The valley floor loomed below, pulling at her feet, dragging her down. Her eyes burned and she gritted her teeth.
She didn’t have to give in, though. No, she didn’t, and she wouldn’t.
A rush of adrenalin washed over her. She’d already survived being snatched by a dragon and falling out of the sky. She refused to allow her life to end by falling off a godforsaken cliff.
Taking a deep breath, she hoisted herself up once, then again.
Blood smeared across the bark. Her hands stung, but she clenched her teeth, steeling herself against the pain. Her hands throbbed. She slipped on her own blood. Her feet dangled, swaying in the breeze.
Anna closed her eyes and prayed for something, anything to stop her fall.
A sharp dragon roar reverberated off the rocks followed by a shrill shriek like the sound Dixie had made when she’d been bitten by a raccoon, only a hundred times louder. Something had happened to Puff.
Her pulse throbbed in her temples as she envisioned the huge, gray dragon biting down on Puff’s pearlescent neck.
Her dragon roared again, not anger, and not the garbled Draconic words like she’d heard in the camp— this was pain, undeniable shrieks of mind numbing pain.
She fought to control her breathing, pulling herself up further as Puff continued to wail. He was dying up there, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Her shoulders ached as she pulled herself higher, but she was still only half way up the branch. The roots shifted, releasing more gravel to fall in her eyes, before the sandy soil gave way, dropping her.
She didn’t scream. Time seemed to slow as she hung in the air, shocked as the roots that had anchored her to the mountain shot into her hand. They were white and fluffy, with small balls of soil still attached to the individual threads. Her heart thumped slowly in her ears as she focused on the treads in the cliff face before her.
Her mind raced, contemplating the depth to the bottom, how long she’d fall, how quickly it would be over. She hoped Sybil would be okay, and Connor would take care of her.
Sybil hated dogs, though. Who would take care of Dixie?
“Anna!”
She looked up as the silhouette of a man appeared between the trees. A hand shot toward her and wrapped around her wrist. Her body jolted to a stop. Her shoulder exploded in pain.
“I have you,” the voice called from above.
She rose, confused, tired, bewildered, and still waiting to hit the ground.
Instead, her body slid up the stone, between the two trees, and over the precipice, until she lay flat against the soil.
The grip holding her released, and someone slumped beside her, panting. Long, flowing platinum blond hair fell across his face before he pulled it back.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, holding his chest. “We made it.”
Anna pushed up from the soil. Hands shaking, she held herself off the ground, blinking against tears and dirt in her eyes as she took in the man’s milky-white chest, rising and falling in rapid succession. She reached out to touch him to make sure he was real, and he winced as her fingers met warm, white flesh.
“Joe?”
He blinked, turning his strange, icy blue eyes toward her.
But no, they weren’t strange. They were beautiful eyes. Dragon eyes.
He tried to reach for her, but fell back. He winced through clenched teeth.
“Don’t.” She pulled herself into a sitting position. Her eyes drew down his torso, briefly taking in the rest of his pale, naked beauty. Damn, how could she ever have thought he was scrawny? “You-you shifted.”
Tears streamed from his cheeks. “I couldn’t reach you. It was the only way.”
She wiped the tears from his face. “But I thought you were stuck in dragon form.”
He caught his breath. “It hurts.” He clutched his stomach. “Anna, it hurts.”
“What do I do?”
He closed his eyes. “Keep safe. Stay hidden until the Seventeen Year is over. He’ll have no need to look for you after that.”
Wait. What was he saying? “I’ll be safe, because I’ll be with you.”
He shook his head. “It hurts inside.” He took two short, labored breaths. “The change. It was too much.”
Just like the gold dragons warned. He knew the risks, but he did it anyway to save her. “You are not going to die. You can’t.”
He cupped her cheek and tried to keep a grimace from his face. “Promise me you’ll hide until the Seventeen Year is over.”
She leaned down, and brushed her lips against his. “Only if you promise not to die. Stay with me. Hold on.” His eyes fluttered closed again. “No.” She shoved him. “Puff, no!” This wasn’t happening. He’d shifted to save her, she couldn’t let him die for it. “Joe!”
Rocks skidded down the mountain from above as Tyler slid to a stop beside Joe. His eyes widened. “Albinism.” He turned to Anna. “The Great One?”
She nodded.
He felt Joe’s neck. “He’s still breathing.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Can you stand?”
“I-I think so.”
Tyler looked up the mountainside to the precipice she’d fallen from. “We’re down here!”
Several blurry figures slid down the path made from her fall. She allowed herself to cry once they lifted Joe’s nearly lifeless form, and started moving back up the mountain.
20
The glow worms twitched overhead as Nik stared at Puff.
Well, no, that didn’t seem quite right anymore. What had the boss said his real name was? Joesen-hopping-on-a-fiat or something like that.
To the Maori, he would always be Great One. The name still managed to fit. This pale, sickly-looking guy continued to appear ethereal, like the magical being Nik knew he was.
Anna had been asking over and over for Joe, so the guy’s name was obviously Joe— it was to her at least.
