by Willa Hart
My face couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so I let it do both for a few minutes. When Ryen pressed a mug of hot tea in my hands, I sniffled back what was left of my tears and tried to hold in my happiness.
I failed.
“I’m so happy!” I shouted to the rafters.
“Us too,” Danic said, squeezing my knee.
“Um, this might not be exactly the perfect time,” Ash said, “but you’re feeling pretty emotional right now. Maybe try using it, like Bunica suggested?”
“Of course!” I gasped. “You’re brilliant,” I said, leaning over to kiss him.
“Wow, way to kill a moment with a better moment, nerd,” Ryen teased, though I could see that his eyes were just as damp as mine.
Okay, not that damp, but close.
I took a deep breath and lay back on the bed. Each of my guys laid hands on me so our connection flowed through me unbroken, like electricity through a half-dozen circuits. My heart still felt as light and fluffy as a big throbbing cloud, and as soon as my eyelids closed, I immediately slipped into my vision state. The tiny stone house melted away and I found myself in…nothingness.
The joy in my heart started to fade as soon as I realized I was back in the void, with almost no hope of finding Zoe. I’d seen this movie before, and it always ended with me frustrated and pissed off. But I had to try.
I started my search as I always did — letting myself relax into the emptiness and waiting for something, anything. And, as always — at least since arriving in Romania — nothing happened. Zilch, nada, bupkiss. I was about to give up when I blinked and found myself standing in a dark forest.
I stood in the middle of what looked like an animal trail. Far too narrow for humans, much less dragons. Black trees loomed over me, moss dangling from their branches for an added touch of spooky. Exactly what I wanted to brush against my cheek as I stumbled blindly down a misty path through a scary forest.
This most definitely wasn’t where they were holding Zoe, but maybe the path would lead to her, so I walked. And walked. And walked.
It seemed hours had passed — though my brain told me it was really only a minute or two — and I was ready to give up on my little sojourn when something caught my eye in the distance. I rubbed my eyes to make sure the dark gloom wasn’t deceiving me and was surprised to find the something had turned into a figure. And it was running right for me.
“Zoe!” I shouted, waving my arms over my head as I broke into a dead run toward her. “I’m here!”
Only it wasn’t her. It only took a few hurried steps until I realized the figure was a man, and he was sprinting toward me as fast as a cheetah running down its prey. Fear blazed in my belly for a split second until I spotted a silver ponytail bouncing around his shoulders. Holy shit!
“Max!” I cried, closing the distance between us as fast as I could.
His wild brown eyes flashed orange, continuously darting behind him, as if someone was chasing him. Without so much as a hello or a smile, he grabbed my shoulders — hard — and looked at me with those desperate eyes.
“Don’t give up the Heart, Favor!” he shouted right in my face, and I felt my whole body seize up in terror. “It’s a trap! If you give them the Heart, it will be the end of dragonkind! Protect it with your life, my nephews’ lives, your unborn children’s lives! Do not give up the Heart!”
His words echoed in my head like a bell that had been hit with the hardest swing of a hammer the world had ever seen. It’s the last thing I remembered.
Chapter 11
“That’s all he said?” Lazlo asked as he and Elder Almeric scowled at me like I was the top suspect in a heinous crime.
After I’d woken from my vision of Max, we’d all rushed over to the cottage Lazlo and Almeric were sharing. Apparently, Rufus had felt more comfortable bunking with the other enforcers, but he’d come running when Kellum had put out the call for an emergency meeting.
The nine of us found what perches we could in the tight space. As something of a guest of honor, I sat at the head of the table with Lazlo, Almeric and Kellum taking the remaining chairs.
“That’s it, word for word.” I gave them a helpless half-smile. “Trust me, I had a lot more I wanted to talk to him about, but it seems that he only had one thing on his mind. Protect the Heart at all costs.”
“But why?” Lazlo asked, turning to Almeric for his wisdom.
