uncle Mark’s gaze had softened to that of the tender man she once adored. He sipped his bourbon, an expression of ease coming over him.
“Don’t fight it, honey. It’s not natural,” he assured, stretching his arm toward her. He turned his fist to the ceiling and unfurled his fingers. Sitting on his palm was another small, delicate key. “I don’t think your father was crazy at all, Ari. A couple years before things went sour between us, a very important object was stolen out of the cabin in Upstate New York. A priceless artifact that, should it land in the wrong hands, could spell disaster for us. All of us.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ariah lifted her eyes from the key to her uncle’s tender gaze. For the first time since she arrived, he grinned.
“At one point you did. The young woman sitting with me now has been hardened by life’s cruel pitches. Rest assured, that is all about to change.” He stretched his hand a little closer to Ariah. “Go ahead.”
“How do you know it’ll open the box?”
“I can feel the magic inside. It calls to me.” Uncle Mark lowered his hand after Ariah took the key from his palm. Doubt plagued her. Her uncle claimed to feel magic? All she felt was a strange hum of electricity, most likely from her tired nerves and her adrenaline crash. “Open it.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because.”
When Uncle Mark failed to divulge more, Ariah plugged the key into the hole and twisted. The lock clicked open. Ariah chewed her lower lip for a short moment. Uncle Mark leaned closer. The scent of bourbon teased her nostrils. His eyes sparkled.
“After I do this, will you tell me why you won’t open it?”
Her uncle’s smile grew as she lifted the top back on its hinges. Her brows came together as she stared at the contents of the velvet-lined box. Nestled in the center was a smooth, oblong jewel unlike anything she’d seen in her life. Deep, rich amber with slashes and swirls of gold, burnt red, and streaks of black.
The hum of energy intensified the moment the pad of her finger connected with the warm, smooth surface of the jewel. An unseen force rooted deep inside her mind and lured her to an unknown destination.
Was this the call her uncle meant?
The jewel’s magical beauty held her so captivated that she didn’t noticed her uncle leaning close to her ear until he whispered, “It’s time he sees you, at long last.”
Chapter Two
“It’s time he sees you, at long last.”
Alazar Brandvold threw off the covers, jumped out of his bed, and tripped over something on the floor. His shoulder smacked into the wall, sending a dull throb down his arm as he rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes. The disorientation didn’t fade when he pulled his hands away and stared straight ahead.
He didn’t see his bedroom.
He stared through his dragon’s eyes from the curved shape of his dragonstone. Over a decade of that stone lying dormant did nothing to help him orient himself as he fought to make out the strange, contorted vision moving in a hazy blur in front of him.
Well, in front of the stone.
Aww, no. No, no, no.
Oh, yes, buddy boy. Good ol’ Mark opened your box.
He frowned. Mark’s voice had jerked him from sleep, but the face he stared into as his vision focused and clarified was certainly not Mark’s. Not unless his Keeper lost a good bag of weight and turned female.
“Who will see me? How?”
The quiet female voice rattled him, and not in an unpleasant way, either.
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Alazar pressed back against the wall, hands splayed against the cool plaster for support while his dragon perked up at the pretty female’s presence. He had no idea what was happening, who this female was, or why Mark thought it was smart to expose his dragonstone to the stranger. Cade, the leader of the Firestorm tatsu clan on a hunt to locate any other female Keepers, had assured Alazar only a week ago that Mark had sired no children. The female was not his daughter.
“Who is she, Mark? Are you nuts? Letting an outsider see this?”
He rubbed his eyes again. The burnt essence of smoke teased the back of his throat before it curled from the corners of his mouth. His arms prickled, the hairs stiffening before his scales grazed the surface. Oh, man. The dragon’s attention on the woman grew steadfast the longer he stared into her obscured smoky gold and red face.
“Will you close that box so I can get my bearings?”
All Firestorm dragons had a dragonstone that allowed their Keeper to communicate with them. After the Baroqueth slayers attacked The Hollow—the Firestorms’ magical world separate from the mortal world—and Cade deemed it safest for the Keepers and the dragons to split and go into hiding, contact between them was kept to a minimum.
Like, non-existent minimum. There was no communication.
