The Burning World (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 7)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Ladon looked up at Dragon. “Should we continue packing?”

  Rysa sat up. Bad dreams or not, they really didn’t have a choice. She needed to buy her books and they needed to get settled into Daisy’s house before classes started. “Yes.”

  She’d call her mom once they got out to the truck and were on their way down the mountain. Ask her how to interpret all the thoughts rolling around in her head. Maybe there was a Parcae trick for calling up vision-dreams, and for separating the dream parts from the vision—

  Her present-seer flared: Her father jogged into the front entrance area of the cave.

  “Dad’s frantic,” she said.

  Dragon sat up. Ladon looked at the door.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sister-Dragon held up her dragon-sized tablet computer so they could all watch the video.

  Rysa pressed her back against Ladon’s front, and pulled his arms tight around her waist. Next to them, Anna tensed, but Derek pulled her close. Rysa’s dad continued his pacing in front of the clinic door.

  Her father had come back inside ranting. “Mira’s not answering. Neither is Andreas. And this is all over the internet.”

  They’d all come up front to the kitchen area and now gathered like a little Dracae congregation to watch a video her father downloaded no more than twenty minutes ago.

  Sister-Dragon tapped “play” on her big tablet.

  Trajan Upton stood behind an expensive, high-tech glass and metal podium. The glorious, wide-open expanse of Mount Hood filled the window behind him. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but instead stood tall and imperial in what looked like an unmarked Praetorian Guard jacket. He wiggled his shoulders and conspicuously gripped the sides of the podium with his gloved hands.

  He looked pale but still regally handsome with his salt-and-pepper hair and his authoritative body posture. The paleness seemed odd, since Trajan had access to healers almost as good as her father.

  The hairs on the back of Rysa’s neck stood up.

  Trajan lifted his chin. “Good evening,” he said. “Thank you for coming. As the retired CEO of Praesagio Industries and the man who oversaw most of our projects for the past two decades, I volunteered to step forward during this trying time and field questions while Mr. Pavlovich and the Praesagio teams handle the technical and logistical issues.”

  He paused to let his “volunteer” status sink in.

  “The men and women of Praesagio Industries work day and night to help—to protect—our fine planet,” Trajan said.

  “Does Dmitri know about this press conference?” Derek asked.

  Rysa’s dad stopped pacing, but only for a second. “He’s not answering calls, either.”

  Derek frowned. Anna gripped his hand.

  Trajan paused for effect and his face took on a theatrical sadness. “As most of you know, many of our great cities have recently been rocked by a rash of explosions.” He paused again, and the sadness turned to a stout stubbornness. “Many of you have asked if the destruction we have all faced is connected to the video live-streamed recently by a man in Portland.”

  Rysa’s dad stopped again. “I downloaded that video, too.”

  Was Trajan outing the Burners? The fear causing Rysa’s hairs to stand moved from her skin to her muscles, and all the way to her spine. She shivered.

  Trajan puffed out his chest for effect. “The man demonstrated… abilities.” Trajan paused again. “True abilities that all of his kind possess.”

  The crowd of reporters burst into a mad cacophony of yelled surprise and questions.

  AnnaBelinda looked over at Ladon. “He’s revealing the truth of us to the world,” she said.

  Ladon tightened his arms around Rysa. “Maybe not.”

  Rysa curled her hand around her dragon talon talisman. It clicked against her talon-infused wedding band.

  She released her seers.

  Trajan, as always, hid behind his own stitching. Like her, he was a singular Fate and could use his present-seer to stitch up the present to cover it from prying past-seers. She hadn’t quite learned yet how to stitch subconsciously—her mom told her that it would likely take another full decade before her seers learned to coordinate and stitch on their own—so she only did it to practice right now. But Trajan did it all the time. At this point, so did her mother. Trajan, like Praesagio as a whole, was only a shadow in the what-was-is-will-be.

  Yet her present-seer pulled a generalized and massive sense of upheaval—which, with Trajan’s press conference, came as no surprise.

