Author: Hutchins, Hollie
Date: 2019-05-08

Captured By The Royals

Hollie Hutchins

Contents

1. Elena

2. Garek

3. Elena

4. Garek

5. Elena

6. Garek

7. Elena

8. Garek

9. Elena

10. Garek

11. Elena

12. Garek

13. Elena

More In This World

The Last Unicirim’s Bride

Copyright

1

Elena

Colors blurred around Elena. The moon was ubiquitous tonight in all realms, some places suspended above the sky like a lemon slice, others full to bursting, with a faint white light yawning over the worlds. Her signet ring glimmered. Set inside the little ring was a waystone – a tiny thing that gave her the ability to slip between realms if she found a weak spot in the fabric of reality.

Or, in this case, a special ring that allowed her to directly slip into the Realm Market. No matter where the weak spot was, with this special ring, embellished with the image of a horse-drawn cart, it whisked her straight to the vibrant, chaotic swirl of a multi-realm market. Everyone who was a resident of the Realm Market possessed one.

Elena hummed with satisfaction, cradling her latest spoils under her elbow. Nothing significant, just a small, gear-sprung clock, but it was a prized collector’s item in several realms – and the gears alone were advanced compared to some of the realms that existed. She whistled merrily to herself, replaying her last mission, and her soft footfalls as she shimmied into that old clockmaker’s shop, blending in with the shadows, her magic cloaked around her, so not even the whisper of her breath penetrated the silence.

It wasn’t her fault, exactly, that shadow magic just fit the thieving profession so well. You had to use what you were good at, right? And it wasn’t like her family’s market stall earned that much money. Just enough to keep running and to scrape up a little profit, but they did need some extra income every now and then.

Now, with the realms, rules had to be established with something as ambitious and chaotic as the Realm Market, when people perused for magic and technology. If magic wasn’t known in a buyer’s realm, for example, they absolutely couldn’t abuse it, and if said abuse was discovered, death magic from the darkest of dark realms would tear them apart. All down in the contract terms and use, automatically enabled the moment you stepped into the market’s shining streets.

Understandably, no one liked the idea of spontaneous combustion. So smaller, less important objects, non-magical in origin, tended to sell better as a result. The Realm Market had one main currency, called zots, but they had money exchangers all across for the different realms.

Elena’s parents focused on mundane earth objects like mugs, energy drinks, condoms and pills for headaches and sleep.

Even in the darkness, the Realm Market operated, with bright lights upon every street, and stall owners calling for customers. Elena weaved her way through the market, still whistling cheerfully to herself, eyes scanning the many stalls and creatures that walked the shimmering marble streets. Humans, werewolves, even some of the smaller dragon shifters enjoyed what was up for grabs.

Stopping at her favorite night food stall, Mama Loue’s, Elena got her usual pumpkin pastry and little cup of Zorin coffee, as well as several spiced rabbit burgers for her parents.

No nightmares for weeks, now. A vast improvement from before, when she’d been waking up in rivulets of sweat, needing to change her sheets on a regular basis. Maybe the nightmares were a sign of a guilty conscience, that she should stop her less than stellar activities. Or maybe they meant that at some point, confronting her mother about them might finally happen.

For now, Elena shied away from the notion, delivering the supplies to her cheery parents, and the clock, which her father grabbed eagerly, already placing it down to examine through an eyeglass he had plucked out of his waistcoat pocket.

“Oh, thank you, darling,” Sue gushed. Her father, Arthur, gave a curt nod, still engrossed in examining the clock. Sue spoke enough for the both of them, and Arthur only liked to speak business and objects. Worse parents existed in the world, though, so Elena didn’t mind.

Still running a little on the adrenaline of her last successful heist, Elena was eager for more missions. “Got any new jobs? Got any big new jobs?” Elena sat just behind their stall, eyeing the potential customers in their gaudy clothes and garish jewelry. It made them prime targets for the child thieves that roamed around the busy, chaotic streets, but people loved their material wealth and status.

“You want a big one?” Her mother smiled at her, but the smile didn’t extend to her eyes. “I have one, but I wasn’t planning to take it. Seems rather risky.”

“Okay then, spill. What’s the big one you’ve got all lined up?” Elena crowded her mother, a maniacal glint in her eye. “Bet you I can do it. Whatever it is. It pays a lot? It has to pay a lot.”

“Calm your tushie,” Sue said, holding up her hands, smiling half in exasperation and half amusement. “We’ve got a contact from Albalon who reckons there’s a golden dragon’s egg up for grabs.”

Golden? Both Elena’s eyebrows raised. “What, you mean like the egg’s made of gold?” Shit, that did sound good. Elena rocked on the heels of her feet, eager to hear more. She wanted a new mission. Something challenging, something valuable and worthwhile.

“Yes. And the creature inside it is of immense value to collectors in other realms,” Sue continued. “A queen dragon. You have exotic collectors prepared to pay thousands, maybe even millions for a golden egg. The problem is…” Sue took the dramatic silence, and Elena willed her to go on. “The problem is that the egg is heavily guarded in one of the most fortified places in Albalon – the city of Bastion.”

Elena barely heard the rest. Her brain fixated on millions, and all the dreams she’d had of finding some remote place on some remote planet somewhere, getting her house on the mountains. No longer working in the Realm Market, though she could drop in any time she wanted. Millions. To solidify her determination, she also felt the kick of compulsion in her stomach; the strange part of her magic that sometimes urged her to do something – and she’d learned never to question it. It was that simple. Feel a compulsion, follow it through. Trust the gut instinct, no matter the cost. “I’ll do it.”

Her mother cut off with whatever else she was saying, puckering her lips in an almost disapproving way. “I won’t be coming with you. I’m getting too old for the big ones like this – my magic’s not what it used to be.”

“That’s fine,” Elena said, already thinking about taking the Realm Market’s waygate to Albalon. There was a weak spot around twenty miles outside Bastion, one in the mountains next to River’s End, and one near Zorin’s capital city, so she’d have to make sure she didn’t accidentally take the wrong gate. “I imagine other people in the market will be considering taking the egg as well.”

“Naturally,” her mother replied. “But none of them are shadow witches. So we have a distinct advantage.” She smiled now, brushing imaginary dust off Elena’s shoulders. “If you do get this egg, we’ll be sorted. We can pack up the stall here and then. Though I expect your father would want to keep running it, he does enjoy his little hobbies…” Sue shot a fond glance over at her husband, who was selling a packet of condoms to a shifty looking customer, with a tiny, scraggly beard on his chin.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Elena said, brimming with confidence. As a shadow witch, she had a huge advantage. She’d be ahead of the curve. And she fully intended to retire early.

* * *

Elena embarked on her most daring thievery to date, two days later, after renting an inn within Bastion nearest the castle – where the egg was supposedly kept. Sneaking past a veritable army of minions to steal a golden dragon egg might not have been one of Elena’s safest missions to date. But a gold egg – a queen egg, no less, sold for millions in certain realms. Private collectors salivated at the opportunity to be able to have such an exotic specimen.

Or maybe they just wanted a really expensive omelet. Rich people did crazy things.

Her shadow magic wrapped around like a blanket, shielding her from prying eyes, plunging her into a world of silence, where she passed unsuspecting people without them sensing anything, except for the perceptive individual, who might feel the tiny stirring of baby hairs at the back of their neck. Even though Elena had agreed with about half a second’s hesitation on grabbing this egg, a part of her wondered if it was a good idea. She knew the realm it came from, Albalon, was in the middle of a war campaign. Goodness, the Albanese who visited the Realm Market talked about it all the time – how the unicirim royals had slowly conquered the country, and were gathering to take back River’s End, the capital city overrun by dragons.

They’d even managed to ally with some smaller type of dragon species, because apparently there could be nice dragons and not so nice dragons.

The compulsion inside Elena purred. Telling her, in no uncertain terms, that today was the day to steal the egg. Everything led to this moment. If she didn’t steal today, her moment would pass.

She didn’t know why she knew that, but deep in her bones, that conviction permeated. It had to be today.

Being a powerful and silent shadow witch didn’t stop Elena from stubbing her toe on an offending piece of rock, hopping on one foot, and saying, “Shit,” as soldiers blurred past. But she kept going anyway.

Yes, that was right. Shadow witch extraordinaire and occasional sneak-thief, still stubbing her feet a decade or so later after discovering said power. A power she shared with her mother, though her mom claimed she was getting too old for shenanigans. Anyway, the egg was located in Bastion’s castle, on the fourth floor, according to their informant. The castle’s concentration of soldiers was insane. She rubbed at her black gloved palm, fingers rubbing against the zig-zag pattern on her wrist, attempting to dispel the sudden itch erupting along the scarred flesh. It did that sometimes; itched like there were ants crawling under her skin. Her mother insisted that it was normal for phantom pains and sensations to occur over burn marks and other scars, and her mother always liked to show her scarred knee and state it could tell when rain was coming.

Personally, Elena thought it was rather obvious to tell when rain was coming; just look out the window or glance upward and see if there were any angry clouds.

She skated into the castle, passing dozens of guards, stopping briefly when she saw two people huddled together, one of them wearing the stereotypical Zorin witch facial markings, with long dark hair and a broody expression. The other’s bright red hair stood out like a fanfare, so Elena paused, still cloaked in her magic, to eavesdrop.

She was nothing if not nosy.

“No,” the witch with black smudges on her face was saying. “Absolutely not.”

“I just think I could help...”

“Keep your pointy little nose out of it, or you’ll wake up one day and find it missing. Hmm...” the dark haired witch seemed to look right at Elena, and Elena suppressed a gasp, even though she knew the witch shouldn’t be able to see or hear her. The other woman, probably a witch too, even though she didn’t have any obvious markings, seemed to sniff the air. Taste it.

“Something’s wrong,” the red-head said. “I can feel it.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Mercifully, the dark haired witch turned away, back to her companion. “That hair on the back of your neck thing. I can’t explain it any other way.”

“I might. It’s familiar...” the red-head paused. “You know that shadow witch, Thorn? It feels like her. It has that inky, tar like texture on my tongue...”

Shit, shit, shit. Time to go. Elena rapidly hurried away. That wasn’t supposed to happen. People couldn’t sense her. No one sensed a shadow witch. That was just how it worked. She wore the magic, it cloaked her, and even if she breathed down their necks, they still remained oblivious.

“Someone’s panicking,” the red-head said, nose twitching like a sniffer-dog. “Feels like they don’t have control of all their magic. It’s practically leaking out of them.” Another jolt of panic went through Elena as she dashed up the stairs, scooting past guards, still trying to wrap her head around the impossibility.

Whatever magic those two had, she didn’t want to stick around and find out. Also, she was an idiot, dawdling and snooping when she could have already been staggering out with the egg.

Thoughts of calling off the mission drowned themselves in that peculiar compulsion, which strengthened the closer she got to her destination. She also tossed a few good reasons to continue with her egg theft. Dragon egg. Millions in payment. No more sneaking around and thieving for her. She could go, find a nice realm to settle on, live in her little hermit hut in the middle of nowhere, and scare wayward children who came wandering into the forest, until they made up fairy tales about the witch in the woods. All that was just one spectacular steal away. Nice life, quiet life, until she got random urges to sneak into places and take things for the hell of it. Damnit, she was twenty-seven now, she didn’t have to keep helping with her parent’s business. Even if she did get a thrill out of successful heists.

Even if it was comfortable and easy to be told what to do. Easy for her to sit around and smell the roses until her mother presented a new job from her numerous contacts, and off Elena went.

This contract, though… it just felt right.

Top floor. She probed at her magic, satisfied to feel it more than capable of concealing her for hours. She was stronger than her mother, though her mother preferred to joke it was all down to the high protein diet and exercise.

A room with furnaces. Heat for the egg. Elena found it past no less than four guards, with an open door, and what seemed to be a fire witch gently coaxing flames in a room with practically enough heat to melt a pot. The heat slammed into Elena, and shit, even her protective gloves might not be enough if the egg resembled this heat in any shape or form. Furnaces lined the room, all on and smoldering, with vents that allowed the heat and dangerous gases to filter out. The egg itself sat in a pot, above a kind of pit fire, a slight rosy glow to its otherwise golden, smooth surface.

Just as she reached for her baton, tucked into her belt, preparing to knock out the fire witch so she could grab and run with the egg, something blurred behind the unfortunate woman. A flicker of darkness coalescing into a humanoid form. A tall, muscular man dressed in skin tight black clothes. With a club in his hand.

Crack. The fire witch dropped like a stone, the blow to her temple knocking her out cold. The man, grinning, tucked his club into his belt, and reached with gloved hands to the egg. Grasping it from the pot and holding it tight.

Elena, still perfectly concealed, stared at him, utterly confounded, breath trapped in her lungs. Something in her stirred, some foreign sensation at the closeness of him.

Another shadow user? Stealing the egg at the exact same moment she was? What in actual fuck.

Also, how dare he.

That was her egg! Before he flared up his magic, ripping him out of the realm of sensory detection, she lunged, flaring into visibility to grapple the egg from his hands, in front of his surprised and dumb face.

“What,” he said, just before she smiled and cloaked her clearly superior magic over herself and the egg.

“No,” he added, scrabbling at the place where she’d vanished. His magic flared up, and Elena was too slow to stop him grasping her arm. She hadn’t moved in time, so his magic pulled her out of her own private bubble.

“That’s my egg,” he snarled, squeezing her arm painfully, and both of them flickered into visibility, before returning back into the shadows. They continued to grapple, attempting to overpower each other whilst simultaneously avoiding damage to the egg.

“Careful, you fool,” she snapped, “you want to break the damn thing?” He pushed at her, desperate to grab the large and warm dragon egg, which seemed to vibrate in her arms. Her back hit the wall, and she almost dropped it. “Fuck off.”

“Fool? What the fuck are you doing here? Why are you here?” He clung by the scruff of her shirt with one arm, reaching for his club with the other. His thigh wedged between her thighs, and a hiss escaped her lips from the sudden lick of warmth across her skin. He paused in his actions, eyes wide and detectable even with the shadow magic caressing them both. His stubbled jaw hung open in surprise.

She took the opportunity to bash him in that stubbled jaw with her elbow, and he stumbled backwards, spitting and cursing – but kept a hold of her shirt.

“Lady, I’d really rather not kill you and break the egg, but you’re leaving me no choice here.”

“Wait!” she blurted it, and he froze once more upon reaching for his club. “Can we talk this out? Like… we’re both shadow witches. We’re both after the egg. Maybe we can… escape with it together?”

“Sure,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “Just as long as until one of us backstabs the other, right?”

“Oh, you’re planning to backstab, are you?”

He let out a growl, his fingers tightly wound in her shirt, and his face hovered inches from her own. Both of them stopped talking for that split second, just staring into the shadows of their eyes. Wrapped in the magic, the color was indiscernible. She felt his breath upon her lips. “Who’s your employer?”

“Why, you going to tell me yours?”

Another pause. “Ugh,” he finally said. “Okay. Let’s just… let’s leave. Truce until we’re out of Bastion. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, instantly scheming how to keep the egg. Because she refused to surrender it to him, and refused to stay in a vulnerable position where she might be backstabbed.

The egg rattled, and squeaked. Both thieves stared down at it in horror. The egg squeaked again, and Elena felt something siphon at her magic, draining it out of her as if it was a glass of water.

Running out of magic, Elena and the stranger were completely revealed – at the precise moment four guards entered the room, followed by the two witches from earlier.

Both would-be thieves froze. The man instantly untangled his hand and sprang away from her. “Uh, I was trying to stop her stealing the egg.” He eyed the egg as if it was a ticking time bomb. Caramel brown eyes, Elena noted wildly. That was the color of his eyes. Also, he was trying to sell her out.

Typical fucking thief.

“Excuse me? I took it from your hands. After you knocked out the fire witch. If anything, I’m the one stopping someone from stealing –”

“Another word,” the dark haired witch growled, “and I’ll drown you both where you stand.” For good measure, she summoned two snake-like plumes of water from her gourd, which hovered menacingly in front.

Both thieves fell silent. Before Elena could register that maybe it might be better to just make herself vanish and drag the man with her, one of the guards snapped an iron band around her wrist, doing the same to the man.

Nullifying their magic, though it was already inexplicably drained.

Speechless, Elena knew she was in some deep, deep shit now. Well, it was nice being alive.

“To the dungeons. Extract that egg carefully.” The dark-haired woman crouched by the unconscious fire witch, and a strange mood pervaded Elena – calm and peace. It didn’t feel like her own emotions, because that calm and peace caused her to placidly hand over the egg.

Which squeaked, and rattled again.

All eyes turned to the egg. Eight people watched as cracks appeared on the golden surface. The guard holding the egg appeared terrified, and hastily placed it on the ground, backing away. The useless thieves watched as their very expensive prize broke into pieces in front of them, and a tiny, slime covered golden dragon crawled out of the remains. Elena’s insides felt much like those egg shards. Everything she’d battled for was for nothing. She’d been caught, her magic stripped, and now there was a tiny lizard in place of a golden egg.

The baby dragon squeaked and crawled to Elena’s feet. Filmy yellow eyes contemplated her, and something nudged against her mind, until it broke in without any ceremony whatsoever.

In the back of her mind, she felt the dragon’s little heartbeat. And some very smug satisfaction that she was certain a twenty second old hatchling shouldn’t have.

“Did the dragon… just hatch for these two people?” the red-haired witch said, looking very confused.

