by Jessica Gunn
“No,” he said. “At least, I don’t believe so. The previous Wardens did not. Guardians are meant to protect the Warden. We can shift into dragon forms and possess great magic. But our power doesn’t come close to resembling yours. The ancient First Dragon made sure of that. She was a Maker, one of the Old Gods.”
Okay, this was a lot to process. But my mind focused in on one word in particular. “‘We’?”
Eli nodded. “Yes. I am the Guardian of this generation. Your Guardian. I only wish I had found you sooner.”
I looked to Zezza, wondering if she was hearing all of this too. “I mean. Again, I didn’t know that—”
“What he means is that you were hidden from us,” Elena said, interrupting. She and Tharin walked behind us, as quiet as ghosts, giving us the privacy Elena had apparently decided we didn’t deserve. “By magic or choice, we’re not sure.”
I looked back to her. “You think I purposely chose to remain hidden?”
Elena shrugged, a lock of her long, dark hair falling over her shoulder. “I don’t know what I think about you, honestly. You claim to have had no knowledge about us and our kind and your role in it all but were found making deals with the King of the Night Court to rid yourself of your dragon. It’s a little odd, don’t you think?”
“Firstly, I never intended to give up Zezza. Secondly, I think that I know the supernaturals of Boston very well,” I spat, unable to hold my temper. How dare she make these assumptions when it was obvious I had no idea what was going on? “The vampires, the werewolves. Even the fae. Not dragons and dragonkind. You all were supposed to be extinct. And I was walking with Kristian because it was the only safe path to take at the time.”
Elena’s expression remained a painful shade of neutral. She wasn’t giving me a single inch.
Whatever. In many ways, she reminded me of my older sister. Which just gave me more reason to ignore her.
Tharin cleared his throat. “Gods, Elena. Chill out. She’s clearly clueless.”
I went to argue against it, thinking it an insult, but in this regard, Tharin was right.
Eli gestured widely. “Can we please focus on the present?” He gestured to the building next to us. “Inside is a healer who will take care of your wounds. Then I’ll guide you to where you and Zezza will be staying for now.”
“‘For now’?” I asked as he opened the door. “How long is ‘for now’?”
Elena walked in front of me, entering first. “You heard the Speaker. Once you’ve pasted the trial, you’re one of us, for better or worse. Warden.” She ducked her head a bit as if in an informal bow as she passed.
Inside, a healer pulled me straight to a cot and set to work pressing together herbs and other ingredients into a salve. Eli stood guard next to me, the others remaining behind a curtain, while the healer went to work.
He was a stout man who had given me the name “Ander” when I’d asked him directly. Since then, the blue-scaled man had only spoken a few words, all to the tune of, “Lie down”, and “Stay still,” and “This might sting.”
The latter had been true. The combination of herbs Ander had mixed together stung at first but then soothed with a cool sensation that curled my toes. Zezza watched from Eli’s side, carefully following Ander’s movements with her sharp eyes. With her around, I knew I was safe.
Ander smiled. “Good. Now hold still again.” He lifted his hands to the salve-covered gashes of my arm and bridged his fingers together. Inside the space left open, energy the color of a clear summertime sky swirled to life. First as a small pinprick, then moving together into a gyre of magic.
My eyebrows knitted together as Zezza’s head appeared above the edge of the table, curious as ever. “Magic?”
Ander slowly moved the magic over to me. “Healing.”
As soon as the healing spell touched my skin, the energy seemed to go to work pulling together skin and muscle, cleaning the wound and stitching it together at the same time until it looked like nothing had happened at all. There was no blood, no gash, no scar.
“Oh, my god,” I said, my mouth agape. “That’s… amazing, Ander.” I grinned up at him.
Ander bowed his head a little. “Thank you, Warden.”
There it was again. The title. I pressed my lips together and tried to hold a smile that appeared remotely genuine. “Thank you.”
