Cerulean Magic: A Dragon Mage Novel

by Aimee Easterling

  Yes, her softer side ached to give Nicholas the benefit of the doubt. To assume that he’d purchased her ship with pure intentions, just like he’d swooped Steph out of harm’s way during the mechanical attack and handed her brother a tablet in an effort to provide the mute teenager with an avenue through which to speak.

  “I want to get to know you, Sabrina,” Nicholas had told her on the beach. Perhaps buying the Intrepid was the dragon equivalent of bringing a girl roses.

  But the gesture didn’t feel like roses. Instead, it felt like Sabrina’s free will was being squashed beneath one hard boot heel, like her route to independence was being hemmed in on every side by debt and obligation she had no idea how to repay.

  For the first time in her adult life, Sabrina felt like just another girl being bought and sold on the open market. And as much as she loved the Intrepid, Sabrina’s price tag was significantly higher than one gifted airship.

  So she spoke to the open air without turning. “I can’t afford to pay off a debt that large.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  She’d forgotten Dominic was still present until air currents brushed against her cheek, the bosun’s mate taking the smartest path and fleeing down the passageway after his men. Her third in command was nothing if not efficient, so Sabrina suspected there’d be a sailor walking down the hallway to guard the door she lingered beside in five minutes flat.

  Plenty of time to have it out with the high-handed dragon who thought he could buy her as easily as her father had bought and sold those poor little girls. Perhaps Nicholas thought she should feel grateful that her price was five gold bars—an unimaginable fortune—rather than the handful of coins Frank Fairweather likely charged for his own sex slaves?

  Sabrina must have waited too long to make her rebuttal, though, because a super-heated palm landed on the patch of bare skin where collar opened onto neck. “Nothing between us has changed,” the shifter offered, his voice conciliatory.

  Maybe not for him. But for Sabrina, the imbalance of power she’d tried so hard to overlook during the past few days had finally reared its ugly head in a way that was impossible to ignore. Ever since her father died, she’d built her life around independence. She’d tightened her belt, paid her crew rather than herself, and made tough choices in order to maintain the freedom that her airship offered.

  Sabrina didn’t plan to lower her guard and depend on a man now or ever. Definitely not upon a man who made choices for her without asking and assumed she’d simply go along with his wishes when he high-handedly bought her own damn ship.

  So, even though, she couldn’t afford it, Sabrina made a promise she fully intended to keep. “I’ll find a way to pay my debt.” She hesitated, then added, “In the meantime, should I be looking for another first mate?”

  Sabrina didn’t know why she even asked. Of course the ship’s owner wouldn’t want to stand around making sure half-trained seamen didn’t fall to their deaths while they literally learned the ropes. Assigning himself the role of second-in-command aboard the Intrepid had merely been a way for Nicholas to ensure he was in the thick of things and available to protect Steph from enemy dragons. As owner, he needed no such excuse.

  Sure enough, footsteps finally moved around her until the shifter filled her entire field of view. He was even bigger than she’d remembered. A wall of dragon standing between Sabrina and the future she’d worked so hard to build for herself.

  The captain’s primary obstacle reached out and tilted her chin upward so she could no longer peruse his scuffed boots. “I took the job. I’ll keep it until you fire me.”

  With a harsh laugh, Sabrina accepted his statement. The logic was just convoluted enough to amuse a dragon. Nicholas had paid off Gleason to become her boss and yet she still told him what to do from day to day. Of course that would make sense in his twisted shifter brain.

  “In that case, you’ll be standing day watch,” Sabrina said, giving Nicholas the less dangerous duty when Dominic would also be awake to help guard the ship. “I’ll be on night watch. Which means I should get some shut eye now if I want to be alert enough to check our course at sunset.”

  Then, like a coward, and without once looking her companion directly in the eye, Sabrina turned on her heel and fled.

  ***

  Astonishing how easy it is to avoid someone when you’re both aboard the same small ship, Nicholas thought the next morning as he strode down corridor after corridor in search of a frustratingly elusive captain.

