The Dragon Marshal's Treasure

by Zoe Chant

  “New mates,” Magda said, putting down the plant-sprayer and shaking her head. “Incorrigible. No respect for public decency.”

  He supposed she had a point. Judging by the dark pink Jillian had flushed, he thought she thought so too.

  “Your pardon, Magda,” Theo said. “We were carried away.”

  “Go carry yourselves away somewhere else,” Magda said. “Why I got into this business I’m sure I don’t know. Shifters here, shifters there, shedding all over the floor, leaving claw-marks, defiling the booths. This is a family restaurant.”

  “We really are sorry,” Jillian said.

  “I guess it’s nice to see he has blood in his veins,” Magda said.

  Theo blinked again, but not because of the water. “Are you congratulating me?”

  “Get out of here,” Magda said. “Or I’ll congratulate my foot all the way up your ass, Theo St. Vincent.” But her mouth was curved in what might, on another person, have been a smile.

  Jillian wasn’t the only one who needed to embrace her present. Theo thought he was only just now realizing that he had one at all. His life was woven through with people who cared about him, people who hadn’t been able to show that as long as his perfectly-maintained walls of ice were up. Unnatural for a dragon to hide himself from warmth. He would do his best not to make that same mistake again.

  He took Magda’s hand in his and lowered his lips to it, giving her the traditional hand-kiss dragons bestowed upon a respected female relative.

  She recognized the gesture, of course. There was nothing in shifter lore Magda didn’t know, no matter how obscure or insular the shifter type. She cleared her throat and, to his surprise, said in Old Draconic, “You have given me a jewel, and I thank you.”

  “A gift to you is a gift to myself,” Theo said.

  Magda snorted. “Listen to that hick accent of yours,” she said. “You’ll never get anywhere sounding like that.”

  *

  “Will you teach me that language?” Jillian said.

  It was the first time she had spoken without being spoken to since they had gotten back to the car, and Theo was overwhelmingly glad that she was talking freely again. And looking at him now, too, whereas before her gaze had been out the window as the mansions ticked by, gradually growing grander and grander as they approached her childhood home.

  “What Magda spoke in? Old Draconic?”

  She nodded. “Is there New Draconic?”

  “It’s Old Draconic, then Latin, and then the usual split—English, Spanish, Mandarin... If I had to guess, I wouldn’t think you wanted to talk about linguistics.” He pulled into the long, curved driveway that led up to the Marcus house. It was a slide going down to the inevitable. He parked, but it didn’t feel like it stopped whatever was happening. His dragon was coiled and watchful, muscles tensed, eyes watchful.

  Our mate is troubled.

  We’ll resolve this and then move on, Theo said. Out with the old and in with the new.

  Out loud, he said, “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “I already made you drive here.”

  “You didn’t make me drive you anywhere. I would—”

  “What if I’m like my dad?”

  It had gotten darker on their drive, the evening ushering in a gray and lavender twilight heavy with clouds, not dragon weather at all. The sky and the dome light of the car turned Jillian’s face into a succession of shadows.

  He could say that she was nothing like her father. He believed that to be the truth. Gordon Marcus, dazzled by easily-obtained wealth, greedy for more, had never known what real treasure was; his hoard was massive but accumulated by price tag and not by taste. The finest, most impressive piece he’d owned had been the handmade lace, and from where it had wound up, Theo was sure he had gotten it by accident and hadn’t known its value. Jillian saw the real worth of things. Dragons collected what was good and fine, but it was people like his mate who made and protected that finery, people like his mate who kept the world a place where beauty could occur. He believed in her goodness absolutely.

  But that same goodness was what brought her to worry about whether or not it was there, so there was no arguing with it. And Jillian was practical. She would prefer a solution to reassurance.

  Theo said, “Do you remember the color of my scales?”

  “No,” Jillian said. “I’ve completely forgotten what the only dragon I’ve ever seen looked like.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe your mind was still fogged with lust.”

