Dragon Bonded: A Bumblespells Novel

by Kath Boyd Marsh

  Dragon Bonded

  A Bumblespells Novel

  Kath Boyd Marsh

  Dragon Bonded

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  Text Copyright © 2018 by Kath Boyd Marsh

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  Dragon Image Copyright © Shutterstock/notkoo

  Fae Image Copyright © Shutterstock/Kozyreva Elena

  Forest Image Copyright © Shutterstock/Vertyr

  Unicorn Image Copyright © Shutterstock/MiceKing

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  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, write:

  CBAY Books

  PO Box 670296

  Dallas, TX 75367

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  Children’s Brains are Yummy Books

  Dallas, Texas

  www.cbaybooks.blog

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  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-944821-40-1

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-944821-41-8

  Kindle ISBN: 978-1-944821-42-5

  PDF ISBN: 978-1-944821-43-2

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  Printed in the United States of America.

  It’s all about laugher.

  For my husband Jim whose ability to laugh at and with all my eccentricities has made all the difference.

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  For Professor-Daughter Jessecae whose amazing sense of humor feeds mine.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The massive wooden doors to Hazel’s tower top chambers flew open. So excited his green and purple Dr’gon scales almost stood on end, Hazel’s brother Cl’rnce shouted, “Quick, there’s someone in the other tower!” He turned and ran back out, heading down the hall that connected Hazel’s tower to the twin tower he had shouted about. His petite, human Wizard Partner, Moire Ain, raced right behind him.

  Gaelyn, Hazel’s Wizard Partner, started after them, but stopped in the doorway when she realized Hazel was not with her. Her Dr’gon Partner stood as if frozen. Hazel’s luminous Dr’gon eyes were wide with something Gaelyn had almost never seen in them. Fear.

  “Come on, Hazel,” Gaelyn said. She took a step back toward Hazel. “What’s wrong?”

  Snapping out of her frozen state, Hazel snorted and strode past Gaelyn. “Some intruder in the tower is what is very wrong. Unless this is one of Cl’rnce’s practical jokes.”

  Gaelyn shrugged, fluffed her cloud of curly brown hair, and followed. Or tried to. Hazel must have been more bothered than she wanted to say, because she immediately burst into top Dr’gon speed. Ten strides down the corridor, Hazel passed Cl’rnce and Moire Ain, who preferred the name Great and Mighty Wizard. Gaelyn didn’t even try to catch up with Hazel. Nothing was as fast as a Dr’gon on a mission.

  It took but a moment for Hazel, and then the rest of them, to get to the other tower’s doors. Hazel stood in front of the closed double-doors, her head bowed and her claws touching the chain and lock that hung across.

  Gaelyn cleared her throat; Hazel whirled around her snout an angry red and purple. She looked past her Wizard Partner and glared at Cl’rnce. “A practical joke! While I’m busy doing your Primus work, you plague me with another practical joke? Wiz-Tech granted us chambers here in the school because they were honored to have the Co-Primus, Gaelyn, and me in residence. They will throw us out if you don’t stop these embarrassing jokes. Then where will you have your ‘palace?’ In that mulberry tree you nap in a zillion times a day?”

  Great and Mighty stepped in front of Cl’rnce, barely coming up to his chest. “It’s not a joke. I promise. These doors are locked, but we heard someone in there.” She held up a glowing ball. Inside the ball a figure paced around a dim chamber almost identical to the tower room Hazel used as her bed chambers and office. The room in the ball, though missing the work tables stacked with scrolls, even had the same ornate, extra-tall window-slits. “I made this scrying ball. You can see the human.”

  “Not a human,” Hazel grabbed the ball and held it, peering close. Her snout grew a darker angrier red and purple. She shook it, and the shadowy presence magnified until it was easy to see the person had long limbs and fast movements that weren’t human. It didn’t surprise Gaelyn that Hazel could enhance Great and Mighty’s magick. Dr’gon Magick was legendary. In part that was why Gaelyn’s uncle had sent her to Dr’gon and Wizard Technological School and Knights Academy: to learn that magick. What surprised Gaelyn was Hazel’s anger and how her voice scratched with intense hatred. Hazel never made snap judgements about any creature until after she got to know them, but just seeing this stranger had her rabidly angry.

  Hazel tossed the ball back at Great and Mighty. “It’s Fae. I smell it.”

  Great and Mighty looked at Cl’rnce, but he shrugged. “She’s got powers,” was all he said nodding at his twin sister.

  Gaelyn frowned. Hazel was special, but there was no way she could smell a Fae from this distance. Gaelyn’s little Jinn, Silkkie, whispered from her shoulder, “The Dr’gon is quite the bragger, huh?”

  Hazel gave the little pink cat a scowl. “I have many many powers. I have a better sense of smell than anybody.” She held up her long claws to keep Silkkie from saying anything more. “I didn’t mean I smelled it smelled it. It’s a figure of speech. Like being able to smell a lie.” She stopped, glared at Silkkie, then looked at Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty, but they just shrugged.

  Hazel sighed and continued, “I mean I know for sure that the miserable nasty creature—who is skulking where it doesn’t belong—is a Fae.”