But how could Nik call him Joe? It seemed wrong, like calling the president by his first name. It seemed demeaning.
It was still Puff’s tormented thoughts swirling through Nik’s mind, no matter what they called him. A man lay as his feet, but Nik still saw a small, helpless dragon— someone he was bound to so deeply, that he’d known the second Puff made the choice to shift.
The pain had knocked Nik back and sent him whirling into a foggy abyss that continued long after Tyler had found Puff and Anna trapped part way down the mountain.
Nik woke hours later, dragged himself to Puff’s side, and took vigil, doing not much more than watching him breathe.
Every few minutes, Puff’s— No. Joe’s face, would contort. Nik had learned by now that their bond had a two second delay, because right after Joe winced, Nik’s mind would explode in a cascade of sharp, slashing pain that seemed to cut into the very center of his being. Now, every time Joe moved, Nik grabbed the side of the nearest stalagmite, waiting for pain and nausea to overcome him. Sometimes it didn’t. Most times, it did.
He didn’t know what Tyler was doing with all the herbs and salve he spread on the kid’s pale skin, but all this ancient Maori healing stuff seemed to work wonders on Connor. For now, Nik could only hope the odd treatment would do the same for his boss.
Boss. That seemed an unnecessary title, things being what they were.
The one and only job Nik had ever done well was acting as a translator. But with Puff human again, the dragon hardly needed Nik anymore.
He pursed his lips. Say hello to another layoff. Even though he wasn’t getting paid, it still stung.
Joe groaned and Nik placed a cool cloth on his head. A wave of relief coated him, and he knew he’d done the right thing.
At least if he wasn’t needed to translate anymore, he could give the doc a decent barometer on the Great One’s health, since Nik could still pretty much feel every emotional switch, and he could definitely feel the little dragon’s pain.
Tyler sat beside him. “Any change?”
“
You can’t tell looking at him, but I think he’s better.”
Tyler felt Joe’s cheek. “I think you’re right.” But a deep sadness grew in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“The gold dragons warned him not to exert himself for a reason. He’s hurt even worse now than he was when he fell from the sky.”
And with both Joe and Connor out of the picture, there was no one left to challenge Gale. Even worse for the mourning vet, there was no one left to save his daughter.
“But he’s going to get better, right?”
Connor limped through the door. The worm-light basked his face in a sickly glow. “He won’t heal in time for the close of the Seventeen Year.” He slumped to the hard ground. “Neither of us will.”
Damning the Draconi to another seventeen years of gray rule.
This was bad. Nik understood that, but somehow he was relieved to know everyone had lived to fight another day.
He glanced at Tyler. Well, almost everyone. It didn’t seem right to think that one girl was an acceptable loss with her father sitting right next to him. Nik needed to count something as a victory, though, or all of this would have been for nothing.
Tyler turned to Connor. “Have you tried to shift?”
Connor sneered at him. “Didn’t you hear me scream like a dying pig? Everyone else did.” He looked away. “No, I can’t shift.”
“What are you going to do?” Tyler asked.
“There really isn’t much to do.” Connor glanced at Joe. “I can probably go home once I heal, but he’ll have to live in exile.”
“Exhile?” Nik asked.
Connor leaned back and rested his head on the stone floor. “Gale isn’t an idiot. Even if Anna is no longer on the islands, Gale will smell her on Joesephutus. That will be enough to prove he was hiding her.” He grimaced. “Gale will kill him for it.”
None of this seemed real. Nik felt caught within the plotline of a movie, not living in real life. And this wasn’t only about the dragons anymore. How long would the Maori be able to hide Joe before Gale found them and fried them all to cinders?
Joe groaned and blinked his eyes.
Connor winced, pushing back into a sitting position.
Joe’s creepy silver eyes widened. “Anna!” He sat up, then doubled over, grabbing his stomach.”
Tyler placed his hand on Joe’s back. “Sitting up like that is probably not the best idea. You really need to rest, Great One.”
“Where is she?” Joe rasped through gritted teeth.
“She’s fine. Resting. You saved her. Do you remember?”
Joe nodded, then accepted Tyler’s help easing back to the floor. He looked at Connor. “I’m glad to see you’re still breathing.”
“It takes more than a dragon ten times my size to clip my wings. You should know that by now.” He looked at Nik and Tyler. “I would like a moment alone with the boy.”
Nik stiffened. Not his reaction, he realized, but Joe’s.
Tyler tapped Joe’s shoulder lightly, rose, and disappeared into the dark corridor. Nik made to follow.
“No,” Joe said. “He stays. He’d hear everything through the Kotahi bond anyway. Better to have him here than feign privacy.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed. “Fair enough.”
Joe closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “You called me boy. You’ve never called me boy.”
“Because today, for the first time, you acted like a child.”
“I am a child.”
“You’re not!” The roar from Connor’s throat reverberated off the walls, as loud as if he’d taken dragon form.
The worm-light flicked out as if someone threw a switch, dropping them in complete darkness, before one by one, they began to glow again. The light betrayed Connor holding his head. They sat in silence until he raised his eyes.
“You doomed the Draconi. You realize that, don’t you?”
