by Tara West
“Serah, won’t you at least visit with Lily?” Brayne said at her back. “She’s been so excited to meet you.”
He’s using you, Thelix warned.
Standing, Serah turned to him, spine rigid. “You’re a manipulative, selfish troll.”
He blinked as if she’d splashed a bucket of ice water in his face. “I am. I’ve wronged all of my children, but I’m trying to make things right.”
She didn’t know what he’d done to his other children, but she could imagine. He clearly only cared about himself. She cocked a hand on her hip. “By stealing my eggs?”
His eyes lit like a child’s in anticipation of pudding cake. “I took good care of them.”
Is he that thick-headed? Thelix snorted.
“That’s not the point!” She threw up her hands, wishing she could hit him again and held back only by the sniffling Lily. “Have you no idea of the pain you inflicted on my mates and me?”
He looked at his feet, too contrite to be believed. “I didn’t know how else to bring you here.”
“You forced us to make enemies with King Tormung,” Draque said angrily. “He’s none too happy we’re here.”
Brayne’s jaw dropped. “I’m surprised, considering all he’s done for your grandparents.”
Draque and his brothers shared dark looks and low growls. “He killed our grandparents,” Draque answered, balling his hands into fists.
“Killed them?” Brayne’s hand flew to his heart. “Why no. They’re here in Elysan.”
Draque bore down on Brayne, his head wreathed in steam. “I’m growing tired of your lies, fae.”
“I do not lie.” He stepped back, nearly tripping over a vine. “They sought asylum with the dragons a decade ago.”
Draque launched at Brayne with a roar, hauling him to his chest by his collar. “I should claw your eyes out.”
Brayne didn’t even put up a fight but hung as limp as a ragdoll in Draque’s clutches. He was a pitiful figure. Too pitiful. His actions were nothing like what she’d expected from a proud fae.
What a pussy! Thelix laughed.
Lily let out a mournful wail as her cat jumped from her arms and ran into the foliage. “Please don’t hurt my daddy.”
“Draque, release him.” She sighed, her heart aching for the innocent child. Poor Lily. It wasn’t her fault Brayne was a royal ass.
Draque released Brayne with a shove and a growl, and Serah latched onto his elbow. “Let’s go.” She mouthed an apology to Lily, hating herself when the child’s eyes watered.
Toughen up, Thelix warned. He’ll use the child to get to you.
Duh, she snapped at her siren.
“You’ll be back,” Brayne said as she walked away.
Though a retort balanced on the tip of her tongue, she chose not to say anything to Brayne. She’d given him enough of her words. There was nothing she needed or wanted from him. He had had his chance to be a father years ago.
They reached the glass doors at the back of the manor, where the pixie twins were waiting, and Serah’s heart lurched at the loud sound of Lily crying behind her. Fighting the urge to take the child in her arms and offer comfort, she let her mates lead her through the house and out the front door. Only then did she give in to tears that had been threatening at the backs of her eyes. Leaving Lily hurt more than she’d expected.
“DID YOU TAKE YOUR MEDICINE?” Katherine glowered at Thaddeus, her lips twisted angrily.
“Yes.” Feigning disinterest, he pulled a woolen blanket around his shoulders, making sure to conceal the exposed wires poking from his chest. “Now leave me be.” He cringed when he heard a commotion at the dresser. Fighting the urge to look at the witch and see if she was okay, he kept his eyes on Katherine.
“You are still angry with me?” She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing up her cleavage. No doubt she meant it as a distraction, but he was unmoved.
“I am angry with the world, Katherine.” He looked away. “You know that.”
Startled by the sound of a bottle shattering on the stone floor, his attention shot to the witch. She was clinging to the dresser, legs trembling. No doubt she hadn’t fully recovered from the hex.
“What is wrong with you, slave?” Katherine sneered.
“Do you not remember tripping her?” Jumping to his feet, but keeping the blanket tight around him, he tugged her arm, hoping to distract her.
Katherine shook him off. “Turn around, witch.” She marched across the room.