Alazar was aware Mark resided nearby. When he and Zareh—friend and Firestorm comrade—came to the quaint town of Nocturne Falls in Georgia, he sensed his Keeper’s nearness. As much as he wanted to search for Mark, he refrained. Contacting his Keeper would bring unwanted attention to him and Mark, placing them both in danger.
Well, his Keeper was about to have him show up on his front stoop if he kept this carelessness up.
“You’re making my stomach churn, Mark.”
In possession of the dragonstone, Mark could hear his thoughts and answer, if he chose.
Apparently, he chose not to, driving Alazar mad. He began to wonder if Mark realized he was quickly pinning down his Keeper’s location.
“Mark!”
The woman’s face disappeared behind a sheet of black.
The dragon recoiled in a huff, curling up in the back of his mind. The smoky black tips of his scales retracted into Alazar’s skin and the essence of fire from deep within his gut subsided.
Alazar’s bedroom reappeared before him. He blinked several times, staring at the rumpled comforter half puddled on the floor. A pillow was wedged between the mattress and bedside table. The fitted sheet had popped off the corner of the mattress. Evidence of restlessness.
“What the heck was that all about?”
Alazar rubbed the back of his neck, gaze drifting to the digital clock on his bedside table. Barely after two in the morning and Mark was entertaining strangers with tales of rare jewels and stones.
“And I have issues. Geez.”
As he fixed up his bed, he considered heading down the hall and waking Zareh up. Then again, chances were his friend wasn’t asleep, and neither was his lifemate, Kaylae. Interrupting that would not bode well for him.
With a sigh, Alazar climbed back into bed. Morning wasn’t too far off. He’d bring up the issue with Zareh then. He might need to put in a call to Cade so he could investigate the woman.
For now, he reached for the thick gold chain on the bedside table, brought it close to his nose, and sucked in a deep breath of the warm metal. A smile curled his lips and his dragon rumbled sleepily like a child comforted with a teddy bear.
There was nothing like gold to ease him back to sleep.
* * *
“Uncle Mark, all due respect, you’re frightening me.”
Ariah’s fingers rested in a painful knot on her knees. Her uncle placed the closed box on his desk, the dainty key beside it, and brushed a hand over his dark hair. The glint in his eyes was something Ariah had never witnessed in her life. She had seen a similar glint right before her father went berserk.
“There’s nothing to be frightened of. I’m just…well…I’m anxious.�
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“Yeah, that makes two of us.” Ariah waved a hand toward the box. “What’s going on? Who was supposed to see me? How were they supposed to see me?” She was so confused and tired, she felt like she might cry again at any moment. “You’re starting to act like Dad.”
“Sweetheart.” Uncle Mark went to his knees at her feet. His big hands closed around hers, tender, gentle, protective. He let out a slow breath. “There was once a time before life dealt you unfair hands that you embraced the history I shared. I still remember the sparkle in your eyes at the mention of dragons and faraway lands. Nothing, Ari, could extinguish that gleam from your spirit until your father and I had our falling out.”
Ariah swallowed the small lump that had formed at the base of her throat. “Well, life got real crappy real fast for me after that.” She gave the closed doors a pointed look. “After her.”
“If I had it to do over again, I would’ve done things differently, Ariah. But I can’t change the past. I can only pave a better path for the future.” His hands tightened on hers, drawing her attention back to him. “You have a future. A bright, promising future. One that is as fantastic as the stories I used to share with you.”
Ariah groaned, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. “Uncle Mark, don’t. I’ve outgrown that stage of my life. I lost hope of magical lands when reality swept me away. I can barely afford a bag of pretzels from the vending machine let alone a few hours to daydream.”
Uncle Mark sat back on his heels, eyes narrowing. Ariah sighed, pulling her hands away from his. She realized her mistake too late. She hadn’t meant to share so much information on the extent of their poverty.
“I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I need some rest. Maybe we can continue this tomorrow after we discuss our plans to help Dad?” Ariah was desperate to escape the fairytales. Her life was not a fairytale. It would never be a fairytale. She climbed to her feet, her uncle following her lead. “I can’t wrap my head around anything else. I’m burnt out.”
“Yes, sweetheart.” The concern etched into the fine lines around his eyes and mouth deepened. “Of course. I’ll bring your bags upstairs for you.”