“This is the worse day I’ve ever had,” the dark-haired witch said, throwing up her arms in apparent disgust.

2

Garek

How did it all end up going so wrong? Garek had no clue. One moment, he’d been contracted to steal back a dragon egg for some very angry dragon overlords, offered thousands to ensure their queen was returned to River’s End, the next, another shadow witch appeared out of thin air, wrestled the egg off him, and then the people came and it hatched and now he was in jail.

What he couldn’t wrap his head around was the coincidence.

What in damnation had arranged things for someone with the exact same powers to attempt to steal the egg at the same time? Out of all the coincidences in the many, many realms that existed, he thought this one was a bit too much.

He brooded in his cell, sat upon the hard jail bed, antimagic chains anchoring him in place. Opposite him sat the other magic user: the person responsible for completely ruining his burglary.

True, Garek had felt an… unusual compulsion for taking on this task. A strange drive that he had to take that egg the day before, that it needed to be within that time frame. He’d assumed it to be some kind of gut instinct at the time, and he wasn’t in a habit of ignoring gut instincts, but now he wondered if somehow, he’d been played. Some great cosmic joke ending up with him in jail, and some trickster witch or deity somewhere laughing until tears rolled out of their eyes.

At least the compulsion had stopped, now. Ever since he’d laid eyes upon that woman, touched her, actually, and something inside had shifted. He had no words for that something; just an awareness of things somehow being different. Though that might also be down to the fact that he’d been ousted, so of course things were different.

There was one other little problem. That thing, that dragon – he felt it in the back of some cobwebby corner of his brain, and its mental screams of distress. He’d learned to shut it out now, but boy did it give him a stomping headache for the first five hours of jail time.

Absently, Garek blew lank blonde hair out of his nose, failed because it flopped right back, and continued wading through sluggish thoughts.

No matter how hard he attempted to think, nothing made sense. His job, his reputation was in tatters. As soon as the smuggler’s den caught wind of his botched mission, he’d likely be severed from it completely. They didn’t tolerate failure well. They were obliged to satisfy clients, whatever end of the species spectrum they hailed from. No hard feelings – people needed to survive and make money somehow. In war and occupation, all sorts of unscrupulous opportunities emerged for those lacking moral fiber. And with his species and skill set – working as a thief came naturally.

He’d been a thief in the Realm Market, and a beggar as well. He knew the other kids, how they pooled together all their earnings each day to make sure they had food and warm, dry things to sleep in. He’d caught the eye of Sylas, his mentor, and his life went on an upward trajectory from there.

Staring at the cell bars, he wished he could shift into his unicirim form and kick the damn things down. Use his magic to slip out of the castle, and then take to the skies, an invisible ghost heading home.

He wanted freedom. Independence. Not this. Or the sobbing, wailing dragon in the back of his mind, which he still didn’t fully understand as to how he could feel it in the first place. It cried, and he knew it wanted him close. There were no words to express how he knew – just that he did.

“Well done, genius,” the curly haired woman said from her cell. She fixed him a particularly vicious glare, like nothing would give her more satisfaction than to watch him drop dead.

“You’re the one who ruined my operation,” Garek snapped back. “Then you got all hysterical and wasted time arguing when we could have gotten out of there.”

“What, you’re blaming me for this? If I recall, you were arguing back, and assaulting me, which could have dropped the egg. You’re the shitbag.” She rattled her chains for good measure, all fire and fury, and Garek examined her for a moment, licking his bottom lip. Tracing over her wild, curly brown hair, the angry grooves in her heart shaped face, and the tight, skin-fitting black clothing. “Hey,” she added, lips curled in scorn. “Are you fucking checking me out right now? Seriously?”

He blinked at this ludicrous assumption, cheeks heating slightly. “What? No. Just thinking we could spend less time yelling at each other, and more time thinking of a way to escape.”

Her expression turned dark, her smile sarcastic. “Yes, let’s discuss our escape plans right now, in front of the two guards patrolling the dungeon who can overhear us. They’ll never suspect a thing.”

Storms, Garek wanted to slap this woman’s face. If she could lay off the tongue lashing for just one second, maybe they could get somewhere. Where, he wasn’t exactly sure, except now his mind was reflecting over the crazy, ridiculous coincidence of them both robbing the egg at the same time.

“Why were you there when I was?”

“I don’t know. Why were you?”

He thought about that odd compulsion in his gut. The same one he’d learned to follow over the years, to trust in times of danger. “I don’t know,” he answered. The other question he wanted to ask: did you feel what I felt? – he didn’t allow it to see the light of day. This wasn’t the time and place. And she was a complete stranger who’d completely destroyed his chances with the Smuggler’s Den. Instead, he settled with: “What’s your name?”

Her lips pressed together, and he wondered if she’d be too stubborn even to share that. “Elena,” she finally said, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Elena?” he said, to check he’d caught it right. She nodded. “I’m Garek. Garek Waymarket.”

Her eyes widened at that. “An orphan surname.”

“You know that, do you?” One of his eyebrows raised, interested in spite of himself. “Only way you’d know that is if you’ve been in the Realm Market long enough to pick up the customs.”

“I live there,” she replied. “Well, there, and places on earth. Our favorite place is Vienna in Austria, but we also like Vancouver.”

None of those names meant anything to him, but he nodded as if they did. “That explains things, then.”

“Do you live in the Realm Market, still?” She frowned at him. “Just wondering if I’ve seen you around.”

“I’ve not lived there for years. But I used to be with the beggars. I lived in Westside Orphanage with about fifteen others.”

“Westside…” The frown deepened. So not an angry frown, then. A thinking one. “I’m sure I’ve been there. I used to play with some of the orphans as a child.”

Garek’s heart began to beat faster. Searching his memories, he felt a strange nausea steal over him, the harder he tried to recall. Eventually, he gave up, not wanting to risk vomiting, and shrugged. “Maybe we did play with each other. Maybe we didn’t. But I can’t remember.”

“Me either,” she said softly.

They lapsed into silence after that. Occasionally, they stared into each other’s eyes. More unspoken questions came into his mind, but all of them slipped away, until he closed his eyes, letting exhaustion overtake him. In the dozing state before sleep, he thought he heard the wordless crying of the baby dragon in his mind. Along with the rapidly pulsing heartbeat of an animal in stress.

He jerked into alertness when the cell door opened, and a scowling pair of women examined him. The dark haired witch he vaguely remembered was called Yvonne, and a scarred woman who looked as if half her face had been pressed against a furnace; a shadow witch in the employ of the royals.

“Am I to be executed now?” he said, sounding bored, though his heart picked up in pace.

“Not yet, unfortunately,” Yvonne said, holding up a pair of cuffs. She approached him and clamped each one around his wrists. Locking into place, they chafed his skin uncomfortably. “We’re taking you and your fellow prisoner for a little walk.”

Released from the wall chains, Garek stumbled forward, prodded by the shadow witch, blinking against the stronger hall lights outside of the dungeons. They hauled Elena out as well, also wearing antimagic cuffs, and she glowered at the ground instead of him. His legs ached as they went through the stairwell, winding up and up until they were on the third floor, passing suspicious guards and finery which Garek itched to steal, before being ushered into a room that looked like some kind of high-end nursery. If the pen, the toys, the soft blankets and books and pillows were any indication. Inside the pen lay a twitching baby dragon.

To his side, past the four helmeted male guards that stood to attention on each corner of the room, and a surly, yellow eyed man. In front of the dragon, Elena lifted her gaze up from the ground at last.

Their eyes locked together, and her brown ones narrowed with complete dislike. If looks could kill, Garek would be dead hundreds of times over. Her dark hair was a ruffled mess, and since the last time he’d looked at her, there seemed to be some extra chunks of hair teased out of her scalp. Like she’d been ripping at it in stress. Now they were closer, he again felt that strange energy between them.

“Do we both have to be here at the same time?” Elena asked. The one who’d ruined his plans, but who also felt familiar, somehow.

Have I seen her before? Again, he searched the recesses of his memories. Because there was something about her. Try as he might, however, nothing came to memory. Just that vague nausea welling in the back of his throat.

“Oh, shut up,” Yvonne snapped derisively. “You don’t get a say in this. If it was up to me, I’d have you both strung on a mast for the birds to pick at, but according to our exile friends...” She gestured to the yellow eyed man, “a queen dragon only hatches in the presence of someone, or someones, that she feels an intense connection with.” Yvonne really didn’t look like she was enjoying saying a single word. Each one was forced out of her.

In the deadly silence that followed, the yellow eyed man stepped up to the occasion, his voice gravelly and disdainful. “A dragon’s bond is different from a unicirim’s. You people, you’re born, and you can spend your whole lives searching for one another. For the exiles, it’s the same. We spend our lives searching, we don’t always find what we’re looking for. But with a dragon, a good-to-honest queen dragon that grows to the size of a house – she doesn’t hatch until the right dragon comes along, with the right magical energies. Or in this case… persons.”

As if in agreement, the little dragon squeaked. The despair and distress in the back of Garek’s mind faded, and the creature’s yellow-gold eyes kept shifting from the other thief to him, little nostrils flaring.

The man’s words didn’t bring a whole lot of hope to Garek. “Wait, you’re telling me I’ve Bonded to a baby dragon? That’s messed up.”

“It’s nothing as crude as that,” the man said, a faint growl rumbling in his throat. “It’s just an imprinting. The baby senses the one she wants to be taken care by, the one whose destiny entwines most fiercely with her, and when born, will often mold herself to the ideals and morals of her chosen caretaker, or caretakers. She feeds on their magic if it is strong enough, and by extension, grows with the feeding.” He glanced at Garek and the other woman as if they were pieces of dirt stuck to his boots. “It’s an honor to be a queen’s caretaker. Roughly one queen is born every century. It places the next generation of dragons in that caretaker’s hands. And it seems… the next queen of the dragons will be an ally to humans. If,” the man said, holding up one aggressive finger, “you morons don’t mess it up.”

An unnatural, high-pitched giggle left Garek’s throat before he found the sense of mind to contain it, with a lot of hostility focused on him. “I’m sorry,” he said, not sorry at all, “but you’re telling me that a mighty, powerful dragon… will grow up to be a thief?” His stomach trembled with barely concealed laughter. “She wants her caretakers to be… us?” He pointed at the woman and himself.

“Yes,” Yvonne said flatly. “That’s what we’re saying. And the baby will not shut up unless its caretakers are in the same room as it. It just sits there, crying, all day, all night.”

“What are you saying?” the thief-woman said in a rather panicked tone, her brown eyes wide circles. “What do you want us to do?”

Skies, Garek thought. The other thief was a little dense. He was already on board, and still struggling to control his mirth. The mirth escalated into something giddy, and he brought himself back to some sliver of rationality, in time to hear Yvonne say, “Congratulations. You’re no longer on the execution block. Both of you are now babysitters to a dragon.”

A low, frightened groan slipped out of the thief-woman’s mouth. “You’re kidding.”

“Or would you prefer to be executed?” Yvonne asked mildly, expression bland.

“I’m not… I’m not going to babysit a dragon. Christ on a cracker. My mom’s expecting me back. This was supposed to be our lucky break.”

“Should have thought of that before you decided to sneak into a stronghold surrounded by thousands of soldiers and witches to steal an egg from us. Which we will be drilling you both about, by the way.”

Still grinning on the inside, which he suspected was part hysteria at the terrible situation, Garek focused his gaze on the baby dragon. He felt similar mirth nudging the back of his mind, and vaguely realized the little creature was imitating his emotions.

Well, this was interesting.

He didn’t exactly think he’d be any sort of father or inspiration material, but honestly, this was too good an universal joke to pass up. He might be fired from the thieving gig, this might be the last sail of his career – but the honest thought of a huge storming dragon calling him dada did nothing for his sanity. How many others could say the same?

Sure, he still intended to escape. He wasn’t going to throw all his plans and ambitions out the water just because these people had designated him as a babysitter, forcing him and the other thief into an instant dysfunctional family.

But right now, he didn’t see any way out of his situation, other than to wait and hope his fellow thieves took pity on him. That his mentor, Sylas, respected him enough to spring him out.

Unlikely, because the Smuggler’s Den hated liabilities, and him being Bonded, imprinted, whatever to a dragon almost certainly classified as a liability.

* * *

“So...” Garek said, committing Elena’s name to memory. He liked the way it rolled off his tongue, and it definitely matched her pretty face. “You were planning to sell the egg at the Realm Market.”

“Yep,” Elena said, straddling the chair opposite him, both her arms propped on the top of the backrest, chin digging into her knuckles. Both of them were under intense scrutiny, since no one planned for them to leave the baby dragon alone. Garek had entertained some notions of taking the baby dragon hostage, but he’d already calculated the probabilities. None of them ended with him escaping. Four guards watched them. Yvonne listened in with that Thorn woman, and two more people had squeezed into the room, which Garek recognized as royals. Tara and Janus. Two of the four, and the last two awaiting a Bonded. People always spread rumors about them being closer than close, since one was rarely seen without the other.

“How did you even hear about it?”

“We had an informant. You get all kinds at the Realm Market – and someone – my mom wouldn’t say who – tipped the location of this egg. Right down to the room it lay in.”

Garek could see their captor’s minds whirring at the information. Such detail likely meant a traitor in their own castle, and no one liked traitors. The baby dragon, which didn’t have a name, was nuzzling into his mind from behind its pen, and he wondered if it could hear its thoughts – if it even had the capacity to understand the images and strings of words layered over his brain.

He wondered why Elena had chosen to reveal it in front of the captors. Some things needed to stay private. They didn’t care about these people, and whatever grand plan they had engineered for themselves.

“And you?” Elena said, after a pause where they did nothing but stare.

Then again, it wasn’t like he particularly cared about his clients, either. Not when he was likely being written off by the Smuggler’s Den right now for his capture.

“Contracted by the dragons,” Garek said, eyeing Yvonne stiffening, her hand twitching towards her gourd. “You could say they’re livid about their queen egg being stolen.”

“What, they actually hired you?” Elena’s busy eyebrows popped up in interest. “I thought they hated working with humans.”

“I’m a unicirim,” Garek added absently. “But same thing, I suppose.”

Elena blinked rapidly. “Uh, no, it’s not. Because one’s a human, and another turns into a feathery horse with a stabby on its head.”

“Yeah but I can look human, so it doesn’t count.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, they do interact with humans – mostly through the smaller dragons who can shapeshift. The big ones can’t, so they have intermediaries. Some of their contacts came to Smuggler’s Den where I worked, offering… a lot. To get the queen back.”

“Is that the coastal community outside of River’s End?” Yvonne interrupted, still looking slightly murderous. Garek shrugged.

“No. Ours is somewhere else.” Like he was going to tell her where. “Plenty of smugglers making a living from the unhappy and miserable.” Garek tapped his feet on the carpet floor, vaguely disappointed at how softened the sound was. “So you’ve never lived long anywhere outside of the Realm Market?” he redirected to Elena. Again, there was that faint, irritating suggestion of a lost memory. Like he should have known her. Perhaps in their past, they’d bumped into one another at the Realm Market. Though it’d have to be childhood, because he’d left the place well alone once getting his apprenticeship. Still wore the ring signet, in case he ever wanted to return. “Who ended up training you in your magic? Didn’t think there were many witches living there.”

“My mother,” Elena said. “She….” Elena gave a hasty glance to her listening captors, “knows enough about magic to be able to help me out with it. We did spend a lot of time on earth, though, where magic doesn’t really work there for long. We liked earth for that reason, as magic can royally screw things up, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Garek said with a laugh, enjoying the way her own lips curled upward in response, and the flash in her light brown eyes. His attention occasionally wandered over her jawline, broad and strong, and the tufts of hair behind her ears. “Well, you know I used to be there, from the orphanage. Less noble circumstances. Begged for scraps on the streets. Worked with the little child gangs there, tried to hit the quotas they imposed.”

“Oh.” Elena chewed her bottom lip, face momentarily clouding over, as if chasing a memory. “I still feel like I might have met you at some point. But there’s… it keeps escaping me.”

Do you feel nausea, like I do? “I’m sure I’d remember meeting someone like you,” Garek said sincerely, not failing to notice the faint dust of red on her cheeks.

“Oh, you would, huh.” She stared dumbly for a moment, before shaking her head. “Okay, that’s sweet and all, but are we not going to talk about the big, stupid coincidence that resulted in both of us stealing the egg at the same time? I mean, Christ, we’re both shadow witches, and we chose the exact same time to take something. What the shit.”

“Lotta crass words coming from that mouth of yours,” Garek said with a slight drawl, though he whole-heartedly agreed with her confusion, and the bizarre coincidence that had smashed them together. “You wash out that mouth often?”

“Fuck you,” was her reply. He recognized the words – popular earth curses that kids adopted in the markets. They adopted all sorts of phrases, and he now employed one.

“Only if you want, sweetcakes.”

Yvonne let out a sound of disgust, and Elena scowled, not exactly impressed either.

“Let’s get this back on track,” the royal called Janus said, clapping his hands. “Talk, don’t antagonize.”

The baby golden dragon huffed and tried to wriggle through the bars of her pen to reach them, but she was gently restrained by the third shadow witch, Thorn. Even if the baby wanted Garek and Elena there, none of these people trusted them. Which was fair. Garek would have held little respect for them otherwise. Trust was a dangerous commodity, easily abused.

“What is there to talk about?” Garek challenged, slouched insolently on his hard, wooden chair. “None of us want to be here. Only reason we are is because the shiny newborn lizard over there decided to hatch. And you’d be right not to trust us, because we’ve got some contractual obligations hanging over our heads. Isn’t that right, Elena darling?”

