by D. D. Chance
I grimaced. There was an elegance to such magic that was dangerous, though I didn’t understand exactly why yet. Not my problem today.
Marta returned with a wide-eyed Alaric, who looked from me to the portal to Magnus to Niall with transparent excitement. I strode up to him and dropped my hand on his shoulder, not missing the jolt he gave. “Your skills as a spell caster have not gone unnoticed, Alaric. Are you willing to serve the High King?”
He straightened to his full height. “I am,” he said, his voice, for once, not cracking.
I squeezed his shoulder. “Then go. Follow Niall as you would follow me.”
I stepped aside, and to his credit, Alaric asked no questions, but fell in line with the other warriors as Niall led them through the portal. Alaric didn’t even spare me a glance as he passed by, his chin up, his shoulders back.
Magnus lingered a moment more, his face inscrutable. “Thank you,” he said. “Now go undo what you have done.”
He whisked through the portal to the McGeary Spire before I could ask him anything else, and the panic that had been building deep in my gut coalesced into white-hot fear.
I sketched a portal back to the domain of the dwarf king and stepped directly back into the bedchamber I shared with Belle.
Stone and sand. She was gone.
23
Belle
I fell fast and hard, so fast I didn’t have time to tense up before I plunged into a thick, heavy substance that scattered like powder as I crashed into it. I flopped around, making frantic snow angels in the fine sand, until finally regaining my equilibrium enough to push myself up to a sort of seated sprawl.
I stared around, blinking. I was in a cave, but a cave formed to an enormous scale, easily two stories high, maybe three. High pinholes of light were cut into the ceiling of it in two sections, which illuminated the small square of real estate where I had landed, but little else.
Which was not to say that the cave was hung in shadows. As I edged away from the natural light, my eyes adjusted, and I saw that chunks of rock seemingly lit from within lined the dome at regular intervals. They glowed soft yellow, and put me immediately in mind of citrine. But citrine was not naturally luminescent, so how…
I managed to pull myself upright in the pit of fine sand, no small feat given how soft and giving the substance was. Not like a typical beach, but somewhere between a beach and straight-up powder. I waded across it until I came to a defined lip of stone.
My brows shot up. Son of a bitch. This wasn’t a pit, it was a landing pad. None of the sand spilled over the side to mar the stone floor beyond it. Where the hell was I?
I peered down at the rock floor, something about it striking me as off. It had been worn down over time, but deep grooves marked it, as if it had been raked clean over and over again. I shuddered, thinking of the sound of metal tines on that rock, like nails on a chalkboard. Despite that image, and a vague sense of the place being almost oddly clean, it felt abandoned. I peered up and around, but there was no visible sign of the portal I had fallen through. Would Aiden be able to find me? The question gave me pause as I rested my palms on the lip of the pit. How would he know which of those dozens of portals blowing up across our bedchamber I had fallen through? Would he even see the same portals? And how had they shown up in the first place?
This last question made me frown. The answer was obvious, but opened more questions than it did answers.
Whether aided by my crown-and-shackles upgrade and our, um, magical lovemaking or not, Aiden had somehow shared with me his ability to make portals, sort of. I never wanted to see that pinwheeling kaleidoscope of opening and closing doors again, but could I get to a point where I could intentionally open a portal like he did…to anywhere I wanted to go?
Could I escape?
Had I escaped?
My brows shot up with that possibility. I began to haul myself over the foot-wide side of the pit, then paused, dusting off the rim to keep as much sand inside the pit as possible. I didn’t know who was on cleaning detail of this landing room, but they clearly took their work seriously.
As carefully as I could, I seated myself on the edge of the pit, then brushed myself off again, slowly and carefully lifting my legs out and settling my feet to the floor of the chamber. I tensed, expecting alarms to go off, but there was no sound. Actually that wasn’t true. There was a soft drip-drip-dripping of water somewhere high in the caves, but that only served to soothe my nerves, not ratchet them up further.
