by Terry Spear
“Yeah.” Then they shifted and before they flew off, she noticed half of his staff came out to see them go. She wondered if they usually did that.
When they arrived at the registration area, she swore everyone stopped to look up at them. She supposed it was because of their unusual dragon scales and now not only was Alton that color, but he had brought someone along they didn’t know whose scales were too.
The problem was that everyone continued to watch them when they shifted, and instead of just blending in with the dragon crowd, she stood out. Sigrid had thought it would help so that she wouldn’t look like she was hiding, but truly, Kayla wouldn’t have minded hiding a bit.
“Okay, I’ll meet you right here after the trials. I’d watch you, but I need to do my own.”
“Thanks, Alton.”
“Good luck.” Then Alton kissed her again, and she couldn’t believe it. The first was for show. Now what was it for? He smiled at her. “I’ve already shown everyone we’re courting. Have to keep up the charade.”
As much as her cheeks burned, she imagined she was red-faced. “Well, next time, I mean, if there was a next time—“
“There will be a next time,” he assured her.
She shook her head. “Warn me, will you? So it looks like we’re courting instead of that I don’t know what’s going on?”
He laughed and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back here in a couple of hours. Fly well.”
When he left her, she felt very alone all of a sudden, and like who she really was. A golden fae who didn’t belong.
“Hey, girl,” Willow said, hurrying to join her. “Here I was telling you all about Alton and Ena and you already know him personally. So where did you go?”
“To practice with him and Olaf.”
“Wow. You’re kidding. They never take newbies with them to practice.”
“I watched them practice too.”
“I can’t believe you’re staying at Alton’s castle. I sure wish someone like him would take an interest in me. And I can’t believe the two of you have matching scales for now. Really cool. Who would ever have thought? Because I’ve never seen them before, I didn’t believe anyone had them.”
“So what games are you going to try to prequalify for?” Kayla asked, wondering what level she was.
“The blue games. The black are the expert. The green are easy. The yellow are the second level up. The blue are just below the expert. The red are right in the middle. I would have tried out for the black this year, but I figured I’d end up practically killing myself when I’m not really at that level yet. I just like to push myself though.”
Kayla looked at the fae lined up for the easy trials. They were all around eight to ten years of age.
“Oh, don’t worry about how young they look. If you go for the next round, that’s like eleven to sixteen experience level. Being you’re brand new at this, you won’t qualify at anything if you try to do one that’s too hard for you.”
“Then I can watch Alton,” Kayla said.
“You don’t want to participate?” Then Willow smiled. “Oh, I see, you have a major crush on each other, and you don’t want to be apart from him for a moment. Or maybe you’re just worried he’ll be interested in a fae who’s more of an expert gamer like him. I wouldn’t worry about it. I haven’t ever seen him interested in any girl besides Ena and now that she’s unavailable, you. He seems to prefer one girl at a time.”
Like that would ever happen, given what Kayla really was.
10
“Alton, can I have a word with you?” Ena asked, racing to catch up to him.
Alton figured Olaf would be questioning him first about the mystery dragon. He should have known Ena would have seen him with Kayla and wondered who she was.
He stopped and waited for Ena to reach him. “I’ve got to get in line for this event,” he said, motioning to the line a few feet away that was growing by the second.
She seized his arm and pulled him into the line. “Me too. Are you sure you’re all right, enough to fly in the rigorous games you’re signed up for? Olaf said he knew you were hurting when you were practicing some of the moves.”
Alton was surprised she didn’t mention about Kayla. Maybe she hadn’t seen her with him. “Minor pain. Nothing to be concerned with. Certainly nothing to keep me out of the games.”
But then Ena glanced around and he wondered if she was looking for Kayla. He was probably just being paranoid. He looked too though, to see if Kayla had moved up in the beginner’s line yet. His was going slower because the experts had to do more of a routine. It was all based on skill, speed, endurance, and wits.
What shocked and concerned him was Kayla was standing in the line for the second level gamers, not the beginners. What was she doing?
“Who is she?” Ena suddenly asked.
He realized then Ena was looking at Kayla too. “A friend. Like you’re a friend.”
“I suspect she’s more than that. No one knows her. I asked. She’s never been to the games before. Yet, you know her? Intimately?”
“You’re not jealous are you?” Alton knew Ena wasn’t. He just wanted to change the subject. Fast.
“Olaf said she barely knows the basic skills of flying. Same with controlling her fire stream. None of us had seen a purple dragon before your scales turned that color and suddenly you have a friend who nobody knows who’s wearing the same shade of color as you? Mere coincidence? Or something more?”
“I knew her from before,” he said vaguely.
“You mean while you were trying to court me?” Ena now gave him the evil eye, which she shouldn’t have, considering she had fallen for Brett.
“No. After you married Brett. Long after.” Still, he didn’t want her thinking he’d been seeing other girls when he’d wanted Ena to court him. Well, he’d seen other girls, flirted with them, like they’d flirted back, but he hadn’t been interested in courting any of them. “We met, connected, and…” Alton saw Kayla take to the sky and fly through several hoops in the undulating maneuver he had taught her. He held his breath.
