Gaia Awakened

by Cassie Thorne

  “What?” I unconsciously touch my fingers to my lips.

  “It doesn’t matter now.” His gaze follows every aspect of my movement, a slight frown on his face. “We’re about to be attacked by Jasper. The only way to return to the Dragon’s Tale is with magic. It will be hard for you, but I need you to trust me. Do you understand?”

  I stare at him for a second, then burst out laughing. “Willow did put you up to this. ‘It will be hard for you?’ It’s like you guys didn’t even try to come up with a realistic script. What is this, a blind date at a theme park where we roleplay as fantasy characters?”

  He shakes his head. “You’re not listening to me, Paige.”

  “Of course I’m not! This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you and Willow conspired to kidnap me and...” I hesitate, not sure what actually happened.

  “You were brought to the Winter Realm by a hellfrost spell,” Aidan says impatiently. “I can’t even begin to explain how much danger we’re in right now. The instant Jasper shows himself, we need to run to the castle.” A muscle twitches in his jaw. “Actually run, this time.”

  “Right,” I say, nodding. “So what happens after that? Do we work together to solve a series of increasingly annoying riddles to escape from the castle? Will there be a souvenir picture you buy at the end to convince me to go on a second date?”

  “Are you always this difficult?” he asks me.

  “I’m the one who was kidnapped,” I point out. “I’m allowed to be difficult.”

  Aidan starts to say something, but then his mouth falls shut and he shakes his head again. He doesn’t seem to know what to say next. I’m not really sure either. Maybe I should have just gone along with everything. Willow must be trying to help me move on, and I can’t deny that I felt something during his kiss, like a delicate ray of sunlight breaking through a layer of dark, heavy clouds.

  “You’re right,” he says finally. “We’ve been set up on a blind date at a theme park with some very realistic animatronics. I’m roleplaying a demigod with powerful abilities, and you’re a human who’s inexplicably brimming with magic. We’ll have to work together to escape from the castle by speaking phrases in a certain order. If there’s a souvenir picture at the end, I’ll buy it for you. Satisfied?”

  Aidan just confirmed everything I said, but I’m suspicious of how easily he’s admitting to it. Something still feels off. I like being right as much as the next person, but this was way too easy.

  “Okay, but where are we?” I ask him. “I don’t understand how it’s snowing in the middle of June.”

  “Where do you think we are?”

  “I have no idea. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  He sighs. “You are always this difficult.”

  An earsplitting screech tears through the atmosphere before I can respond. It’s so loud I actually flinch, my ears ringing painfully. The only time I’ve ever heard anything like it was when Willow and I went to the zoo. I wanted to see the cubs at the lion exhibit, but the entire pride was lying down in the shade, ignoring the crowd of people.

  But as I watched, all the lions and lionesses lifted their heads and padded over to me.

  And then, as if I was the freaking Lion King, they knelt down before me and roared in unison.

  Willow said it was hilariously bizarre, but I thought it was weird in an unsettling kind of way, as if there was something wrong with me. If animals can sense things like earthquakes and hurricanes, maybe they were detecting some kind of anomaly in my existence. I kept dreaming about having a heart attack, or being diagnosed with a terminal illness, or waking to find everything on fire again.

  But even that wasn’t as terrifying as whatever just screeched above the castle.

  Aidan tilts his head upward and climbs to his feet. He’s so tall he almost looks like a titan from down here.

  “We need to go,” he says to me.

  “What made that screech?” I ask, gazing up at him.

  “An animatronic.”

  “It didn’t sound like an animatronic.”

  “Well, you wanted a theme park with riddles and animatronics, so that’s what you get.” He lifts his leather jacket off me. “Let’s go.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

  Aidan impatiently leans down and reaches for me. I try to pull away, but he manages to snag my hand and yank me to my feet. He’s so strong I don’t even try to resist. But he’s using way too much force, and I find myself sailing through the air at breakneck speed.

  I don’t understand why until I see the expression on his face.

  He expected me to resist with every bone in my body.

  I collide with Aidan and he stumbles back slightly. Neither of us moves for a few seconds. This might actually feel more intimate than when we were kissing. Our bodies are touching everywhere, and my ear is flattened against his chest. His heart is beating rapidly inside his ribcage.

  I can only imagine how fast mine must sound to him.

  Slowly, I inhale his musk to find it’s warm and sweet and wild like summer.

  A ripple of heat burns straight to my core when I realize he’s doing the exact same thing to me. His nose is lowered to my hair, breathing in my scent.

  “Paige...” Aidan whispers.

  “Yes?” My heart is pounding.

  “I have a confession to make,” he says, his voice low. “I’ve been wanting to taste you ever since I laid eyes on you.”

  When I gaze up at Aidan, his green eyes are piercing into mine. His body is tensed against me in a way that makes me instinctively tighten our embrace.

  But I haven’t been thinking about what it means to be this close to another person.

  I haven’t been thinking about Summer.

  Aidan sees the sudden shift in my expression and releases me. I step back without thinking and immediately regret creating any distance between us. It’s been all of a split second, but I already want to be close to him again.