I slid off the edge of the sand pit, realizing that the light from the citrine sconces was bright enough for me to see easily. There was a single doorway, an arch that had been hewn into the rock, easily three times my height. I looked up, craning my neck, awed again by the size of the room. The landing pad itself had to be twenty feet across and was shaped in a perfect circle. I peered around the room, but couldn’t make out any other doors.
Again, would Aiden know which way I went? Would a different doorway appear to him? Between the monster realm and the land of the high Fae, I knew better than to trust my eyes.
“Well, you’re the king of the Fae, buddy boy. I guess you’ll figure it out,” I muttered, more to hear another voice than anything. Surely the noise of my ungraceful fall would have alerted any predators to my arrival—or any allies, for that matter. If they were going to come for me, they wouldn’t have waited around this long for me to announce myself. Right?
I stepped to the door and at the last second, turned back, hastening to the sand pit. I smoothed out an area closest to the exit door and drew a deep furrow of an arrow. If Aiden landed on top of it, it would be ruined, but at least I’d tried. For good measure, I picked up a sprinkling of sand and made it an arrow-shaped wedge on the rim of the pit also pointing to the one doorway. It seemed almost ridiculous, given the size of the doorway and the fact that there was only one, but again, who knew what was real here and what was illusion?
Turning back resolutely, I clenched my hands into fists and marched forward, brazening my way across the room until I reached the doorway. More sconces winked down the long corridor, and even though they might have been infernally lit, they still gave me a measure of comfort. I shook out my hands, willing myself to relax, and stepped into the gloom.
Silence blanketed me, broken only by an occasional soft dripping sound, a far-off splash. The air in the cavern was moist, even warm, and it smelled not of damp and mold, which was what I would have expected, but more like a meadow after a spring rain. Were there plants and flowers down here? I could almost smell the scent of orchids in the air. It was such a peculiar aroma that I led with my nose, walking faster down the corridor with every step, following the line of sconces.
At one point, the passage teed off, and while the citrine sconces arced on around the natural corridor, the new corridor was marked with amethyst-colored sconces, glowing equally bright. More than that, though, a wave of suffering rolled toward me out of the passageway, catching me up short. I turned, momentarily torn. I sensed quite clearly that golden-lit passageway was the way out, that these faintly glowing sconces led to the surface, but as I paused, I could hear a faint hissing sigh, ending almost on a whimper from far down the amethyst corridor. Another wave of pain rolled through me, and I turned resolutely in its direction, determined to investigate. When I reached this person or creature, I would be able to see at least their near-term future…and hopefully, it didn’t involve them eating me.
The sense of pain grew stronger as I walked, and I picked up the pace, wrestling with what to do. Any creature in these halls would know I was here already, but if he or she—and I thought it was a she who was distracted and in pain, would she necessarily expect me, or would she be further distressed at my arrival?
I heard a faint cry, almost a hissing groan, and I gave up all pretense at being careful. I rushed forward, the purple sconce lights whipping by, until I came to another fork. I took the one marked with deepest red sconce lights, a garnet or maybe a ruby stone. They would have been bre
athtaking if I wasn’t in such a hurry.
I came to the first doorway, really more of a long entry passage, but the room beyond was lit with an emerald glow. Falling water broke across my senses, along with a high-pitched keening sigh.
I slipped through the shadowed passage and into the hazy green light and stopped short. A talon the size of a rugby player arched in front of me, digging into the stone floor. It was attached to a large scaled hand or foot or—I didn’t know. My gaze swept up high until I found myself staring up at the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my life. Deeply shadowed purple, red, dark blue, and orangey scales shimmered along its skin as its large expressive eyes fixed on me, its nostrils flaring, tendrils of smoke slipping from its lips.
Oh, yeah. I was staring at a dragon. Because that happened.
More beautiful than anything Tolkien could ever have imagined, the creature gazed down at me while tears rolled down the side of its face to turn into crystal shards that clinked and plinked over its shoulders and in between its forelegs.
