“No… or, if she does, it is so faint that her magic’s smell overwhelms it. Her magic’s scent is very strong,” he said. “I might have sensed it with my sister, though it was never strong enough to be of interest. Both my sister and yours are magically so unique,” he said.
“Is that what magic really smells like? A fire at the beach?” I asked.
“Not at all. Magic is much more intense and yet subtle. There are many levels of magic as well, active, innate, cast, lingering, fixed, and more. Each carries the scent of the magic of the person as well. A witch’s cast fireball smells different from a sorcerer, and even more distinct from a dracons.”
“Do you just know… like is it just uploaded into your brain?” I asked, eyes wide.
He flashed a grin. “Definitely not,” he said.
“You must have spent your whole life honing your aspect,” I said, awed.
“We are all sharpened tools for our masters,” Harrison said.
A pulse of emotion flared over Wyvern’s soul, but when I tried to inspect it, his soul was too thick and vast to define one part from the other. I moved my hand so it would brush against his, hoping to examine what he was feeling, but he shifted away far enough that I’d have to be really obvious.
“After my dad inherited his aspect, my grandfather spent years and a not so small fortune researching anything and everything to do with soul magic, legends, mythical stories, everything. When I inherited my aspect, he had me hone my skills by watching the information in his memories. I’m pretty sure he showed me all of the information he had on it and I have never heard of anything like this,” I said.
“I did some research as well in the past three months,” Wyvern said.
When I turned a half glare, half-knowing grin on him, he met my gaze with a smirk on his lips.
“Did you expect any different?” he asked in a quiet voice, just for me.
“No. So, what did you learn?” I asked.
“Nothing that would explain this either.” He turned to Harrison. “When your father trained you, did he say anything that could be related to this? My father always said that the Vrykolakas dragon hoarded knowledge the way other dragons do gems.”
“My father would give away all of his gems before the information he alone knows, even to me,” Harrison said.
“But he might know?” I asked.
“I inherited this aspect from him, but he had it for eons,” Harrison said, his voice wasn’t ‘like, duh,’ but I really should have figured that one out.
“Would it be easier for you or me to request an audience?” Wyvern asked.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should not be the ones to tell my father about what happened to Imogen,” he said.
“How do you know that he doesn’t already know?” I asked.
“Because he’s not here. Because your sister is still alive,” Harrison said.
“Your brother pardoned her,” I said.
“My father doesn’t deal in intentions. It wouldn’t matter to him whether or not she was really to blame for attacking my sister, it would only matter that she did,” he said.
“Well that sucks,” I said.
“Can we move away from these souls?” Wyvern asked.
I looked back to them. “Could I have a moment to study them?” To Wyvern I said, “You can trust me, I said I won’t touch them, and I won’t.”
His gaze met mine, the barest of smiles playing on his lips. “I trust you.”
He had said it before, and like the last time, it floored me. I actually didn’t know how it could even be possible. He knew I lied as easily as I faked a smile, that it had been my job to live a lie for years, yet he kept saying he trusted me.
Four words came unbidden into my mind. I love you, Wyvern. But I didn’t love him, I couldn’t love him, not like that.
His hand brushed mine as he stood, sending a quick zinging shock across my wrist and up my arm. I forced my gaze back to the souls, realizing that Harrison was already gone.
I waited for a minute, glancing back to see that Wyvern and Harrison were locked in conversation before I really examined the souls. As far as I could tell, the souls were undamaged. But I had never actually seen a true soul before, not with my eyes at least. I brushed the glass and dirt away with a coat I found on the floor and crawled around the souls on hands and knees, stopping to lay my head on the cold floor to see them from different angles. They looked very similar to pictures I had seen of stars, glowing orbs. I’d never spent too much time exploring the true soul, the only real use it had ever had for me was in paralyzing my target. Truly, I’d only ever skimmed the surface of a true soul. It had always felt a little like a stick of dynamite, something I only wanted to handle if necessary.
Rocking back onto my feet, crouching by the souls, I considered. “I have a theory,” I said in a normal voice, as I knew they could hear me.
Less than thirty seconds later, and without hearing them approach, both of the guys were crouched down near me.
I pivoted toward Harrison, so that all three of us now sat in a triangle. “I propose a trade of information,” I told him.
His eyelids narrowed. “What information do you wish to trade?”
“What are the Regina’s aspects?” After pausing, I added, “I would need to know all of them.” I turned to Wyvern. “Unless you know…”
He grinned. “I know only a few, I am assuming not close to all of them.”
“No,” Harrison said.
“You’re not even going to ask me what information I have to trade?” I asked.
“No information is worth committing treason,” he said.
“It’s not treason if you reveal it to save her life.”
“How exactly would you knowing all of her aspects save her life?” he asked, his gaze cutting into mine.
“No, the information I will tell you will probably save her life,” I said.
“What information are you trying to sell?” he asked.
“I know who the traitor in your family is, the one who helped the humans attack your sister,” I said.
He glared at me. “How do you know this?” he growled.
“That I won’t tell you. But I know beyond doubt who it is,” I said.