  “Around you, that’s a given.”

  His dragon preened—dammit, he preened too. He wasn’t adverse to pride. But there was more serious business at hand.

  “Everyone in my valley has the same colors. Different patterns, different markings, but always red and gold, over and over again throughout the generations. The story is that it’s because all our wealth, all our gold, once came from blood, in one way or another, from theft or murder or war. In our shame, we were marked for it. Now we try as hard as we can to live honorably, with our colors as living reminders of what happens when you prize your hoard above your heart.”

  “I can’t ever see you doing that.”

  “I hope I wouldn’t. But, because I think of it sometimes, I may try harder to live well.” He cleared his throat. “I do know that people, and dragons more than other people, do terrible things for gold. And I know that I love gold.” He traced her collarbone with one finger and watched her shiver. Her skin was like warm silk. “So I remember that that could get me into trouble. Do you want something to help you remember? I don’t think you need it.”

  Her smile made her face more visible, the starlight reflecting off her teeth. He even thought her teeth were cute. It was no surprise that Magda had sprayed them. “What if I want you to paint me red and gold?”

  A spring seemed to tighten inside him. Yes, please. He imagined drawing his finger, the pad of it wet and the color of raspberries, of rubies, across her breasts. Imagined circling her nipples, teasing her with the warmth of his hand close but never quite touching where her flesh pebbled up. He would put gold dust in her navel. He couldn’t wait to adorn her with the best of his hoard, to gild her wrists with heavy golden bracelets and her throat with emeralds that would sparkle darkly near her lush hair.

  “I’ve distracted you,” Jillian said. She didn’t sound upset about it all.

  He could not take her to bed in his car in the driveway of her father’s house, and all the beds inside would have been dismantled by now. But he felt that he had to have something—and that, moreover, he had to give her something.

  But she was far ahead of him. She unbuckled her seatbelt and slipped out into the cool night, whispering to him, “Inside.”

  Who cared about dismantled beds? They had floors. They had walls. Any flat surface would do when they were in this kind of mood. He hurried out to join her.

  Jillian gave a short, cut off scream, and Theo darted in front of her, his gun already drawn. Seeing what had made her cry out was not as reassuring as it could have been.

  The nutcrackers were once again lined up in battalions, their maniacal chompy grins frozen in their knowing little laughs. Theo hated them almost as much as his dragon did.

  “Gretchen,” he growled. “I’m sorry. It’s her idea of a joke. I know these were all marked to be packed up—and maybe burned.”

  “I think they packed and unpacked them,” Jillian said. She nudged a torn-open cardboard box with her foot. “So I’ll say this for her, she really committed. A lot of people would have given up once they encountered that much packing tape.”

  “It scared you.” And me. He pulled out of his phone. “I’ll text her. This isn’t acceptable. What if you’d been alone? What if you’d jumped back and tripped and hurt yourself?”

  “I’m not in a Three Stooges sketch,” Jillian protested.

  “What if Tiffani had come in and had a heart attack?”

  “Tiffani’s only forty-three,
for one thing, and she’s in better shape than I am... and you’ve already texted. I like Gretchen, please don’t make her hate me.”

  He obediently sent a follow-up text that said, Jillian thinks it was funny, though.

  Jillian relieved him of his phone and slid it back into his pocket, using the same gesture to push herself up on her toes and kiss him. Her mouth tasted as sweet as honey.

  “Upstairs,” she said. “I’ll pick something out from my old bedroom. I’m sure there’ll be some embarrassing Backstreet Boys jpeg print-out in a treasure box or something equally nineties that will work as a token, something nobody has packed yet. I’ll take that and then you can seize my assets again. If the combined impact of my teenaged possessions hasn’t driven you away.”

  “Remember,” Theo said, “I was home-schooled in a family commune with a superiority complex. There is nothing you could turn up that would be more embarrassing than that.”

  “You say that now.”

