He’d climbed the wall and hung from the ceiling, waiting for an opportunity to lift Mira. Dragon had hung upside down, transferring to Ladon the discomfort in his talons caused by fire creeping through the ceiling, as much to punctuate Rysa’s pain as his own.
Ladon carried Rysa out of the house and onto the burning grass. She gasped, unable to breathe. Her soul melted in front of Ladon’s eyes.
Mira clawed and bit, and Dragon dropped her before backing away. Her sword had blown out with the door and now poked out of the deck’s wood cross pieces. She lunged for it.
“Mira!” Ladon bellowed. The house burned behind her, hot enough now she glistened with sweat and effort. “Come with us.” He reached out his hand. She’d stop the ranting when the burndust wore out of her system. And then he’d make sure she apologized to her daughter.
Mira’s gaze landed on Rysa and she stared, her eyes blank but her brow furrowed, and she tilted her head to the side, like a Burner. Her seer blasted through the backyard and Ladon winced, the jarring clanging of her ability smacking against his mind.
Like her future-seeing brother and her past-seeing sister, Mira had always been slightly musical, like an instrument left in the wind. The Jani Prime could have been good, if good had been their talisman.
Their fate.
“It’s going to kill her.” She continued to stare, her head tilting farther. “Her talisman. It’ll cover her mind with thicker and thicker coats of ash and fire.”
Mira would blister if she didn’t move away from the house. “Come away.” Ladon held out his hand again. “You can help. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Rysa would not die. Nor was she going to face a future full of agony or lies. He’d make sure. This time, he’d respond fast enough.
“Before, when I blacked out, I saw my dad,” Rysa whispered.
Ladon bent closer. “You’re safe. We’re here.” She’d suffered enough.
“He vanished one day. I don’t know where he is.” She pulled away. The brilliance of her seers washed over him and, dazzled by the full beauty of her potential, his hold on her loosened.
Her arms dropped and the damned shackles slid down her wrists. She didn’t move.
“Mira!” Ladon didn’t know what to do. How was he supposed to help a singular Fate? He barely understood the workings of a triad.
Though he should. After centuries, he should.
Human!
Another Burner burst out of the patio door. Mira swung, her sword slicing with vengeance. The neck of the Burner split. Mira screamed and the blade dropped from her curled fingers.
Behind Ladon, Dragon dodged the crafty Burner who’d punched Mira—the one with the British accent.
The Burner Mira sliced imploded into a writhing red ball. She leaned back, her body countering the pull. Then she leaned forward, her eyes narrow. Her hand rose, her head still tilted, and her finger slid across the implosion’s surface.
Dragon slapped the British Burner into the woods behind the house and pivoted, his intent to grab Mira.
Her eyelids drooped. She stared at her finger tip, her face slack like she’d given up. She didn’t look at Ladon. She didn’t look at Rysa.
Next to him, Rysa’s foot planted and her body tensed in preparation to leap. “Mom!”
Ladon lifted Rysa into the air. If she moved closer to her mother, she’d get hurt when the ball exploded. She might die.
Mira licked the liquid from her finger.
Dragon lunged across the deck. Mira vanished just as the Burner ball exploded. Ladon curled around Rysa, his hand on her head to protect her eyes.
He’d seen other Fates breathe burndust. Take it in to cloak themselves in its randomness. It hid them from all seers and made them invisible to their own kind. But he’d never seen a Fate take from an implosion.
She rips at my coat. The beast let go and Mira tumbled through the grass fires spreading across the lawn. I cannot hold her.
“Mom!” Rysa thrashed like her mother and pummeled Ladon’s shoulder. “No no no!”
Something he’d never experienced happened. Something so utterly brand new he didn’t know how to respond: Her seers latched onto his connection to Dragon. Ladon stopped cold in his tracks. Dragon rolled onto his back, his hide sparking with wild, mixed-up flame patterns. Rysa connected to them—how, neither he nor the beast could fathom. No Fate had ever felt their connection before, much less touched it. Only once had a Shifter heard Dragon, and that was long, long ago. And they never saw the woman again.
