“I can’t!” She let go of her end of the shirt. “I can’t be with you, Cale. Don’t you understand? That’s the problem. Something is wrong with me. And staying here and pretending to be happy and domesticated is only making it worse.”
He stopped. “What do you mean, you can’t be with me?’”
“I try, Cale. I try. I just can’t. I don’t know how to be close to you anymore.” She sat on the floor and stuffed her shirt into her backpack and fought back tears that were as stubborn as she was. “I can’t even hug my best friend. Or sit next to you. Or sleep beside you. We need to find some way to go back to how it was. Someway to fix it.” Her mind flitted to Ixora—her golden wings and white skin—but she pushed it away. She’d have to leave Cale to go there to talk to the phoenix. “Some way on this planet for me to be with you without…dying.”
Cale’s grin crept over his face. “So you want to be closer to me?”
Ava didn’t want to smile, but his was so ridiculous and surprising, she couldn’t help it. “I didn’t say it all mushy like that. But maybe if we go to Great Nest, where we pacted, breathe the air again…maybe it’ll ease some pressure. It’s an idea, but it’s better than doing nothing.”
He hurried over to the box that housed his belongings and dumped the contents into a duffel bag. “What do we do with Juliette?”
“Did you really have to ask that?”
“Right. We leave her with the sitters.”
***
Onna looked Ava over. She scowled, her curvy lips pulled tight with disdain. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, Onna, we need you to take care of Juliette for us,” Cale said. “We can’t trust just anyone. We promised Shiloh we’d look after her.”
She shook her head, her silky hair swishing around her shoulders. “You want me to stay here watching the weirdo preggie while you traipse around with this…thing? If you promised the black rider, why don’t you stay right here and watch her yourself?”
“Wow.” Ava was ready to wrap her wrists and put her gloves on. “Let’s just handle this now, O’Hara.”
“She’s a thing.” Onna squinted one eye and pointed a manicured finger at Ava, her glitter nail polish gleaming beneath the light of the O’Haras’ mini-chandelier. “You vanished. According to Cale, you actually died. And now you’re walking around, alive.” She shook her head. “And you still think you’re a regular old human?”
Ava couldn’t believe it. Most of the red dragon world looked down on her for being a frail little human, and the rest of them thought she was a bird creature. Either way, they hated her. “I am human,” she lied. Didn’t matter really. She was bad at being both.
Onna turned to Cale. “What about you, Cale? You think she’s human?”
Cale tried to open his mouth, to side with his rider, but the lie he wanted to say wouldn’t come out.
Ava threw her hands into the air. “Seriously, Cale? You too? How would we be pacted if I wasn’t a human? How? Because you said so yourself: red dragons protect humans. That’s what you were made for. That’s why you pair with human riders. So if I’m a phoenix, how do you explain us?”
“I don’t know, Ava, but you’re definitely not a regular human. You’re just not. And honestly, I don’t want to talk about what happened.” He faced Onna again. “Please. Please watch Juliette for us.”
“Absolutely not. If she does it again…disappears on you….”
“She won’t.”
“I won’t.”
Onna shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. One of you is naïve and the other is a liar. That means neither of you can be trusted with Cale’s wellbeing. I’m coming.”
“We can’t fly with you. You’re too heavy. It’d take forever to get there. Besides, you and I hate each other.” Onna crossed her arms as Ava spoke. “And frankly, I’m not sharing him.”
Onna dropped her arms and darted her eyes to her friend. “Let me talk to you alone, Cale.”
Cale glanced at his rider for permission.
Ava shrugged. “You can talk to whoever you want,” she said.
Onna’s room was nothing like the old room in Cale and Ava’s apartment. It was all high ceilings and plush cream carpet. Her queen-sized bed was covered with smooth satin sheets, her open closet lined with dozens of name brand outfits. She settled on the edge of her bed and Cale sat on the floor. They’d had many conversations that way—Onna clutching her pink toss pillow, glad for the company and Cale sprawled out, telling her about how his brothers were driving him crazy.