“What is it?” I asked. I didn’t know how to speak dragon, but every fiber in my healer soul wanted to help.
The creature merely gazed back, its tongue slipping out between its long lips, the glint of fangs obvious. It said something, a burst of words like music that had no form. I didn’t recognize the language, but my mind was filled with the images that rendered words unnecessary.
“Hatchling,” I breathed, looking down to the shadowy base of the dragon. Her—and it had to be a her—heavy chest obscured a nest lined with more scales. Her scales? I didn’t know, but I edged forward, the scales as brittle and beautiful as dried leaves as I stepped onto them.
The dragon mother let me come, let me edge past her powerful forearms, and there, in the circle of her body, lay three eggs, shaking and trembling…but then they stopped shaking. A second later, the movement continued—shaking, but then stopping.
I looked up as the dragon craned her head around toward me, my eyes wide. “They can’t get out?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t understand me. Instead, a veritable sea of memories rolled over me, a stretch of years of babies born strong and healthy to a young mother with richly colored scales. This beautiful creature’s scales were muted and dark in comparison to those flaunted by her younger self.
Understanding crept across my thoughts. This dragon queen was old, I suspected, her eggs not so eager to give up the life within them as they once did.
With her eyes on me, I held up my hands and placed them over my heart, then slowly, carefully, I reached down to the knife in my jeans and drew out the pitiful bit of protection Aiden had allowed me since the first night he’d met me. It was a simple knife, a Swiss Army knife. I was a healer, not a killer, and it was the only knife for me.
I held it up, the blade glistening in the emerald glow, and blinked as unexpected tears filled my eyes. The dragon mother nodded, steam hissing from her nostrils, and I turned. I had attended countless births by my mother’s side, both the witches who had come to us for aid and the occasional monster who had nowhere else to turn. But I had never helped a dragon give birth to her babies.
I stepped forward and knelt beside the largest of the eggs, barely longer than my arm. I had no idea what to do, no idea if piercing the egg at the top would slash a wing or gash a snout. My tears fell faster now, the grief of the mother transporting me, until suddenly I heard a different voice, a new voice, far at the edge of the cavern.
“Don’t cut,” Aiden said, his voice as soft as new fallen snow. My heart surged, but he made no move to draw closer, only spoke words that carried above the dragon mother’s mournful, keening cry. “You can do this, Belle. I will tell you how.”
24
Aiden
Everything that had come before, the recognition of Belle’s absence, the panicked fury as I focused on her to open the portals necessary to find her, the shock of stepping out directly behind an enormous, gravid dragon queen, faded into nothing as I saw my beautiful mate take on a task she had no way of knowing could kill her.
She would have done it anyway, I suspected, her heart so big that she could not stand to see another creature in pain, not when she could help. I didn’t want to scare her, so I kept my breathing steady, my words slow. The queen knew I was behind her. Her left foreleg had shifted enough that, despite her enormous bulk, she could twist and pin me against the cavern wall in less than a heartbeat should she choose, and incinerate me a moment later. Even the High King of the Fae was no match for a dragon queen giving birth to her young. And if Belle wasn’t careful, those same young would fry her to a cinder the moment their snouts cleared their eggshells.
“Tap against the side of the egg hard enough to buckle it,” I directed. “Tear the membrane with your hands, not the tip of the blade. The young inside will do the rest. You’ll want to back away enough to let them do that, but not move so quickly or so far that it looks like you are retreating.”
Already knowing her body so well, I didn’t miss the slight jerk to Belle’s hands as she moved forward. She at least understood that there was the potential for danger, even if she could not fully comprehend the depth of it. Humans had a relationship with dragons that was only slightly more bizarre than the one they had with the Fae. Creatures of myth and legend, a dragon’s beauty was surpassed only by their shockingly swift capacity to kill. This didn’t seem like the best time to clarify that either.
