Tamed by the Fire

by Maxine Mansfield

  Zander had spoken about his pledge to protect her, but it was an entirely different vow she thought of now. The promise she’d made, what seemed like a lifetime ago and forged in not only word but also blood filtered through her mind.

  From this day forward, ’til time is no more. I pledge you my dagger, I pledge you my sword. I pledge you my service, I pledge you my brawn. I pledge you my heart ’til my last breath is drawn.

  Carefully, she slipped the Dragon Heart Opal up and over her head and placed it gently into Zander’s free hand. She securely closed his fingers around it.

  “Please, keep this safe for me until I…or Lara can once more claim it.”

  He shook his head no and started to speak, but Kitrina shushed him with no more than a single fingertip against his lips.

  “In a moment, you are going to be very, very angry and disappointed in me,” she whispered. “And,” she swallowed hard, “justifiably so. There are…things I should’ve shared with you but didn’t.”

  She squeezed Zander’s hand. “But I hope someday, in the future perhaps, years from now, you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me my little deception.”

  “If and when this situation is all said and done,” she pleaded. “And you wonder if I ever truly cared for you. Please, if you believe nothing else of me, know in your heart that I now and have always loved you with all that I am. And there has never been another in all of Albrath to whom I’d gladly trust more with my life…with my very soul.”

  She cleared her throat. “But this isn’t just about me or even the lives of my family anymore, Zander. Though I am female, in my soul I’m as much a Paladin of Albrath and a protector of the dragons and the magic they bring to this world as any man has ever been. It’s my duty. One I freely chose long ago.” Then she smiled. “Remember me fondly if you can…please.”

  Before another heartbeat passed or a tear could fall, Kitrina shifted into Cat, darted right past Zander, and fled through the still open doorway.

  His roar faded as she quickly sprinted toward the portal. The secret dragon portal. The portal heading home. The portal she knew would take her straight into danger.

  ****

  Zander stood astonished, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to draw in a decent breath. She was gone…gone. And Wally’s classroom had grown deathly silent around him. Silent, that was, except for the startled gasps that still echoed throughout the chamber and competed with the pounding roar of his heartbeat. The Dragon Heart Opal still clutched within his fist pulsed fast and hot. He gripped it tighter.

  He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. Kitrina Dragonheart, the woman he’d loved all his life, the woman he thought he knew every detail and secret about, had just somehow…shifted, morphed…changed into a…a cat?

  He shook his head and, for a moment, wondered if he should perhaps pinch himself to make sure this wasn’t all some kind of bizarre nightmare. After all, he’d eaten turnips at supper last night, and they did at times cause him issues.

  Though he wished it weren’t so, Zander knew without a doubt he was wide awake and what he’d just witnessed was real, too VoT real.

  Kitrina had actually become a sleek little ball of black feline fur right before his very eyes. And not just any ball of fur, either. She’d turned into Cat, her cat, the very same stupid cat who’d been underfoot all semester, and even worse, the very creature to whom he’d confessed things he would’ve never willingly said to Kitrina’s face. And worst of all, she’d smiled at him right before she’d done it and had even had the nerve to wink before leaving him standing, all alone, without so much as a glance back in his direction. He was going to kill her if Marquart didn’t do it for him first.

  The sound of Leeky Shortz’s voice did what probably nothing else could’ve at that moment. It pulled him from his state of shock.

  “What the pimply, pasty-white arse cheeks on the backside of an overaged ogre temptress whose tits hang ta her bellybutton and whose pubes have gone gray do ya think of that, lads? Ain’t our little Kit a sight ta behold when she goes all bahsheer on us and stuff?” He sniffed and swiped at his left eye where a teardrop had formed. “Been a while since I’ve seen her do that. Makes a rogue proud, I tell ya.”

  Zander shook his head. “You knew? You knew this…this…bahsheer thing about her and you didn’t bother to tell me?”

  The gnome had the balls simply to shrug his shoulders. “Wasn’t my place ta tell. Anyways, I thought ya knew. It’s not like her grandmother being part bahsheer was ever a big secret or anything. Everybody who’s anybody knows the Dragonheart lasses all inherited the ability ta shift inta one cat form or another. It’s in their genes, ya know.”