The oldest of the weir’s elders shook his head, looking as confused as the rest of us felt. “Hmm, almost immediately after you all made the decision to cede to the kidnapper’s demands, Max appears in a vision telling you not to. Are you certain it wasn’t a dream, Ms. Fiske? It’s sometimes hard for humans to know the diff—”
“I know the difference,” I said, leveling a pointed look at him. “It was a vision, just like all the others Max was in.”
Kellum leaned forward, drawing Almeric’s attention. “Favor’s an old pro at having visions by now, sir.”
Almeric raised questioning — and very hairy — eyebrows. “It’s my understanding she hasn’t been able to have a single one since arriving.”
When Danic and Ryen took a couple of defensive steps toward the table, Almeric held up a bony, shaking hand to stop them. “I know, I know. Actually, I do believe she has abilities not typically seen in keepers, so why not visions? I had to ask. I had to be sure. And now that I am, we must discuss our next steps.”
“Clearly, it’s to ensure the jadokari never get their hands on what they call the guli,” Lazlo said with a heavy sigh.
Almeric’s white head bobbed in agreement. “Yes, Maximus must be working behind the scenes and thought going dark was the wisest path of action.”
“Going dark?” I asked.
“Cutting off all communications,” explained Danic.
“Maybe he’s being followed,” Ash offered from his spot leaning against the windowsill.
“Or he’s the one doing the following,” Hale added.
“Whatever his plan, he’s deep in the matter at hand and we must follow the casique’s orders,” said Almeric.
“Yeah, Max always knows best,” Rufus said, nodding emphatically.
“I’m just relieved to hear he’s alive and well,” Lazlo said. “Now, on to the next order of business.”
“Which is…?” Ryen asked from his seat on one of the narrow beds.
“As you all know, Almeric and I have been meeting with the elders of the Transylvania weir.”
Ryen leaned forward, his eyes bright. “Cool.”
Lazlo looked all too familiar with what Ryen thought was cool. “I hate to break the news to you, Ryen, but vampires don’t exist.”
I snorted a laugh. “I thought the same thing about dragons, once upon a time.”
My boys and Rufus grinned at me, but Lazlo and Almeric seemed unimpressed. Kellum herded us back on track.
“The locals we’ve been getting to know seem rather hostile to outsiders. I’m surprised their elder council agreed to meet with you.”
Almeric bristled, sitting up as straight as his crooked back would allow. “Of course they agreed! We may hail from a different part of the planet, but we’re still elders. That carries weight, son, especially when both weirs share a common enemy.”
“And let’s not forget I’m still the acting casique, despite Maximus’s brief visit to Favor,” Lazlo said with that patented tinge of snobbery he pulled off so well. “They might have set off an international incident if they refused to meet with another weir’s casique.”
I used to get riled at the mention of Lazlo taking over Max’s leadership role in our weir, thanks to my innate and fierce sense of loyalty, but it didn’t bother me anymore. Lazlo was completely devoted to Max, so I knew he wasn’t trying to usurp Max’s position. His driving desire was to protect the weir and its members to the best of his abilities.
“And what do they think about what’s been going on?” Kellum asked, once again leading the discussion.
Almeric le
aned back and steepled his long narrow fingers into a triangle in front of his chin, contemplating. “As every generation believes about the ones who come after, they insist the weir’s younger generation is at fault.”
Hale snorted, and Ash shared their thought. “Of course they do.”
“Wait, hold up,” I said, confused. “They think Luka and his friends are to blame?”
Lazlo nodded slowly. “They say the younger dragons are stirring up dissent and unrest, inventing problems where none exist. They insist the rebels are overreacting to isolated incidents.”
“They must have their heads in the sand,” Danic said.
Ryen smirked. “Or up their asses.”
“Why?” asked Lazlo. “What have you seen during your time with the rebels?”
Kellum had spent the most time at their headquarters so he took the lead. “They claim the elders are ignoring the problem of the jadokari, which I didn’t really believe until this moment. I mean, how could they ignore dragon and human deaths like that?”