“I don’t like her, Cale.”
“Enough of this. Seriously, Onna…”
“I don’t care if you’re tired of hearing it. I don’t trust her. And now this? This…disappearing? This phoenix thing?” She squeezed her pillow tighter. “What if your dad was right? What if she’s wrong for you?”
Cale’s gaze snapped at her. “I am right. Ava is the best thing that ever happened to me. No matter what. And my god, we’re pacted, Onna, for life. Nothing is going to change that.”
“I know you’re not going to listen to me. I know you’re going with her to wherever you’re going. But I need you to start…paying attention.” She bit her lip, overwhelmed by the sound of her heart in her own ears. “You scared me. When she left. I thought….”
Cale stood up and headed for the door. It made him want to throw up even thinking about what it had been like when she was gone. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes, but she had been gone.
“I love my rider, Onna.”
She left the bed, grabbed his hand before he could leave. “I wouldn’t ask you not to love her. You’re a good dragon, Cale. You’re supposed to love your rider. I know that. All I’m asking is for you to keep a little of yourself separate. Just in case.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Try.”
“Onna….”
“I’ll take care of Juliette if you promise to try. But you have to say it out loud. So I know you mean it.”
“Onna....”
“Say it out loud.”
Cale sighed even louder. “I’ll try to separate. A little.”
Onna gave the same smile she gave every time she left Cale or he left her. And, like he always did, Cale put an arm around her. “Thanks, kid.”
And he walked away. She knew he’d scoop Ava up in his big arms and laugh into her hair and walk through the front door into all sorts of peril. And he’d smile through it all. Because he had her. His Ava.
“Funny how simple he makes everything, isn’t it?”
“It’s not simple,” Onna said. “It’s messed up. He’s just too good to see it clearly.”
“And I suppose you are the destiny he was supposed to cling to? The right one?”
Onna moved to slap the smug blue dragon who was standing in her bathroom closet. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not with the hundreds of razor thin scars that networked over his skin—each had been ripped apart with a scalpel and stitched back together with clinical blue dragon precision.
“So hot-blooded, you red dragons.” He shook his head at her. Even though she hadn’t hit him, he’d noticed the rush of aggression, the dilation of her pupils and the flood of color to her neck and cheeks. “That’s what gets you into these situations in the first place. Passion.”
“Shut. Up.”
He smiled at her, but it was an empty, spiteful attempt. “Keeping the girl close will be easier than we thought now that you’ve been given custody of her.”
Onna darted her eyes to the door, praying that Cale had already left with Ava. He’d never forgive her if he knew who she was harboring and why.
“All you want is to keep an eye on her? You’re not going to….”
“I’m not a monster, if that’s what you’re asking.” He tried to smirk, but his scar tissue wouldn’t allow him. “If the phoenix has taken interest in the fornicating red dragon and her bastard child, then I will take interest as well.”
&nbs
p; “Oh, let me guess. Because Ava is perfect and fierce and beautiful. She’s everything.”
“Incorrect. But I am not surprised. You of lesser intelligence never seem to understand anything. Not truly.” He stared at Onna’s door as if he could see a map that no one else could. “The phoenix is not everything. No. The pearl is everything. The phoenix? The phoenix changes everything.”
“Well I don’t care. I give you nothing until you uphold your end of the bargain,” she said.
The blue dragon sat on the edge of Onna’s bed and crossed his legs, leaning back in an attempt to look relaxed. But it was stiff, rehearsed. An academic blue dragon would find reclining like that silly. One couldn’t think as well when relaxed. But he had always found it fascinating to try to emulate the other races, though he did so poorly.
“You need not worry. They will be unpacted before the year is out. And to speed things along, I’ve sent a few…stumbling blocks of my own.”
“Your sirens?” Onna frowned at him. “They won’t hurt him, will they?”
