Row upon row of abbreviations. Hyperlinked photos and short summaries of which plant had been grown when, where, and how. To the uninitiated eye, the spreadsheet would turn into number soup. But to someone versed in the scientific method, the conclusions would be startlingly obvious.
Don’t be a scientist, don’t be a scientist, don’t be a scientist....
“You’re too young to have created the Green,” Nicholas growled. Darned shifter—of course the most surly of the dragon brothers would know exactly what he was seeing at a glance.
“My mother was a scientist in the Before,” Amber tried to explain, words jumbling together on her tongue as she fought to turn them right-side up before Zane’s sibling wrote her off entirely.
Because there was more at stake than Momma’s memory and Amber’s skin. Her dragon trusted this shifter, treated him like a brother. So if Nicholas decided Amber was a traitor, her golden dragon would likely follow his sibling’s lead and fly out of her life. The mere thought fogged her vision as tears threatened to fall and explanations spun out yet faster.
“Momma helped build the plants that turned into the Green, but she wasn’t trying to harm anybody. She spent the rest of her life seeking a solution for what she’d created, trying to breed a plant that could bring the Green back into line.”
A grunt was the only reply to this new stream of desperate words. Then Nicholas’s attention returned to the tablet that held Momma’s life work. In reaction, Amber’s hands twitched, aching to remove her long-hoarded information from the uncaring shifter’s prying eyes.
“If we’d had a way to get back to the lab for more samples, we might have made more progress,” she continued, not really expecting a reaction this time around. Instead, Momma’s face rose up in front of Amber’s eyes, reminding her daughter of long nights spent poring over data together after days hand-weeding seedlings in their shared garden.
“I need more of the originals,” Momma had complained one evening as she labored over her tablet by candlelight, absently brushing aside a moon-vine tendril that had snuck in the open window in reaction to the small flame and minor use of electricity. “But the lab was probably looted ages ago. Even if it’s still standing, it’s too far away to reach without cars and planes....”
Or so the older woman had thought. Momma hadn’t counted on the combined power of airships and dragons, all united in the quest for a plant just as sentient as the Green...but significantly less malicious. The same plant Momma—and then Amber after her death—had worked so hard to breed using the limited technology at their disposal.
“I can’t promise we’ll be able to beat back the Green,” Amber said at a more normal speaking volume, once again trying to sway the shifter who could erase two generations of work with the swipe of a single finger. “But Zane told me about the Fade. And I think there might be a solution to that somewhere in Momma’s research. Because dragons popped up at the same time the Green did, so there must be a connection between the two. Maybe if we bring balance to one, we’ll bring balance to the other....”
Amber had wanted to dive into the data as soon as Zane told her about the Fade the night before, in fact. The implied connection between Green and dragonkind had bubbled up in her brain as she listened to her shifter’s rich, deep voice, possibilities tumbling through her thoughts like dust devils.
But she’d had no way of accessing Momma’s files without a tablet like the one Nicholas continued to clench in one white-knuckled fist. So, instead, Amber had relinquished the puzzle, relaxed into her dragon’s arms, and fallen soundly asleep.
Now, Zane’s foster brother looked up at last from his coveted device with a frown so deep she could have planted a walnut in the lines bracketing his mouth. And when he spoke, it was as if he hadn’t heard a word of Amber’s preceding soliloquy. “Zane doesn’t know about this.”
There was no glamour in the words. Just the gritty certainty that if his least favorite earth witch didn’t explain fast, she’d be tossed out of the ship to shatter against the ground below.
To Amber’s surprise, rage rather than fear rose up in reply. “I just told you that I’ve spent my entire life searching for an antidote to the Green. And I already agreed to help your brother track down the lab that the original seeds came from. I would have told him about the data too, when the time was right.”
Nicholas snorted, grabbing her upper arm in a grip nearly tight enough to leave bruises. Then he paused to heave the ladder into place with his spare hand. “Get the ship ready to fly,” he ordered without looking back to see if he’d be obeyed by Sabrina, the silent audience to their largely one-sided debate.