“Completely,” Elena said, after a pause. “Honey.” The word was clumsy in her mouth. “Can only make so much money selling condoms.”

Garek snorted, unable to help himself, gathering another spate of unimpressed looks.

“You seem to think this situation is awfully funny, don’t you?” Yvonne said, her voice low and menacing.

His shaking laughter cut off abruptly when water lanced down his throat, flushing down into his lungs, swelling, filling…

He scrabbled at his throat and fell off the chair, hitting the floor hard, gasping, trying to speak, though it came out in gurgles. The awful, contracting sensation of trying to draw in air, failing, with the water flooding his lungs made his brain fuzz, body jerk.

I’m going to die, he managed, through sheer, animal panic, grasping for air that wouldn’t come.

The cold sloshing inside abruptly siphoned out of his throat, and his watery gurgles were replaced with huge, air-blessed lungfuls. He lay there on the floor, curled up, gasping like a fish.

“Like I said,” Yvonne’s voice came from far away, “this isn’t a laughing matter. We’re in the middle of a war. Our biggest bargaining chip has hatched to you two clowns, and I don’t have time for either of you pissing about.”

“Yvonne...” It sounded like Janus. “Don’t you think you were a little harsh?”

Garek crawled into a sitting position, his shoulder throbbing, rubbing fingers over his throat. The first thing he saw was Elena, eyes as wide as saucers in horror.

“That was… nothing,” Garek rasped. “I’ve felt worse. Barely tickled me.”

“Good to know,” Yvonne said sweetly. “Because I’ll do it again if I have to. Skies, I need a pay rise if I’m going to add ‘knocking sense into idiots’ in my daytime routine.”

Garek glared at the water witch, who glared back at him impassively. The memory of his drowning lungs sent a fresh shiver of fear through him, but he’d be damned before he let them see it. The golden dragon, however, sent little frissons of panic into his brain, and she strained against the bars, trying to reach him.

For some reason, seeing that little creature act so scared sent a little pang of something into Garek, though he couldn’t pinpoint why. Maybe it was to do with the fact he could feel a tiny sliver of its consciousness in his brain.

He could almost imagine the guys in Smuggler’s Den laughing themselves sick at the predicament he was in. But right now, stripped of magic, ringed in by the enemy, he had no choice but to endure this imprisonment. Not that he intended to endure it for long, if he had his way.

“I really think this is too unreliable,” one of the guards spoke up, then. “We simply can’t trust them. They have no reason to ally to our cause. We will be better off eliminating them.”

“Which will ensure that the little one here dies of a broken heart,” Thorn said, voice brittle.

“It’s just a dragon. We don’t need one. We can win without it.”

The royal princess held up her hand. Her blonde hair seemed frazzled, her eyes stony. “We won’t kill the dragon if we can help it. She might be the best way to secure our future, to ensure the dragons don’t retaliate in the future.”

“Can’t retaliate if they’re all dead.” A sullen grunt from an equally sullen guard.

“I’ll look after her,” Elena said quickly, rocking on the balls of her feet as she straddled the chair. “I might be a thief, but I do like being alive.” She looked at the princess, and Garek figured that to be the best person to implore to, as well. The princess seemed quite soft in comparison to the others in the room. And, well, if he was the princess, he might be inclined to listen to a face like that, too. His palm itched, and he scratched at the mark.

The more he examined Elena, the more he felt some kind of inherent… wrongness, somehow. That pesky little gut instinct of his, tugged at his stomach. It gave no explanation why. It could have been anything from hunger to disliking Yvonne to thinking in another time, another place, he might have been interested in speaking to that woman in a marginally better environment.

Though the type of women he met were always in inns and bars, swaying to the rhythm of drink, of desperate lust, of whispered flings and lips that tasted of mead and whiskey. All of them nice, but not quite right.

“You shouldn’t trust her...” Yvonne reached out a hand to Tara’s shoulder, and the princess smiled at the witch. “She’d say anything at this point.”

“We’ll find a way to make this work,” Tara said confidently. “There’s a reason for this. Just like there’s a reason we’ve all been finding our Bonded, that everything’s falling into place for us to take back our home… these two will be important. I know it.”

“Wish I could share your sentiment, princess,” Yvonne said. “I mean, sheer hope and positivity’s a good look on you, but...”

Tara gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Oh, shush.”

Garek narrowed his eyes at them. Was something going on, there?

Squeaks drew him back to the dragon, which had given up its efforts to reach him. Against his better judgment, he got up, wobbling over to the pen. He felt the hostility radiating off the others, the nervousness from Elena. “I won’t do anything. I just… I think she just wants to make sure I’m okay.” He crouched and let the dragon nuzzle into his hand. The snout was rough and soft at the same time, smooth at the tip, rough at the edges. Simple, childish joy bubbled in his skull, all from the dragon, and it tugged up his own lips, and squashed some of the simmering resentment growing in him from his confinement, and the treatment he’d endured.

Treatment he planned to get revenge for. But not now.

Good things came to those who waited.

3

Elena

It was the dream again. The one where black inked the edges of her vision, creeping over her eyeballs, swallowing words and images and something so, so important. Something deep in her soul that never should have been touched.

Sometimes she screamed at her mother in it, even as darkness covered everything. Other times she wept as if her heart had been crushed and scattered.

And other times, she half-remembered conversations. Her mother’s voice overlapping, fragmenting with words such as I’m sorry, for the best – and another voice, laughing with the giddy excitement of a child. A voice she knew she was supposed to remember, because it was important, so, so important…

But then nothing.

Waking up, Elena lay there in her new room, which was a vast improvement on the prison cell. The bindings on her wrists were still there, stubbornly preventing her magic. Only one person had the key, and it sure as hell wasn’t her.

What does the dream mean? She lightly probed at her mind, noting the tightness in her chest, the empty, hollow feeling. Like there was something missing. Usually it didn’t hit her so strongly, but in the wee hours of the night, with nothing but her own thoughts and silence around her, it reared its ugly head. Reminding her of that inherent sense of wrongness.

She did know her mother had something to do with it. Namely because about four years back, during a temporary break up with Elena’s father, her mother decided to drown all her problems in drink, though it did nothing for the hole in her heart. The drinking wrung out a sputtered, pleading confession that she hoped Elena found it in her heart to forgive.

Forgive for what? Elena had asked.

I had to save your life, her mother had replied, with red weepy eyes, and a face blotched in crimson. But I used a dangerous enchantment. It was… necessary. But I know you’ve been having the nightmares.

He said that’d be a part of the cost. Whoever “he” was.

Try as she might, Elena failed to wrangle any additional information out of her mother. Not about the person responsible for enchanting her, what danger Elena had endured, or why it gave her nightmares. When her mother cleaned up her act, and her father rejoined their Realm Market nest, any attempt to broach the subject was met with ignorance, silence, or an obvious and frankly infuriating change of subject.

Strange that she’d get a nightmare after that meeting, and getting to witness her fellow thief in question. He’d been so nonchalant and uncaring during that discussion about the fate of the queen dragon. Mostly, Elena’s focus was on how to escape from this ridiculous position, but something about Garek also caught her attention.

Like somewhere, somehow, she should know him. That she’d met him somewhere before, but could no way in heaven or hell figure out just where that gut feeling came from.

Who was he? Where the hell did he come from?

And why couldn’t that idiot have chosen another time to rob the egg?

Ugh. Elena kicked her feet in a sudden burst of anger, and a grunt of annoyance slipped her throat.

Nothing seemed to be going right for her nowadays. Sure, she knew the risks, going in. Christ, you didn’t become a thief without being fully aware of the risks. Still, it was another thing to be face to face with the consequences of her own actions.

Shadows flickered. Elena’s attention fixed on the flicker, just in time to see her mother pop out of the darkness, shaking her head like a dog shedding water. Pepper and salt colored hair bounced with the motion.

“Mom, what the fuck,” Elena said, though it probably wasn’t the best way to start a sentence with her mother. “I thought you were past using your magic to sneak around.”

“Well, I can hardly sit still when my own daughter ends up being kidnapped, can I?” her mother replied tartly, before approaching Elena and swooping her up into a rough hug. “It was all over the Realm Market, sweetie. How they’d caught two shadow witches attempting to steal the egg.”

“News sure travels fast,” Elena said wryly, wrapping her own arms around her mother. She breathed in the familiar scent of her mother. Sue Rivers drew after a rather extended hugging session, and now Elena saw her mother inspecting the antimagic bands.

“Oh, those will provide a problem. I can’t transport you if you’re holding those.” Sue frowned. “Damnit, I was hoping I’d be able to just haul you right back to the market and slip you into Earth. I was thinking you could lay low in Vienna for a few months.”

“You think I couldn’t have done that myself, mother?” Elena smiled wryly, immensely glad to see her mother, but also concerned that at any moment, a guard or witch might check in on them and promptly mess up their union. “Don’t try and heroics with me. These people aren’t planning to hurt me. It’s only if I fuck up that they will.”

“You can’t trust them.” Sue’s eyes narrowed. “You’re their prisoner. What happened with the egg, anyway?”

“It hatched. So I don’t think we’ll be able to use it for money anymore, mom.”

Something tightened in her mother’s features, and now a small nugget of worry teased itself into Elena. Her mother had been dedicated to both her main and side jobs for years. She liked money, but didn’t do a great job of squirelling it away, since she preferred to use it to visit places in luxurious conditions. Maybe her mother wasn’t really here for her, but for the dragon.

“It hatched, really?” Sue’s face twisted in worry. “Oh, that bit of news didn’t spread to the market.”

“Yeah, well, they want to keep the fact they have a queen dragon under wraps, don’t they?” Elena pried herself away from her mother’s grip, hating her own disappointment. Of course, it made sense, if someone failed the mission, someone else needed to pick up the slack. But it would have been nice if her mother had arrived just for her. “You’re still not thinking of snatching the baby, are you? Because that won’t work. It has magic of its own.” Plus, she could feel the queen nudging at her mind, dimly aware of someone else interacting with the human she was connected with.

What will happen if I leave now? Elena wanted to. But she also didn’t think she could endure that crying and wailing in the back of her head. It’d drive her insane. This dragon, for whatever reason, wanted her. Elena didn’t want the dragon, but since when did her choice matter when it came to other people’s decisions?

“Dragons grow too fast,” Sue said, her voice sad. “And as much as I’m disinterested in the war effort of Albalon, I can… appreciate that having a queen dragon will be quite the advantage for the royals. No. I want to rescue you, darling, but I had to check in about the egg too, okay?” She patted Elena’s face, and Elena nodded, accepting. A little relief toppled into her, too. It was stupid, a small thing, but sometimes those insecurities welled up in her, unbidden. Usually when she felt her mother was paying a little bit too much attention to everything else but her.

She’d always insisted she loved her daughter. But Elena remembered great chunks of her life when her mother was absent, simply vanishing for months on projects, and her father didn’t really know how to speak to a little girl. He tried in his own way, but he was just so busy with the market stall all the time, collecting information from traders, finding new missions for her mother to go onto. At least when Elena’s powers blossomed, she was able to go with her mother to places. When she was useful, and went to great lengths to achieve their goals, she got more attention, more praise than before. And it felt good.

“I’ll have to leave you,” Sue said, regret on her features. “But I’ll find a way to get those bracers off you, so I can take you with me. I’ll look for a master key or seek out an enchanter in the market. Just… sit tight. Your mama’s got this. You know who holds the key to your chains?”

“No,” Elena said, truthfully. Ever since Yvonne had locked her up, she knew the woman didn’t carry anything valuable around on her. It could be anywhere, her key out.

“Pity. Well, I’ll have a look all the same, see if I can’t figure something out.”

“Mom,” Elena said, determined to squeeze out the next sentence before her mother vanished, “The other shadow witch – he said he used to live in the Realm Market. I used to play with the children there, didn’t I? But I don’t recognize him. I feel like I should, but I don’t.”

Elena was not prepared for the look of horror painting over her mother’s face. It quickly smoothed over in blank calm, the same expression Sue pulled when acting as professional as possible for her customers. “There’s a lot of children in the markets, my darling. You’ve played with many of them. Maybe you have met this person before, but people come and go all the time, don’t they?”

Her mother’s behavior seemed… odd. She searched through her memory, to a long-ago conversation where her mother and father were discussing plans for their future. They were always seeking ways to change things. “I remember you saying you wanted to look for magic users in the orphans, perhaps give them a new home with us. Didn’t you… didn’t you find a shadow witch?” As soon as she said the word shadow witch in that context, her memory fuzzed, and that strange, inky blackness entered her skull again.

Oh no…

“I’m afraid not,” her mother said evasively. “Yes, we were looking, of course. But ultimately, we thought we’d be better off alone, you know.”

“What aren’t you telling me, mom?” Elena didn’t mean to sound so panicked, but that nauseating sensation that came with her shouldn’t be appearing outside of sleep.

Her mother sighed. She cupped Elena’s face with one calloused hand. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible. And… I can’t say much. But just… be careful around that other shadow witch, okay? He’s dangerous.”

He’s dangerous?

What made her say that? A million questions wanted to vault off her tongue, but before she could ask a single one, her mother’s face froze, as if realizing her mistake, and vanished into the shadows, unable to take Elena with her.

Elena stared dumbly at the spot where her mother had stood, where the lingering aroma of her grassy perfume remained.

She knows more than she’s letting on.

The implication terrified and angered Elena, because it meant that her mother might have a lot more secrets than she’d previously admitted, and it meant maybe her mother had done something cruel to her, rather than saved her.

The other mistake her mother made as well was the fact that Elena wouldn’t be staying away from Garek now. Not with such a cryptic way of stating it. Hell, her mother might as well have placed a big red button in front of Elena and told her not to push it.

So, naturally, she intended to push it. Because it had something to do with those dreams. That darkness. Something her mother did a long time ago, and never talked about. Something Elena didn’t originally push her on, either, because she didn’t remember anything, and she trusted her mother. Maybe a little too much.

Her door swung open, and Yvonne stepped inside, yawning and appearing thoroughly irritated. “Hey, sneak-thief. You’re following me up to the nursery. Your baby dragon awaits.”

Tensed at first, Elena relaxed when she registered that Yvonne had no clue of her mother’s visit, wasn’t coming in to check for disturbances. Breathing easier, Elena grumbled and put up a protest as she prepared to follow, when in fact, she was eager to do something other than sit around in her room, trapped in the vortex of her own thoughts, doubting the intentions of her own flesh and blood.

* * *

Turned out, baby dragons were quite the cuddlers. Actually, they were less about the cuddling, and more about the being near a constant source of warmth, and since Elena and Garek’s conveniently near human bodies ran at a constant warm temperature, the baby dragon was just fine with that. Elena’s new role as dragon babysitter was not exactly the kind of role she’d ever imagined performing in her long and less than illustrious career of taking things that didn’t belong to her, but the dragon inexplicably wanted her, and the death glares she and Garek received from the Bastion keep soldiers and witches was enough to stop her doing anything rash and pointless.

The other thing that confused Elena was that, in all intent and purpose, this dragon was a child.

Her child.

It hatched for her (and Garek), bonded to them, and slowly ran through the malleable contents of their mind like a mountain stream, absorbing ideas, feelings, concepts at an alarming rate, though not quite the trappings of human language.

Elena never planned to have a child. Rather, she never really thought about it beyond the vague I’m getting older and I still don’t have someone. Maybe I should think about settling down soon. My time’s ticking away, and I’m still working with my parents in their little stall, still going on illicit missions, and visiting earth but never settling upon it. Worries that congregated inside, all piling up and saving themselves for the days when she didn’t feel quite as strong in her convictions that her life was good and stable.

Then this. This mess of a situation, with a man she didn’t know, but thought she should. Because he did feel familiar, somehow.

It was during their fourth babysitting session in the space of a week that Garek finally deigned to engage Elena in conversation more than aggravating his captors and muttering about who was going to manhandle the (not so small) dragon. The dragon herself now resembled the size of a large dog within a week, and showed absolutely no signs of slowing down.

“When did your powers first emerge?” Garek lay completely flat on the floor, and the dragon had her head resting on his chest. He absently stroked it – his movements no longer so clunky and awkward as when the dragon first did this to him. His long fingers trailed behind the frills upon the golden dragon’s head, and she was quite audibly purring, sending a pleasant vibration in Elena’s mind.

“I’d say… early teens,” Elena said, wondering how much to share. After all, other people were listening in. Yvonne and Thorn sat together, both reading books, and four guards watched them with significantly less attention than previous visits. The nursery itself had more ruined toys and clothes from where the dragon chewed and raked them, and the corner of one side of the wooden pen had burn marks. A fire breather. Not concerning at all, since that last bout of fire breathing promptly had both Garek and Elena in the room within moments. To calm the young one down, so she didn’t accidentally on purpose burn down everything.

“Early teens. Same for me,” Garek said in his baritone, stretching like an eel. He looked rather absurd on the floor, with the golden dragon draped around him. “Though I sometimes wonder if I had it earlier, you know. Because I was able to do things almost straight away, and my Zorin tutors in the Smuggler’s Den didn’t understand it. Should have taken years, they said, to perfect shadow magic.”