The blue dragon feigned a look of surprise. “Dear. I may have forgotten to communicate that particularity.”
Five
Clutch
Cale’s breath warmed the back of her neck. In out. In out. Always steady, always there. Somehow, he had put his arm over her, his body resting against hers. She felt better after their flight. Always did. They’d made it to the island of St. John, the hum of its crickets and the gentle flitting of its stars blending into a soothing lullaby. The palm leaves beneath them were smooth and cool. It felt like before. Like they had just met.
Her back to him, she ran her fingers along his forearm, his wrist, his knuckles. His fingers twitched as she traced them, and then they opened, lacing together with hers. He let a gruff sound of approval escape, inching even closer, so that not even air could pass between them.
How easily he’d forgiven her for leaving him. And, even if he refused to talk about it, even if Ava refused to believe it, she knew she had left him. She’d needed space. She’d wanted space. And suddenly, when she wanted it more than she ever before—she had it. All the space she could ever need. Cale called it dying. But in that place, Ava had felt what she’d been looking for. Freedom.
She wanted to write another message to Cameron, but he hadn’t answered her last one. And what would she tell him to research for her this time? What it was like for someone to die? For someone to come back from the dead?
“You should be sleeping.”
His words tickled the back of her neck. Made her wiggle. But she didn’t feel the urge to pull away. Not yet.
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Feels like you’re thinking.” But she could tell from the way his lips moved against her skin that he smiled a little when he said it.
“It’s easier to relax, now that I’m back.” She hesitated, then continued. “It was beautiful. That other place.”
She expected his body to freeze, for him to pull away and say he didn’t want to hear about it. But he lay still beside her, played his thumb over her knuckles. “Were you alone?”
“I wanted to be. But there was this woman there. The strangest woman I’ve ever seen. She asked me about my parents.”
“Miriam? And Jim?”
“My real parents.” Ava could see Ixora in her mind. It made her skin burn with gold. “And she kept calling me an egg.”
“Like a phoenix egg?”
“I guess. She said I chose this for myself, that my will was too strong for me to survive as a human, so my soul made me…this. And, apparently, one day my will be so strong that I’ll hatch and be like…I don’t know. Like her I guess.”
“That’s not so crazy.”
“What? That’s not crazy to you?”
“If someone told me that you were so strong you had to become an immortal fire bird, I would think, ‘Yeah, that sounds like Ava.’”
“But I’m not strong enough to keep from going to that other place.”
“Hmm…”
“Cale?” She took a deep breath. “Did I really hurt you?”
He kept playing with her fingers, but he didn’t give an answer. She rolled over, careful not to move the arm that still held her. She didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she curled up, pressed her nose into his chest.
“Can I say I’m sorry?”
Cale twisted the tips of her curls around his finger. “Nope.”
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled. “You never listen to me.” He even chuckled a little. “I’m just glad normal Ava is back. I missed you.”
She slipped her hand beneath the softness of his t-shirt, drew circles on the skin of his back. He was familiar again. The way it was supposed to be.
“What if it happens again?”
He stiffened. “You have your blade?” he whispered.
Ava reached for her pocket, wrapped her fingers around the cool handle of her dragonblade. “Nightfolk?”
“More than one.”
The sweet swish of the blade from its sheath. The crunch of metal through flesh and bone as Cale took the first kill, through the heart and then the head. It was beautiful to watch him move. Like art. Like music. Every muscle twisted and pulled with precision, steps falling in just the right place. He flipped the handle, straightened his sword, and turned to face Ava. He was serious, but there was fire in his eyes—a faint gleam of excitement.
Ava nodded. That was all Cale needed.
He tilted his head back, letting the plume of smoke leave his mouth. The ash mingled with his molecules until, before her eyes, he was someone—something—else. He stood on all four legs, as tall as Ava. His paws were armed with black talons, his razor teeth barred. His red scales were so fine that he gleamed in the moonlight, the blue tracings outlining the trim of his ears and sides almost glowing.
