“Less final than death.”
“But if Graeme is not with us, there is no point in escaping.”
He was right, of course. She missed Graeme so much. It wasn’t one or the other who completed her; it was both. They were her heart and soul, and the loss of either of them was too horrid a thought to bear.
And the only way to come back together was to deal with this damned conflict once and for all, or it would haunt them all their lives.
“Can’t you two simply lay down arms?” she asked. “So to speak. I suppose you can’t throw down your claws and teeth, after all. But can’t you call a stop to it all?”
“If all goes well,” he said, “the battle will end abruptly, and you, Graeme and I will find ourselves in a new world, with better lives for everyone; not only for ourselves. That is my intention, my hope, my plan.”
“I would give anything for that.”
“All I ask of you, my sweet Lilliana, is your faith.”
“I have nothing but faith in you. But you’re not invincible; no one is.”
“No, I’m not. But tell me something: If you had the chance to change the course of history for the better, to save species from extinction, would you? Even at the cost of your own life.”
“I suppose I would,” she replied, her eyes focused on the floor in avoidance of contact with his. Shame filled her; an abundance of selfishness, wanting to hold onto what they had, even if the price were the lives of others.
“Then you know what I must do. And if all goes well, my Lilliana,” he said, lifting her chin and forcing her dewy eyes to look into his own, “We will come out of it stronger, better, and we and Graeme will live happily ever after.”
“And if all goes badly?” she asked.
“Then I may die, but knowing that I have the love of the greatest woman on earth. And you should know as well, whatever occurs, how much I love you.”
The words had come at last, from Conor first. Those three words that should have felt like an embrace, but now felt like injury. Because he might be torn from her, and so soon. The beast in him leading him to a fate that she couldn’t control. And it was she who was responsible for that beast’s existence.
A single, hot tear streamed down her right cheek as she looked at him, and a dimple appeared on one of his own cheeks as his smile began to form.
“You know that I love you,” she said.
“Of course I do. So don’t go thinking that I’m idiot enough to get myself killed when I have been granted the most extraordinary gift in the history of…anything.”
At last she was able to smile. This was his gift; he always made her forget pain. “I hope,” she said, “That there will be more gifts coming. For all of us. But in the meantime I’ll try and be grateful for the ones I’ve already been given.”
Her left hand slid briefly over her belly and she forced the thought out of her mind. The tiny creature inside her would not be robbed of a father, let alone two.
She would see to that.
But at the back of Conor’s mind, hidden from Lily’s view, was the knowledge that he would not likely make it out alive. That he would willingly sacrifice himself for his—and her—kind.
And that he would break her heart.
It was two days later that Conor asked her to escape, but not with him. She would be alone, heading to an unknown place.
“Do as you like, but it would help my cause of you did your best to make it look like an aggressive breakout,” he told her, carefully avoiding any revelation of his final plans.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have an idea. But it would help if you’d tell me yours.”
“I can’t. Even though there are very few around who, like us, can see into others’ minds, we can’t risk my intentions being found out by anyone. Nor should you tell me yours.”
“All right,” said Lily. “But I have to admit that I hate keeping secrets from you. The simple truth, however, is that I don’t have a firm plan, Conor. I don’t know where I’m to go, or what I’m to do. I will be lost as soon as I leave here.”
Her family would still be around somewhere, and aside from Lachlan, she hadn’t seen them since the attack at the Tournament. She considered a flight down to Cornwall to look over Dundurn Castle once again, and to seek out her parents.
But leaving Conor and Graeme behind to suffer the consequences of her disappearance was too cruel a thought. If this battle was going to happen she wanted to be there. Much as it sickened her to think of watching her mates kill each other, she felt that it was her fate to be present. To play her part, even if she didn’t understand what it was.
“You may be lost for a little, but you will be found as soon as I can work my way to you and to our life together,” said Conor, putting hands on her shoulders. “Everything that happens in the near future is meant to ensure our lasting happiness. Yours most of all. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “I know that you mean it from the bottom of your heart. I just don’t see how…”
“Don’t say it,” he whispered. His hand slipped to her neck and he caressed her gently in strokes that soothed him as well as her. “Don’t create a prophecy that wants to come to reality. Only hold onto the hope that everything will be for the best—for you, for Graeme, for me. We will be together again, in one way or another.”
He kissed her, sending a river of warmth through her body and reminding each cell of their bond, of his goodness and of their mutual strength.
Lily’s eyes met his, resolve filling them as she spoke. “Before I make my great escape, make sure someone has seen me in here, and brought me food. They need to believe that I’ll be here for the night. I’ll try and appear tired; possibly even a little under the weather.”
With that, she kissed him again. It was the last kiss that they might ever share, if things didn’t align perfectly in the battle to come.
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” he replied, hesitant to let her go. Here, in this woman, was his true source of strength; stronger than his déor, than his entire army. And yet he needed her now to start the war which might end his life.