  I want him to touch me.

  I want him to touch me where it aches.

  Even if he isn’t Summer.

  As if reading my mind, something shoves into me from behind. I crash into Aidan again and our bodies meet like we’re magnets drawn to each other. But I’m suddenly shivering despite the heat from his body.

  A prickling sensation on the back of my neck makes me turn around.

  A massive reptilian eye is staring down at me.

  I gaze into my own reflection, which disappears as the eye blinks lazily.

  Oh God.

  A dragon.

  I’m facing a dragon the size of a jet plane.

  The creature has sapphire scales covered in frost and icicles. Ice blue eyes that glitter like enormous gems. Bloodthirsty grin crammed full of jagged teeth. Leathery wings that shed a small avalanche of fresh snow with every movement.

  If this is an animatronic, it’s the most realistic one I’ve ever seen.

  I can’t help myself.

  I scream.

  The dragon makes a rumbling sound, like a snort of laughter, and rears back to swipe at me with its claws.

  “Come on!” Aidan yells at me.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the castle. A terrifyingly cold wind batters against my skin as I follow him across the landscape. I’m running as fast as I can, but this is beginning to feel like a lost cause. The winter dragon is leaping across the stone walls, intentionally creating loud explosions of rubble with its spiked tail as it plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with us.

  I’m normally a calm person who leads a very quiet life. The most danger I’ve ever been in was when a fire burned down the apartment where Summer and I slept. If you’d told Willow this morning that I’d be fleeing from a dragon with the hottest guy I’ve ever met, she would have laughed in your face for about a week.

  If this isn’t a theme park, I am so going to die.

  Aidan ducks in through a gap in a stone wall. I follow him into an unlit castle invaded by ivy an
d black roses and thorns, the interior barely touched by snow. We’re safe for now, but it feels like my body is trying very hard not to have a heart attack. I can hear the dragon stalking around outside, searching for a way into the castle.

  The words of the prophecy keep repeating in my mind.

  If you go with him, you will die.

  “What kind of theme park is this?” I demand.

  Aidan looks vaguely irritated, as if the most terrifying experience of my life is nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him. “Do you have to ask so many questions?”

  “I haven’t asked that many,” I say defensively.

  “You’ve asked at least eight since we arrived,” he says. “I need you to trust me. I need you to stop questioning everything. I need you to do exactly as I say. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Is Aidan seriously asking me to trust him? For all I know, he knocked me out and brought me to an abandoned theme park to live out some kind of sick fantasy. He might even be legitimately insane, given that his gaze is way too intense for him to be lying to me.

  He believes what he’s saying.

  The question seems to be whether I believe him too.

  I hesitate. “Give me one reason why I should trust you.”

  “Just one?” His gaze flickers to my lips. “How about the fact that you wouldn’t have kissed me if you didn’t instinctively trust me?”

  “I thought you were someone else!”

  “Who did you think I was?”

  I flush, glancing away. “Do you have to ask so many questions?”

  His voice sharpens. “It’s simple, Paige. Either we’re trying to escape from a bloodthirsty dragon in the Winter Realm, or we’re about to win a roleplaying adventure at a theme park. You have nothing to lose by trusting me for the next few minutes.”

  I look at Aidan again. His green eyes aren’t malicious, just on edge and slightly concerned. He has a point, even if I don’t want to admit it. If this is real, I don’t want to be killed by a dragon.

  And if this is a theme park, I’m going to have a long talk with Willow about boundaries when we get out of here.

  “Fine,” I say reluctantly. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Hold out your hands.”

  Aidan reaches up to the nearest vine and plucks a black rose from the ivy. I hold out my hands in between us, cupping them together as if to hold water.

  He places the black rose in my curved palms.

  The petals feel like ice.

  Something massive slams into the castle from outside. The entire building shudders as I struggle to keep my footing. I don’t have to ask to know it’s the winter dragon still trying to get inside. Every second we’re in here feels like another second my confidence in the world is slipping. I can only rationalize so much of this.

  Fake snow that melts like it’s real.

  Air conditioning turned down to below freezing.

  Loudspeakers hidden throughout the ivy.

  An animatronic dragon trying to kill us.

  Aidan kneels down before me, as if he’s about to propose. He cups his hands like mine and a tiny ball of lightning appears, the tendrils of electricity all twisted together like vines.

  I’m drawn to it for some reason I can’t even begin to explain.

  The dragon slams its body into the castle again. I stumble forward, trying to maintain my balance, but my heart is pounding harder than it ever has before.

  Everything suddenly feels terrifyingly real.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I say desperately. “I want to leave.”

  Aidan glances up at me. “What do you think we’re doing? I said we’d need to speak magic to escape. You said you’d trust me.”

  “That was before I thought we might actually die—”

  The dragon collides with the castle keep for a third time, this time with the brunt force of its entire weight. A large section of stone wall crumbles away, revealing the sky outside. As I watch, the dragon lands on the edge of the newly formed gap and lowers its head, exhaling a billowing cloud of white flakes at us.

  It’s breathing snow. Not fire.

