by Ophelia Bell
He passed between the Summer and the Autumn displays and turned, scanning all four slowly, his face alight with excitement. As his gaze moved, his eyes flickered again to the lighter color that practically seemed to glow. The aura I’d seen around him a moment ago swelled into being again, and time slowed down.
When he looked at me finally, it was with absolute wonder. I hazarded a glance over my shoulder, worried that expression couldn’t really be meant for me.
“April, you’re the artist of these amazing pieces?”
I shrugged nervously. “Um, yeah? I mean, they’re just practice pieces really. Wait’ll you see the real one when it’s finished…” They were pretty, sure, but they weren’t my best work by a long shot, which was why I had no issue putting them on display with price tags stuck to the pedestals beneath them. “Does that mean something to you?”
His eyebrows shot up, and he swept a hand through the air to indicate all four. Spring, with its green-tinted glass and vaguely tree-like contours, was an open vessel filled with an abundance of tiny star-shaped flowers in every color; Summer, shaped like a raindrop, was equally overflowing with lush green miniature vines dotted with yellow blooms; Autumn’s bulbous fertility goddess form gave birth to flowers in a range of fiery reds and golds; and Winter’s slender icicle shape was bursting with blooms of white and pale blue. To me, they were just flowers behind glass, but to Gray, they were apparently something more.
“It means you don’t just carry an unheard-of amount of dragon magic; you’re filled with ursa magic too.”
4
Gray
April’s aura flared green at the suggestion that she was filled with ursa magic, as if merely mentioning it summoned the power to the surface. But the look on her face still made it clear she didn’t quite grasp how amazing she was. I shifted my attention back to her creations, four of the most perfect artistic renderings of the Seasons I’d ever seen. Each one glowed with an abundance of earth magic, though the vessels themselves still crackled with the fire magic she’d infused the glass with.
I hadn’t blown glass since I was a child, but it had always been the most ideal medium for young white dragons to explore our innate creativity, while still exercising our skill with fire. That was why I’d come here. After the bittersweet farewell from the others, I had an urge to start back at the beginning, seek out what I’d loved most in life prior to my hibernation, and try to reclaim some of that passion and see where it led.
Evidently, it had led me straight to this woman, and for the second time, I wished I could see fate hounds the way Deva and her mates could. I was almost positive despite her insistence that her hounds were occupied with another task, they’d somehow managed to steer me into this gallery and straight to April’s side.
But the discovery of her skill meant everything. Not only was she Bloodline, she had power unlike any member of the Bloodline I’d met, except for Aella. As Aella’s bodyguards, my partners and I had always known she possessed it, even before her awakening a year ago on Spring Equinox. When we learned that three of the Winds were her fated mates, we hadn’t been particularly surprised. Her ability to manipulate the air with her voice was unmatched, so naturally, she’d required not one, but three powerful mates tied to that element.
I could barely contain my excitement to learn that April was so similar. Could it mean what I hoped? If she carried enough dragon blood in her veins to be able to carry on telepathic conversations as well as see auras, that ranked her up there with Aella in terms of her concentration of power. Whether it was enough to warrant three dragon mates, I didn’t know.
But she didn’t just carry dragon blood.
Deva had explained how the Bloodline worked that day last year after we watched Aella fly away with her new mates, leaving my five partners and me at loose ends. Each member of the Bloodline carried a mix of higher races blood. For most of them, it was diluted, and all it took was the magic of one of Deva’s songs to activate, allowing them to find their perfect match within a crowd of other Bloodline. Sometimes more than two people matched with each other, but their mix of blood always balanced each other. Deva’s fate hounds had some involvement, but I was never exactly clear on what they did behind the scenes. I think it amounted to subliminal nudges whenever the person had a choice to make that could lead them either farther from or closer to their soul mate.
Deva had emphasized that there were rare members who had much higher concentrations, whose only hope of finding a true soul mate was to be matched with a member of the higher races. And in even rarer cases, more than one member of the higher races. Deva’s dedication to finding them mates wasn’t entirely frivolous though.
The Bloodline existed outside of Fate’s web of control, which meant Fate considered them a flaw, an anomaly that threw the whole pattern of the world out of balance since Fate didn’t have the ability to easily find them soul mates. If it hadn’t been for Deva’s intervention, Fate would have had its own packs of fate hounds hunt down and kill every last member of the Bloodline just to save it the headache. Thankfully, Deva was willing to do the work to restore balance by using her own powers and the six fate hounds loyal to her to match the Bloodline up with soul mates, so Fate had backed down.
But it hadn’t occurred to me to hope I might meet a member of the Bloodline so alluring as April, and I knew better than to believe my urge to come into this gallery was entirely random. I was probably crazy to hope that this beautiful glassblower was powerful enough for six, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to find out more. Even though I itched to pull out my phone, to call Stuart and Tate and the others and tell them to get their asses to Seattle to meet her, I held back. It wouldn’t do to get their hopes up and find out only one of us could have her. Or that maybe I wasn’t meant to have her at all, but to lead her to the member of the Bloodline who was her perfect match—Deva’s hounds worked in mysterious ways like that.
