I’ll show you!
Jericho
I’d made a mess of things over the past few days, and I’d decided this was my opportunity to make up for it. When it had only been a handful of us in this mad place, Dafne and I had found it easier to spend time together, to grow closer. We hadn’t had our families, our friends, or society surrounding us, and things had seemed strange and difficult, but not impossible. In the midst of it all, Dafne had stolen my heart.
But now I had no idea what to do with myself. My fear of being rejected by her had only gotten worse over time, until it eventually threw me off my game completely. Upon reuniting with everyone--plus the Flip turning our lives upside down—I’d drifted away from her, telling myself that we had work to do. That we were stuck here, and there were so many issues to deal with. Things had come between us, and I had failed to stop that from happening.
I’d allowed fate to pull us apart at the worst possible time—just when I’d thought the walls of ice around her heart were finally coming down, ever so slowly. Mom and Dad had no idea about my feelings for Dafne, and judging by the indifference that Lethe had consistently shown toward me, I’d figured he was in the dark, too. Almost four days had gone by since I’d even seen or talked to Dafne, and after so much time spent constantly together, it felt awkward and wrong. The moment I’d spotted her coming out of her cave, I knew this was my shot at making things right. I wanted our dynamic back more than anything.
She’s mad at me.
Knowing I’d brought this on myself, I considered it a challenge. Dafne’s flight was fierce but graceful. It was hard to look away from her. The sky wasn’t the real deal, yet she owned it. Her wings stretched wide, the dark gray skin almost iridescent beneath the fake moonlight. It bounced off her scales, and I caught a glimpse of her stormy gray eyes as she gave me a fleeting look before diving into a sudden descent.
I felt compelled to follow, and she didn’t make it easy to keep up. This was a dance of sorts, I realized, as we were going up again, flying around one another like fireworks shooting skyward, mere seconds from exploding. She swerved to her left. I dove right, unwilling to lose her, even for a second. I mirrored her every move, my muscles hard and tight along my dragon bones as I followed her through the sky. Her dragon form was slightly smaller and significantly slimmer than mine, which made her movements graceful and fluid, while mine felt heavy and forced.
Nonetheless, she failed to shake me. We flew together for what felt like ages, the air growing colder as we shot through the sky. Up, then down, then left and right, ever changing and shifting. There was no need for words. We both knew why we were up here. Neither of us wanted to stop, yet eventually we knew it was time to land. I was getting tired. And Dafne’s motions had become slower and less agile.
We touched down on the fake Sun Beach. It wasn’t as bright as the original, but it still offered an illusion of morning. It felt warm as I shifted, my bones crackling in their return to a human form. I tugged on my uniform belt. In an instant, the fabric and zippers released, stretching and covering me from head to toe. “This is easily one of the best GASP inventions,” I said, chuckling lightly. “We got lucky that the clones copied this prototype in the armory, along with the rest of our weapons and stuff. We had yet to receive suits like this before the clone attacks, remember? I was so happy you and Soph snatched us a couple of them before we blew that place up.” So many times, we dragons had found ourselves in awkward situations due to the absence of clothes after our transformations. The new uniforms were the ideal solution, and they’d made our lives easier since before the Flip, but only now had I had the time and the patience to truly appreciate this gear. Quite expensive and difficult to put together, but their design was flawless. And I’d always looked good in black.
Dafne shot me a cool grin, standing right where the water lapped at the sandy shore. Only the murmurs of this fake ocean remained in the silence surrounding us, and I found myself staring at this exquisite creature. Why did love sound like such a simple and wonderful thing, when it was way more complicated than advertised? Why did the fear of rejection make someone like me act so irrationally, when all I wanted to do was throw my arms around her?
“It’s been a while,” Dafne said, the humor fading from her eyes.
There it was. The poke. I’d had it coming, but how could I explain how I’d been feeling? How could I make her understand without projecting weakness? That was the one thing I could never do as a fire dragon. It was deeply embedded within my upbringing. Strength and dignity above all. “We’ve had our hands full,” I replied. “There’s so much happening.”