Well, so much for swaying with reason. Nicholas obviously wasn’t ready to forgive Amber for playing fast and loose with the truth, so she’d just have to hope her golden dragon would understand what his brother had overlooked.
Zane was more thoughtful, more rational. Surely he’d see that Amber hadn’t intentionally betrayed their bond when she chose to keep her mother’s confidence.
She hadn’t meant her secretiveness as treachery, after all. She’d merely been doing her job—living the life of a Watcher.
Chapter 23
The child was half-crazed with glamour. As best Zane could tell, the message from his twin had been implanted into her brain using the same golden trickery he was familiar with. But Baine had somehow twisted that gentle compulsion into a raging confusion that left Jasmine unable to answer questions or even dress herself in the dry clothes Alexander had carried up from below.
“Do something,” Charlie ground out as he restrained his sister’s erratically waving hands with a tense hug, dodging an unintentional blow that nearly took out one of his eyes.
“I’m...not sure I can.”
Zane had been tugging at the edges of his own glamour for several long minutes, unsure whether subtle trickery would be sufficient to counteract his brother’s depredations but willing to at least give the effort a try. After all, what was a little more trauma when Jasmine already appeared to be going out of her mind under the influence of Baine’s earlier spell?
But his fire had gone missing. His trousers were soaked through at the knees as he knelt on the hard decking by the child’s side and water abraded his skin like acid. His feet were numb, his teeth chattered, and all he could think was—is this what it’s like to live without fire?
Ignoring his weakness, he pressed chilled hands against the child’s cheeks just as he’d done with the goat down below. Then he stared directly into her dilated pupils. “Jasmine,” he soothed. “You’re safe here. Baine is gone. You can let his words go.”
Nothing. No, that wasn’t true. The result was worse than nothing. At the sound of her attacker’s name, Jasmine’s spine jerked and the most terrible keening he’d ever heard rose from her lips.
From her bloody lips. The child had bitten soft pink skin between surprisingly sharp teeth, not even noticing the pain as she pierced her own body parts as easily as if living flesh was a morsel of well-cooked steak. And as yet another vital fluid joined the snot and tears already dripping down her face and onto Zane’s thumb, the shifter flinched backward onto his heels.
His eyes met Charlie’s harsh stare and Zane itched to apologize. Wanted to explain that he wasn’t holding back his glamour out of spite—he simply had no fire with which to wrap golden magic around his human tongue.
“If you...” Charlie started, then paused as another set of hurried footsteps clattered up behind them both.
Instantly, the near-dormant flames in Zane’s belly surged back to life. Heat sizzled rain out of sodden clothing and the shifter found himself floating inches above metal decking as wings sprang unbidden from his back.
Amber was there. He smelled her, heard her, felt her. And as joy returned to his life, so too did words and wisdom return to his Fade-addled brain.
“Sweetheart,” he greeted her, the unfamiliar endearment rolling off his tongue as if he used it every day. Then his eyes narrowe
d as he turned and took in the tense faces behind him, noting the way Nicholas’s hand clenched down too tightly around the earth witch’s slender arm. “Let her go.”
His brother snorted but obeyed. “Tell him what you’ve been hiding then see what he says, sweetheart.”
A growl ripped up through Zane’s chest as he stepped between witch and dour sibling. Without even thinking about it, he found himself tucking Amber against his side and glaring daggers at a man he’d previously considered one of the most honorable people in his life. “Whatever stick you’ve got up your butt, you’d better take it out,” he growled. “We have bigger issues right now than your pessimistic view of humanity....”
“Pessimistic view?” Nicholas thrust a glowing tablet under his brother’s nose as if expecting Zane to be horrified by what he saw.
And maybe Zane would have been horrified on any other day. As it was, though, his eyes weren’t up to reading words or making sense of printed gibberish. All he could think was that Amber was here. She was safe...