Ena turned to watch her when he stopped speaking abruptly. “Not so much of a beginner is she after all. Do you know what I think?”
Alton was certain Ena knew who Kayla was and he was ready to save her before anyone could incarcerate her in a dungeon.
Kayla was a bundle of nerves as she shifted and took off on her flight. She kept telling herself to do just what Alton had taught her, and she couldn’t thank him enough for preparing her for this part of the qualification test. Five other dragons were also flying the same pattern she was at the same time. In a way, it was good because she felt the other dragons would take some of the attention from her. But it was also bad because she knew she wasn’t just up here qualifying on her own against herself, but she was competing with the other dragons.
Which was silly, considering what she really was. Yet when it came to being competitive with others, she went all out. Then she took a deep breath. She wasn’t competing with the others, she reminded herself. She was only doing this to prove to herself that she could.
So far, she seemed to be doing the sea serpent maneuver that meant going up and down correctly. It felt right. She’d only had one instance when the wind knocked her off balance, and she’d had a mini-panic attack. Or she should say she miscalculated using the air flow to her advantage. Next, she had to make a bunch of figure eights, long and wide, then hard turns and closer together. The long and wide ones weren’t bad because she could take more time to get a feel of the wind under her wings. But the short ones were more hit and miss.
Then she had to do several tests that meant diving for objects in big baskets near the ground, or hung from poles high above. This, she hadn’t practiced for. She guessed they didn’t do that in the beginner games, so Alton hadn’t thought he needed to prepare her. She literally had to wing it. She was trying to estimate just how long her legs could stretch out to grasp an object, make sure the flag or ot
her object, sometimes balls of various weights were firmly in her talons before she took off, then deposit the item in a big basket that was designated as hers at the end of the course. The purpose of the trials was to get to the end of this part of the game fastest, so that meant dropping the item at a faster pace, and grabbing the next object.
Once she was done depositing all the objects in the basket, she had to retrieve each of them and return them to the places where she’d taken them from in order. It was a memory course, but also a way to set up the course for the next contestant. She hoped she remembered the order correctly, and tried to calm herself as she felt stressed to the max. If dragons could sweat, she’d be sweating up a storm.
“I think magic is at play here. And I’d be very careful if I were you,” Ena warned Alton as they both kept their gazes on Kayla.
It was a little too late for that. “You know this because Brett has magical abilities?” Alton knew Sigrid had used her power to change Kayla. But if she did this to Kayla, he suspected she had done this to him too where his scales were constantly different colors.
“I know this because your scales keep changing color, at least they were. Then the mystery dragon shows up and you’re both wearing the same color scales that didn’t exist before.”
“We don’t know that for sure. The color may occur in some other part of the world.”
“But it doesn’t alter the fact yours keep swapping colors. Or do they now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Earlier today, your scales were silver, but when we returned here, you saw the girl and your scales turned purple. Has it happened before? I know you went with her and Olaf to the practice area by the river. When you did, what color were they? Did they change?”
Now that was something Alton hadn’t thought of. He watched as Kayla dove to grab a flag before her opponent did. She fumbled with the flag with her talons, unused to judging how close she had to be to tackle objects. They hadn’t practiced that maneuver because he thought she’d be in the beginner trials and they didn’t do things like that. When he looked at the young kids in that line, he understood why she hadn’t wanted to try out there. But he was afraid she was bound to fail.
“They’ve been this color when I haven’t been around her.” He thought. Unless he hadn’t seen her at the time, and she had been nearby. Yet, it was true that every time he’d actually seen her and he was in dragon form, his scales had turned that color. What if she was tied to his scale color then? But why? The locket! Had to be.
“It’s got to be magic. I haven’t seen Brett to learn what he thinks. He was picked to go early for the trial, queen’s generosity, you know,” Ena said.
Alton could tell Ena was proud of him. And he had to admit he was too. But he wouldn’t admit that to Ena or anyone else.
“So how do you know her?” Ena asked again.
“She saved my life from fae seers.” He thought their story was plausible.
Ena’s eyes widened and she quickly turned to see Kayla going through a final loop. “That’s the golden fae? Kayla?”
Great. He hadn’t believed Ena would assume that she was the same girl who had saved him that time. But Ena knew him too well that he couldn’t pretend she wasn’t the same girl now. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“What is she doing here?” Ena’s tone of voice was incredulous.
“I have her locket. She’d been watching Olaf and me flying the one day in a practice session and lost the locket. It’s somewhere in my piles of treasure.”
“Well, give it back to her already. What are you waiting for?” Ena didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I can’t thank the golden fae enough for saving Muriel’s life, but never had the chance to. Muriel keeps telling me how sorry she was when Halloran intended to lock Kayla up, and she didn’t have a chance to thank her one last time again either.” Then Ena frowned. “How in the world could a golden fae become a dragon?”
“A falcon fae who lives among them has powers. She’s helping her so she can get her own locket back also.”
Ena gaped at him. “How many lockets did you steal?”