  The evening before, he’d hunted Sabrina for over an hour, only giving up when the crew started laughing behind their hands at his relentless peregrinations. He’d catch her in the morning, the shifter decided after his third failed circuit of the ship. There was plenty of time to beard Sabrina in her lair.

  Only now it was morning, and once again he’d been outmaneuvered by a master. “The captain’s sleeping, sir, and expressly asked not to be disturbed,” George told him, handing over a steaming mug of tea the minute Nicholas stepped out onto the open deck. This time, after checking the Intrepid’s heading and ensuring their course was smooth and trouble free, the shifter chose a different tack instead.

  If he wasn’t able to speak to the Fairweather he most wanted to debrief...then he’d hunt down the other instead.

  Unlike his sister, Zach was satisfyingly easy to find, tucked away in his own private laboratory in the belly of the ship. The teenager welcomed Nicholas with trademark Fairweather eyes, their sparkle nearly identical to those of the captain. But when Zach spoke—or rather, when his tablet spoke for him—Sabrina was quickly forgotten.

  “Do you think rats can harness magic?” the teenager asked, releasing a white rodent from a small metal cage on the corner of his work bench and allowing it to sniff its way down the length of the flat surface unhindered. The rat was evidently quite familiar with such freedom because it steered well clear of the Bunsen burner currently distilling...something...through a long section of sinuous tubing. Instead of nosing at the dangerous flames, the animal merely scampered to one end of the apparatus-strewn workspace before returning to crawl up Zach’s arm and settle quietly onto his left shoulder.

  Raising one eyebrow, Nicholas paused rather than reply, sensing a secret hovering around the boy’s lips. Two nights earlier, he’d resolved to tease out whatever Zach was hiding. But now that the moment had finally arrived, it felt strangely disloyal to pit his knack against a boy whose childhood left much to be desired. So instead of digging deeper, the shifter merely shrugged and cracked a joke. “I sure hope not. It’s hard enough to keep rats out of our stores when all they have going for them is tenacity and sharp teeth.”

  In response, the rat dove down into the darkness beneath Zach’s shirt and the boy retreated into himself less obviously but equally thoroughly. Wrong answer, he might as well have said.

  Nicholas furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to decide where he’d misstepped. When it came to ferreting out secrets, he usually found that all clues were right there in front of him if he knew where to look. So, glancing once again at the chemistry experiment currently underway, Nicholas ran through the data he’d thus far compiled on the younger Fairweather.

  Mute, scientific, animal lover.

  Or perhaps the rat wasn’t actually a pet? In which case....

  “Are you looking for someone magical to test a concoction on?” Nicholas asked at last.

  This second stab in the dark was far more successful than the first, because Zach’s restlessly jiggling leg stilled and the boy cocked his head to one side in consideration. Then, finally, the teenager nodded thoughtfully, although he didn’t key any further explanation into his tablet.

  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Dragons are magical,” Nicholas offered, wondering even as he spoke why he was willing to swallow an unknown potion dreamed up by a child whose intentions he didn’t fully understand. Hopefully his subconscious was basing its trust on something more than the familiarity of tho
se sky blue eyes. Hopefully...but Nicholas wasn’t so sure he was acting rationally rather than succumbing to the naivety of a lovesick fool.

  Whether or not the shifter was making a bad decision, his companion was clearly intrigued by the possibility. “It’s too dangerous to test on people at this stage,” Zach replied, fingers flying across the screen. And even though the teenager’s words sounded negative, his posture didn’t quite hide the hope sparking to life on his face. “All of my trials on rats have been positive, of course. But there were side effects. Strange boosts of energy that came on fast then faded just as quickly. I don’t know what it would do to a human....”

  That last part was a lie, Nicholas was surprised to see. Even as he peered at the youngster, assessing why Zach would resort to deception, the teenager pursed his lips and backpedaled.