  Hazel had never before discussed Fae even in the All Creatures classes they’d attended together at Wiz-Tech. In all their years as students and then Partners, this was also the first time Gaelyn had heard venom like this in Hazel’s voice. The thought that Hazel hated Fae made Gaelyn nervously pull at one of her soft curls.

  “I will kill it.” Hazel motioned for the other three to stand back. So quietly not a link jangled, she took hold of the chain across the doors. Softly she breathed a deceptively cool Dr’gon Fire on the chain. Where the link melted, she caught the ends as it parted.

  Hazel turned to Gaelyn. “Open the door. Silently. It will not get away. I will destroy it!”

  Gaelyn took a deep breath, ready to say no. There would be repercussions from Hazel that she didn’t want to deal with, but Gaelyn could not let Hazel kill a Fae. She couldn’t, not even for her best friend.

  Before Gaelyn could say a word, Great and Mighty and Cl’rnce pushed past her. Sounding calm and not a bit like the excited Dr’gon he’d been a minute before, Cl’rnce said, “The Primus will take care of this, sister dear. Great and Mighty will capture the Fae, and we’ll find out why it’s here.” He sneezed and rubbed a paw quickly over his snout then wiped it on his side.

  Hazel trie
d to push Cl’rnce away, but he was bigger and heavier than his twin. He was twelve feet tall, and she just under. He shook his head. “Great and Mighty, proceed.”

  Great and Mighty held up her hands, doubled the size of the ball that had showed the intruder, and threw it at the double door. There was an explosion, someone screamed, and the doors tore off and flew into the chamber headed straight for a slender figure Gaelyn recognized as a Fae. Hazel had been right. There wasn’t even time to determine what Court this Fae came from before the doors slammed into it. Door and intruder crashed to the stone floor.

  As everything collapsed, Gaelyn drew on Silkkie’s and her own power to cast a spell to transport the Fae to the Fae Court of Elm. She didn’t have the power to move it to any other Court, and she couldn’t let the insanely angry Hazel get to the Fae first. She hadn’t used a transport spell across the barriers since she and Silkkie had come to Wiz-Tech. She hoped it worked.

  Hazel pushed everyone away and tossed the doors off the spot where the Fae should have been pinned. Gaelyn breathed with relief when she saw that underneath the doors there was nothing.

  But Hazel screamed, “Where? Where are they?”

  Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty hovered next to Gaelyn. No one wanted to be near Hazel in this kind of rage. Smoke poured from her nose, and the scales on her muzzle became darker by the second.

  She picked up the doors and threw them against the wall nearly tearing loose the ceiling height tapestry hanging on the wall. Hazel froze where she stood, watching the tapestry swing back and forth in such huge arcs that the wall was laid bare at the top of each swing. Hazel whirled around. “Out! Everybody, get out. I’ll call you if I need you!”

  Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty scurried out to the corridor. Defiantly Gaelyn remained. She threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She’d only seen her Dr’gon Partner close to this upset once before. That had been last year when for a moment Hazel had become terrified that Cl’rnce would die on his Quest to secure the Primacy. Not that Hazel would ever admit that was why she threw that tantrum. Hazel wanted to be thought of as cold and logical, emotionless. She treated Cl’rnce like an annoyance. Only Gaelyn knew how deeply Hazel loved her irascible twin and how hard she worked to protect him.

  “Is there a danger to Cl’rnce?” Gaelyn asked. She tangled one finger in a longer curl and then dropped her hand. Hazel knew Gaelyn’s nervous mannerisms. Gaelyn needed to appear calm.

  Hazel stopped staring at the swinging tapestry and turned. “What?” She frowned and shook her head as if she did not understand Gaelyn’s question.

  “Cl’rnce,” Gaelyn repeated. “The person that was here, was that person a threat to Cl’rnce?” Gaelyn worried that she might have just helped some kind of Fae assassin. Two other Fae Courts, Summer and Winter, were certainly capable of killing the ruler of the Dr’gon Nations even if Elm Court never would. It wasn’t supposed to be possible, but if a Fae assassin could make the journey across the Fae planes and into the Dr’gon Realms of Albion, they could do so much damage.

  Hazel shook her head a little too hard. “No. Nothing to do with Cl’rnce.” She turned back and walked toward the swinging tapestry. “At least not right now. Maybe someday. Maybe soon.” She stood for a minute, reached a paw to the unicorn tapestry, and stopped the swing. “I have something to tell you.”

  Hazel stared into the eyes of the person she was closest to: her Wizard Partner. Gaelyn was the one non-Dr’gon she trusted. What kind of friend was Hazel that she’d lied to Gaelyn, kept a dark secret from her? “I’m sorry. I should have told you.” Trying to calm herself, she ran her tongue over her longest right front fang then took a breath and pointed behind her at the tapestry. “Move the tapestry to one side, and I’ll show you.”

  Gaelyn grabbed an edge of the twelve-foot tall tapestry and tried to pull it, but the weight was too much. She put her hands together, bowed her head, and said a simple Movement spell to push the tapestry to one side, baring the granite wall.