“And you wouldn’t just tell me? I thought we were allies in this.” His nostrils flared.
I shrugged. “How does the saying go? Never give anything away that you can get a nickel for.”
Harrison’s frown deepened. “I’ve never heard that saying.”
Wyvern smirked. “Me neither.”
“Oh. Maybe that’s just something my grandfather says.”
Harrison leaned in, his glare intensifying. “The answer is still no.”
“Okay, that’s fine.” I leaned in a little toward him, and as I hoped, he checked himself and sat back. “Instead, how about I tell you my theory, and you just confirm whether or not I’m right.”
His expression turned stony, and he didn’t respond.
“Your sister was cursed so she couldn’t be in daylight, right? That’s what you said?” When he didn’t answer, I said, “Anyhow… I’m thinking that she’s not actually nocturnal.”
“You don’t?” he asked.
“Some vampires, really powerful old ones, have shadow sight,” I said.
Harrison stiffened the moment I said the words.
“I knew it,” I whispered. “So okay, what I know about shadow sight is that the vampire can see out from the shadows around them. If it’s a really severe shadow, it takes all their concentration, but unless there is a searchlight, shadows at night aren’t severe. So if your sister went out in the daylight, with deep shadows everywhere around her and was unable to stop shadow seeing all day long, she’d go crazy. She wouldn’t be able to walk five feet down the street, let alone rule an empire. Her concentration would constantly be stuck seeing out of shadows. And my guess…” I examined Harrison for confirmation, “…is that all of her other aspects are passive as
pects, strength, speed, truth telling…”
He looked down.
“Not truth telling, but other passive aspects that occur constantly anyways. Or if she does have other active aspects, they’re something she can do constantly without being obvious.”
Harrison’s eyes moved back and forth, as if he was going through her aspects one by one.
“And, I have more… Okay, so, let’s assume that they were all what we’ve been calling ‘cursed’, right? With at least the Dracs, Lorelei, and Bobby, and I’m almost positive Regina Imogen, after they were attacked they lost all control of their abilities. Actually, they just continuously used their abilities. Whatever this ‘curse’ does, it doesn’t kill them, right?”
“Not right away,” Wyvern said.
“No, not at all.” I looked at Harrison. “You said that your sister drinks twice as much blood as any of you. So, when I use a lot of power, I need to eat or sleep a lot. How about you?” I asked.
They didn’t answer, but they didn’t need to.
“She’s compensating for her power drain. She’s probably lived pretty comfortably with this ‘curse’ for a hundred years… or however long she’s had it.”
“I don’t think she’d consider her curse comfortable,” Harrison said.
“But… I don’t think it was a curse.”
“You don’t?” Wyvern asked, an eyebrow raised over an amused expression.
I said, “Nope. Harrison, can you smell these souls’ magic? Are they still producing magic?”
Harrison looked at me suspiciously, like answering any question from me was dangerous. “No,” he finally said.
“And Wyvern, can you sense any power? Or tell what type of aspect they have?” I asked, looking over to Wyvern.
“No,” he said.
“I didn’t think so. So, in this attack some unique non-human, non-dracon power entered into these three Dracs’s true souls. Whatever this is, it stayed after their souls stopped producing magic, it stayed after their souls stopped having an aspect. If magic remains, it’s because it’s still active, right? Everyone in the world knows that.” I shrugged. “This magic is still active, so I believe that what we’ve thought of as the ‘curse’ is not the result of the magic, but instead the side-effect of the magic. Whatever this magic is actually doing, it’s still doing it even now.”
“You’re getting better at this,” Wyvern said in a low voice. For some reason, the praise sent a low rush of warmth through me.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harrison growled, glaring at me. “The Albonian Rex cursed my sister with his aspect. His son inherited the aspect and cursed his girlfriend, who died from the curse…”
In his eyes, I saw how much he wanted to believe it. I’m sure it was hard to swallow that your sister massacred an entire family, children and all, based on a lie. Glacier always told me, that on a job, if you chose to believe a less frightening lie you might as well aim your own weapon to your head. I looked back to the souls and whispered, “Some truths suck.”
The sound of Wyvern’s phone ringing broke our tense mood. Wyvern stood, pulling the phone out of his back pocket. “Sophie,” he said in greeting. He listened for a few seconds then hung up the phone. To us he said, “She found something.”
Chapter Twenty-five
My phone rang just as I was pushing the reception center’s door open to step back into the daylight. I let go of the door in my haste to grab it and the door almost smacked me when Harrison grabbed it.
“Thanks,” I said, walking past him but staring at the name on my phone. I answered it. “Glacier!”
His voice betrayed no emotion when he said, “Dakota, I am in a secure location. Who can hear our conversation on your end?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you, Bobby teleported to my house and called me. He’s bad, Glacier, and I think–”
“Dakota, assess your location,” he said.
I looked over to where my security team was standing in a loose perimeter around the convention center and us. All of them faced away while Sophie faced us. It was a far distance, but I thought I could see a grim expression on her face.