Elena considered this, even as she moved closer to give the demanding dragon a snout-rub. The golden dragon blew a hard breath out of her nostrils, before relaxing. They should name the dragon, Elena thought. But according to the exiles, the dragons preferred to name themselves. Dragons had all sorts of customs Elena was completely oblivious to. It also seemed the unicirim and humans in Bastion also had no clue about dragon culture whatsoever, since they were understandably, a little obsessed with taking back River’s End and flushing the dragons out of it.

The queen dragon presented to this cause a unique opportunity.

“That’s similar to me, actually. My mother’s a shadow witch, though, and she never made a big deal about it. But I do remember some of our regular customers being surprised that I was so skilled from a young age. My mother said it was because I’d grown up watching her use it.” And Elena accepted the explanation. Garek’s words, however, shone light on the fact that maybe the explanation wasn’t quite as foolproof as her mother believed.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Garek said with a low rumble, now turning those caramel brown eyes of his upon her. At the angle upon the floor, his features seemed accentuated, somehow, and his gaze lazy and hooded. “Both of us here. Both of us with the same magic, being skilled with it early on. Both of us having been in the Realm Market at some point. Yet we don’t remember each other at all.”

Elena’s gaze remained transfixed upon Garek’s. Her body stilled, and she became acutely aware of his long eyelashes, the thickness of his bottom lip, and the dusting of freckles just under each eye. “No. I don’t.”

The baby dragon nudged at her mind, brimming with curiosity. Did it have a concept of their language already? Did it understand thoughts, feelings, words?

Whatever it understood, she got a clear sense that it wanted her to ask the next question. The one building up in her throat, but not finding a way out of it.

Because her question went somewhere she wasn’t sure she wanted to explore the answer to. “I have nightmares,” she said.

There. The words were out. Blurted, garbled, before she’d had time to filter them, and she averted her gaze, struggling to control her sudden blush. I have nightmares. Come on, Elena, add to this. She didn’t, and the silence turned from languid to awkward. She also vaguely noticed Thorn and Yvonne still, having not turned the page in their books for quite some time.

“Nightmares, you say?” Garek sounded oddly choked. “Care to elaborate?”

Shit. Shit shit. Okay, well… taking a deep breath, unsure where to even start, she said, “The same one. I’ve had it for years.”

There was no mistaking it this time. Garek was alert, holding his breath, eyes wider than usual. The baby dragon cracked open her golden eyes to fix one on Elena, and her purring stopped. She shuffled her lanky bat-like wings closer into her sturdy frame.

“Funny you should mention that,” he said, playing himself off as calm, when he was everything but. Elena was close enough to sense his lack of ease, after all. “I’ve had a nightmare for a long time, too. But we all have nightmares, don’t we? Nothing special about that.”

“No, nothing special,” Elena echoed. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of nightmare you have?”

“You first,” he offered.

Really, Elena thought. “You’re gonna be like that?”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. Which earned him a punch from Elena to the shoulder. “Ow! Fine. I have a reoccurring nightmare where it feels like I’ve forgotten something, and then this kind of blackness rushes from all corners of the room or wherever I am. Like it’ll drown me.” His gaze went distant, dredging into the memories. “There’s always a feeling like there’s something wrong, and if I let that black stuff completely cover me, then I’m gone.”

Oh, shit.

He had the exact same dream as her. She could no longer chalk all this up to coincidence. “Shit,” she also said out loud. He snapped out of his reminiscent stature and queried her with one raised eyebrow. “Same.”

Too tongue tied to come up with anything else, she left it at that. Shit; same. I’m such a fucking great conversationalist.

“You’re serious? You have the same dream?” His mouth hung open, but she could tell he’d been wondering something similar. Ever since she’d laid eyes on him, and felt like she knew him, somehow. Perhaps it was the same for him.

“Didn’t you suspect?”

He fell silent a moment, before nodding slowly. “I… I did think there was far too much into our meeting.”

Before either of them added anything else to the matter, Thorn’s voice stole over them.

“Okay, show me your hands.” She sauntered over to them, followed by Yvonne, and Elena didn’t fancy the idea of getting on the wrong side of either. She turned both her palms upward, noticing how Thorn and Yvonne’s eyes fixed upon her smudged scar. Garek, eyebrows knitted together, exposed his palms as well, and to Helen’s shock, although they didn’t have marks on their palms – they both had the same zigzag pattern on their wrists.

Why the hell hadn’t she noticed this before? Her mind whirled through all their interactions, and none of them involved Garek waving his hand around, or her doing the same.

“Bonded,” Thorn said, grasping their hands and matching them to one another. “You’re Bonded to one another. This gets stranger and stranger.”

“What?” Elena gaped at the scarred older woman, struggling to register the words. Bonded. But how? Garek appeared equally dumbfounded.

“This is a birthmark,” Garek said weakly, not convincing anyone, least of all himself. “Isn’t the Bond supposed to happen on the palm?” He frowned. “And aren’t you supposed to remember it when it happens?”

“Here’s the crux of the mystery,” Yvonne said, folding her arms as she inspected them, Elena in particular. “You both claim to be strangers, yes?”

“Yes,” Garek insisted. “I don’t know this woman. I don’t know why she came here at the same time. Why we have the same powers, why we have the same dreams.”

The water witch gave a tight smile. “If that’s the case, then we have another question. Why don’t either of you remember your Bond?”

Elena was fresh out of words, of even attempting to formulate some kind of explanation she could get behind, because all of this was out of her ball park.

The man that felt familiar to her might just be the person she’d been looking for her entire life.

“I trained with other Zorin witches, and we’ve got a lot of strange magicks over in our swamps. Talking to frogs has to be my favorite useless one ever seen. But it seems we keep getting surprised by magic all the time as well, so what do I know?”

Bond? We’re Bonded? Elena and Garek’s eyes met from across the room, and something shifted in the atmosphere between them. Something fiery, crackling that charged the space left, leaving a kind of inexorable pull. Maybe he was a damn fridge, and she was a string of those alphabet magnets that spelled “shit,” before a cat knocked off some of the letters.

Bad comparison aside, she knew one thing.

She was in trouble if she kept going like this. These random tugs of feeling were inconvenient, inappropriate, and absurd. Because of the Bond?

No. She’d been telling herself not to develop attraction like an idiot. Sure, admiration was fine. People admired people, right? Sure, being interested in someone else was perfectly normal as well. Being intrigued by his presence, his demeanor, even if he did come across as cocksure and smug at times…

She just – she didn’t want complications with anyone. Especially the person who had sabotaged her mission and left her as a prisoner. Yvonne had to be lying. There was no way they were Bonded. Even if they did have the same mark on their palms…

Focusing on all the reasons she disliked him, she happily went back to glaring again, fueled by her conviction that he wouldn’t even blink when it came to escaping, and to leave her to the wolves.

That was just the way of a thief.

4

Garek

Impossible. How could he have a Bond and not be aware of it? All unicirim were capable of one. He knew his mark looked like the type of mark that emerged upon the skin after a Bond had happened, but of course it wasn’t, because you felt your Bonded. You slipped into their heart, body, soul, heard each other’s thoughts, and shared everything intimate. That kind of intensity couldn’t be hidden.

Except… according to the witches hovering above him, and the narrowed, frozen glare on Elena’s face, that was precisely the case.

“I don’t feel anything,” he whispered, flashing an apologetic look to Elena. “I’ve had this mark for years. Surely… surely I would have felt something.”

Thorn’s dark eyes clouded over. “You did feel something though, didn’t you? You said she felt familiar.”

Reluctantly, Garek bobbed his head. “Well, yes. But…” How to explain? “It’s more like I should know her, but I don’t. Like something’s missing.”

Something flickered over Elena’s face, and it went from hard to soft. “Missing…” she said.

“Yes,” Garek replied. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Like there’s a hollow spot in your soul,” Elena said, voice barely above a whisper. Everyone turned to look at her for the rather dramatic statement. Her words, however, made a horrible kind of sense in Garek.

“Yes.” Like that. He studied her in more interest, daring himself to associate someone like her being the person who’d know his every emotion, and sink deep into his veins until neither of them knew which body part belonged to the other. “I don’t understand. How can I not know?”

And it was all so, so wrong.

“You really don’t feel any closeness with her?” Thorn asked. Garek’s eyes darted to Thorn’s hand, where he saw the faint white tracing of a scar.

“No. Nothing. Just…” Loss.

Elena was silent, though her breaths came slow and hard, and her slender finger pads rubbed lightly together, clearly trying to make sense of the whole impossible Bonded thing.

Thorn pinched the bridge of her nose. “It seems, Yvonne, that we have an extra complication. Any idea where to start?”

“Mm, no. But I’ll ask Artur. See if he’s got anything in that crusty old brain of his.”

“There’s one person you can ask,” Elena said then, her voice cracking as she finished.

“Oh?” Yvonne scowled at the younger woman. “Do tell.”

“I…” Elena’s eyes darted to the floor, then stayed there, unable to look elsewhere. “My mother. She might know. Actually, I think she does. She said something about needing to keep me out of danger. And… she…” Elena stopped herself from saying something else, and Garek wondered wildly what hovered on the tip of her tongue.

“Your mother,” Yvonne said flatly. “Convenient.”

“I swear. She knew I was having these nightmares. But she never mentioned anything about a Bond. She just changed the subject or found something else to talk about, and I didn’t think it meant anything big at the time.”

“Right.” Yvonne and Thorn murmured something to one another, too quiet for Garek to hear. Meanwhile, Garek just stared at Elena, trying to reconcile the image he had of someone Bonded to him with her. He failed, because there was nothing there except that vague loss.

They should know one another, but they didn’t. And when they touched, there were no sparks, no fire or dams bursting. To test, he absently brushed his fingers against her knuckles, trying to appear he was comforting her, and a strange nausea overtook him.

Her gaze snapped up to him as well, stricken, and she moved her hands away. “What was that?”

“What did you feel?” Thorn said sharply, and Garek grimaced.

“Off,” he said. “Like I’ll be sick if I touch her for too long. Yet I also…” Want to touch her. Yeah, he didn’t voice that out loud, preferring to leave it hanging.

“What in skies and swamps,” Yvonne said, apparently at the end of her comprehension abilities as well. “It’s official. I know nothing about magic. All you special cases cropping out of nowhere. First Maya not fitting in the box, then a wanderer, and now two people who can’t feel their Bond. Who are also thieves who tried to steal the queen dragon. I’m out.”

“Least I don’t torture people for fun,” Garek said, before he could help himself. The water witch gave him a warning glare, as did Elena. “I’ve never tried to hurt someone the way you did to me.”

“Are you sure about that?” Yvonne smiled lightly, but it hid danger. “Because the things you’ve stolen – how do you know you didn’t ruin someone else’s life forever? Taking their most valuable possession. Leaving them in the mud after you robbed them blind. You smugglers are all the same. Thinking you’re above other people, when you’re just as bad as them.”

“I never claimed to be better than other people,” Garek said, the unease still churning in his stomach. “But you think you are, don’t you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Elena squeaked then. “Don’t say things like that.”

“He’s stupid,” Yvonne said. “But don’t worry. I’d prefer to get to the mystery of this Bond. So you say your mother knows? And where is she? The Realm Market?”

“Usually,” Elena said. She sucked in her bottom lip, appearing anxious to Garek’s eyes. “It’s my mother and father, they sell a stall. They call it the Knick-Knacker, you’ll see the sign. But… don’t hurt them.”

“If you don’t want them to be hurt, then why tell us this?” Thorn asked in interest. Garek privately thought the same, because he didn’t think these kind of people planned to be lenient on those with a reputation for stealing.

“Because I want to know,” Elena said simply. “And she never told me.”

Garek didn’t have the luxury of a parent who could tell him what to do. He had his mentor, Sylas, who’d trained him specifically for the purpose of using his talents for profiting the Smuggler’s Den. And it was great to be put to such use, to feel a kind of direction, a purpose to his existence. To have some guidance on his magic, though he knew most of it instinctively already. He liked who he was. But now Sylas, old and settled in his underground throne, would be watching the seconds tick by, and understanding that Garek had failed. If the news spread over the Realm Market, it’d reach the Smuggler’s Den. They had eyes and ears everywhere.

He wouldn’t sell out his people’s secrets, but he couldn’t entirely trust them not to send an assassin at some point to make sure he didn’t reveal anything about their operations. Since the den did process hundreds of clients each day, and scoop up wretched magical children like him to train.

Someone like Elena must have had a nice, secure life. He didn’t begrudge her it. Some people needed to have nice lives, to make up for the ones who didn’t.

“If this Bond between us is true,” he started, making sure Elena’s dark eyes locked with his, because even if touching her nauseated him, seeing her also felt right at the same time. “Then I’d like to know why it’s not working as intended.” It was a strange contradiction, wanting to be near her and distant. Like they should be close, but whatever darkness inked their dreams wouldn’t let them.

“That makes two of us.” She smiled tentatively at him, with a beautiful pale flush on her cheeks, and he blinked.

“That uh, yes. Hmm.” Words failed to form properly. His brain kick started into action when Yvonne cleared her throat, pointing at the baby dragon, which now squirmed, trying to find a better position on Garek’s broad chest. The dragon’s mind brushed against his own, not intrusive, exactly, just curious.

You and me both, little D, he thought.

“We must have met before, then. At the market,” he mused, searching her eyes to see if maybe she recalled something he didn’t. Unlikely, but still…

She nodded at his words, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Like I said, I played with the children when I was younger. And I know my mom didn’t want me playing for some weeks at one point, and that was when I started getting the nightmares. I don’t remember anything else, though. Just a time I was playing and a time when I wasn’t. Nothing of you.”

“Nothing of you, either,” Garek admitted, though he’d been scrabbling hard through his memory for any girls that resembled her. His past in the Realm Market appeared in his mind like a smudged painting. “Though I was taken quite young. I think I was around ten. Eleven. Something like that.”

They continued to scour each other’s expressions in curiosity, trying, trying to push past the fog. A headache built up in Garek’s skull as a result, and he gave up with a huff, choosing instead to go back to stroking the baby dragon. At least the activity was soothing, and the dragon’s purring a pleasant vibration against his chest, which caused his bones to be sunk in warmth.

“Are you really going to help these thieves out?” One of the guards spoke up again, the one that Garek referred to in his head as Grumpy. He always sounded like there was something shoved up his backside when he spoke, and he and Garek were quite content to mutually dislike one another.

“We’re helping ourselves in the process,” Yvonne said. “And like them or not, our little queen here certainly seems attached to them. And we all know she can breathe fire, so let’s not go down this route.”

Go on, Garek thought savagely, feeling a similar emotion stir in the golden dragon. Say again how you think we should just kill the queen. I dare you.

The guard, wisely, chose to keep his tongue from flapping, though he stood far stiffer than the other three, face hidden behind his dark gray visor.

* * *

Garek received a letter from his mentor, Sylas, two days later. Hidden somehow in a plate of food delivered to him by either a servant in on it, or completely oblivious to the information he carried. Garek lay on his bed, facing away from the door, and unfolded the tiny parchment, recognizing Sylas’ special seal in the top left corner.

Son, the letter read.

We know by now that your mission has failed. The security in the castle is tight if you’re not a shadow witch, but we’ve managed to glean information off a guard that our… product has hatched. Furthermore, you may have a bond with said product, which no one expected to happen, least of all our scaly clients.

Not everyone is pleased to hear of your subsequent capture, however. Some believe it better to cut their losses and cut you in the process. They think you’re turning soft with the life of luxury you must be leading in the Bastion keep.

Garek snorted at this, suppressing his urge to laugh wildly. Yes, he was just loving his new accommodations and role.

Our clients grow restless and surly. They are distressed at the thought of a queen hatching for a human, to the point where they are thinking the unthinkable. Kill the queen.

They will pay double our current offer just for you to kill the queen. Since from what we gather from our clients, a queen that has hatched for a human is worse than losing a war.

As always, we at Smuggler’s Den remain neutral. Your task has changed.

When you find an opportunity, kill the queen. This is your chance to redeem yourself. If you can’t…

Then I’m sorry, my son.

I can’t stop them.

Good luck, and hope you return to Smuggler’s Den in triumph.

S

Staring blankly at the S, Garek didn’t move for a moment. Dread bottomed out his stomach, leaving a cold rush traveling through his veins. The queen dragon nudged at his mind, curious at the change in mood, beginning to grow upset herself.

Garek re-read the letter twice more.

He should have seen this coming. He’d speculated that he’d be an assassination target, but for some reason, it didn’t occur to him that the queen would be a target. He’d assumed they’d still want to haul the queen out, somehow. Not kill her.

Skies. He didn’t even know if he could. The thought of stroking that little dragon, then slitting her throat next second filled him with sheer revulsion at the concept. No way. He couldn’t do that. Not drain the life from a completely innocent and trusting creature, especially one that seemed to regard him as a parent figure. Even if it’d only been something to the tune of two weeks since his capture, he’d sensed that little creature in his mind every day, and her confused emotions as she attempted to understand the world around her, and why he and Elena couldn’t be near her every hour of the day and night.

Another ugly thought struck him.

It was far, far worse than just the queen being a target for assassination. Hadn’t Thorn said that the queen was connected to them? That if one or both of them would die, it would kill the queen as well of a broken heart?

Meaning that he and Elena were vulnerabilities.

Without access to their magic. Hard not to get panicked at that thought. All it’d take would be one slip of poison in his food, like how that parchment got in. He’d need to taste the food carefully from now on, using the brief training a food taster learned if they didn’t trust their hosts.

He’d… he’d have to warn Elena. But by extension and association, that meant him aligning with the royals and their cause.