“You really need to teach me how to do that,” April said, her voice tinged with wry humor.
“What?” I shifted my attention from the sculptures back to her, struck again by the sexy disarray of her hair and clothes. She was kind of an adorable mess, her blonde curls sticking out from a red bandana tied around her forehead. She wore a snug tank top that had once been white, I thought, though it was hard to tell, and over that was a threadbare plaid flannel shirt tied at the front. Her cut-off denim shorts left her tan legs bare, and on her feet were a pair of scuffed brown shit-kickers, which were no doubt standard issue for glassblowers, at least if they were human.
“Teach me how not to broadcast, because I can tell you’re doing some heavy thinking right now, but I’m not getting even a whisper. What’s going on in there?”
She stepped close and tapped her finger to my forehead, her proximity giving me another whiff of her intoxicating scent. She smelled like she lived and breathed fire and glass. And not just that, but metal too. Metal and earth and—I inhaled deeply, unable to resist the urge to lean in. Life.
“Sweet Mother, you smell like life.”
She gave me a quizzical look. “You mean I smell like a biology experiment, right? Because there is no way in hell I smell good.”
I barked out a laugh. “No, I don’t mean that at all. You really do smell wonderful. Why do you think you don’t?”
She lifted an arm and plucked beneath the sleeve, dipping her head to inhale, then grimaced. “Because I really don’t. I haven’t bathed in a few days. I’ve been preoccupied with staying on schedule. These little masterpieces are only the beginning of my Earth and Fire series. Just a sample.”
My spine tingled. She had more like this?
“I only saw these. May I see the rest?”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “It isn’t finished yet. The opening is three weeks away, and I’m behind schedule. I actually only popped out here to measure.” She lifted a tape-measure and waved it at me, then pointed toward the open central area of the gallery. “It’ll fill the entire sp
ace once it’s finished.”
I craned my neck up to take in the area she’d indicated. At the moment, a large, abstract mobile sculpture was suspended from the beams, casting moving shadows around the entire gallery.
“Will you show me anyway? I’d love a look at your studio. Do you have any sketches?” I probably sounded like an over-eager pup, but if the beautiful creations I was looking at were merely samples, I had to know what her plan was for a larger piece.
Her aura flared with warm, golden light, and she turned on her heel, heading back toward the rear of the gallery. With a smile over her shoulder, she beckoned. “Come on. But just be warned, if you step through that door, I’m putting you to work.”
I enjoyed the sway of her hips and the way her round, plump backside filled out her denim shorts for a moment longer before following, more certain than ever that there must be a fate hound in the vicinity. I didn’t even bother stopping at the threshold despite her warning. If I’d been led here by the forces of Fate, I absolutely wanted to find out if they were leading me to a match with her. At the very least, I wanted a chance to see how powerful she really was.
The acrid, dusty odor of metal and sand mixed with soot hit my nose long before I crossed the threshold into April’s lair. It smelled like a feral dragon’s den, tickling at my most primal instincts much the way her scent had plucked at my awareness of my waning power. She spun a few feet in and stretched out her arms to encompass the whole space.
“This is where the magic happens,” she said with a huge grin, leaving no doubt how much she loved what she did. I didn’t think she realized how true her words were though.
A slender brown-skinned woman and a tall, lanky man leaned facing each other against the counters of a small kitchen situated at the rear of the space. Their auras were intertwined enough that it was clear they were a couple, yet their attention shifted entirely to us when we entered. They gave me a wary look, tensing at first until they became aware of April’s excitement. They shared a glance, then came toward us, curious gazes shifting between April and me.
“We were wondering where you got to,” the woman said. “It doesn’t take that long to measure even if you really meant it. We thought you might’ve escaped down to the tavern to drown your sorrows.”
The woman’s voice took a teasing lilt, and April laughed. “Don’t think I didn’t consider it. But I found a better distraction.” She turned toward her friends, gesturing back at me. “Guys, meet Gray. He’s a—”
“You’re a dragon,” the man interjected.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes. I take it you’re Bloodline too.” It was commonly understood that the Bloodline gravitated to each other so were often found in small groups. They also knew my kind on sight, but were typically too gun-shy to approach us. I guessed April’s familiarity had sufficiently broken the ice for these two.
“Oh. My. God.” They looked at each other, mouths open and eyes wide, their auras swelling and rippling with the energy of their curiosity, but they still didn’t let loose even though my senses made it clear they were brimming with questions.
“He’s an artist is what I was going to say.” April stepped back toward me and took my hand. “He wanted to check out our progress, see the sketches.” To me, she said, “These dorks are Renee and Josh. They’re my assistants. Don’t mind them, they’ll come around once they get over the shock.”
She led me past her stunned friends, away from the glass furnaces to the other side of the warehouse. We passed a huge table covered in various lengths of copper and steel pipes. Around the table were all the trappings of a blacksmith’s shop: an anvil, a forge, several vises, a drill press, and along the wall hung dozens of hammers, tongs, and other tools. I stopped short just past the table where the framework of April’s sculpture rested on the concrete floor.
