by Lily Cahill
“Oh, I need to?” Blayze rolled his eyes. “Where was the forgiveness when I had that little mishap in Memphis, hmm? None of you were feeling quite as forgiving of me, back then.”
“Well, between you and Damien, one of you has a habit of—”
“Both of you, shut up.” Damien couldn’t listen to another word. Arryn touched his shoulder in comfort as the clearing appeared ahead of them. Freedom. Safety. Relief coursed through Damien’s veins, even if there was still a twinge or something else, panging inside of him.
Regret.
He wanted it to be regret for his weakness, his readiness to fall for such a trap, but it wasn’t. Not really. He regretted that he felt so strongly for Felicity, even now. That part of him still wanted her.
Arryn stepped ahead of the group, into the clearing, and began to shed his clothes and stuff them into his duffle. Shifting was hardest for him, and he usually went first when they were together, since it took him longer than most. The sounds of his bones popping and reforming hit Damien like a blow. It must have been months since his brother had given in to his second self.
When he was done, a large, green dragon stood before the rest of them. They hurried out of their clothes, stuffing them in their bags.
Vincent went next, his transition smooth and soundless. He stood before them in brilliant red scales. Blazye’s second form gleamed gold in the dim moonlight, and finally Damien shifted, giving in to the momentary delight of feeling his wings sprout from his skin, even as guilt thrummed through him for being the cause of this move.
Damien clutched the strap of his duffle bag with his long, silver talons, careful not to cut through the fabric. His brothers waited for his cue; they still deferred to him after all this time, simply because he was the oldest. He spread out his wings and let them beat powerfully in the night air. Beneath his clawed feet, the grass bent under the wind he created.
Damien lifted into the night sky, momentarily enjoying the cool air against his scales, the way it cut over him. He heard his brothers take off below him as he rose higher and higher, getting there as quick as he could. The sooner he vanished behind the cloud cover, the better. Then, they could disappear, as they had done so many times before. Go to a new place, assume new identities, start over. It was not going to be easy. In fact, it was going to be damned difficult.
As he broke through the clouds and headed east, Damien tried not to think of Felicity.
The safe house may have been safe, but it barely qualified as a house.
The walls and floors were riddled with rotting wood, the furniture was old and musty, the sheets moth-eaten. The electricity didn’t work, and the only kind of plumbing was a dirty old outhouse that had not seen a cleaning in a long time.
It was less than ideal, and as the four brothers entered, Damien could feel their disappointment. He knew it wasn’t only that the house was a shithole. Augustus had been special to all of them. Integration between those with magic and mortals was not uncommon, but to have such a diverse, beautiful city at their fingertips—in all his years, Damien had never seen its equal. Augustus was a beautiful haven, and he’d loved it for the couple of years they had lived there. He knew his brothers had felt the same.
And he’d taken that away from him. Shame sat palpably on his shoulders, only lifting when it turned to a burning anger around his heart. How dare the Valdez family take this from them, too?
He wanted to rip out Jorge Valdez’s throat with his long, sharp dragon’s teeth—and he would have, too, if not for the prophecy. The great will fall, their sons will follow in their footsteps. Damn the thing.
Blayze stalked past Damien and kicked open the nearest door. He motioned the other three forward with a groan, gesturing at something inside the room. Damien stepped to his brother’s side, repressing a sigh at what he saw.
“Bunk beds,” Blayze spat, a growl in his voice. “I am way too old to sleep in a goddamned bunk bed.”
Vincent shoved past Blayze in the doorway, not sparing a glare. “Then perhaps you and your pride will be more comfortable on the floor.”
“Vin, I swear, if you don’t shut the hell up—”
The anger at Felicity was still hot in Damien’s chest. Without trying, his firestarter clicked loudly. He could feel the red-hot temptation to transform simmering just below his skin.
At the sound, both Vincent and Blayze fell silent.
