Shadow of Flame

by Caitlyn McFarland

  “He took her.” Cadoc’s voice was dead.

  Rhys clenched his jaw against helpless rage. “We’ll get her back.”

  “Tell me he won’t hurt her, Rhys. Tell me she’ll be all right.”

  Rhys ran a hand through is hair. “She’ll be all right, fy mrawd. We’ll get her back. I swear it.”

  Cadoc stood and embraced Rhys, pounding his back so that his damp shirt stuck to his skin. “Thank you.”

  Rhys clapped Cadoc on the shoulder and stepped back. “Ancients. I kept picking up a communicator, thinking I’d talk to you, then having to put it down again.”

  Cadoc laughed bitterly. “Nothing quite like a Quetzal blood curse to make your friends realize how much you mean to them.” He sighed and rubbed his face with his good hand. “Sunder it. I’m glad to be back, but...it isn’t the same. Griff isn’t here. Iain isn’t here. Ashem told me you’ve got Morwenna in a cell because she’s the spy. What’s happened to our vee?”

  Rhys didn’t have an answer.

  Seeking comfort, he reached out to Kai. Except she’d fallen asleep at some point during his battle with Owain. Rhys wasn’t sure how she’d managed that on dragon-back, but then, Kai had had quite a bit of practice riding dragons lately.

  As if he could read Rhys’s mind, Cadoc asked, “Where’s Kai?”

  “With Jiang. They’re probably five hundred miles away by now.” He nudged Kai with his mind, trying to wake her. Her mind didn’t budge. Frowning, Rhys tried again. Then again.

  The deeper he reached, the clearer it became that something was wrong.

  Dread swept through Rhys. Sick, crippling fear. He reached again, deeper. This wasn’t sleep. In sleep, he could sense her mind moving, sense when she dreamed. This was deeper, somehow. A profound unconsciousness.

  Rhys recalled the spark of fear she’d felt. The shock. He’d been so wrapped up in saving Seren, so sure that she was safe...

  “Rhys?” Cadoc rose from the rock. “What is it, boyo? You look like someone stole all your books.”

  Rhys shook his head. He was being paranoid. He’d used the mantle, so Kai had to be fine. She and Jiang were on their way back to Eryri. They had to be.

  Ancients, he had to be sure.

  It took Rhys, Ashem and Cadoc an hour to find someone who had seen Jiang leave. When they did, it was a rogue Noodinoon girl barely older than a juvenile. She sat out in the storm, her thundercloud-colored wings spread as if she wanted to absorb every drop of the water.

  “Tell the king and the commander what you told me, Stormbringer,” Cadoc said.

  The girl rustled her feathered wings. “I don’t know if the Lung I saw had a human—she was too far away—but she was green with a cream ruff, and she wasn’t headed south. She was headed northeast.”

  A flame of fear licked Rhys’s heart. “Northeast? Why would she go northeast? I used the mantle. I told her—”

  Ancients, no.

  No.

  Cadoc’s voice was hollow, horror dawned on his face. “You told her to fly home.”

  There had been a mistake. The Noodinoon was wrong. Henry Harrow had caught Morwenna sending messages to Owain. Morwenna was supposed to be the spy. Jiang had brought him Kavar. She’d reported faithfully from Owain’s court for hundreds of years.

  Fly home.

  Hundreds of years.

  Fly home.

  Eryri wasn’t her home, Cadarnle was. Jiang was the spy.

  Rhys leapt up from the wet stone he’d been sitting on. Owain had Kai. He would kill her. Ancients, he wouldn’t wait a second. Kai was going to die. His Kai. He’d never see her again.

  A hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him to sit. Ashem’s voice was rough in his ear. “Wait. We’ve got to have a plan.”

  Rhys sat, numb.

  Owain had Kai.

  Ashem shouted commands. Despite Demba’s threats to Seren, he gathering the fastest dragons on the island into a small party and sending them toward Cadarnle. When Rhys tried to go with him, Ashem held him back.

  Rhys punched him in the jaw. Ashem growled and threatened to sedate him.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Owain had Kai. He’d kill her. He’d torture her.