“I’ve got you,” Belle said as she moved forward, her voice taking on a tone I hadn’t heard before, one that riveted both the dragon queen and me to the stone floor. The eggs responded, shaking more earnestly now, the young inside suddenly remembering what their job was here. Belle reached the first, but instead of setting to work directly upon it, she gathered the others close to her. I clenched my fists but kept my mouth shut at a twitch from the queen’s talon. Belle was essentially barricading herself against the queen’s body with these eggs. Not retreating or even giving herself the opportunity to retreat.
I readied myself to move. I had no wish for death, but I would sooner be pinioned and burned alive than let Belle die in such a way. I could reach her, open a portal for her, push her free. I could and I would.
“There you go,” Belle said, seemingly oblivious to my dark plans. She rubbed her hands down the sides of the egg, speaking in low tones. That completed, she picked up her knife and gently at first, then with more force, tapped the butt of it along the egg in quick clipped succession. The egg shook harder, and Belle’s voice rose, speaking for my benefit, not theirs.
“The shell is too thick on these eggs,” she said, her voice warm and approving despite her words. “I’ll have to cut a little.”
My heart leapt in my throat. How she’d gotten this close to the dragon queen, I didn’t know. Usually, the sight of a blade was all that was necessary to throw a queen into a fighting fury. Then I squinted at the blade that Belle held and grimaced. It was her damned toy knife. Something better used to open a wine bottle or file her nails. How could she think it would protect her against a clutch of baby dragons?
High above me, the dragon queen snorted, and I grimaced. I hadn’t known she could read thoughts, which meant she knew what I would do should Belle come to harm. As I looked up, she spared a glance my way, her eyeball rotating while her face remained steady on her young. It was only a moment, but I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. She didn’t want to kill me either, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t.
With quick efficiency, Belle poked the blade in a quick flipping motion at the top of each egg. One, then two, then three—then back to one while she talked, urging the hatchlings to poke back, telling them of their glorious future ruling the skies. I opened my mouth to urge her to have a care, when one of the eggs gave a high-pitched keening chitter, and the queen rocked toward me ever so slightly.
The message was clear. Shut up, Fae. Whatever gets these dragons out alive is what matters.
Belle only laughed, leaning closer to the
eggs.
“You like that idea, do you?” she asked. “Well, it’s true. Boys and girls, heck, mortals of all ages, dream about dragons at some point in their lives, imagining your mighty wings, the flame you command, your ability to soar through the sky, and all that gooooold. I mean, sure, you scare the crap out of us. You’re fierce and mighty, and the clouds are yours, but we can’t help falling in love with you either. Can you imagine that? Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to spread your wings and take the open sky and claim it as your own? And failing all that, aren’t you hungry?”
This last sent all the eggs to rocking harder. As the dragon queen above me huffed a laugh, the sound so startling it pulled my attention away from Belle for a split second, the largest of the eggs cracked down the side. Belle squeaked with delight as a spark of flame shot out, darkening the shell.
“Hey! Don’t do that. You’ll cook yourself alive,” she chided, but knowing now where the creature’s snout was, she sliced her small red blade down in a confident swipe, then tossed it aside. Pulling apart the embryonic sac with her hands, she rolled the egg away from her, then seamlessly moved to its sibling. The second egg had cracked all the way down the center, the snout of its owner already appearing. This was a bigger dragonet, its blue-green scales echoing its mother’s darker hues.
Belle retrieved her knife and sliced away the base of that egg, working up from the bottom instead of the top to help speed the hatching process.
And then there was the third egg, which had stopped cracking altogether. My heart clenched in preparation for attack as Belle laid her hands upon it, but she merely cooed in support as she ripped small tears into the shell with her fingers.
“I hear you, little guy,” she said, once again making me blink. “Your song will break a thousand hearts and rally a thousand warriors. You know it and I know it.” Her voice sounded in my mind above the squawking of the two dragonets already partially freed.
