Mentored in Fire

by Breene, K. F.

  I do not want them back. Let them go. They’ve been suffocating down here for too long. Let them see clear skies and bask in real sun.

  The druid disappeared through the exit. Reagan motioned Saphira on wildly, her movements erratic, desperate to get everyone out. It must’ve been like this when the elves took her. She’d stayed behind and sent the others to safety.

  The vampire rose from the back of Archion. He must not have expected it, because he made a wild grab for Reagan, not wanting to leave. The girl on Saphira leaned toward Reagan, her face desperate, as the vampire touched down in a wobbly landing. Her friends did not want to leave her. She was forcing them out, sacrificing herself for them again. Dooming herself.

  She thought of him in no better terms than she did the elves.

  What Tatsu had said filtered through his mind.

  Saphira pushed forward, eagerly, and disappeared from his kingdom. Only Reagan was left, and they were on her now. She had no hope. One push and they would have her.

  “Stop.”

  His heart broke to hear the word fall from his lips.

  “Stop,” he said louder as Reagan turned to him on the back of Archion, not even trying to push through. She must be worried he would follow her. She wanted her friends to get to safety.

  Her expression was defiant and resolute.

  These last few weeks, he’d gotten the pliant Reagan. The student. The trickster.

  Now he could see the steel that infused her backbone. She would never back down, not like this. She could not be forced, Tatsu was right. Just as he could not be, in his younger years. She had been born for the role of heir, and stubborn defiance was part of that.

  “Let her go,” he said, needing to hear himself say the words, refusing to sag as his daughter beheld him. Refusing to let her see him breaking. He held up his hand, wishing her well.

  Confusion stole over her expression, followed by understanding. She placed a hand on her heart and bowed. Respect given, respect returned.

  Turn and go. He tore his eyes away. She won’t trust me to stick to my word. Turn, and let her see us leave.

  Tatsu did as he’d instructed, blowing a trumpet to Archion. They got it back, and then they were away.

  Shall we go after the vampires? Tatsu thought as they flew over the Edges.

  No. Let her deal with them. But if any vampire should come into my kingdom without her, they will see me directly. If they do not, I will make an example out of them.

  So you aren’t going to repair the fog?

  No. We are going to prepare for war.

  They flew, and he let Tatsu handle the details, thinking of his daughter leaving the kingdom. His kingdom. He wondered if she’d ever think of it as hers.

  He wanted to ask her.

  This time, he would do it on her home turf.

  And we will prepare a visit to the princess of the Dark Kingdom. For that will be her title whether or not she accepts it. After this, she has earned it.

  Twenty-Four

  “It’s fine. No one will notice, honest.”

  Roger stared at me like I’d grown two heads. Three dragons crouched on his lawn beside his very private, very secluded, and not-so-secret house. You could keep a great many things from a great many supernatural creatures, but you could not keep much from Darius. When Darius wanted to know about an enemy turned acquaintance, he learned everything. Including Roger’s previously secret hideaway in the Sierra foothills that only a few other people in the world knew about.

  Well, a few other people…and the government. Shifters largely followed the rules. Vampires did not. Being a good guy came with its drawbacks. And now Roger knew.

  He continued to stare at me. He was clearly at a loss for words.

  “Look.” I gestured around us, to the sprawling house that could fit a wife and a whole litter of children, the gorgeous grounds that would thrill even the fae, and the woods stretching for four hundred acres. The guy might dress like he was just another kid on the block, but he was clearly loaded. Being an alpha paid well. Somehow. Or maybe he’d just stolen some golden bricks from the elves. “Who is going to see them? They won’t bother you. They’ll just hang out here until the battle, and then they can hopefully head back to the Realm and fly around there. It’ll be great. You’ll love them.”

  Penny sat off to the side, basically draped over a patio chair, her arms hanging limp and her legs sprawled out in front of her. A plastic bottle of bubbles sat beside her, which had been her pastime for the last hour, until she’d just given up and opted to stare at nothing for a while. We were taking it slow. She needed some time to back away from the edge.

