Touched by a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 6) - Paranormal Fairy Tale Romance

by Alisa Woods

  “Cinaed.” Leonidas liked the blue dragon, but that was his one warning to not get between them.

  Leksander was wisely keeping his distance. “Just listen to me, my brother—”

  “Have you kicked your angeling out of the keep yet?” Leonidas asked rhetorically. They all could sense who was within the stone walls the castle and who was not—and there was no missing the burning angelic energy of Erelah. “Oh, that’s right. You’re too wrapped up in wanting to bang her—”

  “Leonidas,” Lucian growled, a warning, but Leonidas didn’t care. Erelah had threatened his mate. And still posed a threat as far as Leonidas was concerned.

  Leksander’s fists were clenched, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve been watching her, making sure she doesn’t try to come after Rosalyn again—”

  “Oh! Well…” Leonidas gave him a look of disgust. “As long as you’re watching the angeling who tried to fucking kill my mate… I guess it’s all okay!”

  “She wouldn’t have killed Rosalyn!” Leksander’s eyes flashed. “You know that. Angelings love humans above all else. It’s why she’s so determined to get rid of the demon haunting Rosalyn.”

  Leonidas’s disgust just deepened. “Are you really that clueless? Erelah gets off on demon killing. She may not want you in her bed, my brother, but a little demon-killing will give her just what she needs—”

  “Enough!” Lucian roared.

  “It’s not nearly enough,” Leonidas spat back. “Not until he banishes her from the keep—”

  Lucian’s hand gripped his shoulder painfully hard, and he drilled him with a heated stare. “If I thought she was a danger, I would have thrown her out myself.”

  “But—” Leonidas sputtered. He was reeling now. Why hadn’t Lucian thrown her out?

  “She’s skilled in her blade work,” Leksander growled. “She’s had plenty of practice in Seattle. And yes, I’m aware of the pleasure it brings her.”

  Leonidas narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean skilled?”

  “Precisely the question you should be asking.” Lucian released him.

  Leonidas’s mind was spinning. Were they actually suggesting— “You want to give her another chance?” His mouth hung open.

  “Erelah says there’s a good chance Rosalyn and the baby will live,” Leksander said quietly.

  “She doesn’t know that!” Leonidas shut his gaping mouth and spoke through gritted teeth. “The demon is bound up with their magic—”

  “It’s worse than that, Leonidas.” Lucian’s voice was soft.

  Leonidas just stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Lucian and Leksander exchanged a look.

  “What?” Leonidas demanded.

  Leksander grimaced. “You have to sense it, too, my brother.”

  Leonidas truly did not understand what he was talking about.

  “Her demon isn’t just bound to her witch magic,” Lucian said quietly. “It’s bound to her dragon as well. Her and the baby both.”

  Leonidas blinked and leaned back. The words were like a dark force he was just now noticing, one that would rain death on everything he loved. “You’re saying…”

  “The demon grows as her dragon grows,” Leksander said, stiffly, like he was delivering a death sentence. Which he was. “The bigger the baby gets, the stronger the dragon magic. You know this, my brother. It’s why so few women survive—they can’t endure it. There’s no way Rosalyn will make it until the end of the pregnancy, and even if she did…”

  “The baby will be half demon.” Leonidas’s world crumbled in front of him. He’d been so obsessed with the danger to Rosalyn, the possibility of her dying, that he hadn’t imagined what it would be like if she lived. And if the baby were born. A dragon-demon hybrid? With fae magic as well? There was no way that could be allowed to live. If the baby didn’t immediately go wyvern, it would only be a matter of time…

  He would have to kill his own child.

  “No,” Leonidas whispered. He could not do it. Completely and utterly impossible. Which only meant it would be left to his brothers… either way, it would kill Leonidas. And he couldn’t imagine what it would do to Rosalyn. “Holy mother of magic.” The words were a bare whisper of horror.

  “I didn’t want to…” Leksander looked tortured. “I’m sorry, Leonidas. But there’s no way she’ll fulfill the treat. This has to be stopped. Now.”

  Leonidas blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Leksander grimaced and looked to Lucian.