  The vision of the fair raven—the vision he’d assumed they’d avoided when Kai had fought off her own attacker months ago in Colorado—had come true.

  He leapt up again. This time it took Ashem, Cadoc and Evan to wrestle him back down. When Rhys punched Evan in the jaw, Ashem made good on his threat. He touched Rhys on the forehead, and the world disappeared.

  * * *

  Juli slid along wide, ancient corridors of mosaic and carved stone, invisible as a ghost. Not much penetrated the constant fog of invasive mental voices, save for the even more invasive voices of Ashem and Kavar.

  Then Ashem had told her about Kai, and everything came back into focus.

  Juli moved down through the mountain, unseen by the rest of Eryri’s inhabitants. She could go anywhere she wanted now. Hear anyone’s thoughts. Open their minds and look inside, and they would never know she’d done it.

  She should have done it to Kavar. She might be able to push in a little as his heartsworn, but she couldn’t force her way in, not like she should have been able to. Even with her powers doubled, he had something. Something that gave his own power a boost, made him strong enough to block her.

  She slipped keys from the guard’s keychain, distracting him with thoughts of something else, and walked into the cell.

  Kavar. Even bedraggled from too-long confinement, he looked enough like Ashem to make her heart hurt.

  Except for those silver eyes.

  Kavar smiled, but it was faint. “I know what you want from me, Juliet King.”

  Juli nodded. Of course he did. He’d sensed her reaction through their heartswearing bond when Ashem had told her of Kai’s capture. “Help me. Set her free.”

  The silver eyes considered her. “I might consider it. For a price.”

  Juli barked a laugh. “The price is your freedom.”

  He shook his head, a smile appearing on the corner of his mouth. “No. The price is you. Come with me.”

  Juli snorted. “On a cold day in hell. You don’t have anywhere to keep me, Kavar. You can’t take me to Cadarnle. Owain will never trust you if he knows about me, and that works against your purposes and mine.”

  Kavar settled back against the cell wall. “I suppose that I’m comfortable enough here. Really, there’s no hurry to leave.”

  “Name a different price,” Juli ground out.

  Kavar considered. “Six months. Six months of every year for the rest of your life with me. Six months with Ashem. You’re heartsworn to both of us. It’s only fair.”

  “Who gives a damn about fair?” The rest of her life was a long, long time. She’d seen it, in some of the older dragon’s heads.

  Kavar tapped his lips. “Kai might.”

  Juli made a frustrated noise. She tried to lower the bargain. One month a year. Two. But Kavar wouldn’t take it.

  For Kai, she’d pay any price. What did Juli care if she had to play Persephone and Hades, as long as Kai lived? If their situations were reversed, Ashem would do it for Rhys. He would understand. Protecting Kai was Juli’s job. “Six months, then,” Juli said. “And you will help me free Kai.”

  “Six months,” Kavar agreed.

  “Done.” She unlocked the chains. They fell away, and Kavar rubbed his wrists, staring at Juli with awe, and fear and lust. The insane pull of the first few days of heartswearing had subsided to the deep, aching desire simply to exist in each other’s presence. To touch.

  Juli might have been tempted, but every time she would have leaned in to Kavar, she remembered Ashem. She loved him, and she had betrayed him enough
.

  At least she didn’t have to worry about treason. The Council had no idea of the new extent of her powers. They would never know she’d been here. And Rhys, who might be the only person on earth who loved Kai more than Juli, would understand. If she were willing to let Kavar out to save her best friend, he would be willing to do ten times more for his heartsworn.

  Juli and Kavar walked from the cell, Juli hiding them from the minds of the people around them until they came to a side tunnel that led out onto a ledge. The wild ocean wind whipped her hair. “Can you manage from here?”

  He closed his eyes, lifting his face to the breeze. Then he met her gaze. “I am Azhdahā.”

  Juli nodded, backing away so that Kavar could transform into the black dragon.

  “Come with me now,” he murmured the words in her mind. “Forget Kai. Forget Ashem. I’ll take you somewhere quiet. You won’t have to hear the voices anymore.”