  It had been two days since we’d returned from the Underworld, and I still couldn’t shake the image of my dad lifting his hand in salute and letting me go. It hadn’t been an acknowledgment of defeat. He would’ve had me—if not there, at the gate, then he could have followed me into the Realm. I’d known it when I sent Darius with Penny. I’d known it when I stopped Penny from desperately trying to leap from her dragon to mine.

  The jig had been up. My escape plan hadn’t gone smoothly enough, and he’d caught me.

  But instead of actually capturing me…he’d let me go. He’d respectfully said goodbye.

  That fact made me want to go straight back to him. To my wing. To the castle and its weird gardens. It made me want to continue training and then maybe tour the kingdom and scare more conspectors. That had been a great time. Better than freaking out shifters, because demons were crafty and would give me some real trouble if they fought back.

  But that was probably a pipe dream. Lucifer might have let me go this time, but it was hard to say what plot that worked into. What game he might be playing. I needed to just count my lucky stars and look on his kingdom fondly.

  In the meantime, at least I’d gotten Archion out. Apparently, dragons couldn’t leave the Underworld unless escorted by a card-carrying member of the magical society. They had to have someone on their back who wanted the dragon out.

  Given none of the demons were allowed in the Realm, and they wouldn’t want their dragons heading to a place they couldn’t go, the dragons were mostly stuck with everyone else. Some of them hadn’t liked that fact, obviously.

  But we couldn’t just leave our dragons in the Realm. The elves wouldn’t allow them to wander freely, so the only option had been to take them with us. Which led to the conundrum of where to keep them.

  It was Darius who had suggested this place. There were a few options, including his island, but this was the closest to a gate to the Realm.

  Roger hadn’t been home when we got here. He hadn’t come home because of us, either. Apparently he’d needed a break from all the tireless organizing he’d been doing, of his people and of the fae, now hiding in the Brink from the elves’ minions. He’d left them in capable hands on some of his shifter lands, and showed up here for a few days of quiet reflection.

  Surprise!

  “Reagan…” He shifted his weight to his other foot, his heavy slabs of muscle straining his white T-shirt. “They are dragons. It’s against…”

  He let the thought drift away. It was a different world than when he’d started this job, and we all knew it.

  “It’s against the rules?” I finished for him. “It’s against the rules…of the creatures who are currently hunting any shifters and fae left in the Realm?”

  Before he’d found the dragons, he just gaped at us for a solid thirty seconds in shock (and dare I say relief?) that I was A) not dead and B) in his secret hideaway. Then he’d just opened his mouth and spilled the whole complex situation of the elves vs. everyone else.

  Well, complex to them. To me, it seemed pretty simple. You were with the elves, Lucifer, or us. If you were with us, you were a friend. If not, you were an enemy—and any enemies who showed their faces in the Brink would get dead. Easy.

  But the goody-goody shifters and fae? Oh no, they had a thing for questioning intruders. Giving stalkers the benefit of
the doubt. Letting minions hang around so long as they didn’t attack. He’d apparently ignored a few enemy since we’d been gone. Not cool.

  Before I helped him see the error in his ways, we needed a little downtime. Some of us, and I wouldn’t name names—cough, Penny—needed to fix our brains.

  “Seriously…” I waved my hand through the air, indicating the dragons as Cahal stepped out of the sliding glass door and onto the patio. He had a snifter with brown liquid swaying within his grasp. It was hard to rattle that druid, but our stint in the Underworld and our very close call at the border had done a good job of it. “Aren’t they amazing?” I held up a finger. “Before you answer that, remember that we will gladly kill you if you insult them.”

  Roger shook his head, not fazed. He knew I wouldn’t kill him; I’d had lots of opportunities and never pulled the trigger. It used to be because we needed him, but now it was because I kinda liked him. He was a good, solid guy, even if he was something of a goody two-shoes.