But Rysa’s seers curled around their connection in what felt like long, finger-like waves, and caressed both his and the beast’s minds.
Her world lurched and his perception followed, flat-lining. Everything turned a single radiance. It all held the same importance. Sparkles ignited along the tree’s bark, the fire heating their sap to bursting. The remains of the house sparkled as well, and strange chemicals lifted from the debris as a colored haze. People filled the streets, robes pulled tight around thick waists as they backed away from the hell pouring into their neighborhood.
He saw it, but he didn’t hear.
He blinked, the roar of the real world suddenly snapping back. He couldn’t know about the people. The normals were on the other side of the house, blocked from his vision.
Rysa’s seers had backwashed into his mind. But how was it they carried no sound?
Ladon dropped to his knees, Rysa against his chest. He’d never been connected to a seer before, felt its power from the inside. Seers danced on the edges of his consciousness, mostly grinding against his mind. Sometimes they filled his head with music, from the few Fates whose souls weren’t polluted.
Musical seers, like Rysa’s. But the Burner chaos disrupted her abilities and made a cacophony, not a symphony. Maybe that was why wrongness backwashed with her seers.
Her siphoning flipped and pushed toward him. The world oscillated from too dim to too bright.
We must leave, Dragon pushed.
Ladon didn’t hear. He didn’t understand. He missed the beast’s words, the vision pulling him in too many directions.
Rysa tightened her arms around his neck. Her terror flickered through his mind, a dancing clown flailing its arms and cackling for her attention. And his too, now.
Mira ran for the trees behind the house. The British Burner followed. Ladon spun, Rysa in his arms, his mind in a desperate spiral as he tried to parse where each individual Burner was located. They danced like idiots through the backyard and surrounded the thrashing Mira.
He let go of Rysa. Mira needed—
Human!
Rysa coughed. She stepped toward Mira and away from him. She moved toward the Burners.
Dragon’s tail swished across the burning grass, a great arc of shadow through the flickering. Protect Rysa!
By the trees, the British Burner grinned, his teeth as hot as the fire. Mira swung at his head but he dodged and clamped his fist around her elbow. He yanked her closer and the fingers of his other hand skipped over her flesh as if he played a tune.
Mira screamed.
The Burner’s gaze locked to Ladon’s. The ghoul licked the skin from Mira’s forearm.
“Mom!” Rysa fought against Ladon’s grip, her seers sparking. Her body shook as Mira’s agony echoed in her limbs.
Ladon had seen such attachment before with children, even as adults, whose family was their core. Attachments to parents who soothed tears and celebrated achievements. He never expected to see it between Fates, and especially not between Jani Fates.
Mira wrenched away from the Burner. Blood coated her arm and the talisman bracelet around her damaged wrist slid onto her palm. He grabbed for her again but she threw the talisman of the Jani Prime at Ladon’s head.
He caught it, the gold eagle clinking against a wedding band looped onto the heavy chain. Rysa clutched the bracelet before he could wipe away her mother’s blood.
Mira yelled again, but her words disappeared into the thunder of t
he fire.
She said ‘Keep her safe.’ The Burners had formed a wall between Dragon and the trees. I cannot get close.
“Mom…” Rysa slumped against Ladon’s chest.
The beast’s head swung around and a pulse washed over Rysa to Ladon. A new vision takes her. Dragon rolled between Ladon and the Burners, his concern flooding through their connection. He staggered slightly, the images of flames covering his hide danced out of sync with the real fire surrounding them.
Rysa’s siphoning disoriented the beast as much as it disoriented the man.
“My mother’s wedding ring. My mother’s charm. My mother is gone. Vanished like Dragon.” Her breath rushed in stuttered breaks. “Gone invisible to mimic the burning world.”
What was she seeing to speak in such riddles?
Mira screamed one last time. Even through the haze and the heat mirages, Ladon saw a sudden regret take her body. Her shoulders slumped. She pointed at Rysa but yelled something at the British Burner, something Ladon did not hear.
The ghoul swung to slap, but she bolted into the trees. The other Burners watched, their heads swiveling between Mira’s escape and Dragon standing between them and Rysa.