From there, Elena and Tharin left Eli and me as he led me to a building on the edge of a cliff a bit outside the village. The walk wasn’t too long, but the path had been so winding that I wasn’t sure I could follow it again without Eli. Whereas near the beach, a wooden pathway had made the route clear, this walk was shrouded in areas where the path simply disappeared at points and reappeared a quarter mile later.
If I tried to do this alone, I’d likely end up lost en route to the beach.
At one point, when the volcano at the center of the Lair briefly came into view, Zezza’s snout touched my shoulder, her nostrils sparking on every exhale with a bit of lighting crackles. She sent to me an image of the volcano, which appeared to zoom in farther, following along a path at its base to the top, where a cavern opened in one wall.
“Interesting,” I said. I wasn’t sure why she was showing me this.
“Hmm?” Eli asked.
My cheeks flushed with warmth. “Oh, nothing. Zezza was showing me something.”
His brow furrowed a bit. “Like what?”
“The volcano.”
“Interesting indeed.” He stopped walking. “What exactly did she show you?”
I glanced back to the volcano in question, searching for the path she’d pointed out. “A cavern on the side of the volcano up there. I don’t know why, though.”
His eyes found Zezza next, filled with curiosity leaning toward accusation. “You know what’s up there?”
The question was to her, not me. A sudden need to protect her washed over me.
“How could she?” I stepped in front of where she was hovering. “She’s a baby.”
“With the collective genetic memory of all dragonkind,” Eli said, his words heavy with a meaning I was pretty sure I was missing. There was still so much I didn’t know about this island and the dragon and dragon shifter culture on it. “What’s up there is so secret that not even the crown family knows.”
“Really?” I said, kind of taken aback. “If you’re an actual ruling body and not a cosmetic one, why wouldn’t know you know something about a key feature of the island?”
“Because we don’t.” His tone turned sharp and irritated and his eyes narrowed. “It’s not allowed.”
“Weird,” I said, chuckling dryly, trying to lighten the mood. Poorly so. His serious expression didn’t fade even an iota. “She’s just a baby dragon. She probably thinks the volcano is cool, that’s all.” I turned to her. “Right, Zezza?”
She held Eli’s questioning gaze for a few moments before grinning at me… and simultaneously sending me an image of the cavern leading into the volcano again.
I tried to keep my expression neutral. We can talk about it later, okay? I believe you, not him.
Zezza bowed her head in acknowledgment.
“Ready?” Eli said as he began walking again, either ignoring the obvious exchange Zezza and I had had or being utterly oblivious.
Not that I had a reason to go back there alone yet. Even if I wanted to leave this pocket-weave, I still didn’t know how. But… if the Warden was supposed to have super strong magic, then it was likely I had the ability in me. Somewhere.
Zezza trilled beside my ear, having retaken her favorite perch on my shoulder.
I ran my hand down her scaled back. Lightning slid along her scales, tickling my finger. It was like her special way of saying hello or generally being happy. But now that I knew what I was and the magic I held within me, I understood why the lightning she produced didn’t hurt.
And that was special.
Eli pointed to a path lined with tiny stones that glowed white. “There, follow that
path to your cabin. Settle in and rest. I’ll return in the morning to get you for training.”
“Training?” I asked. “And you’re just going to leave?” I wondered what Elena would have to say about that.
He nodded and took another step toward me. “The Warden must be skilled not only in magic, but in riding. You have not grown up here or around dragons. You will have to learn from the beginning, as we do as children.”
“Guess so.” Riding? As in, riding dragons? The thought of it had my hands shaking after what had happened in the ocean. That sea serpent had been huge. They expected me to actually ride in the air on something that size?
As if he could read my thoughts—or had spotted my shaking fingers—Eli reached out and took one of my hands in his. The movement caught me off guard, but I didn’t stop him.
“Don’t worry, Vera,” he said, his words soft. “They won’t push you beyond your means. It is… difficult right now. But I and they know you can do this. You were born for it. It is destiny.”