  Hazel patted Gaelyn’s shoulder. “Did you ever notice how snarky I am about Fae stuff?”

  Gaelyn shrugged then shook her head once.

  “Good,” Hazel said. “I don’t want anyone to know how much I fear them.” She shook her head. “Not exactly fear. Just that there is something they could use to attack Cl’rnce and the Dr’gon Nations. The fault is mine. I should be able to control it, but I can’t. I can’t protect Cl’rnce. If they steal it …” Since Fae were supposedly unable to cross over onto the Dr’gon plane, she’d never thought much about them—until she found the Prophecy. And then everything changed.

  She tapped three seemingly random granite blocks on the wall behind the tapestry, and the wall slid to one side. Now there was an opening to a small room in which a modest granite-topped table stood. On the table on a smaller rough linen pillow sat a fang that sparkled for a moment in the light from the open door but then turned dull. It looked like any other Dr’gon’s Fang, other than the fact that it seemed to be made of crystal. It was no bigger and no smaller than Hazel’s left front fang.

  “Looks kind of normal, doesn’t it?” Hazel paced around the table. She never touched the fang. “It’s not. Legend has it that this is the poison Fang of the First Primus.”

  Hazel looked at Gaelyn. “I know. Neither Cl’rnce nor I have a poison tooth. No Dr’gon does, not even the ones in the Killer Clan, but the very first Primus did. That Fang is both lethal and powerful. It is the key to the most powerful Dr’gon Magick there is, and,” she stopped for a second so Gaelyn could appreciate the seriousness, “I read that its poison could be used to make a coronated Primus ill and kill him! I’m not sure what it would do to you or me.”

  “It’s a threat to Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty?” Gaelyn gasped.

  This was the part that Hazel hated. This was her secret. She should have asked for her Wizard Partner’s help from the first, but … Hazel was too ashamed that she had failed to get the Fang to reveal its magick so she could train and protect Cl’rnce. “I could prevent Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty from being harmed if I could wake the Fang and teach them its unique magick. Then it would serve them and give them that extra power the First Primus had. I tried and tried, but I cannot make it do anything. I have no way to train Cl’rnce. No way to protect him.”

  “But why hate the Fae? I mean, how are the Fae tied to this?” Gaelyn asked.

  “Oh, an obscure Prophecy that one day the Fae will steal it, harness the power, and kill everybody.” Hazel tried to say it all as if it meant nothing, but she felt fury when she thought of the threat she had discovered when she found the Fang. One minute all that had sat on the table had been the Fang, but in the time it took Hazel to draw close to it, the parchment with its warning of a future Fae attack along with the Prophecy of how the Fae could be defeated had appeared.

  Hazel had picked the parchment up and read it once, stumbling over the Ancient Dr’gon language she barely recognized. After re-reading the archaic language a second time, she was furious.

  The paper had been densely covered with text spelling out the history of the Wars between Fae and Dr’gons. Specifically, it told the tale of the death of the First Primus. During the final battle, a Fae had knocked the Primus to the ground. A unicorn fighting with the Fae had galloped up and kicked out the Dr’gon’s poison fang. She’d been about to retrieve the Fang when one of the Fae had grabbed it and stabbed the Dr’gon Primus with the Fang instead. The Primus had staggered to his feet but was attacked again by the Fae warrior. In the ensuing battle the Primus retrieved the Fang and drove off the Fae forces. He’d only had enough strength left to fly back to the safety of the Dr’gon’s Council Chambers.

  There in Ghost Mountain, his Wizard Partner had kept him alive long enough to do the Primus’ bidding. She’d cast a spell to bind the Fang from being used by anyone other than a team of Dr’gon and Wizard Partners. At that point, the Prophecy had used some ancient words Hazel was certain referred to the future and the now cu
rrent Co-Primus, Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty. In order to use the Fang, the Partners had to be bound together by the Heart Oath. That was the same oath Cl’rnce and Moire Ain had taken at their coronation ceremony. The old Primus’ wizard had concluded by warning that a Fae Queen would one day find the Fang, and the Heart Bonded Dr’gon and Wizard Pair would be all that stood between the Primus and death. And then the wizard had secreted the Fang and the Prophecy parchment.

  After that, Fae had been banned from the Dr’gon Realms, but the part that worried Hazel was that the Prophecy said a Fae Queen would manage to travel between the Fae and Dr’gon realms. Which meant the Fae had never meant to honor the Peace that the second Primus and his Wizard Partner made with all the Fae Courts. How dare the Fae even think of threatening her brother and Great and Mighty?

  She’d been so angry at the threat to the Co-Primus, that she’d flamed a bit. Hazel hadn’t thought she’d breathed on the parchment, but the scorched edges said otherwise. She had been wary enough of the Fang not to touch it, but she did tuck the slightly smaller scroll in the pouch she carried around her neck.

  Gaelyn leaned over and ran her slender fingers through the ashy dust left on the table after Hazel’s accidental flaming. “I’ve never heard of such a Prophecy.” She looked up quizzically, but Hazel ignored the doubt in her Wizard Partner’s voice and the question in her eyes as she rubbed the ashes between her fingers.