Crown of Dragons

by Nina Walker

  Hopefully, Dean was telling the truth when he said he lives alone.

  I palm a nearby rock before I can talk myself out of what I’m about to do and throw it squarely at the window. It crashes through, the glass splintering and falling to chaos. The wind is almost enough to drown out the noise. Not quite. I pray nobody heard it but me. Adrenaline storms through my veins. My nerves kick into overdrive.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this! I am acting like a crazy person right now!

  There’s no turning back. It’s time to find out why Dean knows about the spirit dragon, what his fiery eyes mean, why he was so horrible and territorial when he first met me, and most importantly, why these things have anything to do with me.

  I pull my hood over my ponytail and hug my arms in close. The beloved burgundy Gryffindor hoodie is all I have to protect myself as I shimmy my arm through the hole I made, trying to avoid the sharded glass, to unlock the window and pry it open. I swear, if I accidentally cut this hoodie, I’m going to cry.

  I look around, taking in the clean lines and spotless decor. If I was hiding something in this house, where would I hide it? Heck, what would I even be hiding? I start with the kitchen drawers, tearing through them in a mad dash, but find nothing but perfectly organized cooking utensils. Dean is a clean freak. And he cooks. Who knew? But spatulas and measuring cups definitely aren’t what I came here for.

  I release a puff of air and go for the stairs. Considering this place isn’t massive and the main floor is designed for open living, Dean’s bedroom must be upstairs. There’s bound to be something in there that will help me make sense of it all. With him in class, I should have a full hour to look, but I don’t want to dawdle. The faster I’m out of here, the better.

  The stairs are one of the only things left inside the house that have been restored with the original design. They’re dark hardwood and narrow, polished and quant. I’m hurrying up them when I notice a tingle at the nape of my neck. Almost like the beginnings of a sunburn. I grip the railing and take another step, brushing it off as nothing and continue climbing.

  But then all at once, it grows and heats, spreading around my neck like a burning noose, reaching up and over my head, pouring down my limbs like lava.

  I drop to my knees.

  All thoughts fall from my mind except for the need to make it stop, but I can’t. I’m immobilized. I’m unable to do anything but lie on the stairs and pull at my clothing with fumbling fingers. I’m burning up. I’m being seared alive from the inside out.

  Suddenly, I can’t move anymore.

  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I hear the screeches of agonized screaming. It’s animalistic. And then I realize where those primal sounds are coming from—me. Tears pour down my face, the salt streaming into my mouth. I’m coughing in between my panicked screams. The burning is relentless. I try to climb back down the stairs, but it’s all too slow. Nothing is working. I’m not moving.

  And none of it makes sense because there’s no actual fire. My skin isn’t blistering. To my eyes, nothing is happening. And yet, all my other senses are firing and the pain goes on and on. I’m sealed in place, sealed right in the middle of a hell that stretches on for eternity.

  My vision blurs and my eyes flutter shut. I’m lost to the agony, ready to surrender to death. That’s better than this. Anything is better than this endless torture.

  “Hazel!” The voice is far away, a figment of my imagination, a ghost on the wind or the beginnings of a dream.

  But then arms are lifting me, dragging me further up the stairs. I keep screaming. I can’t stop. I can’t think. I’m nothing. Nothing but pain.

  A door slams open and metal clicks against metal and the sound of falling water penetrates my mind. My eyes pop open just as I’m being thrown into a cold shower.

  Blissfully, mercifully, the heat is washed away. It melts off of me as quickly as it came, and I lie on the shower floor like a newborn baby, grasping at life. I’m traumatized and born again, and reality sinks back into my consciousness.

  “Hazel!” The voice shouts again and this time there’s no hiding from it, I know it’s real—he’s real.

  I look up at Dean through the pummeling water. The glass shower door is open and he’s standing, fully clothed at its entrance, glaring down at me. I’m also fully clothed, drenched from head to toe, but I can’t get enough of the water.

  I close my eyes again. The cold is pure bliss.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” He shuts off the water. “What the hell are you doing breaking into my house?”

  Well, I guess it’s time for me to face this. I blink and peel myself off the tiled floor to stand. All the burning pain from before has gone. I run my hands over my body, my eyes trailing down, looking for proof of what I endured. But there isn’t a mark on me. Water drips down my face. My long hair is matted to my head and shoulders. Somewhere in all that, I lost my ponytail. My hoodie and jeans weigh a ton, and my tennis shoes are filled with water.

  But I’m alive. It wasn’t real. How is that possible? I don’t even have a headache. I’m not even tired. There’s literally no trace of what just happened.

  “I should call the cops on your ass right now,” Dean continues, so fuming mad that his hands are clenched and once again, his eyes are ringed with sparks of dancing fire. “You have some explaining to do.”

  I fold my arms over my chest and glare right back. “Actually, Dean,” my voice cracks, so hoarse from all the screaming. “I think it’s you who has some explaining to do.”

  Because what in the world just happened to me?