The witch clung to the dresser when Katherine grabbed her shoulder. Thaddeus tensed, fearing Katherine would become violent. How far would he need to go to protect the witch? Was he strong enough to take down Katherine?
Katherine dug her talons into the witch’s skin until she cried out and blood dripped, pooling at Katherine’s feet.
“Your eyes are bloodshot,” Katherine squawked. Twin fires brewing in her eyes, she asked Thaddeus, “What did she say to you?”
“Nothing.” Running a hand through his hair, he forced a laugh. “She’s spellbound and is mute, remember?” The blanket fell from his shoulders, and he snatched at it, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Katherine’s jaw dropped, and she pointed a shaking finger at Thaddeus’s chest. “Your heart monitor. Did you tear it off?”
“Y-yes,” he lied. “It was hurting me.”
She spun back to the witch. “Did you betray me?” She shook the girl hard. “Answer me!”
The witch hung in Katherine’s grasp like a wilted flower, whimpering.
“Katherine,” Thaddeus cried, “you’re going to kill her.”
“What do you care? She killed your brothers.”
Thaddeus’s blood turned to ice. The lying bitch. “You never told me that.”
“Yes, yes. It was her.” Her nose transformed into a giant bird beak. “I told my father we shouldn’t allow this witch in our lair.” She swung the girl around, her talons digging bloody holes into her shoulders. “I’ll kill her now before she kills us.”
Trying to keep his composure, lest he make Katherine act even more deranged, he said evenly while slowly inching forward, “Let her go.”
“Why would you defend this murderer?” Feathers sprouted from her ears and her eyes turned a vibrant orange. The girl didn’t move, the rise and fall of her chest eerily shallow, as she kept still in her arms. “Has she poisoned you against me?”
Watching the blood pool around Katherine’s talons and drip down the witch’s arms, he took another step forward. “Sheath your claws.”
“Don’t you see I can’t?” Katherine snarled down at the witch. “She’s turned you against me. As long as she lives, we will continue to fight.”
“No, Katherine.” He took another step forward. “It wasn’t her.”
“Then why?” She let out a shrill squawk. “Why don’t you love me?” She lifted the girl until only her toes touched the floor. “Answer me, or I slit her throat!”
The girl’s eyes fluttered open and she cried out, kicking and thrashing. Katherine’s attention focused on the witch’s throat, and Thaddeus knew he was out of time. He charged her, knocking the girl free and slamming Katherine against the hard stone wall. The sound of her skull cracking filled his brain like the roars of a thousand dragons. He released her, and she slid to the floor, a thick streak of blood following her down. She gazed sightlessly at the ceiling, mouth open, lying in a puddle of blood.
He lurched away from her, shocked she was dead, and would’ve fallen over his own feet if two strong hands hadn’t held him up. He looked into the witch’s large, violet eyes. “Th-thank you.”
She beamed. “You’re welcome.”
Startled, he blinked. “You can speak?”
“When Katherine died, the curse died with her.”
Bile rose in the back of his throat. Great goddess! He’d killed Katherine. Master Eagleheart would have his head. Clutching his roiling stomach, his feet felt weighted with bricks as he trudged back to his bed. Fearing his
legs were about to buckle, he lowered himself to the feather mattress. “What have I done?”
“What you’ve done is save my life,” the witch said. “Thank you.”
He nearly flew off the bed when she placed a hand on his back, her fingers practically burning holes in his skin. No other girl’s touch had ever had such an effect on him. Was she trying to bewitch him?
He pulled away, needing to put distance between them and the corpse of his former lover, whose blood was still seeping into the floor. He remembered Katherine had injured the witch, and he hadn’t asked if she was okay. “How are you?” He frowned at the bloody gashes on her shoulders.
She shrugged. “I’m free of that bitch’s curse, and that’s all that matters.” She was surprisingly calm, considering everything she’d been through.
He still hadn’t pieced together his year with Katherine. Why had she and her father been fooling him all this time? “Can you tell me what’s happened?” he asked her and suddenly realized he didn’t know her name. “And tell me who you are.”