Ava stayed close beside him, her blade ready. She didn’t have to worry about her back. Cale wouldn’t let anyone through. So she took interest in the nightfolk before her. She wasn’t as offensively minded as Cale. Her style was to wait.
The nightfolk stared with pits for eyes, hovering in its place, its mouth partly open. She couldn’t help but see the pain it was in, as if it was gasping for breath, for life…for relief. And she felt what made her pity the creatures. She knew what they wanted, why they hunted. It wasn’t because they were jealous or wicked or evil. It was because they wanted someone—anyone, for goodness’ sake—to end their misery.
And so, when the pale-faced monster stretched wide it’s fangs and hissed, she drove her weapon through its unbeating heart, pulled it back, and swung at its bulging neck with all her force. The head flopped to the ground and lolled over to one side. Before it vanished into ash, Ava thought she saw its features relax, just for a moment.
She took another life, listening behind her for Cale as he rampaged, clawing the nightfolk two at a time, tearing their heads from their bodies with the power of his jaws and the gnashing of his teeth. His roar signaled the end of the assail.
Ava closed her blade, and nudged the fallen blue dragon crests with the toe of her sneaker. The blue dragon was still amassing his army, recruiting these sirens and promising to take away their memories so they could be free. So they could die. Is what we’re doing any better?
Cale licked his lips, nudged Ava’s shoulder with his nose. He licked her hand until she opened her clenched fist, then nuzzled his nose to her palm. Ava gave in to a slight grin. Even when he was a beast, he was Cale.
“You had way too much fun with that,” Ava said.
He snorted his response and licked his lips again. But when he tasted the bit of purple siren blood, he sneezed it out. Ava took his face in her hands and used the hem of her shirt to wipe the poison from his mouth. It held no venom in it, since it didn’t come from the fangs of the siren, but it was still vile.
He lowered his head and placed the scoop of his neck on Ava’s shoulder. He was asking for a hug. Without having to force herself, Ava
wrapped both arms around him.
“We should move on,” she said scratching his ears. He wasn’t what she’d expected. Every time she saw him, he wasn’t what she expected. His scales felt like skin, like smooth, soft leather. And he was still warm, more like a wolf than a dragon. “You up for flying?”
He stepped back and squatted, his belly lying in the fallen leaves. Ava scooped up a few more of the dragon crests and hurried to her backpack, stuffing a few salvaged contents of what used to be in Cale’s now shredded duffel bag inside. She returned to him, threw her leg over his side, and felt the rolling thud of his heart against his ribs. The same heart. The same Cale.
“Go,” she said.
His claws dug into the soil, sending clods of dirt flying as he picked up speed. And as soon as they cleared the trees, Cale leapt into the air. To Ava, his wings always seemed to appear from nowhere, as if there was nothing, suddenly becoming ten feet of red scaled beauty, lined along the tips with the finest feathers of blue and silver. He caught the air beneath those wings and propelled the both of them upward, Ava leaning forward on his back, the toes of her shoes and the tips of her fingers resting in the grooves behind his ears and side. Those grooves were made for me.
Cale let out a roar as they shot up towards the clouds. He was always careful not to take Ava too high, so she wouldn’t get cold. His connection with her wasn’t just for nothing. He felt what Ava felt so he could keep her safe. If she was cold, he’d take her down. If she was tired, he’d land before she fell. But lately, Ava could go higher and higher with him, as if she was acclimating to the chilly atmosphere of the clouds.
Cale lay down as soon as his paws touched the chilled earth. The flight had been a feat, too far of a stretch without stopping to eat or rest. But the Atlantic was vast, and Ava was rushing. Cale couldn’t tell why. He didn’t want to think about why. The rider stood up on wobbly legs.
“I’ll find you something to eat while you get dressed,” she offered. She always looked away, gave Cale privacy while he changed back to first form.
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