  He rocks back on his feet, his jaw tense, as he holds my gaze. The air between us crackles, neither one of us willing to give in to the other’s demands. The tension grows taught until he finally turns on his heel and storms out, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

  But he’s not getting off that easy. I ignore the wet clothes and the thought that he could be calling the police at this very moment and go after him.

  “Dean Ashton,” I yell, storming into the hallway. “Don’t run away from me. We need to talk, buddy!” I go from room-to-room, bursting from door-to-door, tracking water everywhere, but don’t find him straight away, and that bothers me even more. “You’ve been weird since the day I met you, Dean. Don’t even try to deny it. I’m tired of all these unexplainable things happening whenever you’re near.”

  I locate the master bedroom and push my way inside, continuing my tirade. “What is going on? You want my help? Well, it’s like I said, you need to help me understand this.”

  It smells like him in here and I stop, letting water pool onto the hardwood. The bed is perfectly made, the corners of the slate gray bedding tucked in tight. The walls are eggshell white and the furnishings a mix of light and dark grays. There aren’t any photographs or really anything personal in here. The rest of the house is the same way, but I figured he’d have something in here that spoke of his past. But it’s like walking into a museum for minimalist design.

  If it weren’t for the faint woodsy scent that is distinctly Dean’s, I wouldn’t have any way to know this was his bedroom, let alone his home.

  “Did you have to drip all over my floor?” He steps from the door on the far end of the room, which I presume leads to the closet or bathroom. “You already owe me a new window.”

  The sunlight streams in through the opened curtains, lighting him from behind so that his expression is in shadows. I glance down to where I’m leaving a puddle on the dark floor. These floors are old and restored; I’m sure they’ve been through worse. But hey, he was the one who threw me in the shower and then left before explaining himself.

  “Give me a towel”—I shrug—“and I’ll clean it up while you explain to me what’s going on.”

  He sighs ruefully, raking a hand through his disheveled hair. He returns back through the door for a second, holding a fluffy white towel and a pile of clothes that he promptly throws onto his bed. Our gazes collide and his is still h
ard as steel, but something has shifted the tides of our tumultuous relationship. There’s a gleam of defeat somewhere in those blackened eyes, a gleam that sends a shiver of triumph through me.

  “Hazel, you are so damn annoying.”

  I smirk and stick out my tongue.

  He walks past me. “Get yourself cleaned up so we can discuss this like grown ups.” And then he’s gone.

  20

  Khali

  The fog doesn’t want me to pass through to the other side. Its magic yanks at my emotions, demanding my elements to keep me in Drakenon. I’m powerless to refuse. All I can see is a thick cloud of gray. The iridescent shine must have only coated the outside because in here, everything is void of color. My body shakes and Bram’s hand tightens around mine.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” I say between gritted teeth. I am speaking to Bram. I am speaking to nothing. I am nothing if I leave Drakenon.

  “Yes, you can,” he urges, his tone doubtless. “Don’t you dare let go of me, Khali.”

  But letting go? It’s all that matters.

  The need to rip away from him and run back is so strong that I can hardly think of anything else. Bram must sense what is about to happen because his arms wrap around my torso and he lifts me off the ground completely. I shriek. I want to fight him, want to hurt him for this. And I could. I am powerful. He wouldn’t stand a chance against me. I could burn him to cinders or drown him with his own saliva. I could call upon the winds to suffocate him or raise up the earth to bury him alive. Well, truthfully, I don’t know if I can do these from actual experience, but I can feel the power within me, just waiting to be unleashed.

  He rushes us through the last of the fog, bringing us out the other side. My malice evaporates into gratitude. Thank the Gods for Bram. If it wasn’t for his lack of magic, if it wasn’t for his quick wit, I never would’ve made it out of Drakenon.

  “Thank you,” I whisper softly. He’s holding me so close that my lips brush against his warm neck as I speak. We both still and then he sets me down carefully. I take his hand again and squeeze. “No matter what happens,” I say, “we stick together from here on out.”

  “Deal.” He squeezes back. He looks different to me, somehow. And the same. And my stomach does a little squeeze.

  Then we turn and stare, wide-eyed, into a new kind of danger.

  The elementals connecting within me feel the same as our kingdom, but the horizon is much different. Where we have fields of grass that roll into mountains, this area is flat and covered in a thick, mossy forest that is both unfamiliar and unnerving. It’s darker here at night than in our home. And while there doesn’t seem to be anybody around, that doesn’t stop the sensation that we’re being watched from washing over me like a July breeze. Something about the warm temperature feels off.

  “Why is it so hot here?” I ask. I remove my cape and stuff it into my pack. “It’s late enough in the year that it shouldn’t feel like mid summer.” Or maybe we came much further south than I realized.

  “The magic is different,” Bram answers. “The seasons take on a life of their own in Fae territory.”

  I’m not quite sure what that means but I think it’s something to do with the way the Fae Courts operated before the Occultists conquered. A flying insect of glowing white hovers near my left ear, buzzing louder than the bugs back home. I swat it away. The air is thick with water and it settles on me like a second skin. Owen would have loved that. The shadows are long and unmoving underneath a sky animated with winking stars.