The heat drained from my face. “I can’t believe it. Luka and Mariam were right.”
“No wonder they have such little faith in their elders,” Ash said with a groan.
“It is strange that they’re so diametrically opposed,” Almeric said, stroking his long beard, “especially since the elders all but admitted dragons and keepers have been turning up missing for close to two decades now.”
“If their people are falling off the radar, how can they blame it on the younger generation?” Kellum asked, still disbelieving the elders could be so dense.
“Their casique said it’s simply a matter of young people wanting to move where the action is, mainly to the coast,” Lazlo explained. “But he did say one of their ‘best and brightest’ was also one of the first to go missing.”
Lazlo leveled on me a look so saturated with meaning my skin crawled. Looks like that rarely brought good news and my stomach tensed, even as the Heart beat its insistent rhythm against the very same muscles. Understanding hit me before anyone could speak.
“Titus,” I whispered.
A tense hush fell over the room, then everyone started talking at once.
“Titus?” gasped Hale and Ash simultaneously.
“The asshole who nearly killed me? Twice?” Ryen spat.
“Isn’t that the guy who beat the crap out of me at the office?” Rufus asked, his gentle brown eyes filled with worry as his hand reflexively brushed the spot he’d been injured before I healed it with my touch.
“You were lucky,” said Danic, his voice dropping dangerously low as his hands curled into tight fists. “He also killed Enoch Trinkas, not to mention Favor’s parents.”
Kellum sat up straight. “I think it’s safe to assume their Titus is our Titus. The same one we incinerated with our combined flames.”
“Jesus, if he was one of their best and brightest, what does that say about the elders’ moral compass?” I asked, shocked that they would hold such an evil dickhead in high regard.
“They’re either senile, out of their minds, or straight-up evil,” said Ash.
“I would not be so swift to condemn them,” Almeric said in his gravelly wise-man voice, “but in this particular circumstance, I agree. They are wrong.”
“I can’t argue,” Lazlo said, “but we need to remember that the elder council believes Titus disappeared twenty years ago, not yesterday. Maybe he was a different dragon back then and was corrupted in the intervening years.”
“Twenty years!” My eyes bugged at the thought of that being recent.
Ryen shot me a smile. “Newsflash. We’re dragons. Twenty years is the blink of an eye.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, but where’s he been all this time?”
“Better question,” Kellum said, leaning toward Lazlo with a worried expression. “Do the elders know Titus is dead?”
“And that we killed him?” Danic almost seemed pleased by that.
Lazlo grimaced. “It doesn’t seem so, but it’s only a matter of time before word gets back to them.”
“And we will want to be far, far away from here when that happens,” Almeric added sagely. “They will not likely agree with any of our assertions as to why his death was necessary.”
“He tried to kill Favor!” Danic erupted.
Almeric gave him a mild look. “Precisely. They are less concerned with the lives of humans than we are.”
Ryen launched himself into Kellum’s typical pacing path. “So what you’re saying is that we need to find Zoe yesterday, before all hell breaks loose.”
“Astute,” Lazlo said, leaning back in his chair.
The Dragon’s Heart — I couldn’t bring myself to thinking of it as the guli because that’s what the jadokari called it, though I still often thought of it as the blob — pulsed low on my stomach, snug as a bug in its little pouch. Each beat of its non-existent heart set my teeth on edge, reminding me of the evil it was capable of. Fucking thing.
“Is it already too late?” I asked, catching each man’s gaze to drive home my point.
Kellum reached across the small table and grabbed my hand, his eyes blazing with love and fury. “No. It’s not too late. We’ll find Zoe without handing over the Heart and we’ll figure out how to destroy the damn thing. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises your ass can’t keep,” Ryen scoffed. “If dragon fire couldn’t destroy it back in Ventura County, what can we do?”
