Shadow of Flame

by Caitlyn McFarland

  A few more councilmembers spoke, but in the end, they agreed. Tomorrow, Rhys, Jiang and a dozen other dragons would fly across the ocean to capture Kavar.

  Rhys exhaled, relieved. “Council Leader Kansoleh, is there any other business for the Council today?”

  “No, Majesty.”

  “Then we are adjourned. I thank the Council.” Rhys stood and bowed to the room. The council members also rose, bowed to him with the fingers of their left hands pressed to their foreheads then filed out through the narrow, carved columns that separated the open Council chamber from the wide hall beyond.

  Deryn walked by, last to leave, as usual. Today, however, her brow was creased and she fidgeted with the azure fabric of her dress.

  “Do you want to come up and spar with me?” Rhys rolled his shoulders. Council meetings always left him edgy and tense, and he didn’t want to be alone with Morwenna, who stood a few feet to one side, waiting for him.

  “Hm?” Deryn blinked. “Oh. Not now. I’m...going to take a nap.”

  “A nap?” Rhys looked down at Deryn’s restless fingers as they crumpled and straightened the front of her trailing skirt. “Are you sick?”

  “Yes.” Deryn said the word decisively, then pressed her lips together. “If you need something to do, go see Ffion. She wouldn’t eat breakfast again. But it’s not like she would eat my food anyway. Will you try?”

  Stars. He hadn’t been taking care of Ffion as he should with Kai and Kavar’s capture on his mind. He owed more to Griff. He owed more to Ffion. Ancients knew she’d been taking care of the rest of them for centuries. “I’ll get her to eat.”

  Deryn moved to go, then turned back. “Rhys? Do you ever think that you need more allies?”

  Rhys gave a humorless laugh. “Every day. If there were any to be had.”

  Deryn chewed on her upper lip and nodded slowly. “I think so, too.” She turned and walked away.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Morwenna asked.

  Rhys shook his head. Now that the Council meeting was over, he could dispense with pretending he needed a guard in the middle of his own home. “No. You’ve got to head to New York tomorrow to meet Feng and stop whatever Owain’s lackeys are doing there. It’s a long trip. You should get some rest.”

  Morwenna’s full lips curved, and she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Moving to his ear, she whispered, “Miss me.”

  He swallowed and stepped away. Ancients, this had gone far enough. He needed to tell her about Kai. He opened his mouth, but Morwenna breezed away too quickly, disappearing through the columns.

  Berating himself, Rhys didn’t follow her to the hall, which led to a wide path that spiraled around the sides of the open shaft at the heart of the mountain. Nor did he try to chase her through the maze of meticulously carved, colorfully tiled tunnels that ran through its stone exterior. Instead, like a coward, he walked to one of the windows and looked into the crystalline lake several hundred feet below. Listening to the cry of island birds, he pushed Morwenna from his mind. There would be time to tell her. Later.

  He stepped up onto the window ledge and leapt.

  Wind whipped past his ears as he called the fire. It burst around him in midair, engulfing him, expanding him, pushing him outward until he became the dragon. He snapped open his vast wings, feeling the hard, almost painful jolt in his shoulders, the stretch and strain of tendons, the burn of his muscles. He tilted to one side, skimming a wing tip across the surface of the lake, the water ruffling in the wind of his passage.

  He pulled himself into the sky once more, soaring over beach and ocean, then banked back toward the island. Above land, Rhys caught a small thermal and let the updraft of warm air take him higher, until he was gliding above the summit of the mountain. The sea stretched from horizon to horizon, the rest of the dragons’ archipelago trailing away into the distance.

  A sentry gliding above him trumpeted a greeting. Rhys roared in acknowledgment, then tilted his wings and let warm, tropical air slip from beneath them as he circled downward.

  Kai would love this.

  He missed a beat and dropped a little before he could catch himself. For the hundredth time that day, he tried to push thoughts of her away. This time, they wouldn’t go.

  He soared to the ledge outside of his rooms. He’d told Kai he wanted to be happy with her, and he hadn’t been lying. According to his daily reports from Ashem, Kai was all right.