  She opened the bedroom door. To Theo’s relief, there actually were still a few lingering items that had yet to be packed: a beribboned bulletin board on the wall, a couple of stacked picture frames painted in streaky colors, some kind of vase filled with colored sand.

  Whatever it was Jillian saw first seemed to dismay her, because she groaned and said, “Just stand in the middle of the room with your eyes closed and try not to form any unfavorable judgments. Remember, I’m your mate and you’re stuck with me.”

  He did close his eyes, because he liked the feeling of her moving around him in the dark like a firefly, liked listening to her pick things up and put them down. Sometimes she would drift by him and her hair would tickle his nose. Sometimes she would skim her hand across his back, making him shiver.

  His phone buzzed.

  He slid it out of his pocket. “Can I look at the text or do you want to read it to me?”

  Jillian pressed her lips against his again. “I’ll tell you who it is and then you can tell me if it’s confidential,” she said. She turned the phone over in his hand. “Gretchen.”

  Theo snorted. “Here, I’ll unlock it.” He pressed his thumb against the screen. “Okay, read. I can’t want to hear her rationale for the great nutcracker caper.”

  Jillian read: “‘I didn’t unpack any of the nutcrackers, so I can’t take credit for that. The guys must have just not gotten around to it.’ They didn’t get around to that but they got around to everything else? They must have been tripping over them the whole time—no, but they were unpacked, remember? Is she still kidding?”

  Theo opened his eyes. In his mind, his dragon’s wings rustled.

  “No,” he said slowly. “She wouldn’t do that, she knows when to stop. And it wouldn’t make any sense as a joke from anyone else. I think we need to get out of—”

  Then the room around them erupted into sound and fire.

  9

  Jillian

  All she knew at first was the noise. It sounded perversely like someone tearing up a carpet: this long, thick ripping sound. She felt the boom more than she heard it. It knocked her down to her hands and knees.

  Theo. I have to help Theo.

  It was only then that she realized that Theo was holding her. He had shifted in what must have been the blink of an eye and he had wrapped her in his wings. All the light that came through them was dim and red as blood, except for a few patches where the thin, flexible tissue of his wings had been torn by flying debris. One wing, still curved around her, was sagging inwards in the middle where one of the bones had snapped. It looked like a broken umbrella spoke.

  Thinking that made a sob well up in her throat.

  She said his name out loud, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. She realized the word had come out as a squeak. She was still too scared to talk.

  So she pressed herself against his belly instead. It was armored—weren’t dragons always invincible, except to some arrow in exactly the right unshielded spot? But Theo didn’t look invincible, unfortunately. His poor wing!—and the only part of him that was cool to the touch. It felt like plates of metal. But she knew he could feel her because he brought his immense head down and blinked at her with those eyes that were his eyes, no matter what head they were in.

  Or what the pupils looked like. Right now they were as narrow as a cat’s.

  That wasn’t just the shift. She breathed in, only now getting the scent of smoke, thick and oily. Fire. His pupils were constricted from the additional light.

  Jillian put her hands on either side of his head, trying to make him focus.

  “Theo, we have to get out of here.”

  He blinked at her—his eyelids, she noticed, were golden—and then, slowly and shudderingly, transformed back into her Theo.

  Shifting hadn’t healed him. He was still covered in blood and soot. When he’d wrapped her in his wings, he’d taken the brunt of the damage for them both. It had left him looking glassy-eyed and dazed.

  She would have to do the thinking for the two of them right now. She looked around. All she could see was wreckage. The room was unrecognizable: there was nothing left but dust and smoldering ashes. There wasn’t any fire near them, but its glow was there, flickering against the walls, so she knew it had to be close.

  She inhaled deeply, trying to clear her her head, and noticed that the smoke was thicker now. He was right, they couldn’t afford to waste time. He was a little out of it, but she had no excuse for lingering, no excuse for being lulled into some kind of blame game, no matter who she was finding guilty. She had to pull herself together.