“Destiny,” I echoed. His hand was warm and strong. A reassurance was there too in the way he didn’t let go, as if he were trying to anchor me in this new world. “I don’t believe in destiny.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I do. Destiny is what brought you here despite magics keeping you hidden. Destiny is why I am Guardian while also being the prince, despite the issues it creates for my family.”
“Issues?” Not that I couldn’t understand family problems when I had created ninety percent of mine. In hindsight, it all seemed so stupid now.
“Elena is older and should inherit the throne,” he explained. “And that’s fine. I’ve never wanted it. But me being also born the Guardian to the Warden is a strong claim to leadership our people support very much.”
“So that’s why she hates me.” The words were out faster than I could stop them.
Eli winced. “My sister doesn’t hate you. She views you as a threat. That’s all.”
“Well, I know even less about your politics than I do dragons, so…” Letting my sentence trail off, I pulled my hand from his so I could turn around and take in the view behind us. A tiny cabin had been built on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and later on tonight, the starry sky above. “I… accept that I’m this Warden. But I don’t know what it means in the long run. I have no interest in being a chess piece in whatever political stuff is going on, here or back in Boston. I just want to be safe.”
“You will be. I will make sure of it,” Eli said.
I turned back to him, searching his gaze for the information he wasn’t telling me. I’d been sure earlier, with the Speaker, that there was more to the story. The Speaker had kept the full details of the Warden role vague. And now Eli seemed to be holding back as well. “Because it’s your destiny?”
Eli nodded. “And because both of us have our own battles to fight in the coming months.”
“Whoa, I’m not fighting anything,” I said, lifting up my hands. “I’m not a fighter. Clearly. I’ve done nothing but run away from everything since last night.”
“There is a prophecy.”
“Of course there is.” Supernaturals, crazy powers, mythical titles. All that was missing was a prophecy to complete this set.
Eli’s expression turned pleading, asking me to hear him out.
I crossed my arms. “And what does this prophecy of destiny say?”
Eli’s head dropped the smallest bit. If I hadn’t been looking at him directly, I wouldn’t have noticed the motion at all. It was almost… sheepish. “When the elven war rises, the Guardian and the Warden will be the only things protecting the Storm and the mortal weave from which all life arose.”
Well if that wasn’t some melodramatic, high-fantasy movie bullshit, I wasn’t sure what was.
But… here I was. Talking to a dragon shifter, who’d saved me from vampires earlier this morning. I had a dragon friend and had talked to a sea serpent earlier.
I was already living the high-fantasy bullshit.
“You know what I think, Eli?” I crossed my arms again and spared a quick look at the sky as if to prove my upcoming point.
“Yes, Vera?”
“I think we make our own destinies. Maybe the cosmos-level stuff is out of our reach, or predetermined, or divinely created. But battles and war and magic and all of the rest of this? Everything from who’s king to what we’re eating for breakfast the next day—that’s on us. We can change it. Form it. Move it.”
Eli’s expression remained neutral for most of my speech, only becoming slightly disappointed at the end. “Vera…”
I shook my head. “No. Because you can’t tell me it’s destiny that I purposely put myself in the line of fire by forcing my way into a poker game. A poker game played amongst Boston’s supernatural elite, in which I won a real-life dragon egg and changed my entire life. That wasn’t destiny. That was my decision to act.”
A wisp of a smile ghosted Eli’s lips. He nodded once more. “Perhaps.”
“There’s no perhaps about it,” I said.
“Then why did you do it?” he asked. “Why force your way into that poker game? How did you even end up in a position to do so? Can you not say that was destiny? Or the fact I was also there that night, and that Zezza’s egg was up for winning.”
“Because I was running.” Normally, I wouldn’t have admitted that. But something about Eli and this conversation and this whole damn dragon island had me wanting to spill my truth all over the place because what did it really matter anymore after today?
“Running from what?” he asked, his eyes meeting mine.