She looked at me with an intensity I had never experienced before. I would’ve given anything to be able to hear her thoughts in that instant, to understand how her mind worked… and how she saw me. But a weight fell from my shoulders when Dafne smiled. “It’s been crazy, huh? And with the dragons back together, doesn’t it feel even harder to have some time to yourself?”
“Yeah. I take it you’ve had similar issues?”
“I was mad at you. I thought this would be an opportunity to call you out on being so distant, but standing here now… I’ve kind of lost that appetite,” Dafne said, sighing.
I drew in a long breath, letting it out slowly. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and I feared I’d never get enough of her. “I did give you reason to be mad, huh? Sorry, Dafne. It wasn’t my intention to vanish for days.”
“Well, I didn’t say anything, either,” she muttered. “Thing is, I’m ice. You’re fire. Our parents might frown a little.”
“Your dad, maybe. He’s still hung up on the old school stuff regarding the dragon clans. My dad is married to a fire fae. We’re obviously on the more open-minded side of things.”
That earned me an instant frown. “Excuse me?”
“Well, Lethe is more of a traditionalist.” This was all banter, and she knew it, judging by how hard she was trying to hold back a laugh.
“He married a human!” Dafne retorted. “Besides, we both know what the underlying problem really is, and why neither of us has been able to fraternize with anyone outside our family clusters since the Flip.”
The humor dissipated between us, like steam rolling out of a boiling kettle until nothing was left but the harsh reality we were stuck with. Dafne and I looked at each other, momentarily silent as our minds worked in unison. I could almost hear the wheels turning.
“Our dads are full dragons. And they are both traditionally educated. Fire with fire. Ice with ice. No mingling with humans or whatever,” she added. “But they live in The Shade. They married non-dragons out of love, and we’re living proof. What’s really keeping the whole fire with fire and ice with ice nonsense going is our current situation. It’s how they’re coping, by blowing antiquated traditions out of proportion because it’s easier to deal with than the reality of our situation.”
I blinked several times. “The coherence in that entire argument is astonishing.”
“We have literally shared a bed, Jericho. I think we both know what’s going on between us, but neither of us can say it out loud,” Dafne replied. “On top of that, our parents’ dragon nonsense is louder than ever, and I haven’t seen you in days. Not even a message. Nothing. Are we really going to let Hrista’s mess spoil something so potentially beautiful?”
“You think it’s beautiful… whatever this is?” I asked, my voice wavering as I motioned at the narrow space between us. Dafne crossed her arms in response.
“I hope so! Otherwise, what’s the point of all this tossing and turning, huh?”
I couldn’t help but laugh lightly. “And to think I had to breach a fortress of ice to get to you… what happened? How are we even talking about this?”
“Hrista happened. That whole situation made me realize that I can’t waste any more time. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring or how long we’ll be trapped here. I only know that I don’t want another second to go by without some kind of
clarity between us,” Dafne said, raising her chin proudly. “So tell me. Why haven’t you said anything since… well, since the Flip? Why have we drifted apart after the troubles we survived together? I don’t understand.”
“I can’t blame you.” My reply was followed by a heavy sigh. Dafne was right. There was no point in hiding behind our fears and insecurities anymore. My feelings for her were only getting stronger, regardless of whether I acted on them or not. And she deserved my honesty. “From the moment I saw you, I knew you were different. Extraordinary. Possibly out of my league.”
Her breath faded, and she stared at me, lips slowly parting.
“I can’t fight this anymore,” I continued, driven by a simmering need to take this conversation in a different direction. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but I was afraid that you didn’t feel the same way, that you’d reject me. That fear has kept me constantly on edge, and I thought that maybe if I took a couple of steps back, my feelings for you might fade. But nothing’s changed. I’m still very much into you.”
