by R. G. Thomas
Teofil pulled him close for a kiss. Thaddeus felt the warm pressure of Teofil’s hand against the small of his back and the strong swell of his chest pressing against his own. When Teofil pulled back, he took Thaddeus’s hand and looked into his eyes. “I love you too. More than anyone or anything. Flora guard and protect you.”
“You too,” Thaddeus said.
“We need to go,” Leopold said with a nod to the sky. “Isadora’s making another pass.”
Thaddeus looked at Teofil a moment longer, holding his hand tight. Then he stepped back and let Teofil’s fingers slip out of his grasp as he turned away and jogged toward the trailhead with his father and Leopold. Overhead, he heard the flap of the dragon’s powerful wings and Isadora’s gleeful cackle. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Vivienne, Hannah, and Teofil disappear around the corner of a house. He wished Teofil well—he wished all of them well—and turned away as they reached the trail and started to climb.
Chapter TWENTY
WITH MAGICALLY conjured lights to guide their steps, Thaddeus, Nathan, and Leopold climbed the trail as quickly as possible. Every now and then Isadora guided the dragon over the town, sometimes having it blast a structure with flame, other times just swooping low overhead and laughing at the screams that followed. Thaddeus climbed behind his father, focusing on his steps and keeping well away from the edge.
When they reached the plateau with the hot springs, they paused to catch their breath. Thaddeus searched the sky for any sign of the dragon, but she had dropped out of sight.
“I don’t see her,” he said. “Do you think Isadora has flown her off somewhere?”
“I think I know how to draw her in,” Leopold said. “But it will be tricky. We’re going to have to hide from view, make Isadora think she’s found you on your own. Can you do that?”
Thaddeus nodded. “I can.”
“I have no doubt,” Leopold said with a smile. “Let me see the cut I made.”
Thaddeus held out his hand, wincing now and then as Leopold unwrapped the bandage. The wound was still open and weeping. Leopold squeezed hard, causing blood to well up and spill onto the ground. Thaddeus jumped and jerked away.
“Ow, that hurt!”
“Yes, I know. But now the scent of your blood is in the air. Your mother knows that scent, and even though she’s under Isadora’s control, she knows you. It should draw her here.”
“And then what?” Thaddeus asked.
Leopold held up the sealed plastic bowl. “And then we give her a treat.”
“Where will you two be?” Thaddeus asked. He held his hand away from himself and tipped it sideways to allow the blood to drip onto the stony ground.
“Back here behind the rocks,” his father replied. “We won’t be far. But we’ll need to extinguish our lights.”
Thaddeus nodded. “I understand.”
His father approached and put his hands on his shoulders. They stood nearly eye to eye these days, and Thaddeus wondered when he’d gone through a growth spurt. Maybe learning magic had helped him grow taller?
“I don’t know if I can get used to you being this tall,” his father said.
“I’ll probably be taller than you,” Thaddeus said with a smirk.
His father smiled with tears in his eyes. “Son, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about…. Well, about any of this. It was all one big secret that, unfortunately, had many layers.”
“Dad, it’s okay,” Thaddeus said, and he was surprised to realize he truly meant it. “I know you were just trying to keep me safe. But no more secrets, okay?”
Nathan laughed quietly. “I don’t think there are any left. You know all about me and your mother now.”
“I’d like to know more,” Thaddeus said. “So after this is over, I really want us to talk about the past.”
“I know,” Nathan said. “And we will.”
“She’s coming,” Leopold whispered from where he stood just past the hot springs. “We must get out of sight. Now.”
Thaddeus looked to the night sky and saw the dragon glide into view from the other side of the mountain. He was scared but determined, and nearly burst into tears when his father hugged him tight and whispered, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Thaddeus said. “Now go.”