“What’s done is done,” he said. He hoped he sounded calmer than he felt, but he doubted it. “I am sorry, but I cannot change it now. Stop picking fights with each other and be angry with me, if you want to be angry with someone.”
He looked around the room. There was one set of bunkbeds, pushed up against the back wall. The only window was blocked off with heavy, black curtains. There was no other furniture in the room, just a hole in the floorboards where some of them had rotted away.
“I’ll go see if there are more beds,” he muttered, turning and leaving his brothers behind.
The next room was a closet, the one next to it a rudimentary kitchen. There was a small generator in the corner, and a couple of hotplates sitting on the ground next to it. They had power after all, but they’d have to be careful. Ration it out, conserve it until they’d picked their next cover story, established their new lives.
Damien thought of Augustus, of the French restaurant where he’d been able to secure a reservation because the owners knew and liked his brother. It had taken him so long to get over his fears and be willing to establish ties in a community. He’d really thought that he and his brothers had found a home, there, hiding in plain sight among the other shifters.
The only other room in the small house was the sitting room through which they had entered. No other beds, then, just a dank old couch. Arryn wandered in behind him, a grimace on his face.
“You going to take the sofa, then?”
Damien sighed. He had messed everything up, so it was only fair that he take the floor. “Nah, you go for it. You okay?”
Arryn shrugged his duffle off his shoulder and unzipped it, finding a sleeping bag within. It looked like it had been magically shrunk to fit. He whispered a word, and the thing unfolded to its regularly size.
“That’s a helpful spell.” Damien nodded toward the bag. “Who did it for you?”
“A witch,” Arryn answered. His voice was curiously flat. “I had her do it a while ago, just in case. We hadn’t been uprooted in a long time. I figured our luck would run out soon enough.”
Damien sighed and went for his own duffle. He hadn’t had room for a sleeping bag, just a blanket he’d shoved in from his bedding. He laid it out on the floor. On the couch, Arryn settled into his bag, on his back, staring toward the ceiling.
“You really thought this girl was—was some kind of character from one of Dad’s stories?”
As Damien settled, he looked up at his little brother. Arryn had been six when the prophecy had been given and their parents had died. Damien had done all he could, but life was long, and Arryn’s memories of the parents who had loved him were few, especially with over two decades of distance from them.
Now, he could see the toll that took on Arryn: He barely ever turned, only when he absolutely couldn’t help it. It made his brother, all fair hair and bright eyes, seem older. Colder. More remote.
“Not a character, exactly. The old stories said that there was one woman in all of time who could love both the man and the dragon within. Timonius did fall at once, with pretty words did charm her, and Grizelda loved him faithfully, in both his scales and his armor,” Damien quoted. Their father had loved that story and had always cast a fond look at their mother whenever he retold it.
Arryn sighed. “And you thought this girl was your … Grizelda?” He sounded understandably skeptical.
The words caught in Damien’s throat, and he found it hard to choke them out. It felt so foolish, now, to admit the thoughts that had gone through his head. He had never been the romantic idiot, prone to bouts of sworn de
votion. That was part of the reason he’d trusted the feeling so much, so quickly: This wasn’t his usual way, so it had to be special to make him act so differently.
She had to be special.
“It was stupid,” Damien said quietly. “But I’ve never—there’s never been ….” He shook away the idea. It still pained him. “It’s just a story. I see that now. I think I wanted to believe that it could be true. The prophecy—it predicted our parents’ deaths, but it also predicted ours. I’ve waited twenty years for us to meet the same fate, and sometimes I think the waiting is harder than the dying would be. But I thought … if the prophecy has to be true, why can’t the happier stories be so, as well?”
A beam of moonlight cut across Arryn’s face. He was frowning at the ceiling, but he didn’t look angry—just sad.
“I think I understand,” Arryn said. “I’m sorry, Damien, that it wasn’t true. I’m sorry she wasn’t worthy of your love.”