They ran after Mira.
We must leave. Dragon pushed him toward the neighbor’s yard. She distracts them. We must protect Rysa.
“But—” What would happen to Rysa if they abandoned her mother? Even after all Mira said, Rysa trembled in his arms.
The Jani will retaliate. The Burners are no longer our problem. The beast ran behind the houses toward their van.
The familiar stretching ache, as the distance between him and Dragon grew, twisted inside Ladon’s muscles. He had no choice but to scoop up Rysa and follow.
Her ice cold arms sucked away his warmth though her skin, flush from the fire. He ran across a picnic table, jumping up and over a fence.
Her mother’s blood streaked her cheek. He stopped, Dragon skidding across the lawn next to him. The blood dripped down her jaw, thicker than it should be from a simple fingerprint. He dropped her feet and she teetered, grasping for his arms.
His gut clenched like he’d been punched. A tongue-shaped streak colored the sleeve of her shirt. “Did one of them bite you?” Ladon asked. But none had gotten close enough.
He pulled up the fabric and peered into the space between her wrist and the shackle and saw a bite identical to the wound Billy inflicted on Mira. He lifted Rysa’s other arm. Another one, under her sleeve, but higher up.
She was manifesting the Burner’s attacks on her mother.
How can this be? Ladon pushed to Dragon. They’d never seen anything like it. Even members of a triad were not connected with such strength.
A porch light flicked on. Ladon lifted her again and darted toward the van.
“Everything burns.” Her voice all but vanished into the fire’s roar. The siphoning ceased, but he still felt the defeat pushing from deep inside her mind.
Over the course of his long life, he’d seen death and terror and anguish. He’d caused his fair share. He’d seen Fates and Shifters cause more. Sometimes, every few centuries, it got to him. He’d wake in a cold sweat, an overwhelming dread that he’d lost Dragon destroying all other thoughts.
When it happened, his limbs turned to ice, as Rysa’s did in his arms.
He’d been cruel when she first woke, his words gruff. He’d shut out her concerns with his anger. The hurt had washed across her face before she opened the van’s door. He’d seen it magnified in her eyes when he followed her into the house. She’d run from him.
She’d tried to save the one person who, until moments before, had treated her with kindness.
He held her closer, a new resolve taking hold.
He’d never be heartless with her again.
Rysa clutched the bracelet and the ring. The shackles scraped his neck, her tears dampening his hair below his ear. She breathed in shallow inhales, each intake tight and constricted.
“When I hurt you, please forgive me.” Her lips grazed the collar of his jacket. “Please come for me.”
Forgive her? What was she seeing? “Rysa?”
Her eyes didn’t focus. She saw only this new vision. Yet her face showed openness again, like it had in the lot when she activated. Open and happy, wide-eyed and calm, for him. Even though the Burners dragged away Mira. Though he’d been callous. Though she bled from wounds that were not her own.
Her face held no edge of fear. No undercurrent of sharp tension because, deep in her gut, she thought him a threat. She offered only a future he didn’t deserve.
“Beautiful.” How could she give him such trust? If she knew him, she’d think better of it.
He carried her around another house to the van. Dragon set her on the blankets as Ladon pulled the door closed.
We must dress her wounds. Dragon dabbed at the blood.
Her chest heaved. She pulled herself into a tight ball, still not aware of where she was. Ladon touched her elbow and her shoulder. Mira’s ramblings about a burning world meant nothing—Fates, as a breed, constantly issued dire warnings about one apocalypse or another, mostly to scare the normals into submission.
No person as good as Rysa would set fire to the world.
Dragon stroked her forehead. Her fever has returned.
Ladon touched her cheek. “Maybe it’s from the house.” But a new fear crept into his mind: The present-seer of the Jani Prime had uttered one truth.
Rysa’s talisman might do as Mira prophesied and as the layers of ash solidified, she’d solidify with them. She’d die.
Marcus will know what to do.