“I’m Violet Mystique. I lived on the edge of the forest with my mother. I was an apothecary at her shop.” Wincing, she checked each of her wounds. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Why was she poisoning me?” he asked, instantly regretting looking into her pretty eyes. Her name matched her eye color. They had a slight slant, making them look more like a cat’s eyes, complementing her purple, spiked hair.
“To make you believe you’re sick,” she answered.
He shook the fog from his head. Why was he mesmerized by her eyes at a time like this? He needed to focus on finding a way out of this situation. “I am sick, aren’t I? I have a griffin’s heart beating in my chest.”
“As far as I know, you don’t.” She tore off a piece of the blanket on his bed and used it to dab her bloody wounds. “You were struck down by the unbreakable curse, but it didn’t kill you.”
“But it injured me,” he said, clutching his heart, feeling it beat dully beneath his palm. “I am in pain.”
She shook her head. “The potion Katherine made me make you dulled your heart rhythm. You should recover soon now that you’ve stopped drinking it. Rumor is that one of your brothers was also struck by the curse but survived, that the curse is not powerful enough to kill a dragon.”
His chest seized, but not with the familiar pain. It was anxiety that twisted his heart and soul into knots. Could he allow himself to hope he still had family? “M-my brother lives?”
“All of your brothers are alive. They’ve been looking for you.”
“What?” he rasped, feeling as if the world had opened beneath him, pulling him beneath his feather bed into the abyss. Was she deceiving him? If she wasn’t... joy threatened to burst from him.
“Nathaniel Goldenwand’s army was defeated,” she continued. “They’ve gone into hiding.”
Feeling as if his head was about to explode, he clutched his shaggy hair by the roots. “I-I don’t understand.”
She crossed to the dresser and began treating her wounds with the potions. “I read the story in the Goblin Gazette the day after the battle between Nathaniel’s army and the shifters.” She winced, hissing when the medicine she poured into a cut bubbled and boiled, killing the infection before fusing the skin back together. She was ashen for several heartbeats, then the color returned to her cheeks, and she let out a slow breath. She ripped a hole in her jeans and poured the potion on her bloody knee. “Nathaniel tricked Parliament into going to war,” she said. “He’d bewitched them with a spell in his new wands. Your younger brothers’ mate stopped the war with her siren voice.” She treated the wound on her other shoulder.
He watched her with a mixture of shock and dread twisting a knot in his gut. “This all sounds too strange to believe.”
“It’s real.” She drew a pentagram across her heart. “I promise.”
With a shuddering breath, she cleaned dried blood from her injuries, then went to him, tweezers and gauze in one hand and medicine in the other.
He scooted back when her gaze centered on the wires sticking from his chest. “You need to take care of this. You won’t make it far with these wires still attached to you.”
Balling up the gauze, she tapped his chin. “Bite down on this.” Without asking she ran her hands across his heart and pulled out wires.
“Fuck,” he growled, glaring at her while she worked.
She was surprisingly fast, removing them and then pressing gauze soaked in medicine against the wounds. It burned like the fires of hell. His inner dragon raged, threatening to crawl out of his skin while he dug his fingers into the feather mattress. How had she tolerated this pain? He was forced to hold his breath, and not just because the pain was unbearable. He feared his dragon would burn her to a crisp.
When she moved away, he was shocked to see the holes in his chest had fused together, leaving behind a faint circular scar.
“I didn’t know such a healing ointment existed.”
“It’s rare,” she said. “The herbs I need to make it only grow deep in the caverns of Valhol.” She frowned down at the gauze. “And I used the last of it on you.”
“I appreciate you using your precious potion to save me.”
She blushed. “Of course.”
“How did you come to be here?” he asked, trying not to be distracted by her delicate fingers branding his skin with flames of desire while she fixed him up. How had such a simple act turned him on, and why did he want her so badly?
“I was kidnapped while looking for a herb in Werewood Forest,” she said, capping the bottle and slipping it into the pocket on her threadbare dress.