Damien sucked in a deep breath. That little bit of forgiveness did nothing big, in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t make planning their new lives any easier, it didn’t make forging new documents or finding a new magical community any less of a pain. But it did make facing the next day a little less awful, and that was enough.
“Do you think the rest of the prophecy will come true?” Arryn cut in, his voice loud in the near-silence of the safe house. “About how we’ll follow Mother and Father into death?”
That was the biggest, more frightening question of them all: What if this was how it happened? What if, after years of running, Damien had taken down his walls around the one person he shouldn’t have trusted? What if he was the cause of the Dragomir downfall?
What if he had just gotten all of them killed?
Chapter Seven
Felicity
JOY LOOKED SMALL IN THE sterile hospital bed.
There were all sorts of machines hooked up to her sister’s body, beeping and taking readings. Felicity looked at them without really seeing them; she felt empty. It was like there was so much going on inside of her that her body decided the best way to handle it was to not handle anything. Damien Dragomir was alive, her sister had done something self-destructive again—
She’d used what little presence of mind she’d had to flash her last name and get Joy a private room right away. Although Felicity had sworn to herself that she’d never do that again, never use her family to get what she wanted, this had seemed like a good reason to break that personal rule. If word got out that Joy Valdez was living under a different name in a different town and was still getting into trouble—the paparazzi would be out here in Augustus faster than she cared to imagine.
The doctor hadn’t stopped by since Felicity had arrived forty-five minutes earlier, still in her date clothes, hair a mess. A nurse had popped her head in long enough to let Felicity know that “some pixie” had dropped off Joy at the ER, but that the girl had not given a name, and had left without answering any questions.
Felicity’s blood boiled to think of it. Tania was definitely going to hear from her about that.
And through it all, she couldn’t help but remember the ghost of Damien’s hands on her skin, the feel of his body against hers, inside hers ….
He was a Dragomir. And he was alive.
It was so impossible that Felicity struggled to wrap her mind around it. Her father had been the Dragomir’s most trusted advisor, but he had grown disgusted with their bids for power, their tyrannical control of the magic community, their inability to be reasoned with. There’d been calls for a more democratic form of government, and the Dragomirs had ignored them, safe in their palace, ruling on high.
Her father had always told her that he’d not been able to abide it, that his conscience had demanded that he act. He’d tried for years to make peaceful suggestions only to have each one scorned. When he’d heard the prophecy, a trust misplaced will bring about the downfall—he’d known what it meant. He’d known what to do.
He’d pulled a “Macbeth,” had staged a bloody coup that shocked the world, and had taken over.
And now he was a sick old man, unable to leave his bed. Not even magic could cure everything.
Damien had to hate her. She would hate him, if she were in his place. She couldn’t blame him for his parents’ policies; he’d been a teenager when they’d died, nothing more than a bored prince inside of a castle. Her father had thought that the only way to have full control was to wipe out the line. She wondered if he ever regretted his actions, his murders.
Growing up, she’d been so sure he’d been justified in his actions. The older she got, however, the harder it was for her to see what he did as anything other than wrong.
And now she’d accidentally found Damien Dragomir, and he had assumed the worst of her intentions. He thought she was a plant, and that this was all a ruse to gain his trust and, what, kill him?
Her heart ached. She had felt something so intense, so powerful with him. It had been … special.
There was a knock on the door, and all of Felicity’s thoughts flew away.
“Miss Valdez?” The doctor was slight and pretty, with almond eyes and dark hair. “I’m Dr. Chen.”
“I prefer Morningstar, actually,” Felicity said. She took a deep breath as soon as the words were out of her mouth. What difference did that make right now? “Is Joy going to wake up soon?”
She glanced at her sister as she said it. Joy looked waxy and pale, nearly the same color as her sheets.
Dr. Chen maintained her professional demeanor, her face a blank slate that gave nothing away. “We’re keeping your sister in a medically-induced coma at the moment. We don’t believe this was a normal overdose.”
