by C. I. Black
His hands slipped to the door handle, but he yanked back before he could open the door and forced himself to move to the other side of the Handmaiden’s chair and table.
Keep going. Out the door. Into the hall. Leave her.
But he couldn’t make his legs take him any farther.
Mother, please. For all he knew, as soon as she’d closed the door, she’d called Court security and Regis’s men were on the way to arrest him. He couldn’t stay and he couldn’t summon a gate until he’d left the Handmaiden’s chambers.
He forced himself to face the way out.
Now go into the hall. Just. Do. It. He’d done harder things before. Hell, he’d battled his fear of the human realm to summon a gate when he’d thought Hunter’s life was in jeopardy, and then gated there numerous times in the last few weeks. Taking six steps out of a room was easy.
Really.
He started to turn back to the inner chamber.
No. With a roar, he wrenched himself into the hall and slammed the door shut.
Something snapped, as if the distance of the Handmaiden’s chamber and two closed doors was what he’d needed to break whatever spell Tobias’s agent had cast on him. Except he knew she hadn’t cast anything. She just was. Calm. Young. A drake with a fraction of the history of any other drake. When he looked at her, memories didn’t flood him. Even the memories of the Handmaiden’s chambers had eased — probably due to his fascination with her.
His phone rang and he drew it from his pocket. No number. That meant it was Anaea, Diablo, or Nero. It could also be Hunter.
Please let it be Hunter and he’s found the Handmaiden.
“Hello?”
“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe for you to return to Court,” Nero growled over the line, no doubt his concern more for the safety of his puzur, his unusual, secret coterie of natural human mages than for Grey’s well-being.
“Tobias assured me it was safe.”
“That’s not what Diablo said.”
Which was true. Tobias hadn’t said it was safe, only that it wasn’t a trap. “I’m leaving now. We need to talk.”
“Yes,” Nero said, his tone dark. “We do.”
A masculine voice from down the hall said something, and two Court guards — both broad-shouldered, muscular men, a foot shorter than Grey — sauntered around the corner.
Shit.
Grey ended the call and pocketed his phone as he headed in the opposite direction, praying the guards wouldn’t notice him.
“Hey,” one of them called in a reedy tenor.
So much for that.
Grey rushed around the closest corner and bolted down the hall, trying to get to the next turn before the guards could see him. If he fought, even if he won, the guards would get a good look at him and report back to Regis. That would only make things worse. If there wasn’t already an official warrant for Grey’s arrest, one would certainly be issued. If he lost, it would be worse than worse. Buying enough time to make a gate and hope the guards didn’t recognize him was his best bet.
“Stop.” This voice was deeper, a rich baritone.
Grey picked up speed and hurried around the corner. The two chambers in this hall had been sealed five hundred years ago. At the very least, he had to get to the next hall over, and at best, without them seeing which room he’d then enter.
“I said stop,” Baritone yelled.
A blast of wind pounded into Grey’s back and slammed him into the wall beside the first branch in the passage. His forehead cracked against the granite and pain snapped through his skull.
He staggered, fighting to keep his balance. The hall twisted and the reek of rotting garbage rushed around him.
Not now.
Wind billowed again, this time slicing across his back.
“How fast can you heal, drake?” the memory hissed.
Not fast enough. It was never fast enough. He couldn’t even stand and fight. He didn’t have a weapon and he had no offensive earth magic.
The hall darkened and cold bit his face and fingers, except for a searing heat oozing from his temple down his cheek.
Blood. But the drakes in the alley had slashed his throat, not his face.
His thoughts stuttered.
The heat slipped under his jaw and slid down his neck.
He wasn’t in the alley or anywhere on earth. He was in Court and in danger.
Another slice of wind cut into his shoulder and the guards’ footsteps pounded closer.
He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the darkness remained, blinding him to his reality and yet not manifesting into a memory.
“Hold him,” Tenor said.