  Ancients, how could she be all right when he felt like this? Unfocused, out of control.

  Then again, he was getting his information from Ashem. There was no one Rhys trusted more with Kai’s physical safety, but the stoic Azhdahā wasn’t exactly likely to pick up on the emotional state of anyone aside from his own mate—and only then because she was in his head.

  Maybe, if everything went according to plan with Kavar, Rhys would go and see how Kai was doing for himself. Maybe—

  No. Going near Kai would be to risk bringing Owain’s attention down on her. He couldn’t. Not yet.

  If Rhys went to Kai, it would be because it was time to bring her home.

  Chapter Three

  The Other Way Around

  Kavar soared through rain-laden trees above the river, the heat clingy, oppressive and dripping.

  He hated the rainforest. But Jiang was a contrary little salamander. If she was going to find an artifact, she would find one here. Apparently some humans had unearthed it on some archaeological dig.

  As if they had any history worth digging up.

  Kavar would’ve left her to sneak into the site she’d found without his help, but he’d already been on his way to the area on an errand for Owain when she’d contacted him three days ago. He was hoping for a chance to steal the artifact, hide it again and go back for it later. Owain was obsessed with the lost magical weapons of the Ancients, and though Kavar had been his closest friend for more than a thousand years, lately things had been strained between them. If Kavar “found” the artifact instead of Jiang, it could only help.

  She’d undermined him enough recently. He was ready to return the favor.

  He flew low through the steep, forested valley, staying close to the silver-brown river that snaked its way through the mountains. The vine-hung forest teemed with birds and insects and life. Below him, the water reflected heavy gray clouds that rode low in the sky. Unaffected by a mental barrier that made him virtually invisible to most creatures, the river also reflected him—a sixty-foot-long dragon, wings outstretched, horned tail streaming behind, scales as black as the void between stars.

  He banked around a sharp curve. Ahead, the river roared into space, dashing itself into mist three hundred feet below. Kavar flared his wings, digging his claws into a jut of stone at the edge of the dropoff, letting the wet rock bite into his scaled feet.

  Jiang waited in the pool far below, her serpentine body wrapped around a large boulder in jade-colored coils, well back from the mist thrown up by the falls. Her long tail undulated through the water in precise little arcs, like the ticking of a clock. She tilted her head up, regarding him with eyes nearly the same shade of green as her scales.

  “You’re late.” Her voice in his mind was low and melodic and made him want to claw it out of his brain. If there was a single being he hated more in the world than his self-righteous, self-aggrandizing brother, it was Jiang. The Lung had come to Owain’s court centuries ago, and Kavar had been telling Owain for years that she was too slippery to trust. He’d been so close to ousting her.

  No hope of that now.

  Kavar bared his teeth in a dragon smile. “Where’s this dig? I sense no minds, human or otherwise.”

  It would have been a relief, if he hadn’t wanted to get home. Humans were like mold—popping up anywhere moist enough to support them, and rotting everything they touched.
/>   Jiang ignored his question. “Come down, lazy beast. Looking at you is hurting my neck.”

  Kavar bit back a snarl. He would have argued, but he’d known Jiang long enough to know it wasn’t worth it. Sunder her.

  Kavar opened his wings and dove.

  He dropped into the bowl-shaped chasm that held the pool. As he passed the cliff edge, a handful of dragons burst from beneath the trees.

  An ambush.

  Kavar beat his wings, but the waterfall churned the air and the chasm was narrow.

  Jiang sprang from the pool and whipped one foreclaw forward just as Kavar opened his mouth, preparing to spray a cloud of venom at his attackers. A long, silver-white chain flew from Jiang’s claws and hit him in the face, snapping his head back. The chain circled his muzzle once, twice, three times. A hook at the end sank deep into the soft area below Kavar’s chin, biting into his flesh.

  He couldn’t open his mouth.