“Lilliana,” he said. “Protect yourself, at all costs. You are the most important of us all.”
“I will,” she said. But the most important of us all is inside me.
When he’d left her, she felt her eyes welling with tears. Yes, she would protect herself. After all, it was she who was to bear their young. And if all went as she hoped, she would protect the two men as well, that they might be around when she gave birth to their child.
The time was coming to prove to the world and to herself just how powerful she was. To abide by Merriman’s wishes and to accept who she was.
This was to be her war as well.
11
Escape
It was the following day that Lord Graeme Ramsey received word that Lady Lilliana had been broken out of the Dunbar clan’s castle by his dragon soldiers, constituting what was essentially an Act of War.
Word had it that the signs pointed to one or more of the flying fire-breathers coming at the castle walls from the outside, bursting through them and extracting her from her prison.
“How can this be?” he asked the young dragon fighter who’d described the alleged scene to him. “We haven’t sent anyone to do any such thing—I didn’t know that she was imprisoned, even.”
“I don’t know who it was,” said the young man. “Only that she was a prisoner and now she’s not.”
Graeme knew that Lily could escape any prison anytime she wanted, though her powers of traveling through time and space remained elusive and mysterious to him. Surely she had remained at the Dunbar castle as long as she had in order to be with Conor, to gather information. But his Beorn army would take the escape as a slight, as though a spy had evaded their clutches. This was bad news indeed.
“What is your plan, Lilliana?” he muttered as he paced about the room, all but forgetting the other man present.
“My Lord?” said the young shifter.
Graeme held a hand up to the dragon soldier. Without speaking a word, the young man turned on his heels, leaving the room and closing the door behind him, convinced that he needed to head directly to the kitchen on an important, non-existent errand which Graeme had inserted into his mind. When he arrived at his destination he would forget how he’d gotten there.
His leader’s powers were growing, and the best-kept secret in the castle.
It was only a minute or so after the young man had left that Graeme’s father burst into the room where the leader stood, still attempting to assess Lily’s movements.
“Do you know what this escape means?” Lord Ramsey asked, his voice booming and echoing against the stone walls.
“Yes, Father, I do.”
“War will come sooner than we’d expected.”
It was now early August, and Graeme found himself smiling. The war that had been depicted in the history books had begun in September. Here was his first chance to change the tides. If the war came upon them quickly, his army would find itself inexperienced, unprepared. It was possible yet that the Beorn would survive an attack.
“They will come at us,” his father said. “Out of spite, revenge. They will be convinced that Lady Lilliana is our spy, transmitting information to us about their numbers, their strength.”
“Well, she hasn’t, has she?” said Graeme. “I haven’t seen her, and I certainly am not responsible for her breakout.”
“Well, those savages won’t believe you for a minute, so there’s no point in considering the truth of the matter. We need to prepare. They will arrive on our doorstep within days; that I can promise you.”
“We’ll be fine, Father,” said Graeme. “We have power on our side.”
“I hope you’re right. These are no mere black bears that we’re fighting.”
“I know.”
With that his father left the room and Graeme sat at the head of the long conference table, one hand casually outstretched, moving objects about on the other side of the room, some of which weighed hundreds of pounds, such as an enormous oak desk which he shot into the air as though it were as light as a penny.
After weeks of training he had taught his troops some elegant drills and flight patterns. They could hit targets from a good distance, and very impressively.
But the real training had been Graeme’s. In the absence of his two mates he’d mastered the delicate art of manipulating objects of all shapes and sizes, and he had honed the skill of mind control.
The previous day he’d silently convinced two of his dragons to fight quite violently, resulting in some bloody wounds, though neither man knew what had prompted the conflict, and neither could particularly recall its details afterwards.
All of the soldiers attributed this aggression to their dragon genes, their bloodlust. But all of it was orchestrated by their leader, who intended to keep them from hurting anyone he cared about. If they had to kill each other in order to guarantee it, so be it.
Lily’s escape had been unceremonious. After she’d ensured that a Beorn guard had seen her safely ensconced in her prison cell that afternoon, she’d waited until nightfall before leaping through space up onto the castle’s roof, using the skill that was evolving into something more akin to teleportation than to simple time travel.
On the roof she’d lain her clothes flat and shifted into her dragon form, carefully controlling the coat of normally bright flame which might make her too visible from below, and, chameleon-like, she’d begun to initiate her plan of action.
She flew to the side of the castle and on her first attempt, managed to burst through its thick stone wall, causing most of the damage to be internal and ensuring that the escape would look like an outside job. For good measure, she’d blown a few bursts of flame at the outer edges of the split stone, outlining the opening in black: just in case anyone doubted that it was the work of a dragon.
And then, after snatching her clothing from the roof, she had begun her flight away from the castle and from Conor.