A hand shoved against Grey’s back.
God damn it. Out of options.
Grey wrenched his elbow up and slammed it into the face of the drake holding him. The pressure on his back vanished and a foggy hall materialized around him. Yes, there were two drakes. This was the present.
He grabbed the wrist of the drake he’d just stunned, thrust him against the granite wall, and dislocated his shoulder in one quick, violent twist.
The other drake grabbed the hilt of the machete sheathed at his hip and opened his mouth. To say his power word? Call for help? Grey didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. He rammed his fist into the drake’s neck before he could speak then yanked the machete free and slashed the guard’s throat. Blood sprayed the front of Grey’s dress shirt and splattered over his hands and arms. The guard clamped his hands over the wound, blood bubbling between his fingers, and staggered back.
The other drake behind Grey roared, and he spun to face him, slashing at neck height. The tip of the blade caught flesh, but the cut wasn’t deep enough to stop the guard.
Grey swung again. The only way to win this fight was to be faster, more aggressive, pray they didn’t have rapid healing and that he’d incapacitate them long enough to get away and make a gate.
The drake jerked back, and Grey’s second swing missed. Light flashed in Grey’s eyes and someone screamed. He gritted his teeth and swung again. A hand grabbed his wrist and biceps. The guard. It had to be the guard in front of him, the one still standing. Grey twisted before the drake could snap his elbow and rammed his heel into the drake’s knee.
Crack. The drake screamed, his face materializing through the light. Grey sliced the machete across the guard’s neck and shoved him back. More blood sprayed Grey. The guard collapsed beside the other one, who still gurgled but was climbing to his feet. Grey kicked him in the head, sending him tumbling over. The guard’s eyes rolled back and he stopped moving. But that wouldn’t last for long. While most drakes didn’t have rapid healing, they healed fast enough — and always faster than Grey.
He bolted around the corner, only half able to see through the haze of memories crowding his vision, dropped the machete then took off down another hall. Light flickered, blinding him, and the woman howled.
His breath hitched in his throat. His only saving grace in that fight had been almost two thousand years of fighting experience in his current human body, and he’d learned being vicious and fast was often the edge that won a fight.
The first of a dozen doors leading to abandoned chambers came into sight… or was that memory? He didn’t know if he saw reality or not. Did it matter? He wiped the blood off his hand on the clean underside of his shirt and grabbed a very real door handle. The room’s magic light flared to life, revealing an empty living room with kitchenette at the back, very much like the living quarters in his suite or Hunter’s here at Court.
Hunter’s Court furniture popped into sight, every available space on the wall covered with a painting or drawing or photograph of the sky. A part of him understood Hunter’s obsession with the sky. He could still remember flying, feeling the wind in his face and the strength in his wings. But he remembered it with perfect clarity as if he’d just been flying moments ago.
Hunter’s suite vanished, turning into a clear cloudless sky.
; No.
Grey squeezed his eyes shut, but the sky was still there, the earth a patchwork of fields and forests and lakes far below.
No no no.
Concentrate, damn it. He wasn’t flying, he was in Court, and he couldn’t stay. The guards had healed by now, and it wouldn’t take them long to find him standing, stunned, in this chamber.
A pinprick of darkness bled into the remembered cloudless blue, and he grasped at it. Gates were a black vortex leading through interdimensional space from one spot to another. A sci-fi movie would call it a wormhole or some such thing. He needed that. Now.
He hissed his power word, summoning the magic to open a gate. The power swept down his arm and burst from his hand. The darkness in his sky grew, devouring the blue, sucking at his soul, urging him to step through.
For a second, his vision cleared, revealing the empty chamber. The door to the hall opened, and the guards rushed inside, their uniforms stained with blood. The one in front yelled and raised his machete.
