by Riley Storm
Gesturing with his hand, Rane sent a gust of wind to flip the intruder’s hood back to reveal their face.
“Natasha?” he rumbled, frowning in confusion. He focused his mind and allowed more oxygen to flow to her lungs, confident that she wouldn’t try to harm him.
He didn’t, however, let her down or ease his suspicion.
What was she doing here?
Rane had almost given up patrolling the hallways in the late hours of the night. Ever since he’d chased his last quarry out, things had been empty and silent on all fronts. Not a single sign of anyone poking around.
Until tonight.
He frowned, thinking back to that last intruder. One thing he remembered vividly about them was the flash of green eyes as they’d dived away from him.
Natasha didn’t have green eyes. Unless that was another trick the witches could pull off that he wasn’t aware of.
“Are you okay?” he asked, moving closer, turning on the lights. “Why were you sneaking around the dragon quarter this late? If you needed to find me, you could have just come see me, you know.”
Natasha was silent, grey-blue eyes troubled. Her fiery red hair was once again straightened, this time wrapped up in a tight bun at the back of her head. Clean and out of the way.
“What’s going on?” he asked, not releasing his hold on her yet. The wind continued to swirl around her, holding her against the wall. Once he got some answers, perhaps, then he would let her down. In the meantime, he wasn’t about to risk anything.
“Rane…” she began, then faltered and came to a stop.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. He’d never seen her this upset.
“You need to explain yourself, Natasha,” he said calmly. “Because you were sneaking around here very late at night. Wrapped in a cloak of invisibility as well. You didn’t want to be seen.”
He straightened, wondering if he’d gotten it all wrong. “Is everything okay? Are you running from someone?”
“You can’t run from yourself,” she said glumly.
“Why were you trying to sneak into my quarters?” he asked.
“How did you find me?” she countered. “I was invisible. No sound was coming out, and you weren’t in the hallway when I opened the door. Nor were you inside.”
Rane shrugged. He wasn’t about to let her know that he’d tracked her via scent. His nose had told him he recognized it but caught up in the frenzy of realizing that someone was sneaking around, he hadn’t realized it was Natasha he was smelling. Rane had figured it was the same witch as before.
“The same way I found you before,” he answered, deciding to test his theory.
Natasha’s eyes lit up, turning bluer with ire. “What are you talking about?”
“The last time you came sneaking around here. I found you then, like I found you now.”
She shook her head. “What last time? When was I sneaking around here before?”
“Don’t lie to me!” he snarled, clenching his fist, the air grabbing at her wrists and legs doing the same.
“I’m not lying to you,” Natasha said, never faltering. “The only other time I’ve been here was when I was with you.”
He watched her face carefully. Until a few minutes ago, Rane would have been confident in his ability to spot her telling a lie, but now, now he wasn’t so sure. After all, he’d thought that she liked him, that she even had feelings for him. Was it all a lie?
“If you wanted to see me, you should have just come to see me,” he said, taking a different approach, trying to lure her into explaining why she was there.
“I…I know,” she said, hanging her head. “It’s just…it’s complicated, and I wasn’t sure what others would think of me if I did.”
“So, you snuck in here to avoid being seen by everyone else?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you would be up trying to catch someone else.” Natasha frowned. "You're telling the truth? Someone else was in your area?”
He nodded, seeing no need to hide the truth from her. “Yes. I chased them, nearly caught them, but they escaped. They had bright green eyes.”
Something flickered in Natasha’s face, but it was gone too quickly for him to register what it might have meant. Probably just surprise at his admission, and the knowledge that she wasn’t the first.
“Next time just knock at my door,” he said. “There’s no need to sneak around while you’re in our area. The dragons don’t care.”
He pulled her away from the wall, while another gust of wind retrieved her wand. Natasha sagged and nodded. “I’m sorry, Rane, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“We all have times we do that,” he said somberly. “But you can trust me, Nat. I’m on your side.”
“I know,” she said.
He grinned, relaxing as he came to accept that she was here to see him, not for any nefarious reason. Reaching forward, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her clear of the floor in a giant hug.
“Rane no don’t—!” she yelped.
Something dropped out from her robes and slid across the floor.
He glanced down to see a pile of papers scattered everywhere.
“What’s this?” he said aloud, bending down to help gather them up.
Then his eyes registered what he was seeing.
Wind came back with a vengeance. He tore the air from her lungs and—with a flick of his palm—slapped her up against the wall, pinning her spread-eagled in mid-air.
“Natasha,” he said quietly. “Please explain to me what I’m looking at.”
He expected her to fight back, to try and escape, to get mad at him. Those were all natural responses to his actions.
What he wasn’t prepared for, was for her to break down into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Natasha
The dam broke.
Everything she’d been holding back, all her fear and terror at what she was doing, how Loiner was manipulating her, it all welled to the surface and washed over her at once. Fears for her future, disgust at the way she’d treated Rane and what she had been attempting to do to the dragons when she was caught, it all mixed together into a blend of hatred and self-damnation.