Joe forced himself into a sitting position. He held his right arm as if it were in a sling. “I couldn’t let her die, and I was too big to help her as a dragon. I had no choice.”
“You had every choice.” He pointed his chin at Nik. “You could have sent your fire-blasted Kotahi to help. He’s human, unless you’d forgotten. He would have fit through those trees.”
“I couldn’t send him.”
“Why?”
“Because he was busy saving you.”
Joe’s words hung in the air. Connor’s gaze shot to Nik, then back to Joe.
“I was careless,” Connor said. “You should have left me to my fate.”
“I wasn’t going to let you die for me.”
“And now you’ve damned us all. You could have been king.”
Joe stared at his friend. “Why do you push so hard? And why me? I’m no better that any dragon who took flight. If anything, I’m worse.”
Connor held the younger dragon’s gaze. “When you look into the water pool and catch your reflection, what do you see?”
Joe shrugged. “A dragon. A small one.”
“True.” Connor gathered his thoughts. “But what I see when I look at you, is hope. You are not jaded like the others. You don’t want power. You just want everyone to live in peace.”
“How does that make me a good king?”
“Because even in your idiocy, your recent actions still tell me that you will choose others over yourself, no matter the cost to you. I highly doubt anyone would say the same of Gale.” His eyes softened. “What you probably see as faults, are what the rest of us hold in high regard. If you’d had made it back to the mountain, others would have stood behind you.” He pointed to his chest. “I would have stood behind you.”
“I’m sorry I disappointed you.”
“I’m angry, not disappointed.” He sighed. “I can’t fault you for being exactly who I’d expect you to be.”
They stared at each other for a few moments. The obvious hung in the air— that none of this mattered, because there was a huge, brutal dragon out there, and neither one of them was in any shape to face him.
Joe pushed off his blankets and stood slowly. He stretched his neck.
Nik stood, steadying him. “Take it easy, boss. You’ve had a bad day.
“This is encouraging,” Connor said. “You looked like you were going to die a few hours ago.”
Joe eased back to the ground. “Don’t get too excited. That was absolutely exhausting.”
“So now what?” Nik asked.
Connor considered the twinkling worms above. “Now we wait, and pray we still have a home to go back to when the Seventeen Year closes.”
21
Anna fingered her bandages as she watched the sun’s decent toward the horizon.
Nanna eased onto the rock beside her. “How are you feeling, my dear?”
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess.”
“We have a surprise for you.” She handed Anna a pair of binoculars and pointed down the mountain.
Looking through the glasses, Anna combed through the trees until the sun reflected off something metal. She adjusted the focus to reveal a silver four-wheel-drive truck parked just north of their original camp where Anna and Puff had fallen from the sky.
“It’s a car!”
Nanna took the glasses back. “Yes, my husband called for it the moment the Great One decided to see you on your way.”
This was amazing. She could go home. No more worrying about giant scheming power hungry dragons who wanted to use her in the worst way imaginable. She could forget that Gale and the rest of his hoard of giant nasty dragons ever existed.
She stood, ready to make her way down the mountain, but instead of making a beeline for the trail, she glanced back to the caves. What kind of person would she be if she left the first chance she got, while the guy who’d saved her life was still unconscious?
“Don’t get too excited.” Nanna stood beside her. “You’re not leaving until morning. The trek down the mountain is hard enough in the daylight, let alone trying to
drive the jagged trail in the dark."
A few days ago, she may have protested, but now all she could think about was the look on Puff’s face as he struggled to get through the trees— the absolute anguish in his eyes as the small branch she held started to give, dropping her closer to death with each passing second. Her little dragon had been afraid of losing her, not the contest; and he’d proven that by doing the one thing that ensured the crown would never be his. He’d shifted, trapping himself in human form.
Even if they could leave now, she didn’t think she’d be able to go without at least saying goodbye.
Pops approached from the trees. He smiled at them. “The Great One is awake.”
Anna nearly dropped the binoculars. “Can I talk to him?”
“In time. At the moment, he is in conference with the mighty green.”
More likely, Connor was giving Joe a piece of his mind. Taylor had explained that Joe’s sudden shift had done incredible damage to his musculoskeletal system, and that he would probably take weeks to heal.
Neither Connor nor Puff would make it back to the Seventeen Year on time, and it was her fault. But now, at least, she was completely off the hook. If neither one of them could make it up the mountain, they also couldn’t change their minds about forcing her to be part of this insane contest. Which left her that much safer than she’d been yesterday.
Anna shuddered. When had she become so callous? Connor had nearly died, and Puff took a huge risk to save her. She should be mortified that all this had happened because of her. The end result gave her exactly the outcome she’d wanted, though. She was free to go.
She glanced in the direction of the cavern entrance. For some reason, knowing she’d soon be free didn’t give her the comfort she’d expect.
“I need to see him.” She handed the glasses back to Nanna and took one last look at the darkening purple sky before heading back to the caves.
Making her way through the Maori, Anna kept her head down so she could avoid their accusing stares. There gazes still seeped into her, though, chilling her as effectively as if they’d reached out and slapped her.
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