She hadn’t described it to me at all, but the colorful smoky whorls of magic that drifted around the cage of metal allowed me to easily envision its intended shape.
“It’s a tree of life.”
She turned and looked at me in surprise, then stared up at the simple curved lines of the structure between us. “You can tell from this? It’s barely even a shape.”
“It isn’t the framework itself. It’s the magic. I know you figured out how to see my aura. If you try, I bet you can see this the way I do.”
She moved back to my side and took my hand. At my bemused expression, she shrugged, and her cheeks turned pink. “I feel more settled when we touch.”
So did I, but I wasn’t prepared to admit to it yet.
My gaze remained fixed on her face as she scrunched her eyebrows, focusing on the sculpture. With one blink, her irises flickered from slate gray to a more vivid, iridescent blue, and my heartbeat stuttered. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was a dragon, but the abundance of earth magic that permeated the air in this studio was more than enough to prove otherwise.
Her face practically burst into joyful wonder. “Holy shit. Did I make that?”
I laughed. “You will. Your intentions are as clear as they can be through the magic. With this kind of pre-planning and with the magic on your side, there’s no way you won’t complete it just as you’ve envisioned it here.”
She frowned and released my hand, crossing her arms. “Well, you wouldn’t know it based on our complete lack of progress the past few days. Everything wants to break.” She reached for a couple of the pipes laying on the table and held them up. The ends were sharp, jagged points, as if the pipe had turned brittle and snapped like a twig. Then she stomped over to a huge metal trash can and tilted the opening toward me, revealing a pile of broken glass.
That made no sense. I bent down and examined the broken metal pipe, touching the end, my stomach twisted into knots, and I recoiled. Chaos.
But my former boss was preoccupied with the Pandemonium casino and his new bride. What the hell would he want with a member of the Bloodline? Unless this was what Deva had been talking about when she said that Chaos was after the Bloodline just to stick it to Fate for some reason.
“What is it? You look like you just ate a lemon,” April said.
“Can I watch you work? I might be able to help figure out what’s wrong.” The sense of unease didn’t abate when I put the metal down, but I kept my voice steady to avoid alarming her.
She crowded closer, looking up into my eyes. “You know something, don’t you?” She asked in a low voice. “Are you thinking it’s something…magical…that caused this?”
“I don’t want to speculate just yet. Give me some time here to observe, and I’ll be able to say for certain.”
“Just observe? Because we can always use another set of hands.” She gave me a sly look but held my gaze intently until I cracked.
Laughing, I said, “Fine. My hands are yours to command, mistress.”
5
April
I started out with the intention of hazing Gray a little, throwing commands at him left and right as I got down to the business of continuing where I’d left off earlier. He inserted himself seamlessly into the flow of our routine, generally being right where I needed him when I needed him, whether it was with a torch or a set of tongs or any number of other tools.
I slipped into the zone eventually and forgot about my assistants entirely, at least to the point that I was aware they were there, working as extensions of myself and my vision. I’d already spent enough time with Renee and Josh that they understood my tells. Gray caught on within moments.
Music kept us in motion for several hours non-stop, and it wasn’t until I heard the same Fate’s Fools song I was sure I’d heard earlier bumping through the speakers that I did the math. My hot shop playlist was long. If it was repeating, we were long overdue for a break.
“Let’s take a breather after this,” I said, tapping the pipe and letting the caged globe slip softly into the enormous fiberglass gloves covering Renee’s hands to the elbows.
Renee set off on yet another
rushed walk to the row of annealers where Josh already waited to open the door for her to place the precious item within. We’d perfected the routine like a dance to ensure the piece didn’t remain out of the annealer any longer than absolutely necessary. It would be set inside the protective heat with the door sealed shut, where it could cool down gradually over the next thirty minutes to avoid breaking due to stress after we took it out.
Gray shadowed Renee the entire way, and even though my assistants and I had done this dozens of times, I still held my breath until the piece was secure. Just as Renee neared the end of her trip and Josh reached for the latch on the door, she stumbled, the toe of her boot catching on some invisible obstruction. My heart lurched, and I darted forward, grabbing a pair of gloves on the way and sending up a prayer that this piece would make it to its destination.
Josh’s eyes went wide, and Renee let out an incoherent yelp of dismay. The caged globe wobbled in her grip like a slippery football. Gray’s hands shot out just as it tipped past her fingers.
“No!” I closed the distance as fast as I could, frantically shoving my hands into the gloves as I dove to catch the falling glass. The metal filigree surrounding the glass might prevent it from breaking if it hit the floor, but I really didn’t want to take that chance.
Renee dropped to her knees in an effort to reclaim her hold, but it was too late. Gravity took over, I landed hard on the floor in front of her, the globe seeming to hover in the air above me as I stretched out my hands. Too late, I realized I only had on one glove, the other dropped and forgotten to free my other hand. I grabbed the piece with both hands, not even thinking. At the same time, Gray’s hands clamped around the piece too.
“Open the door!” he snapped.