  “Okay, that’s not quite true. I took it twice and survived. But...I...it’s complicated.”

  And there was the teenager’s secret, plugging up their direct line of communication quite thoroughly. “I trust you,” Nicholas said when it became clear his companion wasn’t going to offer any further information. “If it’ll help, I’d be glad to act as your guinea pig.”

  “As my rat,” Zach corrected, stroking one finger down the white rodent’s spine. Its tail curled trustingly around his wrist and the animal chattered appreciatively from its shoulder-top perch.

  “As your rat,” Nicholas agreed.

  But even though both rat and shifter had expressed their confidence in the young scientist, apparently the boy wasn’t so sure of his own work. Because, shaking his head, he dismissed Nicholas’s offer as quickly as he’d at first considered spilling his secrets. “No, it’s not ready yet.” Then, remembering his manners, the boy added, “But thank you. I appreciate your offer to help.”

  And Nicholas found himself dismissed by this second Fairweather just as thoroughly as he had been by the first. Retreating to the helm to guide a ship that didn’t need any guidance at all, the spark of interest that had flared to life in his gut moments earlier gradually sputtered out.

  Is it just my imagination, or does the ocean appear grayer than it was yesterday? Nicholas wondered as he peered out across the open water. Grayer and endless, a brilliant orb of sunlight glinting off the surface and tearing up his squinting eyes.

  If Nicholas had turned to peer in the opposite direction, he might have seen something that would have taken his mind off Fairweather evasions. Might have noticed a mechanical pigeon sliding out a window at the rear of the ship before flying as rapidly as it could toward a shore that had already faded into invisibility the day before.

  If Nicholas had been paying attention to his job instead of to the captain who hadn’t so much as met his gaze for nearly twenty-four hours along with the budding chemist who’d almost—but not quite—taken the shifter into his confidence, he might have taken roll of Intrepid’s crew. Might have noted who was present on deck and who was missing.

  He might have thought about the secrets he already knew, then guessed who beyond Gleason had an incentive to send word to Steph’s erstwhile captors.

  Instead, Nicholas stared out across the water glumly. One more day of being avoided as if he carried the plague, then the Intrepid would reach Sabrina’s chosen destination. There, he hoped, the captain might deign to look him in the eyes at last.

  Chapter 25

  Raft City was invisible amid the fog. But Sabrina knew the colony was out there, waiting, watching, deciding whether the Intrepid carried friend or foe.

  She, on the other hand was pressing her nose against the glass rather than standing on the open deck while wet air streamed across her skin the way it had when she was five and six and seven. Reluctantly, and despite enjoying free run of the ship as captain, Sabrina had opted to skip the most visceral anticipation as she prepared to dive into a world of water and magic.

  Aware of her cowardice but equally unwilling to brave conversation with her first mate up on deck, Sabrina instead turned away from the fog-shrouded expanse and eyed the strange contraption sitting in one corner of the cluttered engine room. Her chief engineer merely grinned and shrugged in response to her raised eyebrows, but Zach looked up from his work in time to give her a rundown on his unofficial charge—Steph’s newly laid egg.

  “This is all just for monitoring purposes,” Zach assured her via tablet, pointing out wires and doodads and things Sabrina couldn’t even think of a name for as he explained further. “One of the twins must have died early—it’s completely absent. But the other one’s heart rate is steady. Interior temperature is holding despite changes in the outside air. I’ve even run an ultrasound. Look.”

  The teenager tilted his tablet and Sabrina smiled at the shape of a tiny dragonet swimming within the watery confines of its shell. She wasn’t an expert on embryology by any means, but the youngster appeared fully formed, nearly ready to break free and scamper through the outside world under its own volition.

  Based on certain aspects of its anatomy, the captain thought the dragonet might even be a girl. The world’s second female shifter, hatching aboard her ship—the concept sent a tendril of warmth twining through Sabrina’s chilled body that she hadn’t experienced since giving Nicholas the cold shoulder two days prior.