Grey wrenched forward into the gate, and the vortex sucked him in and spat him out into Nero’s living room, right where he’d left six hours ago. The lights were no longer on, but it was noon and brilliant sunlight shone through the massive bank of windows behind him. Diablo was gone, but Nero and Ryan sat in the armchairs across from the couch.
Ryan jerked to his feet and rushed to Grey. “Is that blood?”
“Not mine,” Grey gasped. Darkness from too many memories flooded around him, and he fought to stay in the living room with wide-eyed Ryan and glaring Nero.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Nero asked from his seat on the couch, his expression pinched as if he were in pain. If Grey hadn’t known that dragons never aged, he would have sworn the silver patches of hair at Nero’s temples had gotten bigger. “Regis has every Court guard on the lookout for you, and I just heard he’s placed a gate-trap on your suite.”
“Gate-trap?” Ryan asked. A handsome, muscular man with a square jaw and bright green eyes, he had a blue aura that made him look like a young blue drake — while Grey knew the man was human. The only way a dragon would be able to know Ryan was a mage was if that dragon possessed the rare ability to tell the difference in auras. Something Grey didn’t have.
“It lets someone gate in but not gate out.” Nero rubbed his temples. “The radius isn’t big, it might not even cover the entirety of a drake’s suite at Court, but—”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not going back,” Grey said. Any chance of safely returning was ruined forever by the fight with the Court guards. Not even Tobias would be able to protect him if he set foot in Court again.
Grey’s pulse jumped, sudden and furious. He was stuck in the human world. The world where drakes ambushed him, where he’d nearly died for good.
“How fast can you heal?” the voice hissed.
Sweat burst across Grey’s forehead and his throat ached.
“Shit.” Ryan’s eyes widened even more and his attention leapt over Grey’s shoulder to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the back of Nero’s massive estate. His aura flared, a sign his earth magic ability to see impending deaths had activated.
“Nero. Kid on the right. Grey. Get the one on the left.”
Ryan bolted past Grey and a blast of cold air — the now open patio door — slammed into Grey’s back. Nero leapt to his feet and raced past Grey.
He turned. Anaea, Raven, and six teens stood in knee-high snow. An earth magic training session to help those kids, natural human mages, control their newly awakened power — although Grey had no idea what was being taught. Everyone was screaming and scrambling away from Anaea, whose aura had grown to blindingly bright and was surrounded in a raging wind storm.
The wind slammed into Ryan and knocked him back. He rolled, scrambled to his feet, and dove for one of the kids. Nero raced toward the one on the right, while Raven — her waist-length ponytail whipping around her — grabbed the closest kid. That left two kids unprotected, Jeff — a bulky seventeen-year-old — and Mia — Nero’s fourteen-year-old auger.
They were too far apart. Grey couldn’t protect them both, but Ryan had said to grab the kid on the left. Jeff. He was just going to have to trust Ryan’s mystic sight.
CHAPTER 5
Anaea’s aura contracted for a split second then exploded with more force and light. The wave slammed into Grey, knocking him over, and the living room windows shattered. Massive shards of glass swept into the whirlwind. Pulse pounding, Grey scrambled to his feet, lunged for Jeff, and shoved him out of the way as shards slammed into the snow beside them.
Mia screamed. A piece the size and length of Grey’s arm hurtled toward her. Raven yelled her power word, and a blast of her wind slammed the glass into the trunk of the oak tree on the patio’s far side.
Anaea sobbed and her power wrenched her off her feet.
“Where’s Capri?” Grey yelled over the howl of the wind.
Nero jerked his kid out of the way of another flying shard. “On a call.”
Shit. Capri’s earth magic to manipulate the minds of humans was the only sure-fire way to stop Anaea — and even then, there wasn’t a guarantee it would work.
“Take a breath, Anaea,” Raven yelled.
“I’m trying,” Anaea said between clenched teeth. The whirlwind roared stronger and branches ripped free from the oak.
Grey yanked Jeff to his feet. “Help the others get clear.”