  Her future-seer, though, managed to grasp an image through the fog. An image from their near-future, one completely unrelated to the Burners: Andreas jogging up the stairwell to the storage rooms above the apartments.

  On the screen, Trajan held up his gloved hands. “They are Burners. We used to call them Ambustae.”

  More yelling from the crowd.

  Rysa turned in Ladon’s arms so that the video would stop distracting her future-seer.

  “Please! Be calm!” Trajan yelled. “Burners have lived among us for millennia! There are other people, with other rare and wonderful abilities, who have for centuries helped to control the Burners who would do us all harm. Many of these rare people work for Praesagio. Some are doctors trying to cure the Burners’ sickness.”

  “Liar,” Anna said.

  Rysa pressed her face against Ladon’s chest and gripped the muscles of his back.

  His attention shifted from the video to her. “Beloved, we’ll get through this,” he whispered.

  “It’s not Trajan,” she responded. The Trajan-caused upheaval made her nauseated, and future-seeing Andreas, disoriented. The fog infected her gut, also.

  On the video, Trajan waved at the crowd. “Many of these rare people have the strength and speed necessary to protect those who might become victims.”

  “There’s more!” her dad yelled.

  “I am one of those people,” Trajan declared.

  Rysa unleashed her future-seer again: Her mother, here in the cave’s kitchen, buckling over one of their dining area chairs. Andreas on the stairs…

  “Trajan is outing us,” Derek said.

  Ladon stiffened. “What are you seeing, love—oh, no.” He grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward the screen.

  Trajan had pulled off a glove while Rysa wasn’t looking, and now he pulled off his second.

  He held out his hands. He bled from a small, indistinguishable wound in the center of each palm.

  Two small wounds with no visible cause.

  “He put slivers of the shard glass into his palms,” Rysa choked out. Trajan had to have slivers in his palms. Nothing else explained the stigmata wounds. But why? Other than the obvious there, too—theater.

  “There is an explanation for these wounds,” Trajan said.

  A new-space explanation which he would not get into in front of a camera. No, too much science would ruin the mood.

  Rysa’s dark Fate appeared right up front in her mind. She reared up inside Rysa like a panicked mare and pawed at the sky. He will be in full regalia for his next speech, she yelled. Emperor Caesar Trajanus Augustus Ulpi. Our Leader. Our Godhead!

  This wasn’t her dark Fate’s normal snide poking. This felt… real.

  Then she vanished back into the recesses of Rysa’s mind. The wake caused by the sudden skipping—the ADHD-like whipping from having her dark Fate in her consciousness, then not, then back to Trajan’s betrayal—yanked on her gut. Her head swam.

  “Ladon,” she whispered.

  Trajan continued: “An explanation which, I am afraid, is tied to the horrific and terrifying increase in Burner activity. An explanation that has necessitated this conference.” He waved his hand at the crowd.

  Her dad waved his hand at the Dracae in much the same way as Trajan had just waved at the world. “No one leaves. Not until we figure out what’s happening.”

  What’s happening.

  What was
happening?

  Trajan inhaled and once again tipped up his head. “The Burners and their newly-realized chaos are harbingers of what is to come.”

  Derek snorted. “What the hell is he trying to do?”

  Anna shook her head. “We’ve seen him do this before, haven’t we, Brother?”

  Ladon’s attention wavered between Rysa and the video. He held her, but hadn’t quite yet processed her distress. Neither had Dragon. So she held on and tried to hold herself together so they could concentrate on the bigger threat.

  Ladon’s voice rumbled from his chest. “He weaves a simplified story that can be easily passed from one person to another.” He pulled Rysa closer. “He’s naming the Burners as advance scouts.”

  “He’s setting up for a war,” Anna said.

  “War?” Derek looked between Anna and Ladon. “Against us?”

  Ladon spoke the truth—Rysa’s past-seer hinted at a string of identical uses of harbingers. Roman wars. Battles with Shifters. Once, to get the Welsh to turn against Anna and Sister-Dragon.