No, I’m not aligning with them. This is just for myself. It’s just a bad joke that it’s working out this way.

The alternative simply didn’t exist for him.

No. He stared at the paper for a while longer, debating how to break the news. If he should burn every scrap or present it as evidence. It took far too long for him to roll out of bed, and alert the guard outside his door.

A muscled, visor wearing guard with the unicirim royal crest on his armor swam into view. “What?”

“I need to talk to Yvonne or Thorn. Or one of the royals. Anyone important.” He stood his ground, gazing evenly at the guard until he relented with a grunt, locked the door in Garek’s face, and slouched off to fetch someone. He couldn’t stay still after that, anxiously pacing up and down the small room, clutching the parchment, still considering whether he should just rip it up once and for all and scatter the pieces to the winds outside his tiny viewing window. Betraying his people didn’t exactly come easy. His mouth was dry, and his heart beat a painful rhythm against his ribcage, as if accusing him of being a sellout. A traitor. Spitting in Sylas’ face after the old man’s efforts to try and reach out to him, to redeem him, like he was a true son.

I’ll always look out for you, son. We might be a collection of slum dwellers and has-beens, but we’re like family, and family has each other’s backs.

Garek exhaled loudly, feeling as though he was exorcising his soul with it. They never said life would be easy, but this…

This was worse than being on the streets. He didn’t even like any of these people, but he refused to be a participant in murdering something that trusted him so completely, that didn’t know any better.

Humans were awful. He knew that, and took solace in it. Made it easier for him to do his jobs, because he knew everyone was wearing masks, anyway, hiding something dark and twisted within. They stole, maimed, killed lusted, pretending to be good people, when reality revealed them for who they really were.

He was just fine stealing from them. But not the little queen. Not something so pure, so stripped down and having done nothing to deserve suffering.

It was Tara and Janus who came through the door, the siblings tall, proud, and wary.

“You wanted to speak to us?” Janus said, leaving a cautious distance between them. Tara was less guarded, but still had a set about her jaw that denoted a lack of trust. Garek held up the crumpled parchment in his hand.

“This was smuggled to me earlier. I think you should read it.” Quickly, give it to them now, he thought. He handed over the parchment before he changed his mind. He’d made his choice. The sibling’s eyes darkened as they huddled together to read through the letter

Seconds trickled by as Garek waited for judgment to fall. Whatever their verdict, he hoped at least his intentions were clear. He didn’t plan to hurt the baby.

“Why give us this?” Tara was the first to speak, her brow furrowed. “Surely this goes against your own interests.”

“You seriously want to talk about this now?” Garek said, struggling to ignore the bees buzzing in his stomach. “You know because of that letter, we have limited time. Elena’s going to be in danger!” He paused. “The dragon. Me. They’re going to know I betrayed them fast.”

Tara and Janus exchanged wary expressions. “We’ll deal with her, don’t worry. But still… why would you care about Elena or the dragon?”

Garek gulped visibly, unsure how to explain, since the panic in his stomach continued overriding everything else. “I’ve no desire to hurt the queen. If they’d asked me to try and smuggle her out, we wouldn’t be having this talk, and most likely you’d come in to an empty bed sometime in the next month. But I’ve no interest in murder.”

The siblings regarded him with identical glares, and he clasped his clammy hands behind his back.

“You don’t want to hurt the dragon.”

“No. Wasn’t that obvious?” Garek smiled briefly, though it most likely came out as a grimace. He didn’t particularly want to hurt Elena, either… “But there is another complication…”

“Of course there is,” Tara said in exasperation. “What is it?”

“There’s three ways to kill the queen. Either assassinate her, the obvious one, or to kill me or Elena. We are quite vulnerable – and if spies can smuggle in a piece of parchment to me, then they can likely slip in something else a little more lethal as well.”

Really, he shouldn’t be telling them about their own security, but neither did he particularly care for getting killed due to major security flaws.

Janus and Tara exchanged a long, meaningful look, as if communicating without words. Twins were like that, weren’t they? Always too close for comfort.

“Thank you for telling us,” Tara said softly. “We’ll pass this along.”

Garek gave a non-committal grunt in response. Sooner or later his former allies (it stung to consider them this way) would catch the news. Sylas might be sitting at his desk with a heavy sigh of regret for having reached out at all. And lots of knives would be sharpened, lots of unsavory thieves taking bets on who’d bring down the shadow user first. Rare enough he was a male, able to use shadow magic. Rarer still he was a unicirim to boot. They’d want to force him into his unicirim form most likely, to rip out his feathers and use them for charms and wards. The black markets around the worlds always held a budding trade in procured body parts.

Tara and Janus left, promising to return shortly with news, though Garek knew it’d be something along the order of moving him to a more secure, less obvious location.

He frowned at the door they left through, still not completely sure if he’d made the right choice. Certainly it wasn’t the smart choice, because the smart choice would be killing the dragon and letting his colleagues rescue him, and then laughing in some high end bar through the dozens of expensive wines bought with his earnings. Buying the company of top class women and comparing successful heists with the boys.

Sacrifices had to be made. An innocent life deserved a chance. Besides, a new mystery had neatly thrown itself onto his lap. A mystery wrapped by dark hair and dark eyes and a body that preferred wearing boyish clothes – pants and shirts rather than sundresses and feminine attire. That glared at him sometimes with unrelenting hate, and sometimes, he was sure, with something else.

It intrigued him, because he’d never bothered forging a connection with any woman. Didn’t think he could, really, because none of them tugged at his heartstrings. None of them meant anything more than a quick way to blow off frustration, a night of passion and fun, and sometimes just something warm to hold when things got a little too lonely for sleeping solo.

I should try talking to her more. Be nice to talk to her outside the context of the dragon and being ogled by several people at once, expecting him to pull off a disappearing act with these antimagic bracers. Which he had been picking at in his spare time. They didn’t want to come off. It was as if they were welded into his skin, because he barely managed to squeeze a fingernail underneath the peculiar metal.

Idling on the bed, he began tracing the shapes on the ceiling again. Cracks and lines which as a child, he used to imagine were creatures or objects, interpreting the squiggles in ways others didn’t. A small patch in the corner resembled the toothy snout of a dragon, or perhaps the wings of a unicirim. His mind continued to paint on top of that image, until he saw himself and a dragon flying through the air. A golden dragon, huge with wings blotting light beneath, jaws open wide, fire billowing from their mouth as they burned enemies in front…

Wait, no. He wasn’t the kind of person who’d be found in a battlefield. He was the person who scavenged from the dead after everything was over.

Still… it was a nice image. Even nicer when he imagined Elena straddling his back, her hands tangled in his mane. Urging him to fly faster, their magic blending together so they became invisible to all but themselves. Sharing his gift with someone else… how wonderful would that feel?

Halfway through his drifting thoughts, he heard a bang.

Jerking upright from the bed, adrenaline rushing through his veins, he listened intently for more sound. Surely that couldn’t be…

Bang.

He froze. Explosions. Yes, that was definitely something exploding.

5

Elena

They hadn’t locked her door. Elena didn’t know why, she didn’t care – her only thought was to venture upstairs to where the dragon was. In her mind it cried out in distress, having heard the loud noises as well, and the faint rumbling within the castle, as if a section of it was collapsing. Had people exploded their way inside? People after the dragon? Or enemies of the royals?

I’m coming, little one, Elena thought in response to the dragon’s increasing stress, noting how the guards just rushed past her, not paying any heed to the worn down prisoner in her sack of a top and loose brown pants. On the top floor, she encountered Helen, who hesitated in front, eyes wide as she took in the fact that Elena was unescorted. Still shackled by her magic, but perfectly capable of doing harm.

“Step aside!” Elena snapped, shoving Helen aside before she had a chance to protest. “The baby needs her momma!”

The red head swallowed a nervous lump in her throat, and again, Elena felt that strange push upon her emotions, even as she headed for the dragon. She didn’t know what kind of magic this woman had, but she felt oddly exposed under Helen’s scrutiny. Like every emotion contained in her physical body was up for scrutiny, to be picked apart like a lab experiment.

“Okay,” Helen said, as if she’d just confirmed something. “Just… be careful, okay? There shouldn’t be any problems, but if I can’t slow them down…”

Not that Elena knew how someone who could vaguely touch on emotions might be able to slow people down, but she nodded and passed several more guards, before making it into the nursery with the frantically pacing queen dragon. Upon sighting her, the dragon let out a low pitched whine, before rushing up to the pen, and scrambling over it – already big enough to do so. At this rate, if they didn’t move her out, she’d be too big to squeeze through the door.

“It’s okay, little one,” Elena said, though the dragon wasn’t exactly little anymore. She butted Elena in the stomach, nostrils blowing in discomfort, tail twitching, golden wings hunched up like the shell of a tortoise. The scaly frame was shaking, and it reminded Elena of a frightened dog, shivering and wet and terrified of every little sound that reached its ears. She sank onto her knees and cradled the dragon. It took them a moment to find a comfortable position, but eventually, the dragon rested her chin on Elena’s shoulder, and sprawled oversized on her lap, whilst she lightly stroked the wing joints, which seemed to bring the baby the most relief. “You’re gonna be too big for this soon. I’m not growing any taller, but you – you’re gonna be the size of a damn house.”

Meanwhile, Elena was thinking furiously to herself. Should they try and escape? Something was going on, some altercation, a fight, a skirmish. An attempt to take the dragon? Maybe taking the dragon out the room might expose her to even more danger. Or maybe they were sitting ducks, waiting abjectly for destruction if they didn’t move. She wished she could sneak outside to check, but the cuffs prevented her magic, making her feel like a useless sack of skin, vulnerable at worst. She loathed being separated from her magic; the thing that allowed her to escape whenever she wanted, permitted her to hide when other people and their problems became too much. Or if hers did.

These things weren’t designed to fall off at the click of a finger, after all.

The door softly clicked open, and she stiffened, turning and only relaxing when she registered the newcomer as Garek.

“I felt her,” Garek said, approaching them instantly, without hesitation. “She’s frightened.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Elena snapped, eyeing Garek as he crouched down next to them and rested a hand on the dragon’s left wing joint. His fingers lightly brushed hers, sending a strange, warm heat flowing under her skin. Like his touch would leave a mark similar to a branding iron. .

Different from the nausea of before. His eyes widened as well. “What?” he whispered, and they held eye contact for one breath-stopping moment. Searching for why he felt so familiar. Why sometimes his presence repulsed her and why sometimes it reeled her right in. But that moment of almost clarity snapped like a band when another muffled blast shook the walls of the nursery, and the dragon let out a puppy-ish whimper.

“Shitballs,” Elena said, feeling the dragon tense up and resemble driftwood against her body. “Do we need to escape? Do you have any idea what’s happening?”

Garek clenched his jaw, glancing away to the floor as if he could see everything happening below them. “I’m not completely certain, but I have a… suspicion. I think my former employers are coming for what’s owed.”

“The dragon,” Elena whispered. “They want her back.” She clutched the dragon a little tighter. “Is it… wrong, they do? I mean… she was… taken. Right? They just want their little one back?”

“They don’t,” Garek snapped. “They want her dead.”

Elena’s jaw hung open, speechless for a moment. “They’re coming to kill her? Your employers? Why?”

“Yes. I… received news earlier on that since she’d hatched, the dragons are less inclined to take her back. It’s a belief that she’s been tainted by human presence. Which means her making it to adulthood and being sympathetic to humans is the worse thing they can possibly think of for a future leader of their society.”

Cuddling the unnamed dragon in her arms and lap, Elena couldn’t really envision this trembling ball of youth as a leader. Surely, it’d be years and years before anything happened. Unless dragons grew up fast, and learned fast. “That sounds so messed up. Now she’s born, suddenly she’s useless to them. How awful.”

The dragon squeaked in apparent agreement. Footsteps banged outside the nursery, and skidded to a halt outside the door, before a red-faced, panicked Yvonne dashed in, taking in the sight of the chained shadow witches crowding the dragon, and the four guards on either side, stiff and alert for trouble.

“Okay,” Yvonne panted, her wild dark hair a mess, her black eyes frantic. “I don’t care how you ended up here, but I need you right now to get the dragon out. We’re moving her to a better location. Thorn’ll be here shortly as well.”

Garek and Elena exchanged a meaningful glance to one another. “Did you manage to stop whatever’s happening?” Elena asked, hoping the witch would tell her, not really expecting her to.

“Barely. They weren’t expecting a wanderer in our arsenal, or a pissed off wife to start shooting flaming arrows at them.”

“…Right,” Elena said, thinking it wouldn’t entirely be pleasant if someone started shooting flaming arrows at her. Remind me not to get on these people’s bad side again. “Where we going?”

Yvonne beckoned at them, not bothering to explain with words. Elena sighed, disentangling herself from the dragon, wondering how to usher the dragon into a new place when she likely hadn’t left this room in the length of her short life. So she tried words. “Hey, little one. We need you to follow us out of here. We’re taking you somewhere safe.”

Elena stared into one of the dragon’s great golden eyes. The dragon’s mind seemed to push into hers, clearly trying to work out the words, the connection and meaning. The words, however, didn’t help, so instead, she tried visualizing a safe place. She pictured taking the dragon outside, following Yvonne away from something scary and dark, to someone nice, safe, quiet.

Images flicked back into her mind, and she heard Garek give a soft gasp. The baby sent a picture of the two of them together in the safe space Elena had visualized, cuddling her, with the hint of a question. It was shunted softly into Elena’s mind, hovering like a dewdrop on a leaf, waiting for confirmation.

She understands, Elena thought with a shiver of amazement. She’s so young, and she understands.

“Yes,” Elena said, and Garek watched as the dragon clambered upright, and padded eagerly after Yvonne, checking to make sure Garek and Elena followed.

“That was easier than expected,” Yvonne remarked, entering the corridor and flagging down Thorn. The older woman hurried up to them, shaking her head.

“They’re using antimagic charms, which stops Helen’s power from working on them. They know about her.”

Yvonne cursed softly, and another explosion wracked the castle. Parts of the ceiling began to topple. “Follow me. Keep yourself and the dragon invisible.”

Thorn nodded, her scarred face hard, and Elena’s heart began to pick up in pace as she realized her new predicament. She and Garek would be trailing behind Yvonne, whilst a ghostly dragon and shadow witch walked with them. And without magic… Helen felt ridiculously vulnerable.

Garek seemed to feel the same. “Um… won’t we be disguised, too? Since we can’t protect ourselves, and if we die, the dragon might die of a broken heart?”

“Yeah, about that,” Yvonne said. “I just can’t risk you both disappearing on me. I’ll try to keep you alive, anyway.”

To be fair, Elena probably shouldn’t have expected a different response. It didn’t reassure her much, and she kept looking at her back, waiting for something to go wrong, for… angry, twisted people to charge down the corridor, swords in hands, magic forming to strike out at them. No one came, but the corridor was eerily empty, aside from the four guards that trotted after them, determined to protect their assigned charge.

Panic teased Elena’s mind when Thorn and the dragon vanished from view – panic that originated from the dragon. Elena beamed a soothing image into the dragon’s mind – that Thorn was wrapping her in a blanket, so that the demons she pictured as the enemy couldn’t see them at all. It was strange, communicating visually, but to an extent, Elena’s brain worked with visual memory anyway. She merely associated words with those images, those memories. Here, she was associating feeling with the images, rather than words. Since the baby didn’t quite grasp the intricacies of human language yet.

Out the corridor, into a small study next to what seemed like an old, decrepit room, full of tarnished grandeur and relics gathering dust, as if the room had once belonged to someone important. Perhaps back in Bastion’s convoluted history, a guest of great importance lived in these walls. Maybe even a royal, though Elena was aware enough to know most of the unicirim royal bloodline used to shack up in River’s End. Bastion was a more uniform, well plotted city compared to the rabbit warren lanes and buildings of River’s End, in the brief moments the Realm Market had parked itself nearby River’s End, and they had entered the quarantined city for potential new buyers.

A tapestry of a female unicirim with a male rider depicted the two fighting against some monstrous, distorted foe. In the wall next to this threadbare image was a tiny crack. Another image entered Elena’s mind – of the baby dragon studying the faded-out picture, radiating unease when studying the formless monster, and curiosity with the Bonded pair. When touched, the wall slid with a rumbling groan, revealing a dank, dark passageway that buffeted her with a rancid wind, as if the air had been trapped and staling for centuries.

“There must be a lot of secret passages in this place,” Garek said, coughing profusely, fist in front of his mouth. “And they probably all smell like death warmed up.”

“Ugh, please don’t say that, I’m already having a hard enough time as it is processing.”

Garek gave her a mischievous grin, and Elena smiled back, some of the breath freezing in her lungs. “Let’s go in, shall we?”

“After you,” Elena said, mostly because she didn’t entirely trust the passageway to be completely abandoned. Who knew what sort of creatures hid in the shadows?

“Guards,” Yvonne told the four protectors, “we’ll take it from here. Please try to find one of the royals and protect them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the guards said, and all four of them did an identical, sharp salute, before trotting off, each bracing a hand on their weapon in case something turned up.

Descending into cobwebby darkness, sliding the secret passage shut behind them, the shadow witches, Yvonne and the dragon fumbled along. Elena braced one hand against the side of the wall and listened to echoing footsteps, taking deep inhales of the musty odor, and the mingled scents of the others. Garek had a strong, earthy odor to his, and he walked with a heavy clump on the floor, like he was trying to break through the stone. Not a stealthy shadow witch. Not that Elena was much better. Yvonne was the quietest, and of course the dragon and Thorn were blanketed by additionally layers of darkness.