  Extraordinary, he thought, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure if he’d let the thought slip or had meant to communicate with me. They are truly magnificent, he continued. I find myself incredibly jealous. His dual-eyed gaze hit mine, one blue eye, one as green as a faded dollar bill. I want to hear about the Underworld. About the elves. I want to know what you’ve been through.

  “You don’t need to add that to your list of burdens, Roger,” I said, softening my tone.

  Darius exited the house with a snifter like Cahal’s. I half wondered if he’d proposed this place to show Roger that he had one of Roger’s secrets, much like Roger knew of Darius’s secret island.

  Roger studied me for a moment. It’s important to know…

  He didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what was troubling him. Leaving me behind had probably been almost as hard for him as it had been for Penny. It wasn’t his fault, but to him, it felt like it had been. He wanted to hear my woes so he could shoulder the burden himself. I didn’t understand how he could live life like that, but I knew him well enough to understand his motives.

  “I’m not fragile. And I will get my vengeance.” I said it as blasé as I felt it. I wasn’t, and I would.

  Oh how I would claim my vengeance.

  “Don’t trouble yourself about it, Roger. If anyone is to blame, it’s the Seers. They’re the ones who told us we needed to go there. How are they, anyway? Feeling guilty, I hope. God I hate that craft.”

  He silently studied me for a moment longer. “They have been doing readings constantly… On where we should be settling…what we should be doing…” He paused for a beat again. “Trying to get information on you. You have been a black hole in their readings. They never got a single thing about you. Not about the dragons, showing up on my property…nothing. They do not know why.”

  “Good. Hopefully it’s the cosmos telling them to butt out.”

  He took a deep breath and turned back toward the dragons. It was clearly an easier topic to bear. I had no doubt he’d been sitting in on a bunch of those readings, hoping for a sign that I would make it out. That Penny and Emery would, too. All while worrying about his people, and the fae, and whatever other burden he probably thought was his to bear.

  “You’re a good man, Roger,” I said, and meant it. “A good leader.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “Now I know I’m dreaming.”

  “Yeah. Everything has gone totally tits up. I know, it’s ridiculous.”

  “What are they going to eat?” he asked. “Where are they going to…fly?”

  “Um…” I frowned at him. “They hunt. You should understand that, right? As a shifter? And, oh, I don’t know…over the trees on your massive property, which is flanked by a bunch of other massive properties of rich people who probably dress a whole lot better than you… Why do you always dress like a hobo, anyway? Are you skimming off the top or something? Do you not want the other shifters to know you’re corrupt and making a bunch of money off them?” I quirked an eyebrow.

  He stared at the dragons for a moment longer, his gaze moving from one to the next, skimming over their wings, their mighty heads, their glistening scales in the bright moonlight.

  Incredibly jealous, he thought, and chuckled. Something he didn’t do with his pack. Apparently shifters thought tough guys—and gals—didn’t laugh. Which was ridiculous, since elder vampires smirked and laughed all the time. It usually meant they were planning something terrible for you.

  “Fine, whatever.” He turned away, toward an open seat on the patio, next to Penny. “Keep them out of sight of humans.”

  “Breaking the rules, I like it.” I gave a thumbs-up to Archion. “You heard that, right? Go hunt if you want. If you don’t have enough, let me know and we can buy a bunch of cows or something.”

  Where do we sleep? Archion asked as Coppelia took off into the sky.

  Wherever you want. Choose a place in the trees. Just don’t break too many, or Roger will get mad. He spread his wings before I thought to add, Oh, and I forgot to tell you, don’t eat predators. Like a gray wolf. Roger turns into a wolf. Don’t eat him.

  We have a very acute sense of smell, you realize. His thought sounded very haughty. Hello, mood swing. We can sense magical beings and identify their magic. We will know it is him. As for predators… We are the top of the food chain. We are the predators of predators.

  I used to think that was vampires. I stood corrected.

  Hey, whoa. I put up my hands. What’s with the attitude? Eat something. Take a nap.

  He huffed out smoke and took to the skies. He was hangry, clearly.