Kellum’s expression left no room for argument. “We don’t know, do we? Together we’ve executed some unbelievable and amazing things. Who’s to say we won’t figure out a way to kill that damn thing?”
I squeezed his hand, then released him, thinking how much I loved his pragmatism, but knowing deep in my heart nothing we could do would so much as scratch the Heart’s surface. I kept my mouth shut though. I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm or bum him out.
“But if we don’t give them the Heart, how are we going to get Zoe back?” I finally asked.
“Doesn’t help that the elders won’t admit there’s a problem,” Hale said, his face glum and slack.
“That’s not exactly accurate,” Lazlo pointed out. “They may not be aware of the scope of the problem, but they have admitted that the jadokari and melots exist. They are simply in denial about how much of what’s going on is directly attributable to them. They think the uproar is an overreaction by the younger generation.”
Kellum shook his head in disbelief. “And they think its the fault of the elders for ignoring the issue for so long.”
We sat silent for several long minutes, considering all of this information. Here I’d thought L.A. was fucked up, but now that I’d seen how out-of-touch the Romanians were, Max actually seemed like a techie.
“Reading between the lines,” Lazlo finally said, “it seems they both are working as though the jadokari are always one step ahead.”
“Definitely,” Kellum said.
“So one group doesn’t trust the other?” Rufus asked, his ruddy face growing redder when we all turned to him. “Who the hell are we supposed to trust?”
Good question.
“Neither,” Lazlo said with an air of finality suited to the acting casique of a dragon weir. “We trust no one but ourselves.”
Kellum frowned. “We’re closing ranks?”
“Yes. We will share only the most basic information, and then only when asked, is that clear? No mentions of anything they might not know about. No discussion of our plans or fears or suspicions. First thing tomorrow morning, I will contact Niles to start making travel arrangements for home.”
Looking around the room, only two faces didn’t look confused — Lazlo’s and Almeric’s. A crucial piece of the puzzle, not to mention the entire reason for our coming to Romania, was missing.
“What about Zoe?” I asked, acid burning through my stomach lining. “We can’t just leave her here.”
“We can and we will,” Almeric sniffed. “If y
our vision is to be believed, our casique has given us a direct command to protect” —he waved in the general direction of my stomach— “that. Which means we must put your safety first and foremost since you appear to be the only one who can carry it without going insane.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I said the only thing that came to mind. “No.”
Almeric blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“No.”
“Ms. Fiske, hitting the proverbial hornets’ nest just to rescue some wayward human female is a risk we cannot take.”
“No,” I said again with a surety not even Lazlo could imitate.
“I know it isn’t ideal, Favor,” Lazlo said in a placating tone, “but—”
“No.” This time I got everyone’s attention, and they waited for me to speak my mind.
“Zoe isn’t just some ‘wayward human female.’ She’s my best friend. No, she’s my sister. I know she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but she was there for me when none of you were. Not even Max. I will love him until the day I die, and I will be forever grateful for everything he’s done for me, but I will never turn my back on Zoe. Never.”
“Favor, listen—” Lazlo started, but I cut him off.
“No, you listen. If you want to turn tail and scurry on home, be my guest. But there isn’t the slightest chance in hell I’m leaving without Zoe. You can either get behind me and back me up, or you can fuck off. Simple as that.”
Almeric looked positively flummoxed. I’m not even totally sure what that word means, but he looked it. “Ms. Fiske, how do you propose to save your friend whilst simultaneously preserving the Dragon’s Heart and keeping yourself safe from harm?”
I shrugged with a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “I dunno, but I’ll find a way. With or without you.”
I was so upset, it took me a minute to realize my boys had begun to crowd around me. Even Kellum had left his seat to rally around me. My heart nearly broke from the love and devotion pouring off them in waves. They’d follow me to the ends of the earth, if I asked them to. Which is, essentially, what I’d already done.
“We’ll always be with you, Favor,” Hale said, laying a calming hand on my shoulder.