  His older brother laid a gentle hand on his shoulder again. “Erelah can use her blade on them both. Kill all magic within Rosalyn…”

  “But the baby is entirely magic,” Leonidas sputtered.

  “It may be the only way to save her.” Lucian’s eyes reflected the ocean of pain swamping Leonidas. “But if the baby prince of the House of Smoke doesn’t survive… neither will the treaty. Or you, my brother.”

  Leonidas swallowed down the horror of it and just shook his head, staring at the floor. “There has to be another way,” he said dully.

  “We should try everything,” Lucian agreed, his voice lifting, like he was putting on some kind of false exuberance. “But in the end… it may come to this.” He glanced at Leksander. “We just wanted you to know that… that we would take care of it for you, my brother.”

  Leonidas nodded, the dull pain of it nearly blanking out his mind. Then he lifted his gaze from the floor. “Our combined healing magic. We have to try that on Rosalyn and the baby first.”

  “Of course.” But Lucian’s tone said he didn’t believe it would work. “You need to go to her, Leonidas…” His brother’s pinched look sliced through him.

  Because he might not have much time left.

  “I don’t want to…” He swallowed again, still getting his bearings in this new reality. “I don’t want to upset her too much.” He looked to Cinaed, who was watching all of this with wide eyes but keeping silent. “Cinaed, she trusts you. Go to her and tell her I have something I want to try. Something to banish the demon.”

  Cinaed gave a sharp nod and hurried out of the training room.

  Leonidas looked back to Lucian. “And we’ll need that tiny bronze dragon token from the Summer Queen. Can you… can you keep that at the ready?”

  “Of course.” Lucian’s pained look didn’t soften.

  Leonidas faced Leksander last of all. “And you, my brother… I’m sorry. What I said before—”

  “There is no need for it.” Leksander’s expression was the same pained one as Lucian’s.

  Leonidas nodded. His head was buzzing. “Tell Erelah to have her blade ready.” The words were ashes in his mouth. “But not until I say.”

  Leksander tipped his head in agreement and hastened out after Cinaed.

  “There’s still hope,” Lucian said, but not like he believed it.

  And neither did Leonidas. “As long as I’m breathing, I’ll fight for her. For our baby. Every second of the way.”

  “I know.” Lucian embraced him, brief but fierce.

  “Come get me when Rosalyn’s ready,” Leonidas said, his voice choked, then he shifted into his dragon form and lifted into the air, riding on wings and magic, if not hope for his mate and his child. He plunged into the black water of the cistern, diving to the depths where he would sit, alone, and contemplate the things he ought to do with the time he had left.

  A small sound roused Rosalyn from sleep.

  She was nestled away in her room, as she usually was, lying on her side and curled up over her growing belly. Growing baby. The little dragon inside poked her with a foot or a tiny hand or something. Rosalyn ran her hand over her rounded belly, soothing the poked spot and hopefully the baby.

  Three weeks. It was hard to believe she was already halfway there. And her love for this little creature kept growing with it. So strange, given she’d never even seen the thing. But he was her constant companion during her temporary isolation.

&nb
sp; Which made it all the worse that the demon in the baby was getting stronger—she could feel it. At least, she hadn’t had any more flare-ups herself. She missed Leonidas like crazy, but her mother’s chamomile tea and soothing meditation music had calmed her mind and kept the demon at bay. She just had to sit tight until her mother and her aunts came up with a spell that would banish the demon, and everything would work out right.

  The noise that woke her grew louder. It sounded like voices but muted by the heavy stone walls and ancient wooden doors of her mother’s apartment. One thing that had taken some getting used to was the absolute silence of the keep. The draftiness didn’t affect her so much now, not with her further along in the pregnancy—her dragon nature kept her body humming with heat like a steady furnace burning inside her. But the quiet of the place was absolute. Rosalyn found herself putting in ear buds and cranking up the tunes on her phone just to have noise every once in a while.

  But, usually, she kept her phone in the drawer by her bed. That way she wasn’t tempted to check and see if Leonidas had called. Or messaged. And she wasn’t tempted to message him herself. She knew as soon as she opened that line of communication, she’d want to be back in his lair, and then all the hard work she’d done to keep calm and keep the demon asleep would be for nothing.