...But her body quivered as she took in the traumatized child still cradled between Charlie’s bent knees. “What happened?” she whispered, the words little more than a breath of escaping air.
“Baine happened.” And now it was his turn to evade everyone’s eyes. He’d promised Amber that no one she loved would come to harm at the hands of his troublesome twin, and look what had happened. The airship crew asleep, Jasmine out of her mind, and his foster mother taken hostage by the very brother he’d promised to protect them all against.
Yet, with Amber by his side, Zane’s previous impotence became a distant memory. Flames raged within his chest, and the anger he’d been grasping for earlier rose to fill him with seemingly unlimited power.
Okay, so ash still floated away from his body to glimmer through the air as he dropped back down onto the ground. He could feel damp decking pressing against aching knees and attempting to squelch the tenuous flames flickering to life within his belly. But this time when he spoke, glamour rose easily to sugar-coat his magical tongue.
“Jasmine, honey,” he coaxed. “You need to remember who you are. You need to shrug off Baine’s commands. And you need to tell us what really happened last night.”
***
Amber’s apprentice shook herself, that strange glassiness fading from watery eyes in an instant. Her horrifying howls disappeared equally quickly and Amber thought for a moment that Jasmine would break down into more normal sobbing now that her sanity had returned.
Instead, the child showed some spine and pulled herself loose from Charlie’s embrace so she could take in the crowd arrayed around her. “It was Baine,” she whispered, the words so quiet they would have blown away on a passing breeze had not the Intrepid been moored so deep in a sheltered cranny of the Green. “He pulled me and Sarah out of bed and went looking for...for you Amber.”
The Watcher could almost see the scene playing out as her apprentice stumbled through a tale of terror. The darkened ship, the combined fear and pleasure as Baine’s glamour bade the girl do one thing while her own mind pointed her in a different direction entirely.
A mad dash down a pitch black corridor. A candle flaring to life in Amber’s room, the bed rumpled yet bare. Baine’s toothy grin as papers fluttered out from beneath the pillow. “Just what I was looking for,” the child mimicked, her cadence eerily similar to Baine’s own.
“He didn’t hurt us, but he was rough with Thea,” the girl continued, indignation flaring raspy whisper into normal speaking tones at long last. “He pushed her back into your room after we left and slammed the door on her poor nose. Then he led me and Sarah up here onto the open deck. I think he was going to force us both to come with him, but Sarah saved me. She told the dragon that she’d gladly read those papers for him just like she used to read bedtime stories for her sons. That none of you cared about me, but that she was Zane’s mother and he’d do anything to save her life.”
The second assertion was painfully accurate. Whether or not the dragons cared for Jasmine, they were definitely devoted to their foster parent. Because as soon as the child spoke, one, two, three men flared into infernos of visible anger, forcing mere humans to take long steps backward to evade the flames.
Physical scorching was the least of Amber’s worries, though. Instead, she found herself wincing away from her apprentice’s continued patter, listening with only half an ear to details about Sarah fighting off the glamour and bargaining for Jasmine’s release. That should have been me protecting the innocent, Watcher thought. Not an elderly woman whose brittle bones had been at risk when the ship merely shuddered beneath their feet. How long would Sarah survive while dependent upon Baine’s not-so-tender mercies?
Nicholas’s gaze caught her own as Amber stood with head half turned aside from the bearer of bad tidings. The shifter’s eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching so hard she half expected teeth to splinter beneath the pressure. But he didn’t speak...not yet.
“Other than a hostage, what did Baine want?” Zane asked quietly. Unlike the others, her dragon had managed to tamp down his raging fire in short order, stepping back until his skin pressed against Amber’s for shared comfort. But she could feel his muscles vibrating with urgency, proof that even her level-headed dragon wouldn’t be able to hold his self control in check forever.
“He plans to burn down some laboratory,” the child said, her voice dropping back down into a whisper. “He knew you were looking for seeds....”