Jeff gave a tight nod, his expression filled with fear and determination, and he rushed to Mia, getting knocked off his feet by a blast of wind as he reached her.
“Anaea.” Grey shoved against the vortex, trying to reach her. “Anaea, look at me.”
“I don’t want to.” Tears leaked from her eyes but were caught up in her wind before dripping from her cheeks. “I’ll hurt you. I thought I was getting control. I thought—”
“I need you to look at me.” He had to get to her and calm her power before she tore the house apart.
Snow whipped around him. Jeff, Mia, Ryan, and two of the other kids were scrambling around the side of the house. They were almost clear. Raven and the two remaining kids weren’t far behind them.
“Look at me,” Grey yelled.
Anaea’s gaze jumped to him, and a blast of wind slammed into his chest.
She gasped and the whirlwind surged, ripping up chunks of hardened snow and the ornamental garden stones underneath.
“You can control this. Raven said to take a breath. Just take a breath.”
“I’m trying,” she sobbed.
“Take one with me.” Grey drew in a slow breath.
Her panicked sobbing turned into agonizing grief. “Oh, Grey. How can you just breathe? How can you stand? All that pain? It’s so strong. I feel it all.” Light blazed from her eyes and bored into him as if she could see his bleeding — always bleeding — soul. “Grey, I didn’t know.”
“I just breathe. All I can do is breathe.” He didn’t want to get into it. He never wanted to get into it, and if he ever did, now wouldn’t be the time. “Take a breath with me.”
He drew in another slow breath.
Anaea matched him.
The whirlwind trembled.
Something — ice or glass, he didn’t know — sliced his cheek, a quick bite of pain. He drew another breath.
A rock thudded into the ground beside his foot. Snow showered him, bright flecks reflecting the noon sunlight.
Anaea trembled. Her wind slashed around her, one last violent blow, then dumped her to the ground. Grey scrambled to her, pulled her into his arms, and held her close.
“How can I feel your pain? Or the kids’ fear.” A sob shook her. “All that fear.”
Grey tightened his grip. “You’re a sorcerer. You can call on every kind of earth magic, and it looks like your ability to sense emotions has just awakened.”
“Wonderful,” she said, her voice thick with disgust. She turned to him, her eyes filled with a soul-deep ache he reco
gnized within himself. “How—?”
“I just do.” He yanked his attention away, unable to continue seeing his inner turmoil reflected in Anaea’s eyes. “Let’s get you home.”
“No,” Raven said from the patio.
Anaea tensed. “It’s safer for everyone if I’m not here.”
“Not for you. Not if you lose control and incapacitate Grey before he can stop you.” The young black drake, Nero’s third in command, crossed her arms as if expecting Anaea to argue. “All the kids go through it. They all understand.”
“They’re all terrified.” Anaea’s gaze dipped to her hands as if her power lay there and not in every cell of her body. “I’m terrified.”
“All the more reason to stay with people who can help,” Nero said through the shattered living room window. He stood inside with snow and glass shards around his feet. Ryan stood a few feet behind him with a broom and bucket, already preparing to start the cleanup as if broken windows happened all the time. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Grey might have laughed. Ryan had only been living in Nero’s house for a few days, and already it seemed he fit in as if he’d been there for years.
“Isolation isn’t the answer,” Raven said. “We all knew the risk when we invited you in. You’re staying.”
Anaea pulled out of Grey’s grip and staggered to her feet. She looked exhausted, which she probably was. Channeling that much magic so quickly could tire even a drake with rapid healing. She opened her mouth, probably to disagree, but Raven stormed across the snow to her.
“You’re too tired to argue with me, and I suspect you’re unable to stop reading my emotions, so you can sense how I feel about this.”
Anaea frowned then rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll argue with you about this once I’ve had a good sleep.”
“I have no doubt.” Raven grabbed Anaea’s arm, and a tendril of Raven’s wind took Anaea’s weight and carried her inside.