Her mind drifted to the confusion of Garek. Of the mystery linking them together and pushing them apart. Of the notion that she should be feeling something for him, but there was something intangible in their way, an emptiness that stopped their connection from finalizing.

A connection her mother had stolen from her. Now, there was nothing between them. No memory of whatever past they shared. Forced together because of this dragon, and restricted to careful conversation whilst surrounded by guards, isolated in other moments. She didn’t know the man in front of her. Only surface level things. Only knowing she liked his smile, wasn’t sure what to think about his humor, since she suspected he’d be at home blurting ribald jokes in front of a crowd of eager drunks. There was something softer about him, too, under those rough edges.

Something she liked seeing, hidden under his blonde hair and caramel brown eyes. Which didn’t get much chance to show itself in their current environment. She wondered, though, if there’d be more softness if they had time to themselves. If no one overheard them and no one condemned them.

Then again, given their circumstances, she doubted they would be allowed time to themselves. The Bastion dwellers couldn’t trust them. The dragon was their first priority. And Elena’s mother intended to save her. She hoped her mother succeeded, but also worried she might. It was strange to be in two states of mind. Because she hated being a prisoner and so vulnerable, but at the same time, she was curious about the dragon’s fate. Curious to see how things would go, because to be honest, stuck in the middle of a war where she happened to be a kind of mother to a dragon that might change the future was a little bit exciting. The sort of exciting that someone planning to settle down didn’t want.

Yes, she wanted her quiet hut in the mountains. But… she also wanted bustle. Intrigue. Working as a thief, she never got to be a true part of anything. She just briefly stole into other people’s lives and took away things that belonged to them. She was never involved in anything. When traveling a lot as well, friends were made and lost by the dozens, because what point was there in making some if you were likely going to leave them behind in less than a year anyway? She always had the stability of her mother and father and their Knick Knacker stall, and her mother to teach her how to be a better shadow witch.

Now these people were yanking her by the chain into this mess, now that someone else was lumped in the same situation as her, forced to be a parent to a creature neither of them dreamed of in a million years, frankly, the curiosity ate her up. More than all the other desires, though they still lingered there in some degree and form.

Another image pulsed in her mind from the dragon. An image of her and Garek standing together, holding each other by their marked palms. The mood accompanying the picture wasn’t one Elena could be certain of identifying, so her brain interpreted it as a tightness in her lungs and stomach instead.

Garek let out a quiet chuckle. Her other hand brushed something that felt like an arm, and something warm and crackling shot through her arm, like electricity. “Are you seeing this, Elena?”

“Yes,” Elena said, her hand still feeling along the cold wall, noting the air get staler and staler. Once her shoes crunched on something, which sounded horribly like bones, and she barely held back the unwarranted scream. She was very proud of keeping it in, but noticed other incidents of crunching sounds.

Shit, this was horrible. Her breathing picked up in pace, the tightness in her lungs and throat felt worse.

“Seeing what?” Yvonne said sharply, and Elena, breathing through her nose, sighed.

“The baby dragon sends images instead of words in my head. Me and Garek can see them at the same time. It’s how she communicates.”

“Images?” Yvonne’s tone went from suspicious to interested. “You’re able to communicate with each other in a way that can be understood?”

“Sort of,” Garek rumbled, letting out a brief curse, along with a sound that might have been him stumbling over something. Elena’s foot nudged potentially that same something, and it seemed soft under her leather shoe. I’m sure it’s nothing weird. Sure this is just fine. “She doesn’t think in words, yet. If I do, I don’t think she quite gets it. But when I – we,” he added, referring to Elena, “think in images, she seems to understand better.”

“Wait. Can you see the images I’m giving her?”

A slight pause. “Yes. I can see when she’s seeing it. But not when you’re thinking it.”

SHIT! Flames burst over Elena’s face, rife with embarrassment. That meant… that meant he saw her projecting the image of her and Garek cradling the dragon. Had she imagined anything else incriminating? But wait, Garek was thinking to the dragon as well. Had she caught any thoughts from him, originally believing them to be from the dragon?

Oh, Christ, the possibilities for humiliation were endless. “I-I don’t think I’ve seen anything from you yet.” Yes, nice save, Elena.

“The implications behind this…” Yvonne’s voice went contemplative. “I’d like to know more. Also, take a right turn. There’ll be steps. They’re shallow, but you better move slow.”

Garek let out a little groan. “Why didn’t anyone think to bring even one light?”

“Because none of us were expecting we’d have to escape. Or an attack. Though we did have warning there might be an attempt, thanks to you, Garek. Tara and Janus informed me of that letter.”

“Letter?” The word escaped Elena’s lips before she had time to think it through. When was this?

“I had a letter smuggled into me, asking if I’d kill the dragon. I refused. I think they’ve found out I’ve refused. They have eyes and ears everywhere.”

Another cold chill swept through Elena. She hadn’t mentioned about her mother’s visit.

She also didn’t intend to. However… she had also told Yvonne the stall her parents worked at. That was appropriate, hopefully. She’d given the information. They didn’t need to know anything more. Still, she couldn’t help but feel guilty, like she was holding back a loaded secret that others would curse her down for.

Again, the image of them holding hands was pushed into her mind by the dragon, but she knew the baby didn’t have a concept of romance like humans did. The baby was fixated on the scarring on their palms. Posing a wordless question.

“I don’t know what to say to her,” Elena admitted in the dark, wincing when her left hand hit empty air, and she turned right as instructed, following the other sounds, gingerly stepping until she reached the ledge of the first stair. “She’s asking about our Bond, I think.”

“She is,” Garek agreed. After a moment, a new, foreign image tickled her mind. Garek showing the baby dragon something new. A male unicirim, and a female rider, in a similar pose to the tapestry hanging on the wall. The dragon feasted upon this image, excitement bleeding into the images she attempted to form, but they were blurry, inconsistent, struggling with concepts she didn’t understand.

Certainly not war or fight or why the pose seemed heroic. Why would the dragon understand concepts like that?

They lapsed into silence, concentrating on not tripping over, breaking their necks and dying. The stairwell, because Elena sensed they were going around in a circle, seemed to get thinner and thinner. The air worsened, becoming so foul that she kept needing to pinch her nose, absorbing it only through a bitter taste in her mouth instead. She heard Garek curse again, and unease radiate from the dragon.

Footsteps pattered into more even spacing, and Elena breathed a sigh of relief, having not fallen unceremoniously to her doom, or in an embarrassing heap on top of anyone else, because she didn’t think she’d be able to live it down.

“Two lefts,” Yvonne’s voice scratched the darkness, and Elena did bump into Garek twice, obtaining a grunt from him, likely knocking the breath out of him one time.

Sorry, she’d muttered each time, and he’d merely grunted in response, too busy focusing, or maybe a little irritated. More unease radiated from the dragon, but there was also a crack of light waiting for them after the second turn, which a silhouette marched up to. Elena’s eyes feasted on that tiny sliver of light like a dog after scraps, her pupils contracting as she took it in. More light bled in once Yvonne slid it aside, and they were outside the castle, in some small, sheltered patch which looked like an abandoned, crumbling tower in an obscure part of the castle’s vast grounds. Blinking against the influx of light, Elena registered no less than two unicirim, and one exile dragon patiently waiting, partially draped out of sight on one side of the tower.

“Here’s our rides,” Yvonne said, and Elena bumped into Garek, who had stopped dead, just to glare at the water witch.

“Where in damnation are you taking us?” Garek said, tone hostile.

“Somewhere safe. So very safe that hopefully no one will be interrupting and assassinating any of you for a while,” Yvonne said, beckoning them forward. All of them could probably fit on the exile alone, but Yvonne seemed to be choosing one of the unicirim to ride instead, while the other trotted behind the exile. Garek and Elena reluctantly crawled up onto the exile via his or her wing joint, colored a bright, almost luminescent green.

Leaving Bastion scared her. The only weak spot between realms that she knew of was twenty miles outside the city. If these people took her someplace else, she had no idea how to get back home at all. And for all she knew, her mother might be searching for her right now, trying to rescue her daughter and bring her back to the market. If Yvonne hadn’t already figured out how to reach the Realm Market without an encoded signet ring, since not everyone would be able to find it.

The exile dragon beneath her lifted their great wings, and with a leap and rough swing of those bat-like sails, they wobbled into the air, before soaring up and away, two unicirim flying with them. The cold chill bit into Elena, and all of them had to lie down on the dragon’s back, stabilizing themselves by hanging onto the spikes that ridged out from their scaly backs. The scales and spikes helped provide excellent grip, but the dragon’s lurching, clawing movement through the sky flipped Elena’s stomach in an entirely unpleasant way.

No, she wasn’t much of a fan of flying at all. She tolerated human airplanes, just about, but always had a habit of clinging onto the armrests. She wasn’t scared… just cautious. But this, this was something else entirely. Clinging onto the back of a gigantic scaly beast as it flapped through the air, knowing that if she let go of what she held onto, she’d likely plummet and die an unpleasant death – not exactly reassuring. She let out a squeak when Garek reached for her hand. Not expecting the contact, she glanced at him, and saw that he was every bit as pale as she felt. All of a sudden she felt much more reassured of her position, of being nervous, because it wasn’t just her. Someone else looked as though they were about three seconds from vomiting as well.

The baby dragon, of course, loved the wind pushing into her face, and her claws dug perfectly into the scales.

Flying through the frosty, evening tinged air felt a lot better when holding someone’s hand. Garek’s grip was warm and soothing, even past that strange unease close body contact gave them. She tried talking to Garek, but it was hard to hear one another over the winds, so they eventually gave up, just focusing on comforting each other for the journey. Wherever it took them.

6

Garek

Garek hated forced isolation, and the cold chill of snow. He preferred the hustle and bustle of cities or thieving towns, because the inns were always full of travelers or people looking to swap information. Out here in the ass end of nowhere, there was nothing but a tiny village for miles around, and that tiny village had one inn, which only held hard liquor and cheap, piss-poor beer, which was about the extent of their crafting abilities in this weather. With his wings clipped by the antimagic cuffs, Garek spent an increasing amount of time in isolation being bored, irritated, and picking at the bindings, seeing if he could engineer an escape, somehow, or just have some damn access to his magic. Being without it made him naked, and being without magic in the middle of nowhere generated fury in his soul for his captors.

Why did they have to put him somewhere with snow?

Their new prison used to be some ancient royal holiday house, somewhere in the center of Albalon, and not too far from where the royals were gathering their army for an assault on River’s End. The house itself had a disused, overgrown garden, and little terraced seats on the sides of the grass, as if people used to watch performances long ago. A couple of servants had been shipped in to deal with the mess inside the house, and Garek slept in one of the servant rooms, like Elena. The exile dragon was their live-in guard, and a few more dedicated sentries also patrolled outside, and slept in the small side houses by the main building. The location itself was in steep, mountainous area, with only one viable path downwards to the tiny mountain village that attracted only miners, trappers, and those accustomed to isolation and seeking treasures by themselves.

Sometimes, the royals and the witches dropped in to check on them. But mostly, for the next few weeks, Garek dealt with the isolation, a rapidly growing dragon able to beam pictures in his mind, and Elena, who locked herself away in her room for long periods of time, sometimes emerging with ink stains on her hands and cheeks. They held nice, light conversation, digging more into the things each other liked and disliked.

Such as, for example, Elena loved the snow, and the peace and quiet it offered. She preferred heating up from being cold, as opposed to cooling down when hot. She knew a fair about of Albanese news regarding the conflict between the dragons and unicirim, and talked about showing Garek earth at some point, because for a non-magical realm, it did boast some magical views. He wasn’t entirely opposed to how her face animated when she talked about earth, about her first ever mission as a thief, a teenager tagging along with her mother, and the friends she knew who had parents working on other stalls. The market’s inhabitants had plenty of bars to visit, and sometimes they organized day trips to one of the many realms accessible via the gates.

Garek shared what he could about himself, glossing over his childhood years, because they were blurred, anyway, and he’d spent a lot of it frightened he wouldn’t hit his quotas, and some of it yearning for something different. Life with Sylas, however… Garek had been put through his paces. Taught how to hunt for information in bars without seeming too obvious, how to cheat at cards, how to spit out his alcohol in a spare bottle if playing drinking challenges and needing to stay sober. He avoided the first prostitute, paid by his fellow thieves to “make a man of him”, and described the sheer freedom of flying through the air in his unicirim form, how exhilarating it felt to spread his wings.

How he loved slipping into the darkness of his magic as he flew over cities and watched their lights dancing in the night, how evening was his favorite time of the day, because that was when the bars were most crowded.

Something was changing underneath all their conversational brevity. Something intangible, unspoken, tense enough to be cut. A sense of loss in the space they shared with one another, as if something permanent had been sliced out of him. Like they should be touching, but not without that missing part, hidden behind the nausea and headaches.

He hated that, too.

Right now, Garek sipped the last of his piss-poor beer, leaning back against the rickety wooden chair doing his spine in. The front door of the bar rattled ominously from a draught of wind, and the two fireplaces in the room flickered from the extra air.

Two guards watched him from their corner of the mining inn, while he sat with two long bearded folks, absently playing cards for a few extra coins. A bottle of whiskey sat by his elbow, and he poured shots into a small glass whenever he felt like a strong bite of alcohol on his tongue, as opposed to the terrible beer. The two men were also liberally pouring from the same bottle.

“Mining accident last week,” Henry said, wiping a few drops of drink off his yellow-gray beard. “That Travis fellow who wanted to strike gold. He went too high, in the snows, and heard it was a cave in. Or was it an avalanche?”

“Both,” Emmett supplied, who concentrated hard on his cards. He’d been losing all evening, and had switched to water in order to keep himself sober enough to fare better. Aside from these two men, the barkeep and the helmeted guards, there was only one other traveler in the inn, wrapped up in a woolen gray cloak, face obscured as they nursed their drink. Snow fell outside, dusting the window ledges, covering the icy glaze of ground with even more powder.

“Has anyone successfully managed to find gold here?” Garek asked, purely out of professional interest. Might be a career choice for him in the future since he couldn’t exactly go back to Smuggler’s Den without being killed. Being a liability was quite the inconvenience.

“If they do, they don’t say,” Emmett answered. “Wise, in my opinion. Wouldn’t put it past some o’these folks to do something untoward to get their pickings. Partnerships are risky business out here. One little shove at the right time, and you’re halfway down a gully with a broken arm, freezing to death in the cold.”

Well, Garek thought sourly, he certainly understood why they’d chosen this place as a hideaway. You’d have to be insane or desperate to choose to stay here, and since the only real social interactions you got was from the inn, you’d probably soon turn into a budding alcoholic. He could already feel the gut-rot drinks settling inside, probably forming a permanent coat there that’d never be washed off. “Seems to me people should stick together in these areas, have each other’s backs. Accidents can happen, and it’d be better to have a partner who could haul you out than to have one slip be the end of you.”

“That’d be the logic,” Emmett agreed amiably. “But folks up here are a stubborn lot. Want to do everything by themselves. Won’t accept maybe they’d be safer off with someone, because they’re quite content to mistrust and be misers over their own paltry earnings.” He blinked at his shot of whiskey, likely calculating if it’d inhibit his judgment, before shrugging and downing it. “Henry and me hope to make it big. We’ve saved a little something up, but we don’t want to return to civilization until we’ve reached our goals.”

“Sensible. Minimal living has to be easy on the pursestrings, right?” Garek smiled at the old timers. Briefly, he entertained the idea of stealing from them, and just as quickly, let it slither past. It was a bad impulse of his. Even with people he liked and trusted, his mind conjured up probable scenarios where he’d rob them, how he’d do it, if he’d get away with it without them knowing. He hadn’t actually robbed anyone he liked, but his mind enjoyed the theory behind it.

Henry, now staring morosely at his cards, let out a world-weary sigh. “Got nothing to spend it on right now, really. No brothel within miles. Wish I still had my woman. Don’t get any in these places, and we were sweet on one another for a while. Not so anymore.”

“Oh?” Garek privately thought about Elena. She’d insisted on wanting to come to the inn for some company, but Garek had warned her off, sometimes too harshly. There were absolutely no women in the village, which was more a collection of ramshackle huts and people retreating to hermit lives, and he was certain that Elena’s presence would invite potential danger. Desperate people did desperate things.

Plus, though this was the tiniest thought that didn’t dominate the others – he wanted to keep her for himself.

Garek listened absently to Henry’s tale of woe, though it sounded like the reason for the break up was all Henry’s fault, though he kept teasing in excuses, justifications, that it was his “nature as a man” to want to spread his seed in other, particularly buxom women.

Damnation nonsense, he wanted to say. But he smiled, laughed, and acted as if he agreed, because it was always worth having people receptive to his company in the arsenal. Never knew when you might need to call upon them. The dragon in his mind was projecting images to Elena, but he grasped at them as well. Elena playing with a dragon now significantly bigger than her. The beast was now over two meters tall, and about triple that length wise, due to her whiplike tail. She was now able to understand snippets of the human language, and both Garek and Elena struggled to teach her about humans in a way that didn’t make humans seem like callous monsters.

Cleaning out one last hand, leaving with a few extra coins than before, Garek also paid for two bottles of whiskey to carry back up the mountain path. His guards trudged behind him, surly and bickering about the cold weather, even though they had far more layers on than Garek did. The guards, in Garek’s opinion, would be far too easy to kill. Trained fighters couldn’t resist a knife slipped under the ribs at night, but so far, Garek hadn’t thought of a proper justification to kill them.