  Zander searched the faces of the other men in the room, and though he’d heard their gasps when Kitrina had…shifted, he saw the truth of Leeky’s words written on every one of their faces. They knew, all of them. Well, not all perhaps, Talon did still look as if he were about to either faint or piss himself.

  He couldn’t just let his suspicions lie, however. He was a glutton for punishment and simply had to confirm what he’d rather not know. Zander began with the two cousins he’d trusted most in all of Albrath, Graydon and Gareth, the half high elf, half barbarian twin sons of his Uncle Sarco and his Aunt Lark Sunwalker.

  “You knew? You knew what Kitrina was capable of and you never once thought to let me in on it?”

  Graydon sighed. “We thought you already knew. I mean, we’ve known since we were little kids. VoT, Zander, she used to get the biggest kick out of shifting right in front of us and using her cat form as a way to cheat and win at hide-and-seek.”

  The elf had the balls to laugh, and Zander had to force himself to not pick Graydon up by the collar of his tunic and shake him like a rag doll. He didn’t, though. He stood stiffly and awaited the rest of the explanation.

  It didn’t take very long for his smiling cousin to continue. “Watching Kit become Cat never got old, no matter how many times we seen her do it.” Graydon’s smile faded. “How were we to know you weren’t privy to what just about everyone else in Albrath was? Don’t blame us for your lack of paying attention to what went on right under your nose.”

  Heat spread its way up Zander’s neck and face. He put his anger aside for the moment, however, and turned his gaze toward Ten and Levin. “And you two? I suppose you guys knew, too?”

  They both nodded, but it was Levin who answered. “We didn’t know that you didn’t know. I swear we didn’t. We would’ve told you if we had…probably.”

  The big halfling rubbed his hands nervously along the sides of his legs. “Sheesh, Zander, how could you not have known? When Kit was little, she was that sneaky-ass cat almost as often as she wasn’t. She used to jump out from every dark corner she could find and scare the, umm, you-know-what out of me and Ten just for the fun of it. Didn’t surprise us in the least when she became a rogue full time. After all, she’d been sneaky all her life.”

  Levin shook his head. “You were at Castle Kuropkat as much if not more than we were. Seriously, how could you not have noticed?”

  Zander sighed and thought to question Wally and Pierced next but changed his mind. There was no need. The knowledge was written all over their faces, and anyway, he’d heard more than enough. He hung his head in shame. They were all right. Not knowing was his own fault.

  How many trips had his family made to Castle Kuropkat over the years? The festive holidays? The long, lazy days of summer? They were too numerous to count. And of those trips, how many of them had he really paid attention to what little Kitrina Dragonheart had been up to? Not many, that was for sure. And he’d done it on purpose.

  After all, she was five years younger than he, and she was his sister Mia’s friend, not his. And then, of course, there was the sad fact that the older he and Kit both became, the harder it was for him to keep his hands—and other body parts—to himself.

  The heir to the barbarian throne did not embarrass himself or his family by chasing a
fter a girl, any girl, especially the lovely, oh so very temping Kitrina.

  Though he could never remember a time he didn’t love her with all his heart and didn’t desire her with every fiber of his body, being the heir to the barbarian throne meant keeping himself aloof, apart, especially from the one female he’d already been assured he could never have for his own.

  Not that he hadn’t allowed himself the opportunity to join in on the merriment…occasionally, for he had. Especially when that frolicking had included the more acceptable and safe male companions, like Wally, Graydon, Gareth, Ten, Levin, and even Pierced. Oh, the hours they had spent riding dragons, questing, and saving fair maidens in distress. He would never forget it.

  So, why then, in all the times they had actually spent time together, had she never once shifted in front of him? And more importantly, why had she trusted all of the others with her secret, but not him?

  As if the fact she’d shared her ability with the pseudo cousins, except for him of course, wasn’t bad enough, from the look he saw in Asla’s eyes, Kitrina turning into a VoT cat and scampering away hadn’t come as any huge surprise to her either.