  So she did. She gently put his arm over her shoulders.

  “Lean on me. I’ll get us out of here.”

  “I’m in your hands.”

  It was strange to be dragging him when he was so much stronger, but it wasn’t impossible. She could tell he was doing all he could to help her. He bore as much of his own weight as he was able to, even though it was costing him to do it: she could hear that in every sharp breath he sucked in. She could feel it in the way his hand clenched into a tight fist. She wished she could have made it easier on him, but she didn’t tell him to stop. They would need to work together. Even now, she needed him as much as he needed her.

  The stairs were gone.

  All Jillian could see of them was a heap of splinters and scorched carpet runner. The second floor landing jutted out unstably, sagging at its edge, and she didn’t dare to step out too far on it. There was no way down except falling.

  Theo could see that as easily as she could. He said, “I can probably drift us down. No matter what’s wrong with my wings, I should still have enough of them to act as a torn parachute. It will work for a short fall.”

  No way. She wasn’t going to give up and let him get hurt even more. There had to be another way down.

  The trellis!

  There was an ivy trellis near her dad’s bedroom window. She’d always figured he put it there so he could sneak down to see his mistresses.

  Theo’s hands seemed fairly intact. Even if he was too out of it to be much of a climber, the ground was still soft, so if he got even part of the way down, the fall wouldn’t be bad.

  She dragged him down the hall and into what was left of the bedroom. She had to wrap a pillow cover around her hand to undo the burning-hot latches on the window, but then she shoved it open hard. The air would feed the flames, so they would have to hurry.

  To her relief, she could hear sirens.

  She eased him up onto the sill.

  “Go. I’ll follow you.”

  To her great relief, he didn’t make her make him go first, he just nodded and went. He dug his fingers into the ivy and the trellis so tightly that she wouldn’t be surprised to find his hands covered with splinters and sticky with green from the crushed leaves. He did fall, but only when he was less than a foot from the ground. She see him nod up at her and gesture for her to come down.

  She made it to the ground in what felt like record time.

  They
stumbled away into the dark. Some basic part of her felt that the further away from the fire, the better. She coughed a few times, but her chest felt basically clear. Her only concern was Theo.

  “Thank God for the sirens,” she said. “Somebody must have seen the fire. They’ll send an ambulance, too, and then we can get you—”

  “No ambulance,” he said, planting her feet as she tried to turn them around. “I can’t. Shifters, for anything serious... we can’t go to the hospital. We heal too quickly, you’ve seen it.”

  She had. If even she’d been thrown by it with something as minor as scratches, of course a doctor would notice it in something this serous. And there was no way she would let anyone drag him off to some X-Files lab and cut him open to see how he ticked. For a second, she was completely on the side of his family and the whole community of dragons: humans were terrible.

  She would treat him herself if she had no other option, but there had to be another option. Surely shifters got appendicitis like everyone else. Surely they had children and migraines and broken legs.

  “What do you do when you get hurt, then?”

  “When it’s something that just resting won’t cure, we have trustworthy healers, shifters who know medicine or medics who are familiar with shifters. There’s a veterinarian here in town who stitched me up once. But she’s not going to know what to do about damaged dragon wings, there just aren’t enough of us.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was raw and vulnerable. “I think I need to go home.”

  The sirens were close. If they needed to go, they needed to go.

  “Home it is,” Jillian said. “I’ve never run from the scene of a crime before.” She kissed him briefly. “Very exciting.”

  There were people gathered all along the street, gawking at the house. So much for the quiet, secluded property the real estate office had pushed. She had no idea how they were supposed to get to Theo’s car from here.

  Luckily, Theo’s car wasn’t the only one around. She never would have guessed that she’d have to be so grateful for her dad’s midlife crisis sports car shopping spree. The converted stable in back of the house was full of sleek, impractical cars. They’d have to gun it and drive off in plain sight, but that couldn’t be helped. At least no one would be able to see their faces at that point.