by Juniper Hart
Then Cassia thought better of it. Sam, though she was friends with Cassia, worked for Hale. Sam took that responsibility seriously. Sam wouldn’t lie to Hale if he ever questioned her. Cassia had already risked the lives of Sam, Ivan, and Igor just by talking to them about her suspicions regarding the death of the Chancellor. Cassia would never willingly put Sam in danger.
She looked down at her anklet. Then she remembered someone who would know that didn’t answer to Hale. Terran. Terran would know about the blue spark, the scent, and why Hale craved salt water. He’d be able to explain what was going on.
Was Cassia ready to do that? She couldn’t turn back. To go behind Hale’s back and talk to his worst enemy about his drug problem? She wasn’t, no matter how worried she was. She sure wasn’t going to do that the night of his homecoming. She was eager to hear how everything had gone. More precisely, she was eager to hear his excuse for not being in New York.
She left the bathroom silently and joined her boyfriend downstairs.
5
The rest of the morning, Hale kept up the facade well enough. He hit every question with perfection. He even acted interested when she told him that she’d found a lovely pair of boots at the store. That’s what sealed it for her. Hale would never act interested in that. Before the trip, he would’ve laughed with her about it, but he wouldn’t have made a grand show of pretending to be interested. What had happened?
Perhaps the strangest thing was that he kept drinking salt water, glasses and glasses of the stuff.
“Doesn’t that hurt your stomach?” Cassia asked.
They were playing a game of pool on a handcrafted table lined with red velvet and ornate silver metalwork around the corners.
He gulped down the last bit of salt water, which didn’t come from the ocean. Instead, at Hale’s request, the staff had given him a glass of chilled water and dumped in some table salt.
“Nope,” he replied. “Tastes delicious.”
She gave him a funny look before taking the shot in the game. The white ball ricocheted off one ball. The one she was trying to knock in almost made its way into the hole before it veered off course and came to a stop right in front of where it was supposed to go.
“I’m just thinking about your health. It seems odd that you’re drinking that.”
“Don’t worry so much.” He slammed the glass down on the pool table. “Watch this.”
He sank his ball and pushed his hips forward victoriously in a humping motion. An abnormality for him to be so crude. “What a shot!”
She smiled faintly, trying to hide her disapproval of his uncouth behavior. “So, in your travels, did you hear about the Chancellor?”
He paused. It was just for a second, but it was enough for her to notice. “No. What happened?”
She watched him carefully. “He was murdered.”
He was shocked just a touch too early, like he knew what she was going to say and misjudged how long it would take her to say it. “Murdered? By who?”
“I’ve heard some names,” she said. “Yours was one of them.”
“Really?”
“Really. The funny thing is that he was killed in New York. But you didn’t go there, right?”
“Right.” He turned his back to her. “Hey! Someone get me another glass! Extra salt!”
“Please stop drinking salt water. You’re going to die of dehydration.”
“Nonsense.” He leaned down to take another shot. He lined up the stick on the white ball and eyeballed the angle.
“I saw a picture of you in New York.” She didn’t mean to blurt it out, but she wanted to see his reaction.
Hale didn’t move. He kept staring at the white ball silently. His knuckles were white with pressure.
Cassia felt dread creep over her. She’d said it. She’d said it, and now she was going to figure out…something. She didn’t know what, and she was scared to learn.
Hale moved up jerkily, forcing a strange smile on his lips. His lip was twitching in the forced grin. His eyes were staring at her, but they were as distant as the sun, like he was seeing her but he wasn’t in the driver’s seat of his body.
He moved over to her shakily and got right up close to her, pinning her up against the wall with his body. She normally would have fought, but his actions took her by such surprise that she didn’t have time to blink. Abruptly, her back was pressed up against the wall, and he was right in front of her, his chest against hers.
He leaned down close to her. The nauseating scent of his sweetly metallic breath permeated the air. As short as she was, her eyes were about level with his throat, and she could see his blood pumping through in blue surges. Something was very much not okay.