  She shook her head. “No. My payment doesn’t come due until Kai is free. We’ll have to plan.”

  “I will not endanger Owain.”

  “I don’t care how we do it, I only care that it’s done.”

  “Then you will come to me?”

  Juli nodded. “One half of each year, I’m yours.”

  For Kai.

  Smiling, Kavar flew north. Juli opened her mind to Ashem to tell him what she had done. If they were going to free Kai, it would take all of them. She was still learning about her powers. Together, Ashem and Kavar would be able to do things she never could.

  But first, they had to stop trying to kill each other.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A Savior

  Kai woke in a cool, gray room. Her vision fuzzed in and out like a badly focused camera lens. Her head throbbed like a drum, blood beating against her temples in an inexorable song of pain.

  A dark figure stood out against the gray wall. Kai took a breath, blinking, as if that might help her to focus. “Rhys?”

  She sat up, the world tilting and whirling, then leaned over the side of the bed on which she lay and heaved the contents of her stomach onto the floor. She raised her hands to her face to push away her hair, which had come out of its braids. But when she lifted her left hand, her right came with it. She blinked again, trying to focus.

  They were chained. Not just manacles around her wrists, but finely wrought silver chains, like the ones used in necklaces, twisted around her fingers.

  “Rhys!” She cried his name out loud and in her mind simultaneously, terror tightening her chest. The figure against the wall didn’t speak, but it did shift and come toward her.

  Rhys flooded into her mind, filling her with relief. And terror. So much terror. “Ancients, Kai! You’re alive. Where are you?”

  Before Kai could respond, a rough hand grabbed her chin and yanked her face up. The dark figure. He was a blond man dressed in black and gold with a patch over his left eye. She jerked away from him, but his fingers squeezed. “Look at me.”

  Kai whimpered, but raised her gaze to the remaining pale eye.

  His face filled her mind. Rhys must have picked up on the image, because he identified the man with one hate-laced whisper. “Owain.”

  Kai’s breath caught. For an instant, pure terror grayed out her vision. When it cleared, Owain was frowning. Not angry, not impatient. Only impassive and curious. But the shape of his jaw and mouth were astonishingly familiar. In a cold way, he looked a little like Rhys.

  “Don’t shout.” His voice was cool and calm.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Rhys begged, though there was no way Owain could hear him.

  Rhys’s fear was so overwhelming that Kai had to pull away from him, just a little, until she could tell her own emotions from his. Rhys was more afraid that she was, and she needed to keep her head. To look around. To deal with Owain.

  Owain... There was something wrong with him. In Rhys, Morwenna and other Fire Elementals, she had begun to sense a sort of warmth. In other dragons or people without magic, she felt nothing. This man was like a black hole. Something that stole warmth instead of giving—made darkness instead of light. She remembered Rhys telling her about the magical accident that had inverted Owain’s powers.

  After a moment, he released her and stepped away. “Do you know me?”

  Kai stretched her jaw experimentally, wincing in pain. His fingers had been as strong and cold as stone. “Do I?”

  Rhys was listing off a litany of things in her mind. “Don’t bait him. Don’t make him feel like a fool. Tell him I’ll give him anything. Anything, cariad, if he promises not to hurt you.”

  Love washed through Kai, and tears burned the backs of her eyes. Not tears of fear, though she was afraid. Tears of grief for the time she should have had with Rhys.

  A smile curved one corner of Owain’s mouth. At the sight of it, her blood chilled. That was Rhys’s smile. But on Owain’s face, it promised pain. He bowed. “Owain ap Rigani.”

  As if hearing him say it was all her treacherous body had needed, the fear she’d managed to keep at bay rose in a drowning tide.

  “I know you,” she whispered.

  Except for the angry scars that peeked from beneath the patch over his eye, he was incredibly handsome. Even his voice was pleasant. Somehow, that made everything worse. “Your name is Kai?”

  She nodded, trembling and staring at those scars. “You’re going to torture me to torture Rhys.”