His father hurried off, dodging around the hot springs and ducking out of sight behind the rocks with Leopold. Thaddeus stood on the trail, ten feet from the edge of the cliff and the guardrail that had been broken by the goblins he’d sent tumbling away with the thunderclap. He was stunned to realize that the goblins had attacked them only hours earlier. With everything that had happened, it seemed like it had been days, or even weeks, ago. His pulse throbbed in the cut on his hand, and a heavy feeling of exhaustion fell over him. He wanted nothing more than to go to one of the springs and soak his sore muscles in the sulfuric heat. It felt like it had been days since he’d slept, even though he’d spent the afternoon unconscious.
A sudden urge to turn and run welled up inside him, but he pushed it back down. It would be easy to run back down the trail, through the town, and then just keep running until he came to a new place where no one knew him or expected anything from him.
And where there were no dragons or wicked witches.
A gust of wind blew that consideration out of his head. He stumbled backward, holding up his arm to protect his face and closing his eyes against flying dirt. The ground beneath his feet trembled as something heavy landed, and Thaddeus opened his eyes to look upon the dragon.
She was magnificent and terrifying. Her eyes glowed red as she considered him, the pupils black slits in the center and smoke curling up from her snout. Moonlight glittered off her scales as she extended her head toward him, sniffing warily. As the dragon lowered her head, Isadora was revealed, sitting at the base of her long neck and clutching the chain that still looped around the dragon’s throat.
“Well, it would seem she found you,” Isadora said. “Takes all the fun out of it when you don’t even try to hide.”
“I’m done hiding from you,” Thaddeus said. He looked from the dragon’s glowing red eyes to Isadora and back again.
“Brave words from such a tender morsel.” Isadora smirked, then slid off her perch and onto the ground. “What makes you so brave and, I have to say, tenacious? Is it because you simply have no concept of what it will feel like when I give her the order to cook you where you stand? Or, better yet, eat you alive?”
Thaddeus’s limbs trembled. He stood rooted to the spot, and the dragon inched closer. He forced himself to look away from it, hoping to limit his appearance as a threat by not making direct eye contact. Instead he glared at Isadora and flinched when he tightened his fist without thinking and his fingers pressed against his wound.
Isadora looked at the blood spatters on the ground at his feet and nodded. “I wondered why she changed course so suddenly. Seems your blood calls to her.”
“It should,” Thaddeus said. “I’m her son.”
He forced himself to look at the dragon again. She was closer now, the tip of her snout only a few feet away. He made himself stand completely still—except for his trembling muscles—and spoke in a quiet, soothing tone, his voice cracking now and then over his bruised throat.
“It’s me, Mom. It’s Thaddeus. I’m your son. You last saw me as a baby, remember?”
“She has no memory of you!” Isadora shouted, then grabbed the chain looped around the dragon’s neck and pulled on it hard.
“No!” Thaddeus cried.
On instinct he took a step forward to wrest the chain from Isadora’s grip. But that single step put him in range of the dragon’s snout, and when she moved in response to the tug on the chain, she knocked him to the ground.
“Thaddeus!” his father called, stepping out from behind the rocks.
“And there, my cowardly brother is revealed,” Isadora said. Then she shrieked in rage, “Kill them! Burn them both!”
Thaddeus crab-walked away from the dragon�
��s gaping mouth, the wound on his hand forgotten as he tried to think of someplace he could go to escape a fiery death. He had seen how far the dragon’s fire could reach, and the evidence of it was still burning down in Iron Gulch. Was there any place they could hide up here?
Then it hit him. He rolled onto his stomach and shouted, “Into the springs!”
“What?” his father said.
“Get in the water!” Thaddeus said. “Now!”
He pulled himself headfirst into the nearest spring. The water was hot and the sulfur burned in his eyes and the cut on his hand. The rocks all around him lit up a brilliant yellow just as he had managed to pull his legs in with him. He lay on his side at the bottom of the spring, bracing himself against the sides with his hands and his feet to keep himself submerged. Heat pushed down from above, and the water bubbled. He closed his eyes as the water heated up even more, and wondered if he was about to be boiled alive.
His lungs ached for air, but he forced himself to stay beneath the water a little longer once the light of the dragon’s fire had died away. Finally he was unable to wait any longer, and he pushed up from the bottom of the spring, mouth open wide to draw in a breath. The air was hot and dry, and it felt like glass in his throat.