He hadn’t yet figured out if any of them had magic, though he suspected Yvonne wouldn’t dare leave two shadow witches in this cursed place without some magical power in the mix. A pleasant buzz hummed in his body from the drink, and when he made it back up the steep, singular path to the private grounds some thirty minutes later, using a key to get through the only entrance there, he saw Elena riding the dragon, giggling in an entirely non-mature way as the dragon lifted her wings and attempted to flap them hard, but not making any progress off the ground.

He watched them both silently for a moment, simply smiling, not wanting to intrude on the rare bubble of enjoyment. It was… nice to see people raptured in joy, rather than grousing about their miserable and entirely self-imposed existences. Had she smiled like that as a child? When they had first met? He wished he could remember. Not that it mattered now, because all they simply had to do was relearn each other once again, but it would be pleasant to fill that black spot in his memory with her.

Sometimes, he wondered if that absence in his memory was what led him down this path. Maybe they’d been great friends together, made future plans as great friends sometimes did. Or maybe they suffered from a fallout of a sort.

Maybe he had caused some sort of rift between Elena and her parents, and they took matters into their own hands to ensure she had flushed him out of mind, and he for her.

It maddened him in a way to have this gap in his mind, this part that should have been his, but got ripped away. For storm’s sake, they were Bonded. They were meant to have shared a future together. Maybe not as lovers (still, that thought whispered across his mind anyway), but just as people bound together by fate. Anchored by destiny. You didn’t mess with fate.

Yet according to Elena, her mother did.

We still found a way back to each other anyway. Garek continued watching her, mulling over his thoughts, and of stray, unformed feelings. He wrenched himself out of them before they morphed into anything he might struggle to deal with, and instead reflected on the fact that the baby dragon was almost big enough to carry them both and fly.

They had a homegrown escape, if they requested for the dragon to carry them off, and Garek felt fairly certain the dragon would happily obey that command. She didn’t like the cold environment much. They’d ended up building bonfires near one of the terraced and a woody overhand so she could have somewhere to lie and warm herself up by.

If they did escape, Garek wasn’t sure if he knew where to go. Maybe his blacksmith buddy to the north-west of River’s End to remove the shackles. Maybe find a new thieving band, or try to contact Sylas again, see if he could do remote jobs on the side, even if the rest of the den would be more than happy to watch Garek bleed out.

“You can stop staring now, creep,” Elena barked at him, and he dragged himself out of his idle gazing, and lifted one side of his mouth in a smile.

“I brought drinks. Figured we could get little D to try some whiskey as well.”

Elena’s eyes widened comically as the dragon stopped about a meter away from Garek. “She’s only a month and a bit old, Garek. You can’t just feed her alcohol. She needs another seventeen years at least.”

“Yeah, I don’t think human standards apply to her,” Garek replied, smirk increasing in volume. “Unless you know any other humans that triple their previous size in the space of a month.”

“But her mind… she’s still so young,” Elena protested, and Garek’s amusement increased, because Elena was acting like an actual parent to the dragon. Worried about the dragon taking potentially dangerous substances, worrying about the ethical implications of her age…

“She’s learning very fast. I’d say she’s probably smarter than most human children by this age already. Thinking like an adult in less than a year.”

As if on cue, the dragon nudged his mind. I grow fast, she thought proudly, accompanied by a heroic picture of Elena and Garek riding her back, in the same pose as the unicirim tapestry a month before. The dragon had adored that image, and quite liberally adopted the word hero when thinking about them. Even though Elena and Garek were complete opposites to heroes. People like them stole from heroes. But since Yvonne had very subtly threatened more waterboarding on her part unless they reinforced the positive association the dragon had, Garek and Elena kept their mouths very much shut on the matter. He did think the dragon picked up on the tension, anyway, but like the people she admired, she chose not to comment on it.

“Besides,” Garek continued, “she already eats far more than us, and her digestion is likely different from ours. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“No,” Elena said flatly. “No, I refuse to let our child be damaged by your poor decisions.”

He smirked. “Our child, eh?”

She flushed, and opened her mouth wordlessly. After a moment’s hopeless wrestling with whatever internal conflict going on in her mind, she said, “Kind of? I mean… we are essentially her live-in parents. She’s in our thoughts, and we hers.”

Garek considered the matter seriously, even as a strange, fluttering feeling ignited in his stomach, over a concept he’d never put words to before.

Their child.

Had to be the most dysfunctional family he’d ever seen, in the spirit of honesty. Two of the parents were prisoners, under constant guard, and the child would grow up to be an absolute monster and possibly alter the course of the future if she survived long enough.

And if Garek and Elena stuck around long enough to do so. But that meant… having his magic stripped away from him. Loss of freedom. Always having to look over his shoulder for the next threat, knowing his ways of defending himself had been drastically reduced.

Now, if he was going to try this whole fake parent thing, he’d rather not have it be on anyone’s terms but his own.

“I guess you’re right, but if she wants to, we should be willing to give her all the experiences and tastes humanity can offer,” he said, his smirk now going teasing, because her blush was adorable. And he liked provoking that kind of reaction, seeing what effect he had on people. It was glorious. He wouldn’t mind being able to provoke more reactions like that, run the gamut of all the different facial expressions she had to offer. Sure would provide some great entertainment, since he couldn’t read the guards in their helmets, and when they did take off their armor, they had equally unreadable faces, and were obviously under clear instructions not to interact with the shadow witches any more than necessary, lest they charmed the pants off them. And since the dragon didn’t have facial expressions remotely similar to human ones, and he’d seen his face in the mirror every day… that left Elena. Elena with her light brown hair and equally light eyes, and her button nose and sharp features.

Elena slid off the dragon, one hand on her hip as she regarded Garek, before snatching one of the whiskey bottles. She twisted the cork out of it, before giving the liquor a dubious sniff.

Personally, he much preferred mead, but honey was a scarce commodity up here, and they had to make their alcohol from the available crops, after all.

“My guts’ll hate me for this later, but I could really do with getting myself that nice little buzz. Maybe I’ll be less inclined to scratch out my own eyeballs in boredom, since someone doesn’t want me to visit the village.” She gave him a rather pointed glare.

“Fair enough.” No arguing with that. “Though I really don’t think you’ll enjoy it. I barely do. Everyone just talks about pickaxes and their lost lady loves. I just hope that all the monotonous conversations I endure will eventually yield something useful. And who knows – maybe I’ll become a gold prospector at some distant point in my life. Stake my fortunes on finding little nuggets of gold.”

Taking a cautious gulp of the whiskey, Elena pulled a face, tongue sticking out in disgust. “God, that’s vile.”

“Nobody forced you to drink it, darling.”

“I’m fully aware of that, thanks.” She glared at him once more, trying to look fierce, but her face resembled more of a cute, angry hamster with stuffed cheeks. He tried very hard not to laugh at that image. “At least it feels like it’s setting my insides on fire, so that’s plus one against the weather. I do like snow, but the heating in this place could do with some tweaks.”

“You already know my opinion on snow,” Garek said. He considered Elena, thinking now would be the time to ask her more questions. A pleasant stirring in his stomach occurred when she sighed, lips parting, before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, breath condensing into the air.

“Don’t give the snow a hard time. It’s peaceful to watch, beautiful when it lands, and cleanses the ground for spring. But the best thing?” She leaned forward conspiratorially, and he unconsciously leaned as well to listen. “No mosquitoes.”

“Shit, you’re right. Suddenly I like snow.” They shared a smile, and an instant, stray thought hit Garek’s mind. What if he just reached across the last few inches? Would she pull away? Would their lips touch?

Would the touch repulse them, or lick through them like molten lava?

The moment vanished when she stepped back to pat the dragon on her snout. The dragon beamed images of the drink, along with distaste at the pungent smell whiskey offered.

“Nobody willingly drinks it for the taste,” Garek said to the dragon. “They just like looking mature because they can drink it, or it’s a part of their culture, or it gets them drunk very, very fast.”

The dragon snorted in response, and stuck out a long, forked tongue, a question mark in her mind.

“Ah well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Garek replied, and before Elena had time to stop either of them, he splashed a generous portion of the liquor onto the dragon’s tongue, and she rolled it back in like a mousetrap, giving an audible gulp.

“You monster,” Elena hissed, eyes wide. “What did you do to our precious little darling?”

They both, however, watched the golden dragon, waiting for a response. She stood perfectly still, making a smacking sound with her mouth and tongue. Then she hopefully rolled out her tongue again.

“No,” Elena said. “We are not teaching that particular habit. I don’t want to think about what’ll happen if we get you drunk. No, baby. No.” She lightly tapped the dragon on the snout, and Garek noted her easy slip of baby. Isolation did funny things to people.

“I’m sure it’ll take a lot to get her drunk,” Garek said with a smirk. “And she’s got to learn sometime. Better it comes from us than from some stranger trying to take advantage of her.”

Both of them glanced at the golden dragon.

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s taking advantage of that,” Elena said dryly. “That’s a piss-poor excuse to get someone drunk.”

The not-so-little dragon bathed them in a warm, happy image, seeming to accept that they wouldn’t give her any more of the drink, before ambling off to the furthest end of her makeshift shelter, right by the bonfire, closing her great eyes, and attempting to fall asleep.

“Guess that leaves just us and our happy companions over there,” Garek said, indicating the surly huddle of guards who probably hated the weather even worse than them. Bastion was a milder climate, and easier on the armor, which could rake in cold. “Know any activities we can do?”

The moment he said those words, an image of Elena, flattened on the ground beneath him, his arms hovering on either side of her as he tasted the skin on her neck leaped to mind. That’d be an activity for sure, he thought, firmly banishing the image for now. He didn’t want to end up with an awkward erection. Not when they were trying to be so careful with one another.

“Twenty-one questions is one. Truth or dare’s another, but I don’t think I’d want to do that one with you,” she said frankly, taking a sip of the whiskey and grimacing. “Never have I ever’s another… but… no. I’d get too drunk from that.”

“Sounds intriguing,” Garek said, mind already whirring with potential questions. “The twenty-one questions one. Is this an earth game, or…?”

“It is, but I’m sure you’d find it in Albalon as well.”

“I haven’t,” Garek admitted, enjoying how relaxed Elena seemed right now, sprawled on the little, snow speckled blanket they’d brought outside with them, next to a little wicker basket with some basic buttered rolls to chew on. “People’s idea of entertainment is a little different. Taking shots until we can’t walk straight anymore. Arm wrestling, knife skills, card games, boasting competitions.” Not to mention talking about the different things they’d gotten women to do with them in bed in the Smuggler’s Den. There were female thieves, but they very much preferred to keep themselves separate from the men.

“Twenty-one it is,” Elena said. “I’ll start.” She scrunched up her face in thought, and Garek wondered if she’d go risky, or keep her questions light and safe. He hoped she’d go risky. Because he could think of a few risky questions to give her in return. Or maybe you weren’t supposed to go risky. Maybe it was just a safe, light endeavor to get to know one another…

“What’s your favorite place in the world to go to?” she asked.

A small twinge of disappointment hit his stomach, but he hid it from his face as he considered. Several places came to mind, but it took him a minute to settle. “There’s an area by the coast that I like, called Spinner’s Hand. It’s a very jagged bay, and the boats there are beached on grayish sand, which sometimes gets so sticky that it’ll cling to everything if you step on it, or seep with water. You have the smell of seaweed and salt and waves, and there’s a little cave within the cliff-face that you can reach at low tide only. Inside the cave, there’s a patch of wall shimmering with what looks like blue crystals. They’re not worth anything, really, but it gives the place a kind of solemn glow. So…” he trailed off, suddenly feeling awkward. “Guess it’s the crystal cave in Spinner’s Hand.”

Elena smiled, her attention rapt on him. “Sounds amazing.” They fell into silence again, until she coughed, and said, “Your turn.”

“Wait, you’re not going to tell me your favorite place?”

“Only if that’s one of the twenty-one questions,” she responded, with a mischievous smirk adorning her lips.

“Well, that’s annoying,” Garek said, not wanting to respond to her questions as an echo. “Okay, let’s try this. Your house is on fire, and you can only grab one thing before running out. What do you grab?”

“Oh, that’s a typical one,” Elena said, grinning, before scrunching up those thin eyebrows of hers in thought. Garek liked the look of concentration, because it made her cute. Certainly made a change from the glowers she sent his way often. “My money bag. Then I can just buy whatever I lost, ‘cause there’s a lot in it.”

“No sentimental items of value, eh?”

“I don’t get that sentimental. My mother and father keep a few things, but me, not so much. Also you’re getting more information out of that than you should.”

“That would seem to be the intent of the game,” Garek said. “Otherwise I think it’d be boring, just firing questions back and forth without wanting to delve deeper into matters.”

She struggled to find a reason to disagree, before firing off her next question. They continued back and forth, keeping them fairly innocent, like favorite colors (Elena white, Garek blue), food, most important person in their life (Elena’s mother and Sylas for Garek), and so on. It always felt like they were dancing on the edge of the far riskier questions, as if one of them was waiting for the other to test the waters.

It became increasingly clear that Elena didn’t plan to dare, and Garek, buzzing from the increasing amounts of alcohol entering his system, felt annoyed and bored enough to launch himself headfirst into those waters. “What’s your favorite sexual position?”

Given the last question from her was “What’s your dream house?” Understandably, this took Elena off guard. Her mouth hung open stupidly, before her cheeks flushed.

“Pass,” she said. “I’m invoking one of my passes.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Garek said. “Who knows what other questions I have lined up in store?” His leg brushed gently against hers, and she seemed held in his gaze, like a fly stuck in a spider’s web.

“What’s your favorite one, then?” she fired back, almost before she had time to stop herself.

Garek grinned. “Whichever one gets the woman off the fastest. So it changes depending on the woman. Meaning if you’d answered my question, that would be my favorite for you. Not that I mean anything about you specifically or anything,” he added a little hastily. “Just… whatever a woman likes, I like.”

“Is that so?” Elena squeaked, her tongue tripping over the words, her flush increasing in size.

“Of course. Seems silly to have a favorite when everyone’s different. Are you a virgin?”

“No,” Elena said, her voice like a whip crack. “And I’m guessing you’re not, either.”

“That’ll be right,” he said, noting how uncomfortable the subject was making her, but also noting how intently she listened. So not that uncomfortable.

Elena licked her lips, and he followed the movement, holding his breath in that moment. Warmth pooled in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol. “What’s your most embarrassing sex moment then, Garek?”

He chuckled. If she’d expected that one to faze him, she was sorely mistaken. “The one time I was getting it hot and heavy with a woman, and I lifted up her skirt…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Let’s just say she wasn’t a woman under the skirt.”

Letting out a snort, Elena covered her mouth with her fingertips. “Seriously?”

“Yes. It was a man.”

A pause. “Did you continue doing it with him?”

“I’ll have to count that as an extra question if you want that answered,” Garek said.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said with a rapid flap of her hand. “So did you?”

Garek was incredibly tempted to say “pass.” But also suspected she might seriously consider killing him on the spot if he did. “I gave him a handjob for his efforts. Didn’t let him touch me. No hard feelings.”

“Wow,” Elena said, eyebrows raised, impressed. “Bold of you. Also polite.”

“I might be a thief, but I do have some standards,” Garek said, taking a liberal swig of the whiskey, before passing it back to her. His eyes trailed over her simple, buttoned white shirt, though the buttons only reached to her breastline. All of them were done up as a ward against the cold, but he did find himself wishing in that moment that they were all undone, enough for him to peek at whatever expanse of flesh revealed itself… “Next question. Shall we go inside? It’s getting cold.”

She’d clearly been expecting something else, for she blinked several times, registering the question, before saying, “Yeah, you’re right. Wow, that took time to process. Okay.” She picked up the basket of rolls and the whiskey bottle he’d given to her. He held the other, and they left the blanket behind, sauntering into the house, doing their best to ignore the guards. Inside, he gestured for her to follow him into his bedroom, and she hesitated, suddenly anxious.

“It’s either there or the bathroom, because the guards won’t follow us inside,” Garek said, and she agreed them to follow him in. He closed the door behind them, locked it, and then, with a languid smile, settled himself in the brown leather sofa. He eyed Elena, feeling something in the atmosphere between them, something charged and full of promise, before he gently nudged her for another question. Determined, at least, to finish this game. How many questions had it been now? He’d lost track.

He followed the path of her tongue as it darted out to wet both her lips, and then her fingers, as they deftly unbuttoned a part of her shirt, exposing the barest hint of her cleavage.

“Do you have any fetishes?”

Interesting. The heat coiled stronger in his stomach, and he carefully adjusted himself, so if an erection did start popping up, he could hide it. Though a part of him wondered just how she’d react to seeing it. A little bit too enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t say fetishes, exactly, but there are some things I’ve enjoyed. I enjoy, for example, blindfolding. It’s simple, but when you remove a sense, it enhances the others. I like when you have a body underneath you, hot and steaming, placing something cold upon it to get that involuntary shiver out of a person. Maybe swilling cold water in my mouth and then kissing along the skin…”

Her eyes seemed to grow wider and wider as he continued, and he finished off with, “The last one I’ve found interest in is choking someone.”

She seemed to stop breathing for a moment, before saying, “That’s dangerous!”