He explained the whole situation and how he knew Kayla wanted to participate in the games. Afterward, he’d give her the lockets and she’d go home.
“Alton, what are you thinking? That’s saying she doesn’t kill herself in the games. And that my brother doesn’t learn of this. He takes his position as Dragon at Arms very seriously. As he should.”
“I agree.” Alton knew Halloran as well as Ena did. “She was supposed to be in the beginning trials, not in the second level one.” He didn’t comment on the part about Halloran causing trouble for her.
“No one our age would want to be in the beginner class.” Ena let out her breath and watched Kayla again. “So what was the kiss all about?”
Alton smiled at Ena. Was she jealous? “I wanted it to look like she knew someone and no one would bother her.” And he wanted to kiss her, to thank her for saving him. It seemed only the natural thing to do. Since Willow had said a dragon fae hadn’t kissed Kayla—obviously since she was a golden fae—he wanted to be the one and only one to do so.
“Male suitors? You don’t have to worry about that. None of those in our expert class would want to court a girl who is just a beginner.”
Alton raised a brow at Ena, remembering very well how Brett had turned into a dragon to both their surprise and was as new as they come.
“Brett was different. I got to know him as a person. First.” Ena cast Alton a scornful look. “And he rescued me from my brother’s dungeon, remember?”
Yeah, Alton remembered. If he had rescued her instead, would she have still fallen for the dragon/phantom fae? “There you go though. All she’d need to do is rescue another guy and I’d have to fight him.”
Ena laughed. “She’s not one of us. And when the magic is gone, she’ll be what she truly is. She’ll have to return to her own kind. She won’t be welcome here.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
Ena scowled at him. “No. Of course not. Why would I do that after she saved Muriel? I’ll let on I know her as your friend…”
“Violet. Thank you, Ena.”
“You can thank Muriel. If she learns Kayla is here, Muriel will be so grateful and want to see her. But I think the best thing to do is keep her being here a secret from everyone. The fewer who know, the better. Speaking of which, here comes Olaf.”
“I’m sure he’s going to ask the very same questions.”
“No doubt.”
“Hey,” Olaf said, joining them, smiling at Ena, and raising his brows at Alton. “So what’s all this about with your new girlfriend?”
“She’s an old friend,” both Alton and Ena said at the same time, and Alton couldn’t have appreciated Ena more for helping out. Though it did sound like the two of them were co-conspirators in some nefarious scheme.
Naturally, Olaf looked a little suspicious. “I believe I should have been in on the earlier conversation. I see I’ve missed out on what’s going on entirely.” Olaf glanced at the competition for the group where Kayla was coming in for a landing. “I thought she was trying out for the beginner games.”
“Seems she loves to live dangerously,” Ena said.
Then they saw Halloran coming to join them, and Alton straightened a bit. He prayed his friend hadn’t seen him with Kayla and start all the questioning too. Both Ena and Olaf stiffened a bit. Alton wanted to tell them to relax and act normally or the whole charade would soon be uncovered.
“So,” Halloran said, smiling at Alton, “I hear you have a new girlfriend.”
11
After finishing the trials, Kayla landed on the ground, shifted, and went over to the big board to check out her score to see if she’d passed. She was third lowest from the bottom ranking, but it showed she had passed! The bottom two hadn’t, but she saw the two dragon fae now standing in the beginner’s line. She was glad they had a chance to try again. And they
were much younger than her.
If she didn’t go any further than this, she didn’t mind. She was just so glad she had made it through the prequalification trials. She intended to see if Alton was flying yet. She’d love to watch him in the trials. The expert ones were so much more extensive than what she had gone through. When she turned to look, she saw Ena, Alton, Olaf, and her worst nightmare, Halloran, Dragon at Arms, all watching her.
Her skin felt like she’d been dipped in the Arctic Ocean and left there to freeze. She straightened. For now, she was a dragon fae shifter. Her purple scales proved that. If Halloran thought to arrest her, what would the queen think? He was crazy?
Alternately, if he tried to arrest her, she could just transport home. She thought Alton might understand, and visit her with…wait, he didn’t know which of the jewelry was hers. Well, she could draw a picture of it for him.
The only way she could deal with Halloran was head on. She stalked straight for them. Halloran was looking stern. Ena appeared worried, her brows furrowing. Alton folded his arms across his chest and smiled darkly. Olaf appeared clueless.
She might be known as the Lavender Fae, which made her sound all sweet and innocent, but she had a dark side like the rest of the fae. And playing games was one of their fondest pastimes.
All of a sudden, Willow hurried to join her, surprising her.
“Did you finish your trials?” Kayla asked her.
“Yes. Passed. What about you?”
“I made it. Bottom of the board, but I made it.”
Willow smiled. “That’s great. Then the others won’t think you’ll be much competition, and they won’t know what they’re in for when you prove you have what it takes to beat them.”
“I’m just glad to be here.”
“And seeing Alton?” Willow smiled in a devious way. “He’s like a rose to the butterflies. They just can’t stay away.”
“We’re just friends.” Though she would be his worst enemy if he didn’t give her back her locket at the end of the games.