“Hale, get away from me!”
The pool stick in his hand snapped.
“Honey,” he said in an alien, broken voice. “I had a wonderful time this morning hanging out with you, but I am feeling ill now. Please, come to the bedroom with me. I want to show you something.”
With that, he pulled away. His eyes glittered madly, and he slowly wandered back to the rest of the house. He dropped the broken cue stick beside the table.
Cassia stood in stunned silence, watching her boyfriend walk away with a jerky motion. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
As soon as he was gone, she reached down and skimmed a shaking hand across her ankle bracelet. “Terran.”
The moment her skin skimmed the soulstone and she said his name, she felt a shudder move through her body. Somewhere, wherever he was, Terran would be headed her way. It was a relief to know he was coming towards the signal.
She moved towards the door, trying to remember how to think. What had just happened?
Cassia could hear something shatter in the other room. “Get me some fucking salt water, dammit!” Hale roared.
Cassia was out the back door before anyone was the wiser. She had to talk to Terran. She had to get away from Hale before he went nuts. It was over between them. She couldn’t stay with a man like that. She was terrified. She didn’t know what to expect from her boyfriend’s erratic behavior. If anyone could protect her, if anyone could explain what was going on, it was the Keeper of the Mountain, Terran.
She shivered from the chilly wind outside, but she didn’t stop to get a jacket. She still wore her sexy dress and heels, heels which caught on a stone and almost took her down. She looked back towards the house, trying to remain calm. She was tough as nails. Whatever was going on, she would get through it. She would. She knew Hale would normally be angry that she was leaving without a bodyguard, but she hardly cared. Hale wasn’t thinking straight, and he was entirely too dangerous to stick around. She needed help, and she needed it now. She knew where to find it.
Cassia mounted up on one of the bodyguard’s motorcycles and pulled on a helmet. It was way too big, and she instantly tossed it off.
The cars were always guarded, just in case someone wanted to plant a bomb on them. Hale wouldn’t want Cassia to leave, so his guards wouldn’t let her. Her best shot was to steal a bike and get away. It was still late in the morning; they’d picked Hale up, and she’d played a game of pool with him. Typically, they’d be on their second—or third—round of passionate lovemaking, but she wanted to get as far away from Hale as possible.
As she straddled the bike and prepared to drive off, Sam was abruptly in front of her, grabbing the handlebars.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked.
“Get out of my way, Sam!”
Her bodyguard didn’t budge. “I’ll ask you again. Where are you going? You know I’m hired to stay with you to keep you safe, and I can’t do that if you drive off on a bike by yourself.”
Cassia cared about Sam, but Cassia had hit her maximum level of patience, and she twisted the throttle to accelerate. The wheel roared up between Sam’s legs. Sam had to move out of the way quickly.
“Fuck!” the bodyguard snarled. “Cassia! Stop!”
Cassia did, but only beca
use she didn’t want to hurt her friend. Still, Cassia was in no mood to deal with anyone. “Get out of my fucking way!”
Sam stepped back, rubbing her inner thigh where the tire had clipped her. “Cassia, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I suggest you tell me right now!”
“I’m upset, and I’m leaving,” Cassia replied hastily, hoping that she could escape before other guards saw the drama taking place.
Cassia’s chin trembled ever so slightly, not because she was scared but because she was so furious that her boyfriend might have killed a political hero and was probably on a very potent drug.
“Are you going to try to keep me from leaving?” she growled.
Sam’s eyes softened. “No. But I’m coming with you.”
She pulled her radio up. “Falcon, checking in. I need a replacement on the west side of the house. Anyone have me?”
Cassia knew what Sam was doing for her. She was risking her job at the very least, and quite possibly her life. Sam knew Hale was not acting like himself. Sam was willing to help her friend run away, not knowing if they would come back.