  He glared at the woman who’d once been his fiancée, daring her to think about lying to him. “And you? I take it she told you?”

  Asla gulped. “No, I swear, she…she didn’t tell me. At least not directly. Maycee—I—I mean, Marquart did.”

  The Dragon Heart Opal pulsed even faster and hotter within his grasp, and Zander squeezed it tighter, trying to maintain a grip on his temper and his sanity. “Kit told the—the troll, but not me?”

  Asla shook her head. “No, no, no, it wasn’t that way. May—I mean, Marquart found out all on her own. I swear.”

  “How?” Zander roared.

  Asla gulped. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her, I guess. She doesn’t exactly take me into her confidence. I just know that Kitrina said the Dragon Heart Opal doesn’t care about her when Kit is Cat, and I overheard Marquart tell my father that Kitrina has the ability to shift. That all the Dragonheart girls can. I don’t know for sure how, but I do know she plans to use that information to get her hands on the Stone of Anthion.”

  “For the love of God Draka,” he yelled. “It’s not the VoT Stone of Anthion.”

  The Dragonheart Opal pulsed ever faster within his grip, and the heat of it became unbearably warm. All of this trouble over a hunk of calcified mineral, and for what? If the stupid thing didn’t mean so much to Kitrina and the entire Dragonheart family, he’d throw it so far away it would never again be found.

  Zander shook his head. Throwing the Dragon Heart Opal away wouldn’t work, and he knew it. The stone was bound to Kit and followed her wherever she went. There had never been a time he could remember when it hadn’t hung around her neck. Why then did she leave it behind now? In his care? Could Asla be right? Did the Dragon Heart Opal not care about or follow Kitrina when she was…Cat?

  Slowly, he opened his fist and stared at the opalescent wonder he’d seen so many times but never really paid that much attention to. After all, the Dragon Heart Opal had simply been a stone hanging at the end of a piece of leather, a necklace, a bauble, a shiny object worn around the neck of the loveliest lass in all of Albrath, and he’d always considered it dull in comparison to its wearer.

  But he paid attention now as ribbons of all the shades of fire danced within its tear-shaped form. The heat and the pulse of it flowed through his fingers like the surge and ebbing of a tide.

  Turning it back and forth to catch the very best light, the form of a dragon spreading its wings preparing for flight suddenly appeared. And then, just as quickly as the dragon was there, it was gone, replaced by a light show of rainbow-colored shooting stars.

  Zander brought it up to eye level, marveling at the play of light and fire. He rolled it between his fingers, caressing it, turning it, testing its weight and hardness. He was mesmerized.

  Then, without warning, a fissure of brilliant blue light formed down the very middle of the Dragon Heart Opal, and the stone simply split in half.

  He gasped.

  Leeky Shortz cackled. “Well, what the prickly barbs sticking straight up and out from a pet porcupine’s arse do you make of that? Looks like our little Kit’s finally gone and got herself a mate.”

  The gnome strutted across the room and high-fived him up as high as his pudgy little purple-go-to-meeting gloves would reach. His hand landed right above Zander’s knee. He grinned. “Congratulations ta ya both, lad.”

  Zander shook his head. There must be a mistake. There had to be another explanation for what had just happened. The Dragon Heart Opal couldn’t have divided on purpose. The whole splitting-when-choosing-the-owner’s-mate thing was simply a legend, wasn’t it? Though he’d never questioned what he’d been told about the stone before, he certainly did now.

  Not that he didn’t want Kitrina as his wife, for he did, with all his heart and soul. He’d dreamed about such a chance, hoped for it, and mourned the loss of that dream when he’d learned he had no choice but marry an at least mostly barbarian female instead.

  But they’d both known becoming one could never be an option for them. After all, there were obligations they each had at Alaria and Castle Kuropkat and people neither one of them could stand to disappoint.

  He stared at the two perfect halves of what used to be the very singular Dragon Heart Opal. It couldn’t be true. Perhaps he’d simply squeezed the stone too tight and…and damaged it? That was feasible, wasn’t it? Perhaps he could force it back together.