“What the hell is going on, Natasha?” Rane snarled, uncaring of her state. “Start talking. Now.”
“It’s Master Loiner,” she said through the tears.
“Is it? Because you’re the one I see in front of me right now,” he said, hatred thick in his voice. “You’re the one trying to sneak into my room with an envelope of papers that look very much like attack plans on Winterspell. This one here is a note that talks about eliminating the Coven and Circe in a surprise assault, killing them all before they can respond.”
“Oh God,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry. I had no choice.”
Rane crossed his arms. “What have you gotten yourself into, Natasha? Start from the beginning. Tell me everything, or I swear I will make you pay for this, personal feelings for you or not.”
“Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “You have to believe, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“These,” he growled, shaking the papers violently. “These tell a different story. So, explain. You’re running out of time.”
He was practically trembling, working to restrain his anger. She’d used him, and now he knew it. Natasha wasn’t sure how he would act, but it was clear that for the moment at least, he couldn’t believe just what she’d been using him for. It must be gnawing at his insides, eating him apart to finally discover what she’d done.
“I…I was blackmailed into it,” Natasha admitted, bowing her head in shame, not wanting to look at him.
“What do you mean? Why would someone do that to you? How would they do that to you?” he growled.
Natasha took a long time in answering, struggling to accept the real truth of it all. “I guess,” she said, sniffling hard, working to compose herself. “I suppose I did it to myself, technically.”
The self-admission of guilt seemed to surprise him, as if he hadn’t expected her to be able to admit it. But Natasha knew who the real one at fault was. The only one to blame.
“Go on,” was all he said out loud, not interested in anything but straight answers.
“Winterspell is built on politics, Rane,” she explained to him. “The Masters who head up the various schools, or who have been around a long time, they wield a lot of power. In many of them, that breeds a desire for more power, including a spot on the Coven, or even the title of Circe, head of all Winterspell.”
Rane chewed on his lip. Judging by the look on his face, Natasha suspected he had an idea who one of the other players in this was. It wasn’t that surprising, because Loiner had crossed paths with the dragons since the day Damien had landed in the main courtyard. The woman hated sharing the spotlight and feared the dragons were after her power.
“I tried going it alone. It was fine; as a Novice, nobody cares about you. You haven’t proven yourself worthy of attention. Even graduating into Initiate status doesn’t garner you much attention, unless you do so faster than most others. But as you progress, nearing the end of Initiate level, the Masters start to take notice in you. To help propel you along.”
“Get to the point,” he growled.
Natasha flinched, but nodded. “After my progress slowed, I allied myself with a Master who had approached me. Since then, over the past two years, she helped ensure my progress got back on track, that it wasn’t being derailed.”
“What a fucking terrible system.” Rane said, disgusted at what she was saying.
“Are you any different?” she asked, half curious, half suspecting that they were more similar than he wanted to admit.
“We’re not talking about Dracians here,” he growled, all but confirming her suspicion. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Still, he was correct. “I know.” She sighed and continued her story. “But I was involved in it, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.”
“How did that lead you to framing us?” he wanted to know.
Natasha looked at him, and she felt sadness pouring into her soul at what she was going to say next. He didn’t deserve what she’d done to him and telling the truth would hurt him more than anything else. “She told me to get close to you. To use your trust of me to find out what you are up to.”
Rane frowned. “I’m not up to anything.”
She knew that wasn’t exactly true. He was up to something, but Natasha was fairly confident that whatever it was, it wasn’t nefarious. Certainly not along the lines of what Loiner assumed they were doing.
“Not you specifically, but the dragons as a whole. She’s obsessed with finding out what you’re planning.”
“We’re planning how to stay alive, something that bitch is making harder to do because she keeps tempting us into wanting to squeeze her neck,” Rane snapped, his anger directed elsewhere for the moment.
Then her words sank home, and his gaze snapped back to Natasha. “She…ordered you to befriend me?” he asked, voice sounding weak.
Natasha’s heart broke as pain washed across his face. “Rane…yes, maybe at first I was acting like I wanted to be your friend because she made me. But I promise, I swear to you, that it wasn’t—”
“Enough,” he said, cutting her off, stealing her air once more to stop her from speaking. “Just stop.”
Natasha tried to gulp down air, to speak again, but she couldn’t suck anything in. No air was getting past his barrier. Her lungs worked, but nothing came. It wasn’t long before they began to scream at her, desperate for oxygen to feed her mind, her body.
Rane sat down, his gaze distant and unfocused. She tried to free herself of his bonds, but they were too strong. Her struggles were in vain, the only thing they accomplished using up more of her preciously dwindling supply of air. The corners of her vision dimmed as her situation grew direr by the second.
“You used me,” he said, looking up at last.
By now Natasha’s eyes were bulging wide. The room was dark, and she felt herself starting to swing toward unconscious. She feared that if she got that far, she would never come back. Perhaps out of guilt, perhaps to hear the rest of her story, she wasn’t sure, but for whatever reason, Rane eased the blockade, giving her air to breathe at long last.