Much as she desired to see Graeme, she knew that her escapade would be causing grief and that her presence would only land him in further trouble.
No. It was a man with a white owl that she wanted to find. And find him she would.
12
“I will go there myself and take them out,” said Kormag, storming about the room.
Conor had never had a terribly easy time reading the man; penetrating his mind was rather like driving a fist into a boulder. What the Beorn leader had been able to gather was that Kormag’s intentions never veered too far from what he considered good or noble, but his sole purpose in life seemed to consist of taking out dragons, and in particular the Ramsey clan.
“No, you won’t,” Conor retaliated. “You know how foolish that sounds. But we must strike soon, as a united front. Lady Lilliana will give them information which could endanger us and jeopardize all of our plans. We need to move out within twenty-four hours.”
Kormag stopped and looked at him, an expression of disbelief on his face. “You really feel that you’re ready for this? For all-out war?”
“What choice do we have? To lie in wait for them to come to us?”
“Well then, it must be done,” said the Roc shifter. “And I will provide what support I can, naturally, my Lord.”
“Good. You can start by informing the ranks that we will be moving out in the morning. We will set up a mile or so out from the Ramseys’ castle. There we’ll meet them head-on.”
Conor saw Kormag’s mouth twitch mischievously. The man reminded him of all the worst things he’d heard about dragon shifters; his desire to be in a constant state of conflict. His failure to attach himself to another living thing.
He seemed to have been built for war, and it was a sad state of existence.
“I will let the men know, my Lord,” Kormag said before leaving the room.
And I will hope that my mates have a better plan than mine, thought Conor.
It was in the woods not far from the Ramsey castle that Lily found Merriman, camping by a fire as though enjoying a nice holiday. The old man sat cross-legged, his long cloak pulled up to reveal linen trousers and sandalled feet.
“You look like a druid,” said Lily, approaching. “Casting spells by an open flame.”
“If only I had spells to cast in this situation,” he said. “I could perhaps prevent what is about to unfold.”
“I suppose there’s no preventing it now,” said Lily, seating herself on a log opposite the other shifter. She’d managed to clothe herself after shifting, in a nearby spot of tree cover. “I have just instigated a war.”
Merriman looked up at the star-lit sky above. “You have, and skillfully,” he said. “And tomorrow it will begin. I will do my part.”
“What is your part exactly?” she asked. “In the painting…”
“In the painting I am standing aside, a mere observer, with my owl friend.”
Lily realized suddenly that for the second time, Barnabas was absent.
“Where is he?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“Fine. He’s been surveying the situation for us both. He is my eyes and ears, as it were, when I don’t have access to information.”
“So you two speak? How?”
“You know the answer to that question. We share a bond like yours with Conor and Graeme. Barnabas is able to convey a good deal to me without words.”
“Do you ever wish he’d come back—his human self, I mean?” asked Lily.
Merriman stared into the fire, the light dancing along the lines of his face. “Sometimes,” he said. “But more than anything I wish for his happiness.”
A soft hoot erupted from above Lily’s head and she looked up, spotting Barnabas perched high on a tree’s thick limb.
“I think he wishes for yours as well,” she said quietly.
“No doubt,” said Merriman. “He’s always been a good sort, that o
ne.”
Lily smiled. Something in the owl had always seemed to convey kindness, though it was an odd thought. Déors were usually far more aggressive than their human counterparts. She found herself wondering what Barnabas the man was like, and pictured a soft, deep voice and gentle eyes.
“Well, I don’t know about you, my Lady, but I need to sleep a little,” said Merriman. “I do apologize for the accommodations.”
“That’s all right. I’ve been in prison for weeks; this will do quite nicely. Thanks, though.”
“There is one thing that I would say to you, Lady Lilliana,” said Merriman as he stretched out on the ground on the opposite side of the fire.
“What’s that?”
“When the battle begins and your instincts kick in, don’t forget who you are. Ask yourself what is your significance, in every possible way. It is your power and what you represent that may turn the tide on this war.”
“Are you saying that I should fight?” Lily thought only of the child growing inside her now, and of her body’s need to protect it at all costs. Merriman couldn’t mean that she was a weapon, surely.
“No. You should do everything but,” he said. As he spoke, the white owl flew down from the treetops and landed on nearby log.
“I’m afraid that I don’t understand, Merriman,” said Lily. “What am I? You keep hinting at my significance, but I’m ultimately just a woman who cares about her mates, her family.”
“You are a woman who has the blood of many running through her veins. You represent all who will be doing battle, and the treasure inside you is the key to all of it.”
Lily stood up then and stepped a few feet away. Treasure? Was this a metaphor, or was he referring to her child?
“Do you mean…” she began, turning back to him.
Look inside yourself for the answer, he interrupted, his voice echoing through the depths of her mind. You know what to do. You always have; now it is time that you showed your faith in your skills.
Dragon Wars Page 6