Dafne’s silence drowned out the lazily lapping waves at our feet, and I felt as though my worst fear, the one I had just admitted out loud, was coming true. I was about to get the it’s-not-you-it’s-me treatment, which was a weapon I’d often employed. No one had ever had the chance to use it on me.
“I mean, if you don’t feel the same, and it’s just me, I don’t mind,” I added, suddenly gripped by the icy claws of panic. “It’s cool. I’ll be fine. We can even pretend this never happened. Bet your dad will be relieved.” I ended up chuckling like a moron until Dafne rolled her eyes and put me out of my misery.
“Jericho, it’s mutual.”
That was all I needed for the world to make sense again. I stared at her for a long second, trying to take in every detail that had made me fall head over heels with this stupendous creature. Her hair was black and long. Normally, I was drawn to short curls the color of summer wheat. Her eyes were gray and filled with mystery. I’d appreciated sunny skies in a girl’s gaze before. Dafne was an ice dragon. A fighter. A cracking whip to either dodge or face fearlessly, and my heart began to accelerate as she closed the distance between us.
In an instant, the entire universe shifted as her lips found mine, and we kissed.
For a moment, I thought we had a real sun shining overhead, filling me with an atomic warmth that spread through my body and set my muscles alight. My pulse raced, but the softness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth… It was the only element of my existence that I could process. It was like tasting heaven, if heaven was an ice dragon named Dafne.
Her hands cupped my face, and the delicate touch of her skin against mine tore a soft groan from my throat. I pulled my head back only so that I could breathe again, wondering how long it had been since we’d started this. The gray in her gaze was almost black, her heart thudding against mine.
“Whoa,” I managed.
“Yeah, you can say that again,” she whispered, taking a couple steps back.
Dafne’s lips were plump and pink. I doubted I’d think of anything else for the remainder of this day. “Well, at least we both know where we stand, right?” I asked, offering a faint smile. I’d gotten past her frozen walls to reach the very core of her. The heat emanating from within Dafne made me wonder if she was really an ice dragon after all.
“We’ll just have to figure out where to go to from here,” she said, her gaze dropping slowly to focus on the water rushing across the coarse, faded sand.
Dafne couldn’t really be an ice dragon, I thought, ignoring the madness of such a thought when she obviously was an ice dragon. But she’d set my heart on fire. The folly of it was palpable, and I didn’t want it to end. We’d fallen, and we’d flown.
We kissed again, and the fake Shade vanished around us once more.
Astra
On the fifth day since the Flip, I summoned a meeting of what Thayen and I referred to as “the old gang,” which meant everyone who’d come to the fake island first. Myst, Regine, Haldor and Brandon joined Thayen, Soph, Jericho, Dafne, Chantal, Voss, Richard, Isabelle, my mom and myself. We’d chosen the Port for this conversation, mostly for sentimental reasons, since this was where we’d come through initially.
The empty, vapid night of the fake island was beginning to irk me. It wasn’t home. Our home was overrun with monsters, and I had grown tired of dwelling here in post-Flip misery. The lighthouse spun its white beam across the vast emptiness beyond the ocean, then back over the island. I found it strange, since the real island’s lighthouse had never worked. It moved in a sullen rhythm, as if the fake island were as upset as the rest of us. It didn’t stop it from draining our energy as usual, however. My days were forced into twenty-four-hour patterns that demanded at least one third of that to be allocated to sleep. It did the same to everyone, even the vampires.
“Please, tell me you have some good news,” Isabelle said. For days, she had been struggling to remember something useful. But the medication that the clones had pumped into her body had done a horrific number on her short-term memory. “Every day I spend in this place feels like a win for those bastards.”
“You may have noticed that Isabelle has been feeling a little cranky lately,” Voss grumbled.
“They messed with my head,” Isabelle insisted. “You’re damn right I’m mad. I demand retribution, and I’m never going to get it if we’re doomed to rot in this place.”
Soph sighed. “I think we all feel that way at this point.”