  “There is no moon tonight.” I peer up and sigh, not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

  “Come on,” Bram says, pointing toward an indent in the forest. “There’s a road.”

  “Aren’t we going to fly?” Fear sparks in my voice. The thought of walking into that unknown forest makes my skin crawl. The trees are different here than in Drakenon. More alive, somehow.

  “There are no dragons here,” he says. “Who knows who, or what, will see you if you shift. We can’t risk it.”

  “But won’t they know me by my eyes?”

  “Not until morning,” he says.

  I swallow and nod, stepping through the tangled grass toward the direction of the road. Bram pulls up his hood as well. We need to blend in and travel unnoticed for as long as we can—he’s right about walking.

  “How far do we have to get to the ley line?” I ask as we hike side by side through the waist-high grass, my palms brushing along the wispy tips. I breathe in the sweet, leafy scent, and try to relax.

  “To travel between the realms, one would need to find where the lines intersect in both our world and the human one. I only know of a few places that could be. The land takes on energy in significant places.”

  “Like at churches?” I ask, thinking of the centuries old chapels back home and the reverence they hold inside their walls.

  “Could be,” he says, “but it would have to be a place where people have been going to worship for centuries if it was a church.”

  I bite my lip. The Occultists are also religious but I’ve never heard that of the Fae. They worship the earth, the elements, the seasons and stars. I don’t think they have actual churches like we do.

  We’re at the edge of the forest now; the thick line of trees feels like a threshold into a new life. I don’t want to go in, my senses rioting at the very idea of it. We stop and look at each other, and I sense the same worry on him, even in the darkness. Either way, neither of us wants to continue this conversation in there which is probably for the best.

  “I have been looking into this ever since Dean left,” he admits. “When he was banished, I lost my mind and demanded my parents intervene.”

  “I remember you two were close.” My eyes were always on beautiful Dean, barely noticing little Bram in the background, but he was there.

  He nods. “You always had Owen, Silas did his own thing, but Dean and I, we got each other. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  I hold my tongue, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

  “My mother promised he was going to be okay, swore that they had a plan for him. She wouldn’t give me details, but she said he was going somewhere that nobody from the other courts could get to him. Where else could that be but in the human realm?”

  The unfairness of it hits me harder than ever, that something as small as a kiss with me could lead to a man being banished from his kingdom. The dragon clans agreed long ago that it was the best way to keep things fair for princes before one would be chosen as king. Do the Brightcasters really have so many enemies within their own court that they couldn’t change things for Dean?

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry you lost your brothers because of me.” I’m not just talking about Dean. Owen’s face floats to my memory and my heart hurts.

  He reaches out and squeezes my hand for a moment. “You didn’t choose to be born with all that magic, just as I didn’t choose to be born without any.”

  I think on what he said about Dean being taken to the human realm, where he’d be safer. It was strange when Dean left. His parents followed the law without question, but they didn’t mourn him either. Not as I expected. They acted like nothing just ripped their family apart by the seams. They acted like Dean’s future wasn’t their concern anymore, loyal to Drakenon only. Maybe this is why.

  “It makes sense,” I agree.

  He stops, dropping his pack and rummaging in it. He pulls out a map, worn with use and marked up by what is, most likely, his own hand. Of course, he would have a map, because who doesn’t carry a map with them when running away? Oh wait, that would be me. He looks at it for just a few seconds before rolling it back up and returning it to its place in his bag.

  “We’re on the right track.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a place not far from here where a human battle occurred during a civil war. It was many years ago in their realm, but it was brutal. Brothers killed brothers.” His
voice grows hoarse, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s thinking of Silas and Owen. “They said the land was stained red with rivers of blood. Anyway, that kind of energy doesn’t just fade away. It gets absorbed, especially if what happened is what was recorded. The humans have since created monuments to the battle. That alone will hold the energy over the years.”

  “And the Fae?” I ask.

  “That area just so happens to be the same place the Fae has had their Summer Solstice rituals for centuries before they were taken over by the Occultists.”

  A place like that with so much energy in one spot could create a fold in the ley line and a place where an elemental like Dean could slip through. The realms are layered on top of each other. We all share the same planet even though we walk different planes.

  “How far?”

  “A few days by foot,” he says. “Faster if we can get horses but I’m not sure I trust Fae animals.”

  I study the mossy black forest. The road is narrow and surrounded on all sides by trees with monstrous qualities in the darkness. “What do we do once we get there?”

  He doesn’t say anything at first, so I turn and study him just as I studied our surroundings. He swallows hard. “That’s the thing I don’t have an answer for,” he says reluctantly, “but if your father could travel through the realms to visit Dean, I’m certain you’ll be able to do the same.”

  I frown. “But what about you?”

  “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to come or not,” he says. He sounds so brave, so certain that this is the right thing to do, but how can he face all of this without worry for his well being? He came with me because he wanted to see his brother, but what if Bram can’t get out of the Fae realm? What happens when we have to go back home? What if he has to go without me, won’t they send him into exile as well? Could the Brightcaster princes dwindle down to only one? Bram coming with me suddenly doesn’t make sense. The questions build upon another like bricks.