Her radio crackled back. “Falcon, we have someone for you. You’re free to go. Everything okay?”
Sam’s silver eyes watched her dragon-shifter friend. “Yeah,” she said. “Just…tired. Falcon out.”
She hopped on another motorcycle and fired it up. Unlike Cassia, whose motorcycle expertise capped out at riding along the road and trying to avoid falling, Sam was an expert. She’d done impossible things on a bike. She was one of those people that ended up on the internet for balancing on the handlebars of a speeding motorcycle or something crazy. She had the perfect mixture of daringness with lack of thought for consequences.
“Well then,” Sam said, pulling on her helmet, “we better get out of here before my replacement comes.”
6
Cassia hadn’t thought the whole “no-helmet” plan through. When she’d tried it on and found it was too big, she’d just tossed it off and driven off.
Bad idea.
Right after getting on the road, she caught a dragonfly to the face and almost fell off. Nothing is quite like going a solid seventy miles-per-hour to get pelted with a bug on your forehead. The dragonfly splattered, giving her a wonderful makeover with bug guts. Showing up to see her ex with a bug across her face wasn’t going to impress. Ugh.
When she drove, she kept her speed low because of the bugs, and then there was the fact that she hadn’t ridden for years, and she hadn’t quite gotten ahold of the movement again. She was afraid that she would lose control and fly into one of the trees.
Meanwhile, Sam drove along without a care in the world. She looked like a natural bike rider. The most obvious difference between her and Cassia was that she wore pants, so she looked like she belonged on a bike. Cassia had also not thought that one through—wearing a dress on a bike was a really bad choice. The dress was tight, so she pushed it up as high as it would go to be able to straddle bike. The ride was miserable.
As Cassia drove, she let her mind wander to get her focus off her troubles. Terran came to mind, like always. The thought of seeing him again was exhilarating and frightening, but the memory of their break-up came flooding back.
As Cassia remembered, it was a cool, summer day. Terran had always done whatever he could to make her happy. He’d built her a home on a tropical island, a luxury treehouse in the rainforest, and a cozy cottage high up on Kilimanjaro. They also had an underground home, which was the center of his kingdom. On that particular day, she tended to her garden at her home along the Atlantic coastline in North Carolina.
It had only been six months after their second miscarriage. Even after the tragedy, they knew they loved each other deeply and had been together for nearly six hundred years. Cassia believed she would spend eternity with him until that fateful day. She believed their emotional distance from each other was only temporary, but it had taken a bigger toll on Terran than she had known.
The second miscarriage happened when she was two months along. It was tragic. To cope with the loss, Cassia planted a large, beautiful garden on her North Carolina property. If she couldn’t have children, she wanted to find a way to cultivate life, and she did this though gardening. The garden was her happy place. She knew the pain would never go away, because she had already had one miscarriage, but she also knew the pain would subside over time. Every evening, she walked through her garden alone with her thoughts.
Terran came up behind her and firmly planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Hello, darling,” he breathed.
“I am not in the mood, Terran,” she sighed. “Today is not a happy day for me.”
“When will you get over this, Cassia? It has been six months now. I am sorry we lost the baby. Trust me, I feel the loss, too. But we are alive, and we will be alive for eternity. We need to live in the present rather than focus on the past. We will have a baby someday.”
“Are you truly that insensitive, Terran,” Cassia spat as she felt the heat rise from her core. “Do you not understand that a woman feels connected to the baby, even before it is born? This has been very hard on me. I have wanted a baby for centuries.”
“I cannot do this, Cassia. I need you to come back to me. I want to live. I want to enjoy all the beauty the earth provides.”
“I need time, Terran. If that is how you feel, then maybe we are not supposed to be together!”
Cassia regretted the words as soon as she said them, but she didn’t apologize. The truth was, he hadn’t been insensitive. He’d cried with her, listened to her pour out her feelings, and comforted her. The healing process just took longer for her than it did for him.