Thaddeus coughed hard and looked around, half expecting to see the dragon poised right beside the spring, mouth opening for a second blast of fire. But instead the dragon crouched back on the trail, violently shaking her head back and forth. The motion had pulled the chain looped around her neck out of Isadora’s grasp, and it rattled and clanked against the ground. Thaddeus moved to one of the flat stones around the edge of the spring. He tapped his fingers against it and winced at the heat that lingered.
“I told you to keep going!” Isadora was shouting at the dragon. “Why did you stop?”
She attempted to grab the chain again, and with her attention occupied, Thaddeus saw his chance. He didn’t stop to think about what he was doing, didn’t have any kind of plan; he acted on gut instinct. Keeping his gaze locked on Isadora, he pulled himself out of the spring, ignoring the heat of the stones beneath his hands. He ran full speed toward her, his jaw set and fists clenched, barely aware of the throb coming from the wound on his palm.
Isadora turned just before he reached her. A fizzy burst of triumph filled Thaddeus at the surprise and fear on her face. His jubilation was short-lived, however, because she reacted much quicker than he’d anticipated. She stepped forward and dropped into a crouch, her fearful expression evolving into a kind of primal determination as she held her hands out toward him. Thaddeus felt pressure against his back and an icy fear spread through him as he understood Isadora’s intentions. She wasn’t going to push him backward. She was pushing him forward toward the edge of the cliff.
No matter how hard he tried, Thaddeus was unable to stop himself. He attempted to set his feet, but the invisible force behind him was strong and relentless. It pushed him across the trail and to the edge of the cliff, his feet skidding through the dirt, producing twin clouds of dust. The splintered remains of the guardrail offered no protection. Far below, Iron Gulch burned and the glow flickered across the surrounding scrubland and the grassy plain that Thaddeus knew stretched away to the edge of the Lost Forest. Fires burned throughout the town and red and blue lights flashed as emergency crews battled the blazes. Somewhere down in that danger and confusion was Teofil, and with a terrible jolt of grief, Thaddeus realized that he would never see him again.
Someone shouted from behind him, “No! Thaddeus, no!”
In the final seconds that his feet were on solid ground, Thaddeus managed to turn away from the dizzying height and look behind him. His father ran forward, hands extended and mouth open in agony. Leopold was just behind him, the bowl clutched tight to his chest, eyes wide in his pale face. Thaddeus stretched his arm toward his father, fingers reaching, desperate to be saved, to feel anything solid he could grasp and stop his fall. But his father was too far away and there was nothing for him to grab on to. The moment his foot slid off the edge, the dragon turned her head to look around Isadora and right at him.
“Mom!” His shout turned into a high-pitched scream of terror. “Mom!”
He reached for her with both hands as his stomach flipped and icy terror rattled through him. It seemed he hung suspended until gravity found him, and he lost sight of them all as he fell screaming toward the rocks below.
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
BECAUSE HE’D turned at the last moment, Thaddeus was looking up at the night sky as he fell. Air whistled in his ears, and he was unable to catch his breath. He still had both hands extended up toward the edge of the cliff, as if trying to grab hold of something, anything, to save himself.
Panic flooded his mind and his heart pounded. It would be over in moments, seconds, and everything he knew, every emotion he’d ever felt, every thought that had ever slipped through his mind would be gone when he slammed against the ground.
His fall stopped with a sudden and much gentler thump than he’d expected. Wind still whistled in his ears, and the surface on which he’d landed felt slick as it shifted beneath him. The stars reeled overhead as Thaddeus lay still for a moment and got his breath back. When he was ready, he sat up and looked around.
He was on the back of the dragon, behind the ridge of bone and between her large wings. When she veered suddenly to the left, Thaddeus grabbed one of the spikes that ran down her spine to keep from sliding off. He adjusted his position and turned his face into the wind as she soared through the air. Though the ridge in front of him blocked it somewhat, the bite of the cold wind seemed to blow every thought and fear from his mind and left him feeling not just chilled, but calm and centered.