A woman whose features I couldn’t make out stood with Sophie, but I recognized her clothes as belonging to the hotel.
Sarah stood to their left, her stance mirroring Annie and Brian’s. Obviously Sophie had not confronted her yet.
I said into the phone, “Wyvern can hear me, maybe some members of my security team, Harrison—”
“Can you get to a secure location?”
Wyvern stood beside me a second later. “You can go into the limousine. I’ll keep everyone out of hearing distance.”
I nodded to him. Looking into Wyvern’s eyes, I said to Wyvern, “Maybe Wyvern should come with me to the limousine…”
Wyvern shook his head. “Harrison would have to come too.”
“Can both Wyvern and Harrison hear this?” I asked in a low voice.
“Not the Princep,” Glacier said.
“Dakota, we’ll just be over there, I’ll have Annie and Brian circle the limo while you talk. Just call me when you’re done,” he said.
“Wyvern, I—” I reached out and grabbed his hand.
Wyvern smiled at me, but an uncomfortable squirming sensation overtook the usual tingling I got from our touch.
“Dakota, I don’t have much time,” Glacier said.
“Go,” Wyvern said with a half-grin as his thumb brushed over my knuckles.
“Okay, heading to a secure location,” I said, swallowing, as I crossed to the limousine. Climbing inside the limo and closing the door I said, “Okay, in secure location.”
“I’ve seen Bobby, he was able to teleport to my location for a couple minutes,” Glacier said.
“How is he? Is he okay?” I asked in a rush.
“What I have to tell you is more important. He knows who betrayed the family,” he said.
“Yeah, I know, he told me,” I said.
“He said that he wasn’t able to tell you,” he said.
“Well, he said, ‘don’t go off alone with anyone’, it took me a minute but I realized that my security team is the only ones I could go off alone with. I confirmed it when I read through Sarah’s memories.”
“Have you told the Rex?” Glacier asked.
I took a deep inhale, then continued, “Not yet. I’m going to, but I’m working on reverse spying until the time is right.”
“I understand your thinking, but I’d recommend against it, Dakota. You are too exposed,” he said.
“Glacier, I know what’s happening to Bobby, at least I think I do. And I’m pretty sure I know how to help him temporarily until I figure out how to fix him,” I said.
“Tell me everything as briefly as possible,” he said.
I first told him about what Harrison revealed on the plane, about the Regina’s supposed curse and the Albonian Rex’s family massacre. Then, I told him everything I’d learned and thought in the convention center.
“After seeing the state Bobby is in, I believe your interpretation is what we should work from,” he said.
“Bobby needs food, maybe protein bars and shakes, somehow we have to get it to him.”
“That might be possible. He’s mostly teleporting through his branded teleportation spots in rapid and random succession. I’m already having someone leave phones and messages for him, I’ll have them leave large amounts of food as well.”
“Okay good, it won’t work forever, but maybe it can buy us a couple days to figure out what this unique magic is, and find out how to reverse it. You’ve never heard of anything like that, have you? A non-human, non-dragon magic?”
He stayed silent for a moment, then he said, “No.”
“Why did you hesitate?” I asked.
“There is a lead in this that I might be able to look into, I’ll update you if it produces anything,” he said.
“That’s all I get?” I asked exasperated.
“I’m more con
cerned with the people who are actively trying to kill you and what you are going to do to protect yourself against them,” he said.
“The humans with the extinction tattoos?” I asked.
“Sophie and Sarah,” he said.
I paused. “No, Glacier, it was just Sarah.”
“No, Bobby saw—”
“Sophie almost died to save my life. She carried me out of a horde of vampires until she was shot down. Bobby has to be wrong,” I said.
“When she passed him, she had earplugs in her ears. Right before he was forced to teleport, Bobby said he had looked at Sophie. She’d been acting as if she was drained, but her gaze was on something above him. When he turned to look, Sarah was behind him. He felt a sharp, debilitating pain in his head, then he teleported into the ocean.”
“Oh my gods, Glacier, I screwed up,” I whispered, my stomach plummeting. “I told Sophie about Sarah—I need to go—”
“Get to a safe location and I will extract you! Dakota—” I dropped the phone on the seat as I threw open the limo door.
Harrison, Wyvern and my entire security team clustered around something.
“Wyvern!” I called, making my voice sound impatient rather than alarmed.
Off in the distance on the golf course lawn, Wyvern’s pearly white hair caught the sunlight as he turned toward me. A small crowd of what I recognized as hotel staff stood around them. When he waved me over, I motioned for him to come to me instead.
He held up a finger and turned the other way.
Forcing down my panic, I started to jog. When I was close enough that I hoped he could hear me, I called, “Wyvern, I have to tell you something really important about my uncle Reeves.”
Wyvern reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone.
When he put it to his ear, I shouted, “My phone is in the car!”
He stowed his phone back in his pocket, leaned in to say something to Harrison, and then turned back toward me, a smirk on his face. Harrison turned with Wyvern, and they both started walking toward me. As I jogged, I lifted my hands and signed ‘run.’
Rex (Dakota Kekoa Book 2) Page 24