  “Do you think...?” she started. But then a change in air currents alerted her to a new arrival just as her chief engineer stood to greet the shifter wafting into the room.

  The newcomer wasn’t the dragon she was avoiding, of course. Instead, it was the one she’d spoken to only a few times before, the one who had become a ghost-like presence hovering around the periphery of their journey.

  Given Steph’s former timidity, in fact, the captain wasn’t at all surprised to find the female hesitating on the doorstep rather than making a beeline toward her unborn child. Her gaze flicked from window to egg to Zach to Sabrina, then settled at last on Gerry as the greatest peril.

  Despite being large and male, though, the engineer was far from dangerous. “Miss Pendragon,” the mountain of a man said quietly, his voice pitched so low it barely impacted the air swirling around Sabrina’s face. “Come on in.”

  His invitation was clearly meant to soothe. But Steph’s already colorless skin paled further in response to being acknowledged and she turned as if to flee.

  This time, it was Zach who reeled the skittish woman back in. “Come look,” the teenager offered, tilting his tablet a little further so Steph could nearly see the screen...but not quite. “It took a while, but I got a perfect image.”

  And this time, motherhood won out over fear. Slowly but surely, Steph took tentative step after tentative step until she was standing by the boy’s side. The egg’s mother didn’t even seem to notice that her hand had brushed against Zach’s as she reached down to turn the tablet in her direction for easier viewing.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  “Not it. She,” Zach corrected.

  At this confirmation of her earlier guess, Sabrina expected the mother-to-be to smile, to start compiling potential baby names the way Charlotte had done when the latter’s secret came out and the crew began a seemingly endless round of congratulations. Instead, Steph jolted as if she’d been struck, her gaze turning toward the bank of windows lining one wall instead.

  And just like that, the egg was forgotten. Giving her unborn daughter a strangely cold shoulder, the shifter left Zach’s side without a farewell and raised one hand to splay trembling fingers against the fogged window pane.

  The poor woman was shaking now, not just her hand but her entire body. A quiver started at the top of her head and ran down to her toes then back again, gaining momentum with every pass.

  Sabrina stepped up beside her, noting that the mists had finally parted to reveal a city of ramshackle boats and floating platforms rising out of the sea. The hidden settlement was even more magical than the captain remembered. Ocean water steamed as mages heated the surface to create a sheltering fog. Small figures
raced across from barge to boat, readying a landing platform for the Intrepid’s use. And, down beneath the surface, extensive living compartments were barely visible under choppy seas.

  Raft City. The colony that Sabrina had half thought was merely a figment of her childhood imagination now spread out before her, larger and more vigorous than ever before. And even though a Fairweather ship hadn’t docked on the floating platform for seven long years, flag men on the surface guided her in for a landing.

  The inhabitants were welcoming her, waiting to greet her in person. Even after all these years, Uncle Walt still remembered the shape of the Fairweather balloon.

  ***

  “Claude says the pirates are still on our tail,” thirteen-year-old Sabrina had reported breathlessly as she joined her father at the railing during what she would later learn was her last childhood visit to the city in the sea.

  The journey was memorable for other reasons as well, most notably because of the enemy ship that had stumbled upon them two days earlier as they ran up the coast from the Keys. The pirates had never drawn quite close enough to board, but they hadn’t been shaken off by night flying or by any of Frank Fairweather’s other signature maneuvers either. Instead, Sabrina had gnawed on ragged fingernails for forty-eight long hours, wondering how the Intrepid would manage to evade a fleet little airship like the one that had tagged along behind them for the last couple of days.

  “The pirates won’t be there for much longer,” Frank said in response to his daughter’s worried glance. Pointing, he drew her attention to the mists gradually dissipating to reveal a colony they both knew quite well. Raft City was on the Intrepid’s usual route, and Sabrina grinned as she anticipated the lavish welcome Uncle Walt—no relation by blood but a brother of Frank’s heart—would lay out for them this time around.