They rose higher as the dragon circled the mountain, leaving Iron Gulch and the hot springs plateau far behind. The temperature dropped the higher they climbed, and Thaddeus started to shiver, worrying that the feeling in his fingers would fade and he would lose his grip. Very suddenly the dragon changed her trajectory, pulled back, and landed on a snow-covered ledge. She lowered her face to the snow and blew a warm, gentle breath to melt it away and expose the stone beneath, then looked back at him.
Thaddeus’s heart felt like it skipped three beats as he looked into her eyes. Where before they had been red and reptilian, they had now changed back to the rounded blue he remembered from Leopold’s backyard.
“Mom,” Thaddeus managed before a relieved sob cut off any other words.
Through his tears, Thaddeus saw her extend a wing to the space she’d cleared for him, and he slid down the leathery surface to the rocky ledge. When she saw he was safe, she looked out over the landscape. Thaddeus looked as well, arms crossed against the chill in the air. They were on the other side of the mountain from Iron Gulch, and moonlight revealed the land rolling out beneath them like a dark, rumpled quilt. The twinkling lights of a city were visible far off in the distance, and the stars gleamed overhead.
“It’s beautiful,” Thaddeus whispered, then touched the raw welt the chain had left on her throat. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. We’ve been trying to find you. Dad’s been looking for you ever since… ever since it happened.”
The dragon turned away from the view to look at him, blue eyes appearing even paler in the moonlight. Her scaly lips parted and a fleeting fear went through Thaddeus as he wondered whether she intended to breathe fire at him after all. But she merely exhaled warm air over him, blowing away the chill and making him smile.
“Thanks,” he said. “For that and for saving my life.”
She nudged him gently before she moved away and lowered the wing closest to him.
“Yeah, we need to get back and help Dad and Leopold,” Thaddeus said. “But I’ll always remember this moment.”
He climbed onto her back and avoided gripping the chain. The chain was a punishment from Isadora, and he wanted nothing to do with it. If there had been time, he’d have tried to use magic to remove each of the chains from her, but th
ey’d left his father and Leopold with Isadora on the plateau and needed to get back to them. With his legs forward and apart, he sat between two spikes and grabbed hold of the one in front of him.
She pushed off from the ledge, and the wind whistled around him as he leaned forward, both hands holding tight to the spike. Beneath the scales, the dragon’s muscles pumped and shifted as she soared around the mountain. The fires glowing in Iron Gulch came into view, and Thaddeus had just enough time to send thoughts of love and safety down to Teofil and the others before the dragon abruptly banked to the right.
Thaddeus nearly slid off her side at the abrupt movement and adjusted his grip on the spike. As the dragon came around for another approach, he could see the plateau and watched with growing anxiety as his father and Leopold deflected Isadora’s magic and sent back attacks of their own. He saw Isadora look at him over her shoulder, and then turn away as she made windmill motions with her arms. A great cloud of dirt and dust blew over his father and Leopold, forcing them to abandon their attacks. Isadora extended one hand toward the dragon while she continued to rotate her other arm to create a continuous cloud of dust. Thaddeus kept his gaze locked on Isadora as the dragon completed a wide circle, wondering what kind of spells she was casting and what he could use in an attack of his own.
The spike he was clutching grew warm, and heat traveled along the dragon’s back beneath Thaddeus. He hoped the fire wouldn’t hurt his father or Leopold and held on even tighter. The dragon had leveled out and was approaching the battle even with the plateau. Thaddeus could see all three of them over the dragon’s head now, and was glad to see that his father and Leopold had retreated from the dirt storm and taken refuge behind a larger stone. They should definitely be out of the path of the dragon’s blast.
Thaddeus focused on Isadora. Whatever spell she was attempting didn’t seem to have any effect, and he started to feel a sense of victory. The spike was almost to the point of being too hot for him to hold when Isadora suddenly extended both arms toward the dragon. Her fingers were curved into wicked claws, and her features twisted into an expression of rage that shattered any thoughts of triumph and shook Thaddeus to his core.