  Kavar let out a smothered roar and clawed at the chain. A blue-black male slammed into him, sinking his claws into Kavar’s back and sending them both tumbling for the deep pool below. With a jolt, Kavar recognized Evan, a midnight-blue Elemental and a member of Rhys’s vee.

  Not ony had Jiang had set him up, she was giving him to the false king.

  White-hot rage exploded inside him. Kavar raked Evan with his claws, leaving deep furrows in the Water Elemental’s body. Two more dragons hit him on the side, snapping a bone in his wing and sending him tumbling toward the water.

  He saw the jagged edge of the rock protruding from the water an instant before it connected with the side of his head.

  The world darkened.

  Flickered.

  His lungs spasmed. Filled with water. Half-conscious, his body took control. He shrank, diminished and became human. The sound of the waterfall pounded in his ears, deafening. He couldn’t tell which way was up, didn’t know where Evan or the other dragons had gone—they’d lost his grip when his body had changed.

  Kavar regained full consciousness just in time to realize he was drowning.

  A claw wrapped around his midsection, squeezing hard enough to make his ribs creak. Kavar writhed as he was dragged sideways. He broke the surface once again in Evan’s claws, coughing and vomiting water.

  The blue dragon threw him onto the rocky shore. The chains that bound Kavar’s mouth had disappeared, changing with him as dragon-worked metals did. Now he wore silver manacles on his wrists, and a collar around his neck. He was locked into this human body until all of the metal was removed.

  He vomited more water, then gasped in air. Groaning, he curled in on himself, clutching his head, his white shirt torn and soaked in blood.

  A crimson shape loomed above him. The bloodred dragon flipped Kavar onto his back, sharp claws scratching his side.

  Rhys.

  The puppet king turned to Evan. The blue dragon was licking at four parallel furrows down his side that oozed blood. “Are you all right?”

  Evan’s voice was dry. “I’ll survive.”

  Kavar spat water and tasted blood. “This is familiar. But last time, I believe, it was the other way around.”

  Rhys pressed one long claw into the hollow of Kavar’s throat. “Be silent.”

  Kavar smiled. “Not much power behind that request.”

  Smoke curled from Rhys’s nostrils. “You prefer being coerced by the mantle?”

  Kavar made a derisive sound. Rhys’s claw dug ever so lightly into his throat. Warm blood welled up, its copper tang mixing with the myriad of scents already in the air. Kavar hardly noticed. He lifted a few centimeters off the ground—as far as he could without impaling himself—and the blood began to drip down one side of his neck. “You’re too weak to kill me like this.”

  Rhys’s foot came down, flattening Kavar against the wet, rock-strewn shore. Kavar barely had time to register shock before the pain hit.

  “Weak?” Flames dripped from Rhys’s jaws and spattered, searingly hot, to one side of Kavar’s head. Rhys pressed harder.

  Kavar made a strangled sound. The trickle of blood on his neck became a stream.

  Above the noise of the falls came a low, melodic voice. “Majesty, if you would, perhaps, not kill him. I believe you wanted him for information.” She wore red silk, loose and flowing. A soft, almost invisible glow emanated from her golden skin.

  Kavar sneered. Jiang, as a member of the Lung clan from East Asia, was an empath with the power to influence emotion, and she was using it.

  “Don’t use your powers on me, Jiang,” Rhys growled. But the pressure on Kavar’s chest lightened. For the second time in five minutes, he gasped for air.

  Jiang inclined her head, the charms on her black bun swinging. “I apologize, Majesty. You did say you wanted him alive.”

  Rhys growled again, but he pulled his claws away.

  Kavar rolled onto his side, sucking in air. His face hurt where he’d hit the rock. His neck hurt. His chest screamed.

  Jiang crouched beside him, lithe and graceful. Her voice filled with sweet venom, she said, “Surprise, Kavar.”

  Kavar got his manacled hands beneath him and lunged, but she put one foot on his shoulder and kicked him over. “Just stay down.”

  Ancients, he hated her. He hated her more than he had ever hated Ashem. And he knew exactly how to wipe that smirk off her face.