  Saphira waited a moment, and Penny swayed toward her, nodded, and slouched back.

  She’s worried about me, Penny thought, and I wasn’t sure if she even realized she was thinking rather than speaking. She thinks I shouldn’t be left alone.

  “Is she right?” I asked seriously. The dragon waited.

  “No. Emery has apparently been in my state of mind before, soon after he went on the run. He says I just need to wallow in it for a while until the unicorn blood wears off, eat and sleep for a long time, and it’ll eventually pass. He doesn’t think I’ll turn into him.”

  Penny and Emery had been given two doses of unicorn blood each, one after crossing the fire field, and another just after we hit the Realm and needed to stall until the sun went down. They hadn’t felt the cravings, but lusty urges were another story. And moods. At least for Penny.

  “Turn into him, hmm… And what is he again…good at survival?” I asked, wandering closer. “Great in a bind? Fast thinking and acting? Is he just trying to keep you down, then…since, you know, those are actually good traits? Who needs independence—let the man do all the work…” It was hard not to smile.

  “Keep it up, rat butt. Just keep it up.” She picked up her stress reliever, the bottle of bubbles, and pulled the lollipop-yellow plastic wand from the purple container.

  The man of the hour, Emery, was the last through the door, falling into a chair opposite Penny, the heavy cast iron squealing against the concrete. “What?”

  “Nothing. She just sucks,” Penny muttered, then blew through the plastic wand. Bubbles jetted out before lazily hovering in the tranquil breeze, fresh and sweet. I needed to create something like this in the Underworld.

  I needed to stop thinking about the Underworld.

  “So…” Roger put his elbows on the table.

  Penny stopped blowing her bubbles for a moment, glanced at him, and then swiveled her upper body toward him. She dipped the wick twice and then blew again. The bubbles cascaded around Roger, settling into his hair or popping with a soundless splat on his meaty shoulders. He fluttered his eyes closed as they brushed across his face.

  “What are you doing?” Emery asked her.

  “Seeing if he’ll give in to his baser instincts and try to catch all the bubbles. My dogs growing up freaking loved bubbles. They’d go wild for them. It’s got to be in the genetics, right?”

  A shocked
silence filled the area as Penny blew another stream.

  “This is what my life has become,” Roger finally said, and the rest of us barked out laughter, letting the stresses of the last few weeks uncoil.

  It had been a hard journey, even when I was being pampered. It had been painful, both physically with the elves, and mentally in terms of dealing with my grief for my mom and keeping up a dangerous game with my dad. Penny had been through the wringer, Emery had relived his nightmare time on the run, Darius had navigated the treacherous underbelly of the Underworld while wondering if he’d ever see his love again, and Roger had shouldered the burden of all his people. Cahal…well, Cahal had been my rock in the storm even as he waded through dark waters of his own. If it killed me, I’d help him find his mate. I’d go to the gods or angels or dickheads to do it. And those might all be the same person, according to my father.

  I knew there would be more stories to digest when I met up with the others, Callie, Dizzy, Charity, and everyone. Fears, concerns, and apprehension for what was to come.

  But for now, I just took Darius’s hand and led him away from our friends. We closed the door to the spare room on the second floor, not bothering to lock it in case Penny wanted to bust in and get a peek.

  “I was so glad to see your face,” I told him as I stripped off the button-up shirt he’d borrowed from Roger and worked at the belt holding up the baggy trousers. Darius was taller, his muscles considerable but less bulky than Roger’s, and it showed in the clothes. I could tell Darius wasn’t overly enthused about wearing garments that didn’t fit perfectly. Especially ones made for “peasants.” Roger needed to work on his fashion. Not that he would. He was probably able to buy this place because of his simple fashion…

  Darius leaned down and brushed a kiss across my nose. “When you uncovered the bond, even halfway, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to feel your love. I’d worried that Lucifer had gotten to you. That he had turned your mind to his plans. You seemed so natural riding alongside him on your dragon. I worried you might’ve forgotten what we had.”