A normal overdose. What the hell did that even mean? Like putting so much shit inside of her body that her body tried to shut down was normal.
“What happened, then?”
“We’re not sure yet, unfortunately. It appears that the drug was pixie dust, but we believe it must have been cut with something else, something that has caused this reaction. She was seizing when her friend brought her in, and we’ve been worried about internal hemorrhaging—”
“What?” Felicity felt her heart stop beating. “But—but she didn’t OD, so why is this happening?”
Dr. Chen gave her best sympathetic face, but her bedside manner wasn’t helping with Felicity’s frayed nerves. “It could be that she was allergic to whatever she took, or that it was mixed with a non-magical drug in a sort of speedball. Maybe it was cut with something dangerous. We won’t know until we get the bloodwork back.”
The pixie dust had to have been accidentally tainted in some way. Joy wasn’t stupid. Reckless, sure. But she’d never done anything like a magical version of a speedball.
“If I find out what was wrong with it, will it help?”
“Felicity,” Dr. Chen said with narrowed eyes. “Do you know something you haven’t shared? You shouldn’t worry about what kind of trouble your sister will be in.”
Felicity shook her head. “I don’t know anything. But I think I know who does.”
Teleportation spells used a lot of power, but Felicity did one, anyway, ending up in an alley near the Maxwell’s store. She was running on so much adrenaline that she barely even felt a dint in her magic, and immediately spelled her outfit into something more comfortable. Her high heels became sneakers, her tight dress became a T-shirt and jeans. They didn’t fit perfectly, everything a bit too big—her concentration was off.
The Maxwell’s store was brightly lit and cheerful, one of the last shops on the street that was still open. They were generally open and closed when they wanted, on average staying open until as late as midnight.
Felicity looked down the neatly stacked aisles and found the essentials—the bare minimum for groceries, cleaning supplies. There was a small apothecary at the back of the store, their magical ingredients section surprisingly well-stocked.
Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell were behind the counter, but th
ey stopped talking as soon as they noticed Felicity coming toward them. Mrs. Maxwell painted on a fake smile. She suspected they blamed Joy as much for Tania’s behavior as she blamed Tania for Joy’s. There was no love lost between them, but they were always cordial when they saw Felicity because she bought so many supplies from them.
“How can I help you, Felicity?” Mrs. Maxwell asked.
“I’m looking for your daughter, actually. Is Tania around?”
Mrs. Maxwell’s smile faded just the tiniest bit. “You don’t happen to know what’s wrong with her, do you? She’s been acting strange all night.”
“I have an idea.”
The door to the backroom burst open, and Tania stalked past her parents and out around the counter, grabbing Felicity’s wrist and dragging her along. She tugged Felicity with her into the storeroom, where Tania’s brother, Zeke, was purported to sell his drugs.
He was sitting there, his hair the same shade of pink as Tania’s, his eyes bright and slit like a cat’s.
“I swear to God, I don’t know what happened,” he said, getting to his feet as soon as he saw Felicity. He brought up his hands as if to keep her away. “Seriously, Felicity, you have to believe me.”
Her anger boiled over, and she glared at Zeke. As she opened her mouth, ready to deliver the kind of verbal ass-kicking he so richly deserved, her phone began to buzz in her pocket.
Felicity’s heart dropped. Was it the hospital?
She scrambled to get her phone out, unlocking the screen to see not the hospital, but a text from her cousin, asking if everything was okay with Joy. She felt brittle, like she could break at any moment. If her cousin knew, then everyone at home new. And if they knew, there’d been a leak at the hospital. And if there’d been a leak at the hospital, it was only a matter of time before the shit show descended, and she and Joy were at the center of it.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment to breathe. Now was not the time to worry about this. Now was the time for getting some answers.
When she opened her eyes again, both of the Maxwell siblings were staring at her fearfully. Good. She could be her father’s daughter today, if it meant getting the answers she needed.