At the final word, Jasmine’s eyes flicked to her mentor’s face and away again so quickly only the most astute observer would have noticed. Dragons, unfortunately, were remarkably astute.
“Such a coincidence,” Nicholas ground out, a crack forming in the tablet’s plastic casing as his fingers clenched into a fist. “We go looking for long-forgotten seeds and suddenly the whole world knows about them. Zane, you need to pay attention to what I’m showing you....”
This is it then. Amber soaked up the precious warmth encircling her, the way Zane curved around her body protectively as if she was an innocent rather than the danger in their midst. That unconditional trust wouldn’t last much longer. Not after her dragon learned what she’d been hiding inside Momma’s memory locket.
Taking a step away from the shifter who would soon be hers no longer sent a spear-like ache tearing through her skull. Her feet threatened to rebel and her stomach considered tossing last night’s dinner up onto the deck as a speedy and effective change of subject.
I’m not a coward, Amber reprimanded her fractious organs. As much as she didn’t want to see the light go out of her dragon’s eyes, Zane deserved to hear this truth. And it was better that the news come from her rather than from Nicholas.
So she took yet another step away from the man whose warmth buoyed her up and filled her life with seemingly limitless potential. Then she turned so she could look directly into her dragon’s eyes while admitting the truth she’d been hoping to keep under wraps a little while longer.
“What he’s trying to tell you,” Amber said as calmly as she could manage, “is that I know a lot more than you do about the seeds you’ve been hunting. My mother was one of the scientists who designed them, and I carried on her experiments after she died.”
Amber closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the confusion drifting across her dragon’s craggy face. Wouldn’t know the moment when realization hit and he began to doubt their germinating bond.
Then, at last, she offered the information that not even Nicholas had fully grasped. “That tablet your brother keeps sticking in your face is something you need to take a closer look at. Because if the laboratory still exists, then there are thousands of seeds there to choose from, only a few of which have the potential to turn back the clock into the Before.
“And, honestly, Baine isn’t so wrong when he says the best idea is to burn the structure down sight-unseen. Because the majority of those seeds? They could easily make the Green look like a well-trained puppy
dog. Choosing the wrong variety will make this entire situation much, much worse.”
Chapter 24
Battle lines formed in the time it took for Amber to open her eyes. One moment, Nicholas was the only one in the anti-witch camp. The next, Alexander’s face had drawn down into a daunting scowl as he strode toward his twin...and at the same time Charlie was leaping to his feet and pulling Jasmine in the opposite direction so the pair could stand like sentinels by Amber’s right side.
In contrast, Zane remained planted in his original spot, beech-like and silent. He hasn’t made up his mind yet, Amber realized. He’s still deciding who to trust and what to do.
It didn’t make any sense. She’d betrayed him. Her parent had helped create the Green, for crying out loud, and his own beloved foster mother was lost somewhere out there in the wide world due to Amber’s negligence. How could her dragon even consider allying himself with a witch he barely knew over brothers of the heart?
But he was definitely leaning in Amber’s direction. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, the curve of his lip. He opened his mouth...
...and all hell broke loose.
The twins split apart like trained dancers who didn’t need to see their partner’s face in order to perfectly mirror the other’s movement. One moment they were men. The next, they were dragons so massive they threatened the flammable balloon suspended above all of their heads.
“What are you doing?” Zane growled, his words nearly lost in the burst of wind moving away from his superheated siblings.
Then Amber lost sight of her surroundings as she was whirled around, face pressing against her dragon’s sweetly scented chest as he enfolded her in the crook of one protective arm. Jasmine’s subsequent scream and Thea’s frantic cries were muffled by warm shifter shoulder, and she barely managed to struggle her way back to facing forward in time to see her beloved goat dangling from a red dragon’s menacing claws.
Verdant Magic: A Standalone Dragon Shifter Adventure (Dragon Mage Chronicles Book 1) Page 15