  Which meant Trajan’s seers showed him something Rysa’s did not. He saw something no one else’s future-seer was picking up. Something so intense that he used Burners as the fall guys to justify outing not only the Shifters, but the Fates as well.

  Because he saw a war coming.

  “Not us,” Rysa whispered. “The burning of the world.”

  Aiden Blake had babbled about the world burning. She’d seen visions of Minneapolis on fire shortly after her activation. She’d seen Burners and dragons. A lot of Fates foresaw devastation, and they had for at least a century and a half. Faustus even tried to manipulate Rysa into killing Ladon because he believed the Dracae would cause the destruction. Aiden had seen it as a cleaning fire from which he would rise as King.

  Except Aiden Blake had never been imperial.

  She looked up at the video again. Trajan stood in front of the world with symbolic hands and declared the Burners a terrible, demonic harbinger.

  Rysa’s seers contracted into a tight rope of energy, one that mimicked the energy that stretched between Ladon and Dragon.

  On the screen, a reporter yelled a question about science and magic. Trajan gripped the podium again. “I will not call it magic!” He frowned at the crowd. “My people have worked for centuries to build an understanding of what it means to be Fate, Shifter, or Burner. We are your brothers and sisters. Your aunts and uncles. Your children. We are as human as everyone else on this world and we have vowed to protect humanity!”

  He slapped the podium.

  Rysa’s seers burst upward, to the sky. To the place in the clouds. To the place of the dream she’d forgotten.

  Yes, hissed her dark Fate. Hissed the Ambusti Prime.

  The winds slammed her against the clouds. Below her, on the flat place with the slithering shades, Trajan looked up.

  Trajan, in full modern-yet-Roman armor. The Emperor, their Leader. “I did wrong by you, Ambusti Prime,” he called. “I will not do so again.”

  He placed Ladon’s black feather-crowned Roman Legio Draconis helmet on his head. The same helmet that had appeared in previous visions. The one that symbolized the Dracae’s military past.

  Rysa hung above the planet, in the clouds. She dripped acid onto the world. But below her, an emperor declared himself Dragons’ Legion.

  Or declared the Legion his.

  She gasped.

  Derek took hold of one of her elbows. Ladon had the other. She must have blacked out.

  Anna peered at her face. “Sister?” she asked. She looked up at Ladon.

  Sister-Dragon had set down her tablet, but Rysa could still see the image move across the screen. Trajan stepped back from the podium. “It’s not humans you must fear.”

  Anna whipped around to look at Trajan’s video.

  “Sandro!” Ladon yelled.

  Trajan smeared blood from his palms onto the podium. “We bleed for you. We are not magic. We are human.” He held up his hands again. “When the demons breathe fire onto our world, we will be here. For all of you. For everyone.”

  Her legs gave way. Rysa dropped to the floor.

  “I promise.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  St. Paul, Minnesota…

  Bright moonlight spread out along the floor of the bedroom Daisy shared with Gavin, and a bright, glowing streak pierced across Ragnar’s bed, who handled the glare by curling into a large ball and burying his face under his tail.

  Sometimes her dogs acted more like cats than canines.

  After Vivicus’s attack, she’d given both Radar and Ragnar a full suite of doggie enthrallings to keep any post-trauma stress under control. The last thing she needed was two on-edge guard dogs in a home with a brand-new baby.

  But that home wouldn’t be this house. That would be another house, somewhere else, probably in an equally nice neighborhood outside of Washington University in St. Louis. Her father would settle for nothing less than the full prince or princess treatment for the soon-to-be little Romanov.

  Wouldn’t be this bed, either. Or this life.

  She folded her fingers across her belly and wondered about the man sleeping next to her. Gavin was the most patient man she knew. He was going to be an excellent father, even if he was only twenty-one.

  The blanket pulled a little, not enough that Gavin should notice, but he opened his bright blue eyes anyway. He wiggled closer. “Can’t sleep?”