  Owain looked wistful, almost regretful. He sat at the edge of the bed. “It’s nothing personal. I need the mantle. My people are broken. Scattered. They need a savior, and Rhys is too much a coward to do what needs to be done.”

  Owain sighed. “And I can’t lie, I’ve been wanting to get ahold of you for months. It’s not fun being blind in one eye, Kai. Fair is fair. I plan on repaying the favor.”

  Inside her mind, Rhys had gone very, very still.

  Kai bared her teeth, a sickness rising inside her. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be real. It was a nightmare. She was going to wake up on the island. Rhys would be there. They would make love. “I’ve closed him out before. I can do it again. He won’t feel anything you do to me. I won’t help you exterminate humans.”

  “Sunder it, Kai. No!”

  Kai ignored Rhys.

  “It’s not about that,” Owain said, impatient. “Dragons deserve more than survival. We’ve been here longer. Our history is longer, our knowledge deeper, more precious. We deserve to be the dominant race on this planet.”

  “Why do you have to be dominant?” Kai asked, desperate. “Why can’t you leave Rhys alone? He doesn’t want to fight you. You’ve already murdered his father.”

  For the first time, Owain’s icy demeanor cracked, and rage showed beneath. “I didn’t murder Ayen, I avenged my mother. He murdered her.” Then he paused, considering. “Mair was self-defense. I didn’t murder her, either.”

  Kai swallowed. Mair was Rhys’s mother. When had he killed her? “So your mother is avenged. Leave Rhys alone. Let me go.”

  Owain’s neutral mask fell back into place, cracks closing as if they’d never been. He shrugged. “As I’ve said, I need the mantle. Our people are falling apart. We’re dying out. Pushed to the margins and the edges of our own planet because nothing is ever enough for you.” He sneered. “I will restore balance.”

  “Yeah, okay, Anakin.” Kai tried to sound bold, but her voice shook.

  She tugged her chains and looked around the room, listing her surroundings to Rhys, anything that might help him find her. There wasn’t much to tell. “It’s all rock and ice. A rock bedroom with a table and a bucket and a door.” She didn’t mention the opposite wall, or the chains hanging from it, or the drain on the floor. “It’s cold. I think it’s very cold.” It was hard to tell, now that temperature no longer affected her.r />
  “You’re at Cadarnle.” Whatever that meant, Rhys wasn’t happy about it. Kai wanted to lean into him, feel his heat. His absence was a visceral, physical ache. “Where’s Cadarnle?”

  He hesitated. “As far from Eryri as it’s possible to get.”

  Tears spilled over Kai’s eyes. She didn’t want to die. She looked pleadingly at Owain. “Please, let me go. I just got my crap together with Rhys, and we’ve had so little time.”

  Owain’s mouth twisted. “I do have a heart, Kai. You’ve got to understand that this isn’t something I take pleasure in. But humans will discover us, and when they do, they’ll try to turn us into animals. Capture us, attempt to tame us, exterminate us I can’t let that happen. Sometimes sacrifices must be made to accomplish great things.”

  A memory in Rhys’s voice echoed through her mind. It’s normal people—people who want nothing but peace, family and happiness—who die because some idiot wanted some grand thing.

  Kai wanted to find humor in the fact that Owain was the idiot, but she couldn’t. “You know, Rhys told me that story, and you’re wrong. Ayen never did anything to you. Your mother left him the mantle herself.”

  Suddenly, the skin of Kai’s face grew cold. In her mind, Rhys said, “Don’t argue with him. Just agree, cariad, say anything to get him to leave.”

  Owain brought his face close to hers and spoke through gritted teeth. “Don’t presume to tell me the story of my own life. Ayen always wanted the crown. He fed my mother lies about me. He sabotaged my research. He pushed me to kill. To perform the magic that took away my fire and left me with ice.”

  “Don’t argue,” Rhys begged.

  “I don’t believe you,” Kai said.

  Owain rose, chuckling a little. “Believe it or not, Wingless, it’s the truth.” He reached out and ran a chill finger just at the neckline of her shirt. “What’s this?”

  He pulled her necklace free, the sun pendant glimmering in the dim light.