  “This isn’t a theme park,” Aidan says calmly. “This is the Winter Realm. It’s ruled by Jasper, the dragon who’s been trying to kill us. Either you can kneel with me and speak the words I’m about to tell you, or you can refuse and we’ll both die. I’m sincerely hoping you’ll pick the former.”

  “You named the dragon?”

  “He named himself. I’d introduce you, but he’s out for blood.”

  Aidan’s voice lacks any hint of dishonesty or manipulation. For the first time, I believe he isn’t lying to me or convincing me to do something terrible. He’s simply presenting what he knows to be fact.

  If I don’t do what he says, the dragon will attack us.

  The prophecy will come true.

  I will die.

  I kneel down to face Aidan, my heart racing inside my chest. The black rose is beginning to melt in my hands, which are slowly turning numb.

  I think the petals really are made of ice.

  Aidan raises his hands to cradle mine from below. The sphere of lightning passes through my skin and flesh with a tingling sensation, overlapping with the black rose.

  We face each other as the dragon bashes violently against the castle, attempting to fit its body through the gap. I’m either hallucinating or about to die, but for some reason I can’t seem to focus on anything other than the feeling of Aidan’s skin against mine.

  “Frigus purgare,” he says to me.

  Nothing happens.

  He sighs. “You have to speak the words so I can open a portal.”

  “What?”

  “The spell. Frigus purgare.”

  “But those are just some Latin words,” I say, confused.

  Aidan laughs unexpectedly, and the warm sound fills me to the brim with memories of ripened pears and fragrant meadows and joyful, endless sunshine. “We’ll speak our spells together, okay?”

  I make a face. “Whatever. Frigus purgare—”

  A split second later, he says, “Terra continuare—”

  As the last syllables leave our lips, I feel that jolt of electricity in my veins again. It’s the same thing I felt right before the bookstore vanished, when Aidan grabbed my hand and everything turned upside down. It might even be the same thing I felt while we were kissing.

  But there’s no question about it this time. It’s a dizzying force, not quite electricity but something else. Something far more powerful.

  Magic.

  Chapter Four

  Aidan

  Holy fuck.

  Paige and I just spoke magic together. I wasn’t even sure if it would work at first. Her hands were visibly trembling as she spoke her spell. But she’s brimming with so much power I think we made the world explode.

  I wasn’t prepared for the wave of lightstorm that engulfed us when I opened a portal to Earth and transported us out of the Winter Realm. It felt good. It felt like the longest day of summer combined with an eternity of sunshine.

  It actually felt better than having sex.

  Fuck. If this is what doing magic with Paige is like, actual sex with her will probably destroy me. But sex has to be the last thing on her mind right now. That kiss between us in the Winter Realm was intoxicating, but I’m not convinced she really knew who I was when she prolonged it.

  It wasn’t the kind of first kiss you have with a stranger.

  It was the kind of kiss you share with someone you’ve loved for years.

  What human could have possibly had enough sway over Paige to make her love him so completely? With that much beauty and magic, she could easily get anyone in the world to fall for her. I was turned into a demigod and I can barely control myself around her.

  I need to know who she’s thinking of when she kisses me like that. When her breath quickens and her body seems to ache with want and need all balled up into a painful knot. But I’ll never as
k, no matter how badly I need to know. I don’t want to think about someone else knowing her better than me.

  It’s a terrible thing to admit. I’ve known Paige for less than a day. What right do I have to claim to know her? But I’ve seen how she deals with danger. I’ve seen how she faces dragons. Even if she told herself none of it was real, that courage in her expression was real. That sadness when she opened her eyes after our kiss and realized it was only me was real.

  I’ve seen her for who she is, and it’s just made me want her even more.

  Paige still hasn’t moved from where she’s kneeling before me. Her eyes are closed, and she seems to be in a state of partial consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less. The human girl just spoke powerful magic for the first time in her life, which means she won’t be able to stand for at least a few minutes.

  In some ways, it is like sex.

  I won’t leave until she’s recovered.

  I look around to see a small apartment that has to be her home. There’s a kitchen with a chalkboard wall, a tiny breakfast nook with a wooden bench, and a living room that can best be described as cozy. Wooden shelves are lining the painted walls, and books are rising in towering stacks all around us.

  We’re back in the Earth Realm.

  But things didn’t exactly go according to plan.

  “Uh-oh,” I mutter.

  It turns out the world did explode, kind of. When I opened a portal to the Earth Realm, I was using the full force of summer without accounting for the extra lightstorm contained within Paige. Which means I used way too much power.

  I’ve yanked part of the Summer Realm into this one.

  Everything in Paige’s apartment is covered in green. Tangled moss, curtains of ivy, tall reedy grass, pools of colorful wildflowers, and so much more it’s fucking unbelievable. Gnarled roots and red roses are twisting all along the ceiling and walls, as if this place has been part of the Summer Realm forever.

  But it’s not and it never has been. I don’t even have to look to know the greenery doesn’t extend beyond the front door of her apartment. I don’t think any of my creatures have followed us either. Though I might hear the distant roll of thunder outside, indicating an oncoming storm.