“Is that where we are?” he asked, for he remembered escaping once several months ago, after Katherine told him Nathaniel Goldenwand had murdered his family. Despite Katherine’s warning that he wasn’t strong enough, he was determined to enact revenge. He hadn’t made it far. The pain in his heart made walking a great distance unbearable. Even after transforming into a dragon, he’d still found himself out of breath. Defeated and depressed, he didn’t fight Katherine when she found him and made him return to their hiding place. Since that day he hadn’t been able to shift. His weakened body and defeated soul held him back.
“I believe so,” Violet said. “In an underground cavern beneath the forest.”
“Why hasn’t anyone found us?” Was their hiding place that well-hidden?
“Master Eagleheart put concealment enchantments around the entrances.”
“Why have Katherine and her father been lying to me?” He was unable to keep the hurt from his voice. She’d deceived him into believing he was unwell, seduced him, lied to him about his family, and for what?
She twisted the frayed end of his blanket in her lap. “They were driven out of The Grotto after they tried to overthrow your parents with their griffin army.”
“Great goddess,” he breathed, remembering the legion of griffin eggs he’d seen growing in a cavern far below, deep in the bowels of the earth. Katherine had her griffin servants carry him there after he’d escaped, reassuring him that her father was building an army that would enact vengeance against Nathaniel Goldenwand. If the wand maker had been defeated, what was the army for? “They are building another,” he breathed, realizing the army was most likely meant to destroy his family.
“I know they are.” She squeezed his hands and again he felt electricity pass between them. “We need to escape and find help.”
“And what if we can’t find our way back?” Their hideout was enchanted with concealment spells. “I can’t leave until I destroy the griffin army.”
She groaned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
DRAQUE FIRESBREATH refused to back down to King Tormung. The giant red dragon was waiting for them when they returned to the golden gates, and he was looking none too pleased. Steam poured from his flared nostrils as he glared at them. “You dare to bring a siren into our midst!” His booming voice rattled the gate so th
at each bar thrummed with a high-pitched ping.
Serah clutched their eggs more securely. She sat atop Teju, in case the dragons attacked. Teju made a better witch than dragon. The plan was for him to shift and defend her and the eggs with magic while she compelled the dragons to stand down with her siren voice. They were grossly outnumbered, though. Tormung had rallied some friends since their last encounter. There were at least two dozen dragons with him. Draque wasn’t sure how far Serah’s voice could project.
He turned to Tormung. “She is half fae and has every right to be here.”
“A siren fae?” The king arched back, a look of horror in his eyes. “There hasn’t been one of her kind since your goddess.”
“She’s everyone’s goddess,” Teju reminded him.
Tormung’s dark laughter shook the marrow of Draque’s bones. “I don’t worship the bitch who chained dragonkind to mortal skins.”
What the ever-loving-fuck? Did that dung nugget just blaspheme their goddess and slander all dragon shifters?
“Dragon shifters don’t mind having mortal skins,” Ladon said.
Teju’s lips pulled back, revealing sharp fangs. “And our human skins are none of your concern.”
“We don’t appreciate you blaspheming our goddess,” Draque added; Serah’s grandmother had told them Serah was a reincarnation of their goddess, which made the insult all the more brutal.
“Foolish shifters!” Tormung threw back his head and roared. “You think a part-time dragon has any chance against me!”
Serah’s cheeks reddened. “You forget they have me.”
Tormung arched a scaly brow. “Do they?” He sat up on his haunches and opened his front claw, which was covered in a yellow paste that resembled pollen.
“Shield!” Draque called to Teju as Tormung blew the paste at Serah.
Teju quickly shifted, catching Serah in his arms, a shield bursting from his wand seconds before the paste hit, but the bubble hadn’t fully formed before the paste plastered Teju, Serah, and the eggs like bees covered in pollen.
Draque roared when his brother and mate collapsed to the ground. The eggs would’ve rolled out of Serah’s sack and cracked if Ladon hadn’t stopped them with his snout.