Ladon’s core squeezed. Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus, the only Fates Ladon had ever called ally. Now only one brother remained. “That’s not a good idea.” Marcus would not be happy if Ladon appeared on the past-seer’s doorstep, Rysa in his arms. Not happy at all. Ladon had ceased to be a true friend a century and a half ago.
She should not have uncalled visions, Human.
“I know.” Her skin did feel hot to the touch.
On the edges of his mind, her three seers twined into an indistinguishable knot. It disguised their resonance, which was why he hadn’t noticed before and why he’d thought she had one that slipped and darted. They overlaid each other and he couldn’t tease apart which one played and when. She probably couldn’t, either. Damned Burners had hobbled a very rare Fate.
“Ladon.” She caressed his arm to his palm and settled her fingers into his.
Agony still contorted her face and body. Ladon looked up at Dragon as the beast settled next to her, his huge hand splayed over her hip.
We must hurry, the beast pushed.
10
Ladon’s memory, long distant with time:
He stepped back as the blast from the forge rushed over his protective leathers. The new blade glowed with the perfect temperature, the exact brilliance and malleability he needed. Satisfied, he lifted his work to the anvil.
He swung his hammer. Metal met metal and he listened to the clang—and for the changes to bring superior balance and strength to this new sword. Another clang and his body responded.
Clang! Ladon’s back and arm fell into the perfect rhythm to make a perfect blade.
Requests for tools had been placed—tilling implement, some fasteners—and he’d start those next. They’d lived in this part of Gaul for more than four decades—long enough for the offspring of his Legio Draconis men to produce their own offspring. Stones had been placed and walls erected. Their encampment had grown into a settlement and now Legio grandchildren overran everything, climbing on wagons, stockades—and dragon haunches.
Ladon smiled as his hammer descended. He’d not have it any other way.
The blade formed true. He let his thoughts follow, dropping into the swing of his muscles. This life, away from the dying carcass of Rome, had finally brought calm to him and his sister.
Alarms sounded. Ladon stopped mid-swing, his attention jerked to just outs
ide the smithy entrance. Jarring patterns oscillated over Dragon’s hide as the beast reared up. Parcae!
Sister-Dragon sprinted by outside, Sister following as she buckled into her armor. They’d be through the gate and into the forest before Ladon pulled his leathers over his head.
He dropped the new blade into the quench. Throwing his gauntlets at the wall, he pushed through the door and into the courtyard. “Armor! Now!”
Dragon pranced, his head up as he listened to his sister. More than one triad approaches.
What could they want? Fates came near at their own peril. All the families knew to stay away from Ladon and his sister.
His Second appeared, armor draped over the big man’s elbow and Ladon’s stallion saddled and in tow. Ladon threaded his arms through the breastplate as he swung up to the saddle. “Pull in everyone.”
The man glowered, his gaze darting to the others yelling and arming themselves throughout their fortification. They were fighters unparalleled by any Roman military unit, but they were normals and Shifters. Fates would shred them.
“Do as I say.” Ladon’s stallion lurched, agitated by the flames curling from Dragon’s mouth. “You are not to engage Fates.”
His Second listened, thank the gods, and would keep their people safe.
Dragon undulated through the gate and Ladon’s stretching connection to the beast raked hot coals over his nerves. The beast stopped outside, his head swinging back and forth as he waited for Ladon’s stallion to catch up.
Undergrowth and forest started three dragon lengths from his stallion’s pawing hooves, brambles less so. Fates’ seers flowed like blood between the trees, but Ladon’s connection to Sister-Dragon quieted—they had already moved too deep into the timbers for him to hear the other dragon.
A bush moved, punctuated by panting, and a lad burst from the underbrush. “Our mother!”
A second young man, his build and face identical to the first’s, stumbled out of the trees behind his brother, a woman limp in his arms. He dropped to his knees in front of Ladon’s stallion, his chest heaving.
The woman’s present-seer sputtered, as if she’d lost control. It cried out like a rasp against wood and Ladon felt the hole gouged into her mind. She’d lost a triad mate. In front of him, the woman’s mind bled onto the dirt with the words babbling from her mouth.
Games of Fate (Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon #1) Page 7