She gasped and sucked in huge lungfuls of beautiful, wonderful air, barely able to focus on what he was saying as Rane started talking again.
“I thought you cared,” he said. “I let you in, I told you things that…that I hadn’t told many others. I felt something for you,” he growled. “But it was all a damn lie. A trick. Just another bit of your magic cast upon me, to think that you cared for me as well.”
“I did, Rane! I do!” she gasped, still short of breath, but wanting him to hear it from her mouth. She needed him to believe that, to believe that she hadn’t faked things as they grew closer. That all that was genuinely her. “I came to care for you. You have to believe me. That’s why I’m here.”
His jaw dropped open and he laughed in disbelief. “You’re going to have to explain that logic to me. Because framing someone for something he didn’t do, is not how you show you care.”
“Don’t you see though?” Natasha said. “I didn’t betray you. That’s why Loiner came to me to make me do this. She was pissed at me for not using you more, for not finding out what you and the dragons are planning. So, she forced me to come plant something fake! I didn’t give you up!”
“There was nothing to give up in the first place!” he fired back hotly. “We’re not planning anything. We’re not up to anything. We just want to survive. Our planet was destroyed, Natasha. Our species wiped out. Imagine if the rest of your planet, all the humans out there, suddenly died.”
Natasha fell silent, unable to picture how such an atrocity would affect her.
“That’s not even the worst of it. Imagine that slowly, they turned on you. Loved ones, friends, family. All of them trying to kill you as the disease spread. They tracked you down, killed without discrimination. Wiped you out, until only a few of you remained. What do you think you would do if you fled somewhere? Would your first instinct be to try and take over, to oust the people who gave you shelter and helped protect you? Because mine wouldn’t be.”
“I’m sorry, Rane,” she said quietly. “I…I didn’t know what would happen.”
“Bullshit,” he snarled. “You knew exactly what would happen. You’re smart; whatever else you may be, you’re that. Don’t try to act like you didn’t know exactly how this would all end. You were just too busy trying to protect your precious self to do something about it.” He snorted. “Now that would have proven to me that you did care. Being willing to sacrifice yourself for me, for the dragons. I might have believed that.”
“I see.” She slumped her head. “Well you have the papers now, so you can destroy them. I’ll go, and we’ll just leave it at that.”
Rane laughed at her, forehead wrinkling in surprise. “Let you go? Why on earth would I do that?” he said, his voice becoming a vicious snarl by the end.
Natasha swallowed nervously, the depths of her predicament coming into stark clarity as Rane got up and left the room, leaving her pinned to the wall. The air grew thinner around her mouth, and in seconds she was struggling to breathe once more.
He’s preventing me from having enough oxygen to scream or cast a spell but leaving just enough so that I don’t die.
She was trapped there, in his quarters, pinned to the wall. Helpless.
Loiner would come get her eventually though. She’d told Loiner she was planning to do it tonight, and when she went missing the next morning, the Master would start a search party for her…
No, she won’t. Doing that would be tantamount to admitting to knowing where I was, and why. Loiner would never implicate herself in something like that.
Natasha was on her own, and she was in a world of trouble. Completely at Rane’s mercy, whatever he
decided to do to her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rane
Outside, he paced up and down the hallway.
The small part of him that remained rational knew what the first thing he needed to do was.
You must control your emotions.
“How am I supposed do to that!” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Anger and pain warred within him, each seeking to establish dominance, to rule his mind. Neither was able to succeed, instead swirling around each other, one and then the other peaking for a moment. His mind hurt as well, trying to sort everything out.
He couldn’t stray too far from his quarters, else it would become too hard to keep the bonds in place. So instead, he walked up and down the corridor, glancing at his door every time he swept past it.
Why did it have to be her? It made everything so much more complicated that it was Natasha trapped in there. If another witch had been caught in his quarters, Rane would have done what he should be doing now. Reporting her to Rokh.
The fire dragon was in charge of the remains of the Dracians. He was the one best suited to dealing with the intrusion. Not to mention, Rokh spent the most amount of time talking to Circe, the witch in charge of all of Winterspell. If anyone could bypass Loiner and deal with the real authority, it would be Rokh.
But Rane wasn’t ready to do that just yet. If he woke Rokh, then Natasha would lose everything. Possibly even her life. Despite knowing everything she’d done to him, Rane couldn’t shake his feelings for her.
You don’t even know if that was the real her. She was playing you this entire time!
Rane’s mind was telling him one thing, while his heart said that she hadn’t been acting. That she was telling the truth about falling for him for real. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing which part of him he should trust.
“Maybe Damien?” he said, thinking of the much more even-keeled head of the storm dragon clan. Damien could be relied upon not to blow the situation up, unlike Rokh, who could be…temperamental, at best.
Telling anyone, though, would doom Natasha in the long run. The reasons she was there would get out, and in the end the result would be the same.