  Zander closed his hand around the two pieces of stone, took a deep breath, and squeezed with all of his strength. Both halves now pulsed at a separate rate, and with different degrees of warmth.

  He sighed. He couldn’t be Kitrina’s mate, he just couldn’t. He was destined to become the king of the entire barbarian race, not…not…the sideline-sitting husband of the oldest daughter of the leader of the Paladins of Albrath.

  His heart ached for the impossibility of the situation. Kitrina was without a doubt the most amazing woman he’d ever known and certainly deserved a man who would walk proudly beside her for the rest of their days. A man she could stand toe to toe with in an argument, a man who would gladly father their children, and a man who, when they were both old and grey, would still see the forever young girl still shining in the light of his wife’s eyes.

  And Kitrina Dragonheart deserved a man who was ready and willing to be the partner of a too-brave-for-her-own-good, pain-in-the-arse rogue female, who could turn him into a blubbering idiot with nothing more than a smile and a wink before turning herself into a frigging cat, of all things, right before his very eyes.

  But that man couldn’t possibly be him. Could it?

  Zander was so lost in his introspection that he almost missed Talon’s comment.

  “Ok, I get it. The stupid rock chose you, and you’re now first in line to become Mr. Kitrina Dragonheart. But what I’d like to know is, what’s the plan to keep your little kitty cat alive long enough to actually drag her sweet ass to the altar? ’Cause drag her is what you’re going to have to do to get her there. She’s not going to just let you quietly give up your throne, you know.”

  Zander took two deep breaths and let them out. What were they going to do? He’d worry about the fate of the barbarian throne later, but standing around The Academy twiddling their thumbs certainly wasn’t going to solve anything, and everyone in the room was looking at him…waiting.

  He made his decisions quickly, cleared his throat, and addressed the men who, along with himself, had sworn to protect Kitrina and her family with their very lives.

  “Graydon, you and Gareth head to Landis and get Uncle Sarco and however many elf warriors he can spare. Leeky, you, Pierced, Steve, Talon, and Wally meet me on the Alarian side of the portal…the other portal. I’ll go to Alaria and rally my father and our warriors and meet you guys there.” He chuckled. “We’ll use the dragon portal and not the regular one. We’l
l sneak right onto Castle Kuropkat lands before anyone even knows we’re there.”

  Ten stepped forward. “What about me and Levin?”

  Zander sighed and pointed toward Asla. “Someone’s gotta stay here and guard the prisoner.”

  The color drained from the barbarian female’s face. “No, you don’t understand. I must go back.”

  Zander shook his head. “There’s no way in VoT you’re going anywhere except to a deep forgotten cell in the bowels of my father’s Alarian castle when this is all said and done.”

  Asla stood up straight. “You don’t have to worry about me betraying any of you or repeating a word of what I’ve heard…or seen. And don’t waste your breath, Zander. You can’t scare me with threats of being tossed into a dungeon. Been there, done that, many times. And as long as it’s not in my father’s castle, I really don’t care.”

  She looked at him pleadingly. “But if I don’t return as I promised Marquart I would, she and my father will torture and kill Kitrina’s youngest sister, Tawny. Please don’t doubt for the time it would take a single grain of sand to sift through the hourglass that they won’t. The child isn’t necessary to their plans.”

  Though tears glistened in Asla’s eyes, Zander didn’t believe her concern was genuine, but what choice did he have but trust her? It was either send her back and take the risk she’d do exactly what she promised not to and repeat everything she’d heard, or take the gamble little Tawny wouldn’t be sacrificed before he could get to her. That was a chance he wasn’t willing to take.

  He had one more question he needed an answer to, however, before he could decide on what course of action to take. “What’s to stop the bastards from killing Tawny whether you return or not? If they haven’t already?”

  Asla shook her head. “They wouldn’t. They have no reason to.”

  It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but Zander knew he had no other choice. “Ten, Levin, would you be willing to escort Lady Fistslammer as far as the portal to Castle Kuropkat?”