“Well, then I guess it will please you to hear that—” I paused to look at Brandon for a split second, searching for a hint of encouragement in his smile even as his flaming blue eyes reminded me of that almost-kiss we’d had the other day. Focus, Astra. Focus! “—I managed to open a longer lasting shimmering portal.”
“Yes!” Thayen exclaimed, practically beaming with joy.
Jericho hugged me, laughing in delight, while Richard squeezed my shoulders and grinned from ear to ear. “You did it!” the wolf-incubus exclaimed, practically jumping out of his skin. I was overwhelmed with tight embraces and kisses covering my face as my fellow Shadians fell all over me, excited and thankful and affectionate.
Brandon was kind enough to gently grip my upper arm and pull me away from the melee of limbs and kind souls, laughing lightly while I caught my breath. “Now give them the bad news, and let’s see if they still love you.”
For hours, the Berserker and I had been discussing proper ways to tell the original crew about what I’d accomplished last night—that after days of pushing myself, I’d managed to open a shimmering portal and then kept it open long enough for people to go through it.
Mom was the first to notice the sour look on my face. “What’s he talking about?”
“I can only hold a portal for about a minute—maybe two, tops—and even then it ends with my nose bleeding,” I said.
“Much like how my nose bleeds if I try to glamor a Berserker or a Valkyrie,” Thayen observed, almost breathless and wide eyed. Beside him, Haldor scoffed and crossed his arms, the pose making him look even bigger than his usual massive self.
“You’re not trying that on me ever again,” the Berserker replied. Without his shadows—or better said, with his shadows tucked away and out of sight, which we’d recently learned he could easily do—he was still large and frightening, but the darkness had often made him much more intimidating. I certainly preferred him as an ally rather than a foe.
Myst intervened, keeping the focus on me and not on anything trivial. “Hold on. You said up to two minutes,” she repeated my conclusion to bring the conversation back on topic.
“Yes.” I added a nod to go with it.
“It should be fine, assuming only a few go through,” she said.
My mom was understandably confused, though Myst had already understood where I was going with this entire exchange. “Why just a few?” Mom asked, her gaze darting between Myst, Thayen, Brandon, and me. “How many portals w
ould you need to open to get every Shadian through? Mind you, we’re talking about five thousand people, more or less.”
“With enough practice and a whole lot of energy, just one. But that might take days, if not weeks,” Brandon said. “I’m not sure we have that kind of time, considering that Hrista and her minions are running loose in the real Shade.”
“Then why did Hrista need so many portals for the Flip?” Jericho asked.
“She used that crystal ball thing and some combo magic from Purgatory, for sure,” Brandon replied. “Astra’s mojo is all natural, possibly unlimited or easy to supplement, unlike the aforementioned crystal ball, and therefore subject to slightly different conditions. I’m not an expert, obviously, but I’m following my logic and the little bits of knowledge I did pick up along the way.”
I sucked in a breath, bracing myself for the proposal. “I’d like to take a small crew through the shimmering portal first,” I replied. “A recon team before we let anyone else return to The Shade.”
“Wait, what?” Mom blurted, immediately concerned—not that I could blame her.
“It’s why I wanted to confer with you all first,” I said, sitting cross-legged in the sand. The others joined me in a wide circle, pensive shadows settling over their faces. Above, the lighthouse’s beam shot across the black sky. Looking up, the emptiness sent a painful pang through my stomach. The absence of stars reminded me of where we were, and why I was so desperate to get out of there. “We can’t risk the entire Shadian population by all returning at once, especially since we don’t know what Hrista and the clones are up to. We don’t know if she has sealed The Shade off or if she started a war with GASP. We have absolutely no idea, and we owe it to our people to keep them safe.”
“Therefore, a small crew to do some recon, now that Astra can portal us back and forth, should help us prepare for whatever Hrista has done with your island,” Brandon interjected, giving Mom a warm but brief smile. “Surely you understand the wisdom of such an approach.”
A Shade of Vampire 91: A Gate of Light Page 8