“Everything. My family. My lackluster life. My inability to connect with anything and everything. I chose that job at that casino serving supernaturals trying to feel something. Fear. Excitement. A connection to the inner-workings of supernatural life in Boston. And you know what I got? A baby dragon and a title I don’t understand the immensity of.”
“You found your destiny.” He said it quietly, as if I’d arrived at this same conclusion myself.
That wasn’t the case at all.
“No, the consequences of my actions found me,” I clarified. “And now I’m more torn than ever about where I belong.”
“You belong here, with us,” Eli said. “With your people.”
“My people,” I echoed, then turned away, pacing a few steps toward the cabin on the edge of the cliff. “My people put me in a trial to almost be eaten by a sea serpent.”
“But you were not,” Eli argued, stepping again closer to me. “You passed.”
“And I suppose that was destiny, too?”
He held my gaze and answered firmly, “No. That was you and your power. Please, Vera. Go rest. Make yourself at home in your cabin.”
Was he changing the subject because I was right? Or because he was getting as frustrated with me as his sister and my family and even Halley, my boss, had gotten on multiple occasions? Sometimes it was just hard to see a future and where you fit when everything made no sense and connections to people faded as easily as they came.
Zezza nudged my cheek with her snout.
I know, Zezza. I have you. Always from now on.
“And where are you going to go?” I asked. “What if I try to run away or something?”
Eli smiled. “I won’t be far. And I know you won’t.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
“I am.”
I sighed and nodded. At that very moment, I felt suddenly fatigued. It had been a long day, and the weight of everything from running from Keir to my trial to being more honest with Eli than I’d been with another human in months was starting to demolish every wall I’d put up. Without them, exhaustion was threatening to pull me under.
“Good evening Eli,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Before I knew it, he was gone. He’d disappeared back into the jungle, leaving Zezza and me and whatever lay inside the cabin alone.
My stomach
grumbled loudly. Then so did Zezza’s.
I looked to her and chuckled. “Let’s see what kind of dragon island food we can cook up.”
Chapter 15
Zezza and I spent the rest of the afternoon and early into the evening exploring the cabin and its contents. It was a simple place: a kitchen area and living room, a table with chairs, a bathroom, and a single bedroom. The dresser was full of clothes matching Eli’s and the others’ and they were even in my size. No armor, though. Maybe you had to be a dragon knight or something for that. The kitchen had also been stocked with food, and the bathroom with toiletries. In the living room was a blue couch and a bay window containing what I could only describe as a pet bed, presumably for Zezza.
I couldn’t tell if this cabin had been specially prepared for us and the baby dragon that had accompanied me to the Lair or if this had always been the Warden’s cabin on the island, and if bonding with and caring for a baby dragon was a normal occurrence in such cases.
Simple as it was, I liked it. It was sort of like my apartment back home, except much less dirty and this wasn’t located in a sketchy area. The best part, though, was how safe it felt. And in that safety, how peaceful.
After exploring, Zezza and I fell into the couch and lay there for hours. Exhaustion pulled my eyelids closed. I wasn’t sure how long I slept for, but when I awoke, the sun was setting over the water outside the bay window. I scrounged up what I could of the food provided in the fridge, mostly the basics, and made a simple meal of pasta and garlic bread for myself while Zezza perched on the dining room table and watched me curiously.
I narrated what I was doing like some kind of cooking show, but that only seemed to draw more curious, verging-on-weird, looks from her. There was some raw meat in a second fridge for Zezza… I presumed anyway. Not like I was going to eat fresh meat—at least without cooking it first.
We sat together, watching the sun set and the stars come out. It was then I realized I really wasn’t that far from home.
The concept of weaves and traveling between them was mostly a faraway one I’d never had to consider before. I’d always been on the mortal weave and until today had never left. It was a different place from the world I knew and yet, as I gazed up at the nighttime sky with little light pollution and saw the Milky Way appear, I realized I wasn’t so far from home after all.