  His scent shifted into wakefulness, brightening and warming from the low-key, cool ambience he produced when he slept. To her, his cooler scent signaled healing, that his body righted itself, and that he’d wake refreshed and healthy. If he couldn’t sleep, she knew. If he wanted sex or simple touches, she knew that, as well.

  And if she was honest with herself, understanding the rhythms of Gavin’s body anchored her in the here-and-now. It gave her a reason to breathe and to live in the moment.

  Daisy rolled toward him first, then tucked her face against his neck. His arm circled under her shoulders as he rolled onto his back. She pressed her belly against his hip and placed her thigh over his.

  The movement felt correct, steady even. They danced this step most nights, cuddling like this, skin-to-skin and breath-to-breath. His body always calmed under her touch, his muscles loosening and his inhalations deepening. She was the best of his world, and he was the best of hers.

  So why did the future continue to cackle like a witch looking to take away all the stability she’d built for herself?

  Gavin buried his lips in her hair. He stayed silent, she suspected, because they’d been down the “can’t sleep” and “you can talk to me about it” road many times already. He was giving her space.

  She ran her fingers over the rolling wonder of his abdomen. He’d taken to doing extra crunches and other exercises since Aiden Blake immobilized his rib, even going as far as using her trapeze bar and rings in the attic. He’d need to ask Rysa and Ladon if he could continue to use them, but she suspected it wouldn’t be a problem, since Ladon was the one who taught him the new moves, anyway.

  She tapped his “psycho rib.” She didn’t like the nickname, but she did like the intoxicating blend of excitement and confidence, plus just a hint of fear, that the name made roll off his skin. Gavin liked remembering his badass strength while dealing with Aiden Blake, and damn it, she liked it, too.

  How’s your side? she signed. He had trouble reading lips in the moonlight, and he’d taken out his hearing aids when they went to bed.

  He ran his hand over her hip. “Fine.” A kiss landed at on the top ridge of her ear. “Mmmm…”

  They hadn’t had sex since the night she got pregnant. Her morning sickness put her off for a week or so, then the stress of moving back into a house in the process of being rebuilt, but now…

  Now, she didn’t know.

  They weren’t supposed to fall into a rut like this. They were young. They were in love. They were doing well, but the clichés just kept on rolling
into their lives.

  Daisy pushed up on her elbow. Gavin watched her face, but his grip on her shoulder alternated between soft and intense. She glanced at the door, then closed her eyes and listened.

  No noises washed down the hallway. No ambient light filtered in under the door, either. Ian must have finally gone to bed.

  She might not like Gavin’s little brother’s attitude, but the kid didn’t have a single malicious bone in his body. He was just clueless about social cues, and women in general, as if he was completely oblivious to non-language human communications. Body language, pheromones, they just went right on by the younger Bower. It irked her, but it was what it was. Like Ladon and his odd issues, Ian wasn’t going to change, so if she was going to be part of his family, she’d have to deal with Ian the way he was.

  Your brother is asleep, she signed.

  Gavin grinned. She slid a hand down his body.

  His erection had ceased all softness and had most definitely moved on to intense. Her eyebrow arched.

  Gavin smiled one of his wonderful, charming, excellent-bedside-manner smiles.

  Daisy moved into the slice of moonlight falling across their bed so he could see her lips, not because she didn’t want to sign, but because she didn’t want to lift her hands off his belly. “You are one beautiful man. You know that? Radiantly lovely.” She kissed the blanket over his bellybutton.

  “Hmmm…” He flipped her onto her back and pressed his face against her collarbone. “Woman beautiful.”

  He worked his tongue across one nipple, then the other. Each kiss rumbled through her body; each nip quaked through her muscles.

  He knew exactly what to do to bring her desire to the surface. He’d figured it out the first night they made love. Gavin was that in tune with her body.

  She was never letting him go. Not willingly.

  Daisy wrapped her arms around his head. “We’re going to be okay, right? No more bad shit is going to happen.”

  Gavin looked up, his face and lips suddenly pulling away from her breasts, leaving them cold. “What?” he said.