  Keep it together, Rose, she admonished herself as she rolled out of bed.

  This internment wouldn’t last forever, and she couldn’t take unnecessary risks. But her curiosity was getting the better of her about those noises outside her door, so she crept up to it to listen through the crack. There had been a few deliveries of food, and a couple times, Aunt Alora visited, but mostly, the rest of the dragons in the keep left them alone. Still, she kept to her room most of the time—it was just easier to tune everything out that way and pretend she was at a distant, medieval retreat where she would re-emerge once the baby was ready to be born…

  Or if her mom found a cure.

  Rosalyn couldn’t hear much through the crack. She debated just going out to see who was visiting, but then the voices fell silent and were replaced by a shuffling of feet.

  Coming closer.

  She stepped back from the door just before it opened.

  A parade of witches filed in—her mom, her mom’s sister Alora, her other aunt, Gwen, and two women Rosalyn didn’t know but assumed must be witches, too. One was young, Rosalyn’s age. The other was slow-moving and effervescently thin and had tiny, fine lines around her eyes, almost invisible. Rosalyn had never seen a truly old witch, but this woman had to be ancient. Her beauty had passed into that timelessness held afloat by magic and good bone structure. The old one and the young one had to be related—they had the same dark, sparkling eyes, the same narrow shoulders and regal composure. Either that or they were just very French.

  Her mother swept to her side, gave her a quick hug, then frowned a silent question of Are you okay? Rosalyn smiled in return, her unspoken yes. With so much time in the apartment alone, they’d developed the habit of that little exchange.

  Alora closed the door and clutched a giant, leather-bound book to her chest. Rosalyn hoped like crazy it was a spell book.

  Aunt Gwen introduced the older witch first. “Rosalyn Thorne, may I introduce Elmira Bonnet of the well-regarded Bonnet coven of Paris. She and her granddaughter Simone have graciously agreed to help us with our problem.”

  “That’s great!” Rosalyn gushed. Her little dragon son kicked, and her hand reflexively went to her belly to soothe him. The motion caught the eye of every witch in the room.

  But it was Elmira who stepped forward, each movement infinitely graceful yet slow. “And how is our young dragon prince?” Her smile was kind, but her eyes were sharp, radiating power. Did witches gain strength in their magic as they got older? Rosalyn couldn’t imagine it any other way.

  “He’s strong.” Rosalyn was surprised how quickly she choked up saying those words out loud. She’d been saying them in her head for a while, a silent mantra about how she and her son would make it through this because he was strong, just like his daddy. “But I want this demon out of both of us.”

  Elmira nodded, and she seemed to take in Rosalyn’s aura.

  Rosalyn frowned, wondering what that was about.

  Before she could ask, Alora stepped forward with the spellbook. “It took some time, but I think we’ve got something for you, Rose dear.” The pages of the spellbook were tipped in gold, and when Alora opened it, it was clear just how ancient the book was. The ink-black calligraphy and yellowed pages and brilliantly-colored, intricate illustrations looked like something from the medieval era. Alora held it open, but not for herself—she was holding it for Simone and Elmira who gathered close. It was written in French so Rosalyn couldn’t read it, but Simone was already passing her finger along the script and whispering an incantation under her breath.

  “What is it?” Rosalyn asked Alora.

  “Ritual magic,” her aunt said. She glanced at Rosalyn’s mother, and she nodded for Alora to explain. “There’s a story handed down in the Bonnet coven about a sister of the coven being possessed by a demon. It happened several hundred years ago. While the witches of that time were used to battling demons and occasionally driving them from the human population, they had never lost one of their own to the horde. But this one was hexed by a spurned male witch, and somehow, that bound her magic to a demon—it invaded her body and entwined with her witch nature.”

  “Just like me,” Rosalyn breathed.

  “Except for the baby, of course,” Elmira said in slow, measured words.