He roared in anger. Claws extended from his fingertips. He slashed out at a nearby tree, lopping straight through the trunk like he was holding a laser instead of just claws.
“Do not blame this on me!” he snarled. “It was not my fault!” he looked big, half between dragon and human form. He pulled himself back under control, trying to collect himself. “Neither of us wanted this to happen.”
Tears spilled from his eyes, and the earth shifted slightly.
At that time, she did blame the loss of their child on Terran. This accusation kept her up some nights from the guilt. It wasn’t his fault. Neither one of them had been at fault. She blamed him because she assumed that his chemistry didn’t work with hers. Bad reasoning? Oh, no doubt. She still couldn’t quite follow her younger and dumber self’s thought process. Once Terran regained control of his sadness, he held it together.
Still, he had ruined one of her trees. Cassia cringed as she remembered what happened next.
“Get out!” Cassia had yelled at him. She’d beat on his chest with her small fists, doing no damage. “I do not want to see you ever again! All of this is your fault!”
Terran stepped back with a stunned expression on his face. She could still remember how anger had overtaken him. She could practically see lightning in his angry eyes. Terran didn’t let himself get hurt by anybody. He was clever enough to avoid letting anyone close enough to harm him, but he’d let Cassia into that precious bubble. She’d hurt him, and hurt him bad.
She remembered the ground being uprooted wildly, tossing earth and plants everywhere.
“Cassia, you mean everything to me! This is not my fault! I have tried everything to bring joy into your life. I love you more than anything,” Terran had snarled at her. Even then, all he was doing was showing his rage and trying to get her to apologize.
To Terran, it was a garden. He was thousands of years old. He’d seen plants come and go a million times. Any garden that was destroyed could be replaced. To Cassia, the destruction of a garden was a horrible, lifelong event. She’d put so much time into it.
If she wouldn’t have blamed him for the miscarriage, then he wouldn’t have slashed the tree. If she wouldn’t have told him to leave, he wouldn’t have grown so angry. The truth was, they both were in pain.
Over the t
wo centuries since she’d left, Cassia wished she had reacted differently. Terran was good to her. She loved him dearly. After so much time, the fight seemed stupid. They could have just talked it out, but raw emotions got in the way of common sense.
She zipped back to the present. She was driving along on a motorcycle away from whatever was wrong with Hale. Her garden, even if nothing had happened to it, would have withered a million times since then. Plants die; it was just life. But what she had with Terran was special. It would have been eternal, if not for that one terrible fight.
She sighed on the motorcycle, which was a terrible plan. She caught a swarm of gnats and inhaled half of them. Luckily, she was by a roadside park. She quickly got off before she lost control of her bike and proceeded to cough like a crazy person for the next two minutes. The gnats had made it everywhere, and she envisioned they even flew down to her lungs. It was one of the worst sensations of her life.
Finally, she no longer felt the urge to sneeze, and she stood, trying to breathe normally again. Sam had pulled over beside her and was watching her behind her sleek motorcycle visor that blacked every one of her features out.
Cassia looked down at her soulstone on her ankle. It was glowing brightly. He was close.
Sam tossed her helmeted head back towards the road. “You good to keep going? Where are we going, anyway?”
Cassia couldn’t think of a reason to keep going. They were well out of view of her house. “Here’s fine,” she said. “I’m meeting someone.”
“What? Who?”
Cassia groaned. Sam wasn’t going to appreciate the name she said. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“I’m your friend. I’ll never betray your privacy.”
“Terran.”
Cassia couldn’t see Sam’s face, but she didn’t need to; she could understand by Sam’s body language. Sam was practically indestructible. She was the toughest person that Cassia had ever met. She was talented. She was knowledgeable. She was experienced. But the one thing that Sam was terrified, utterly terrified of, was dragons. She thought it was entirely too much power in one creature. They were almost bulletproof, could breathe fire, could fly, and were capable of human thought. All in all, a very dangerous combination.