  “Enjoy your empty victory.” He glared at Jiang, then turned to Rhys, who still wore the form of a crimson dragon. “You’ve always had just enough strength to survive, but the scales are tipping.” He looked back to Jiang. “I’ll bet your traitor didn’t tell you, Son of the Usurper. But Owain is heartsworn.”

  “Heartsworn?”

  Kavar could almost feel the sick surprise in Rhys’s mental voice. It was perfect, seeing realization slacken his jaw and widen his eyes. That’s right, puppet king. Owain is heartsworn. He can produce an heir and pass on the mantle. And he knows about your Wingless mate.

  But you won’t find out about that until the girl is dead.

  Rhys looked to Jiang. “You knew?”

  Jiang’s eyes locked on Kavar, radiant with hatred. “It just happened, Majesty. Since my last report. I was going to tell you earlier, but we were planning Kavar’s capture and there wasn’t time.”

  “There wasn’t time on the three-day flight from Eryri to here?”

  Jiang lowered her head. It was a good show of contrition. “I apologize, Majesty. I wasn’t thinking of anything but capturing Kavar.”

  Ancients, how he wished he was free to kill her.

  Rhys fixed his eyes on her, a rumble low in his throat. The other dragons waited in silence.

  Finally, Rhys spoke. “Bring him. We’ll question him at Eryri.”

  They dragged Kavar upright and thrust him at Evan. The blue dragon took off, jerking Kavar from the ground. It was sickening to have no control as the earth fell away, no way to change into a dragon if he was “accidentally” dropped.

  He craned his neck to see Jiang past the curve of Evan’s belly, her snake-like body undulating through the sky a little behind them. She had been worming her way into Owain’s good graces for centuries, but she’d always gone out of her way to be hostile to Kavar, ensuring he’d keep his distance. Until recently, he’d thought Jiang beneath him.

  If he’d paid more attention, he might not be in his current predicament.

  Sundering pride.

  Turning away from Jiang, who was a problem he couldn’t solve, Kavar watched Rhys fly at the head of the vee. The red dragon thought he had a secret. He thought no one outside his vee knew he was heartsworn.

  He had underestimated Owain.

  The girl had been hard to find, at first. They hadn’t known her name. Then she’d turned up—of all places—on an American news website a f
ew days ago. The article hadn’t been flattering, but it had linked back to a series of other articles on her time “lost” in the mountains. The picture, taken in some kind of little shop, showed the girl staring ahead blankly, as if she hadn’t known she was being photographed. Owain had no trouble recognizing her. After all, she had burned out one of his eyes.

  After they had her name, it was easy to figure out where she lived.

  Even if Rhys broke Kavar, it would be too late for Kai Monahan.

  Chapter Four

  All Light Fled

  Cadoc shifted in his chair, keeping the door to the street just at the edge of his sight. People came and went from the lobby of Chicago Children’s Hospital, their voices a low, constant buzz that echoed from the widely spaced walls.

  He turned the page of the magazine in his lap, burying his right hand deeper in his jacket pocket. It throbbed like a dull, incessant drumbeat, still useless, though the injury was over six weeks old.

  In the periphery of his vision, the door swung open. Cadoc glanced up. A grim-looking man entered, holding the door for a woman with haunted eyes and a fistful of bright balloons.

  Cadoc pressed down rising frustration. Seren had to be in this city. In this hospital. Every whisper had pointed him here.

  “Sir?” The attendant at the check-in desk was a handsome, middle-aged woman with her hair knotted in a bun. Cadoc kept his eyes on the magazine, his expression neutral. The article he’d turned to was a double-page spread: The Deal with Diapers: Interpreting #2.

  The woman left the desk and came to stand directly in front of him. “Sir?”

  Suppressing a grimace, Cadoc looked up.

  “Sir. You’ve been here four hours.”

  Cadoc glanced at the clock and nodded. The lobby had high white ceilings and two entire walls of windows. Bright sunlight filtered in from the near-cloudless sky, making the late November day look warmer than it actually was.

  Late November. A month and a half on his own. “So I have.” He looked at her name tag. “Nancy.”