  Alora tipped her head. “As far as we know, this witch was not with child. At the time of her possession, the Church was still very strong in France, and possessions were routinely the province of priests. When the regular spells to banish demons did not work for her, the coven borrowed a ritual from the Church and combined it with their craft, stumbling on a combination of powers that apparently was enough to banish the demon from the witch’s deepest magical essence.”

  “Is this the spell?” Rosalyn asked, peering at the gorgeous book.

  Simone was still whispering in French, and to Rosalyn’s ears, it did sound like half prayer, half incantation.

  “This was recorded at the time,” Elmira said, “but it has not been used since that long-ago day. You will be the first, my dear, but I’m afraid we can’t warrant it is the actual spell. Or that it will work in your case.”

  Rosalyn nodded. She could feel her son growing more every day… and the demon. If there was any chance of this working, she needed to try it.

  Gwen came to Rosalyn’s side and held out her hand. A tiny vial of water—at least it looked like water—sat in her palm. “This is holy water.”

  Elmira took it from Gwen and held it up. “The spell calls for it to be painted across your palms and forehead and lips.”

  “Okay.” It reminded Rosalyn of the spell where she broke Leonidas free of his curse and how they needed the blood of all the parties involved to act as a conduit of sorts for the magic. She held out both palms, face up. “Let’s do it.”

  Elmira nodded, and it was like a signal. As one, the witches moved to surround her—Elmira in front, Simone and Alora with the book behind her, her mother on the right, and Gwen to her left. When they joined hands, Rosalyn realized they were forming a pentagon of sorts, and she vaguely remembered that pentagons were occult magic, something modern covens rarely used anymore, but which made perfect sense here. They were battling a demon after all… something the urbane and sophisticated covens in Seattle, with their social media and graphic design empires were never bothered by. Only now, Rosalyn knew why they could float along, blissfully ignorant of the demons and fae and other immortal beings that might threaten witches and shifters and all of humanity—because dragons from the House of Smoke, like her son, protected them. And her son was key to the treaty that held those dark forces at bay.

  Except he had to be born to fulfill it.

  Simone’s
whispers stepped up in volume, and Rosalyn finally realized the young witch was repeating the same phrases over and over, whatever they meant. But Rosalyn’s attention was wrenched to the elderly witch in front of her when she uncorked the tiny vial of holy water.

  Rosalyn’s whole body went rigid, almost like a horrible chill had swept over her.

  “Hold still, my child,” Elmira said, but it was her mother and Aunt Gwen who suddenly had their hands on Rosalyn’s arms, holding her up, like they thought she might collapse at any moment.

  “I’m fine.” Rosalyn wanted to turn to her mother, to tell her she was pregnant not disabled—she could stand on her own two feet—but she couldn’t. The slowly wave of Elmira’s hand over the bottle was mesmerizing her. Rosalyn literally couldn’t look away. The conjuring was lifting a small rivulet of water out of the bottle, snaking the liquid through the air and undulating with every pass of Elmira’s hand. The higher it rose, the more every muscle in Rosalyn’s body clenched. Whatever magic they were performing must have already grabbed hold of her. She watched with wide eyes as the ribbon of water in the air twisted closer and closer to Rosalyn’s face.

  “Be gone, demon!” Elmira cried out, suddenly.

  A spike of icy chill ran through Rosalyn.

  “Depart from this woman and this child!” Then Elmira flicked her fingers toward Rosalyn, and the water shot out through the air and splashed on her forehead.

  Rosalyn’s head whipped back as if she’d been punched. A scream wrenched out of her mouth, and she thrashed against the hold her mother and Gwen had on her. The growl in her throat choked her. The demon that Rosalyn had been trying desperately to suppress surged throughout her body, taking complete control. She muttered something—she didn’t even know what it was—but she wasn’t in control of any of it. Not the words or the bucking or the thrashing.

  Gwen and her mother somehow still had a hold on her. They lowered her to the floor. All five kept their positions at the corners of the pentagon. Only Simone and Alora were standing, both chanting even louder to be heard over Rosalyn’s moaning and strange mutterings. Gwen and her mother held her down, and Elmira was still conjuring the holy water to snake through the air, flicking more on her face and her palms and her lips. It steamed off her skin wherever it touched.