“That’s the point.” He could tell she was burning with curiosity, perhaps wondering why on earth someone would want to be choked, so he elaborated. “It’s simple. There’s a power dynamic in sex that people enjoy. The person who is submissive enjoys the feeling of having their pleasure, trust, sometimes even life in another person’s hands. They enjoy surrendering. As for the person choking… they become acutely aware of what they’re doing. Knowing the other person has put so much trust in them, knowing they have to pay attention to their partner, to study their reactions. And you have to be careful, too. Always communicate. Always make sure both parties are comfortable. Just lightly press, enough to constrict some of the airflow, but never any harder than that. The intent isn’t to hurt. It can create a euphoric effect in the brain, so I’m told…”

She shook her head, gulping more of the whiskey down, eyes glazed over slightly. “It just – it seems like only something a sick person would do. I mean, aren’t you taking pleasure out of hurting someone else?”

“It’s not about the pain,” Garek said, now shifting his legs up as he imagined Elena putting all her trust into him, whispering heatedly into her ear for him to do anything to her, anything he could possibly think of. His skin rippled with the faint shiver of arousal. “There isn’t pain. And if there is, then it’s being done wrong. But I think it’s more fun with the idea of trust and power. Obviously you don’t just do it. You’d need to talk with your partner first, because self-preservation instincts might ruin the whole thing.”

“Shit,” Elena said softly, those perfect lips of hers parted, so that he could see the glint of her teeth and the wetness of her tongue. “That’s… I’ve never thought about that.”

“Shame,” Garek murmured, but she didn’t seem to hear. A surge of excitement went through him when he saw her eyes flick to his lips, back up to his face, then discreetly peek between his legs, though he’d positioned himself well. That seemed very much like interest, “I’ve got the next question.” He wrestled with himself internally, wondering if he might be reading the atmosphere wrong, before plunging on with, “If I was to kiss you right now, would you hate it?”

Her previously open body language stiffened, and her face went utterly blank. “Um,” she said intelligently. “Pass.”

“Oh, you’ve used up all your chances there,” Garek said, a gleeful smirk on his face. He rubbed his hands together, before taking another glug of drink. Now this was his kind of game. His eyes ran over her body, picking up extra details, and the nervous swallow in her throat.

He wondered just how much further he could push her.

7

Elena

It’s only a game, she thought. Just a game, asking questions. It wasn’t supposed to affect her this way, though maybe part of the blame lay on the gut rot swilling in her stomach.

But right now, a strange, unquenchable fire danced along her veins, as her mind contemplated more and more just throwing all her cautions to the winds, crossing the distance, and straddling Garek. Lust sure was inconvenient at times. Appearing without warning, sending a horrible kind of itch down below and over her skin, warping her thoughts until the curiosity grew into longing.

She also bet that rat-thief bastard knew exactly what kind of effect he had on her, judging by her evasive responses, and the bloom of embarrassment and something else she couldn’t conceal from her cheeks. Couldn’t exactly blame it on the cold weather, either.

“One more question left for me, two for you,” she said, her voice escaping out her lips as a whisper. It’s just a game. Why not just choose to quit it? Easiest option available to her. And Garek’s last two questions might be loaded. Shit. Her mother had warned her off this man. Convinced he was dangerous. That whatever it was between them needed to be quashed. Did she want things to escalate, or to steer them away from dangerous waters? The sensible thing, of course, would be to steer away. The other, slightly more exciting thing meant carrying on and seeing where it inevitably went. Because now that she thought about it, it had been a while since she’d been given any sort of release. Except for maybe a tiny one the other day when she’d been struggling to sleep and he’d quite possibly crossed her mind at one point, in a way that sent an itch throughout her whole body that refused to simmer down until she finally sorted herself out.

Danger or not, she still felt drawn to him all the same. “Mine is… if you could escape from here and get your powers back, join your buddies at the den, but it meant doing something awful to me and the dragon – would you do it?”

Something changed in his demeanor. “Oh, I wouldn’t ask questions I don’t want to hear the answer to, if I were you.”

“Well?” she said. She expected him to say yes. To remind herself that right down to the marrow, he was a thief. A person who exploited others for a living. Like her.

He stared at her with those mesmerizing caramel eyes for a moment, before saying, “Pass.”

“Motherf…” Elena swallowed down the insult and hit her fist against the floor. “I should have known. Of course.”

“You were the one who set the rules, not me,” he said, his voice whiskey-low and raspy. He discreetly dangled one arm in front of himself, covering up his hip area. “Now I get two. Mm… what could I possibly ask you…?”

She waited for him to say his question like a criminal anticipating the executioner’s axe. Meanwhile, her thoughts occasionally darted to what he’d said about his fetishes – all things she hadn’t actually tried in her incredibly vanilla sex life.

“What are you thinking about right now?”

“Really? That’s your question? I hate you,” she replied, taking a rather aggressive swig of the overpowering whiskey, feeling the burn trickle down her throat before deciding she’d rather have her insides intact, and shoved the mostly fill bottle away.

“No you don’t,” he said, and she froze.

No, she hated him. Or… she didn’t.

And that frightened her more than anything else. “If you must know, I was thinking about how much of an annoying ass you are, and how I think that smirk should be punched off your face.”

“I see,” he said, in a tone that suggested he knew perfectly well that what she’d said was a lie. “One more question then. Simple yes or no answer.” He shifted himself slightly, and suddenly, Elena became all too aware that Garek happened to be turned on. Visibly so. Her throat closed up, and her eyes honed on the bulge in his pants. He let out a discreet cough, and that helped to refocus her attention on his handsome face. “I want to take you to bed. Will you let me?”

Elena’s brain had a miniature meltdown at that point, instantly warring between hell no and hell yes. Sensible and irrational. Control and loss of it. Calm versus sweet, shivering desire.

She opened her dried-out mouth, throat unclenching, and uttered one word. “Yes.”

His smile grew wicked. One moment, they’d been suspended in a kind of sacred place, the moment between decisions, actions and consequences, eyes locked on one another, her mouth parting slightly, perhaps to say something else, perhaps to revoke her statement – and the next, he had surged forward, rough and graceless, to press his lips into hers.

Flames seemed to transfer from him directly into her mouth, zipping down her spine in a molten flood to crash between her thighs. Every thought in her mind tumbled out, and her body reacted of its own accord, hands reaching out to meet him, grasping at his neck and hair as he pulled her closer by the waist, his kissing frantic and needy.

Swept up in the current, her lips slid and bumped against his, and behind her closed eyes, she felt like she was seeing the vibrant colors of the universe bursting in them, unable to process the barrage of emotions and tactile contact and breaths, their pants, taste and smell with anything else other than a matching hunger.

Fingers bit into her sides, and she stumbled backwards, in about three steps hitting the back of Garek’s bed. Garek’s initial spark of boldness triggered a similar emotion in her, hands at first clumsy and scratching, growing surer by the second.

Holy fuck. If this was what kissing Garek felt like… just touching him, then anything more might seriously kill her. There was the nausea, burrowing inside her body, the faint tinge of their magic and connection gone wrong, but it was vastly overriden by the burning, crackling passion of two bodies coming together, whipped up in twin tornadoes of rising lust, breaths shortening, brains rippling with need.

“Maybe,” she managed, in a desperate sort of gasp when he drew his lips away long enough to push her onto the bed, “we’re going too fast?”

He dragged his eyes away from the scrutiny of the bare, pale flesh of her throat and pulsepoint, and stared at her with eyes like black holes. “I don’t think we’re going fast enough,” he said, voice low and rough, and god, that voice did things to her. It went right through her bones, and she wanted nothing more than to just drag him close and crush their bodies together, skin to skin.

What about our magic? Isn’t there something wrong with it? It took every ounce of self-control just for her to say, “This could be a huge mistake. We – we don’t know how the broken magic affects us. If – if there’s something more to it that could hurt us...”

Part of her wanted him to nod, agree, and gain the strength to pull himself away from her. The other, less rational part wanted him to go fuck it and continue whatever this was, and wherever it was leading. Because right now, her willpower was at an absolute minimum, and she was very happy to blame the alcohol for it, because admitting she might have wanted this without liquid courage was a little too much to process right now.

Slowly, he crawled over her, taking quiet, deep breaths. “True,” he groused, reluctant to let the word out. “This could be a terrible, terrible mistake...” His mouth pressed against the flesh of her throat, tongue in a heated slide. Tracing the shifting contours of her skin and her rapidly thundering heart. She felt that pulse everywhere, blood rushing in her fingertips, cheeks, behind her eyelids and ears, and certainly in the place where his mouth touched skin. “And believe me, I’d love to be the responsible one, leave you alone, and make the smart decisions. But I’m not feeling very smart right now. Or responsible,” he added in a whisper, and she trembled violently in response.

“Me, either,” she admitted.

Well, fuck.

No one seemed to want to stop this. Any protests, any resistance died in Elena’s chest, and she grasped Garek by the collar of his white cotton shirt, dragging him down on top of her, so that their mouths joined together once more. Every cell in her body was humming, yearning for more contact, more closeness, to get all these damn clothes off. Any trepidation, any gnawing slivers of doubt drowned themselves out with the immediate desire for intimacy. Garek’s spare hand was already ascending Elena’s thigh under her skirt, hungry for skin. The thought of his desire for her flared up her own further, because nothing felt so good as knowing the other person wanted you, when you equally wanted them back.

It was as if their own imaginations, their awareness of the deep, underlying attraction fed off each other until it threatened to burn into a crisp, and he greedily shunted a knee between hers, pressing up into her center, beginning a soft, languid grind on top. She rocked with him, hands traveling everywhere, fingertips dancing beneath his shirt, leaving blazing trails across her skin. A groan rose from deep in her chest, swallowed by his lips upon hers, and the frenzy only grew ever stronger.

More. She needed more. His tongue touched hers and tangled roughly, hot darting movements that had her rising up into him, even though they were already impossibly close.

“Can I –” he began, tugging at her top, and she let out a small growl, shaking it off herself.

“You can take everything off.”

His eyes seemed to go wider at that, and his ragged breaths stopped for one shivering moment, before he did just that. Fingers brushing her skin, lips pressing into not yet explored places upon her neck, behind her ear, as he worked on divesting her of the rest of her clothing. He seemed reluctant to stay away from her for long, and she felt equally reluctant to lose his warmth, or risk quelling the burning passion within, crying out for more, for his touch, for the promised pleasure.

“You like that, yeah?” he whispered, hot air hitting that sweet spot behind her ear, and she moaned in response, yanking his shirt so tight that a button pinged off. “I’ll take that as a confirmation.”

“I’m liking everything you’re doing,” Elena admitted, body swirling with emotion, with bolts of electricity crackling in her stomach and lower, as if all it would take would be the slightest touch to launch her into the stratosphere with bliss.

Jesus. In all her life, all her interactions, less than stellar relationships, and brief forays into the delightful yet messy world of sex, she’d never felt anything like this before. As if his very touch risked her erupting into flames, and if every heartbeat in her was that treacherous organ trying to leap out of her chest and join his. It was everything she’d ever dreamed about, and then some. An elemental, primal force between them that demanded a trade of their bodies and souls.

And just when she thought it couldn’t possibly get better, then his hand slid along her bare skin, finally brushing the underside of one breast, while his leg wedged hard into her center, causing her thigh muscles to quiver, and for her to rock harder against his leg, chasing possible release.

“Not yet,” he rattled harshly, adjusting his leg so that she couldn’t get any more traction against it, instead enjoying the delightful exploration of her body. “I’ve still got plenty to learn… and want to take my time...” His teeth nipped at her ear, before he added, “Because I plan to make you come screaming.”

Oh. Oh. An involuntary gasp left her lips, and her mind not so much processed the words as imagined the sensation of drowning in so much pleasure that she emptied of lungs of air and words, probably enough for people to hear for miles around. If anything, the strange void inside her, the result of the magic castrating her connection, helped enhance the experience. Like they needed something of each other in an attempt to replenish whatever was missing.

Not happy with him wearing clothes, she pinched at them until he got the hint, and parted from her long enough to expose his chest, and leave the shirt and pants as a wad on the ground. He still wore underwear, though she had nothing on now, and she shivered as he took in the length of her body, eyes appreciative, an almost awed gasp bursting out of his lips. Seeing the way he looked at her, like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen did things. She couldn’t entirely focus under that kind of delightful scrutiny. She took her own examination of his form; starting with his rounded face, high cheekbones and mess of hair framing just past his neat, flattened ears, and those wide, dark and curious eyes which were whirlpools of desire, sucking in her attention. Onto the muscled body, wiry, toned and suited to someone who had practiced thievery and slipping into thin spaces. Her hand reached out to trace a thin scar just below his right shoulder, as if he’d been pierced by an arrow.

“One of the stall merchants didn’t take kindly to a young boy making off with his fruit,” Garek supplied with a wry smile, before dipping his lips to taste along her neck, nipping at the pulsepoint, which elicited a whimper out of her, and a squirm. “But that’s a story for another day. I have something much more interesting in front of me now...”

Her hands continued tracing along his skin, feeling along his arms, mapping the bumps and hairs and smoothness all along there, everything that made him Garek. His strong, earthy scent helped ground her, though her thoughts and any coherent sentences being strung together constantly threatened to elude her.

There was something glorious in the movement, in the brush of their skins together, sending fire and lust through their veins. Something heart stopping about the thought of what they did and what they would do, the anticipation sending her body to a heightened state of excitement. Her breaths came short and fast, as did his, leaving huffs of warmth against her skin as his mouth trailed downward, tongue dabbing at her collarbone, before his lips placed a gentle pressure just below the bone, leaving speckles of purple as a mark.

“Garek,” Elena pleaded, though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was pleading for. Him to stop teasing? Him to keep doing what he was doing? Both options seemed equally viable, equally able to made her giddy with desire.

Her eyes fixed on him when a sudden, stray thought entered her mind. She didn’t want this time to be loving or gentle. She wanted roughness. The flame of two people working out the knots in their system, rather than two people who wanted to take their time. She grasped him by the hair, and he stopped his ministrations near her breast, one eyebrow arched in a silent question.

“I want you to fuck me,” she said, her voice rough and foreign to her ears. “Hard.” She pushed him off her, enough so she could adjust her position. Something hard. Something she could feel the force of, decadent, a little humiliating, but at the same time, filling her with the excitement of surrendering to someone, letting them take what they wanted. She rested herself on her knees, and Garek’s eyes widened, before he seemed to take the hint.

“I was planning for a nicer time,” he said, pulling her flush against his hips, where she could feel his length straining against the underwear. “But this works, too.” One hand tangled in her hair, tugging her head backwards slightly, so she felt the strain of each individual strand prickling her scalp. Her breath hitched in excitement, and wetness pooled between her thighs, enjoying the roughness there. The other hand raked across her back, nails digging into her skin, before aggressively cupping one breast and squeezing. She let out a low whine and moved her hips against him, not so subtly starting to rock against his sheathed erection.

“Quite the animal, aren’t you?” he snarled. He held her still by the ass, long enough for him to struggle out of the last, offending piece of clothing. His breaths came short and sharp – despite his confident exterior, he was every bit as excited as her, and probably barely struggling to contain it all. With her mouth dry, her heart pounding even faster, she felt another twinge between her thighs, wanting, needing him inside.

“Please,” exploded from her mouth, and she braced herself by the elbows on the bed, her eyes on the white sheets, attention on those hands still traveling over the expanse of her body, and his now bare erection pressing against her rear. She strained to look at it, but before she got the chance, he adjusted himself against her entrance, and hilted inside her with one sudden, deep and long push. Her mouth hung open in a wordless scream, because shit, the immediacy of it, just taking her without hesitation, and she almost felt ready to come undone there and then. His joy rattled out of his throat, a deep and feral noise, and his hand tightened around her ass.

His fingers slipped around her folds, spreading the arousal further.

She let out a hiss, bucking her hips slightly, wanting him to stop teasing, and to just take her, and her motions seemed to trigger him further. He no longer stood still behind her, but began to move, his length directly hitting the right spot inside her, with the angle she presented to him. Her fingers dug into the bedsheets as he increased the strength and speed of his thrusts over time, and she couldn’t control the sounds escaping her lips as he took her so roughly, so wantonly, and all she was able to do was brace herself against the storm, feeling that ball of heat inside her build up and up with each hard thrust, her entire world reduced to the haze of pleasure and sex that had consumed them both.

One tiny adjustment, and he hit that special spot inside so strongly that she came apart with a scream, muscles tensing, throat closing around the sound, thighs shivering, her heat pulsing around his length.

He didn’t last much longer, she observed dimly, as he kept moving in her through her orgasm, prolonging it, and her fingers ached with bracing herself against him, as did her arms. He stiffened behind her, his hands trembling against her skin, before with a sigh, he removed himself from her, and lightly tapped for her to turn around, so they were able to look at each other once more.

“Wow,” Elena said, unable to articulate anything else. Also, she suspected she probably had the appearance of someone who was either completely smashed or had been struck rather aggressively by several of Cupid’s arrows. He wore a kind of lazy grin himself, and seeing the sheen of sweat upon his body made her want to lean forward and lick it off.

“Wow,” he agreed, also apparently unable to express anything else. Looking into his eyes, into the desire still glazed there, she knew for certain that she was in big trouble. Because one time wasn’t enough for something like this. She needed far, far more than just one time with him.

As if he was able to read her mind, he wriggled up close beside her, and the gesture made her laugh in a drunken way, before he planted his lips chastely on hers. The kiss felt a little like an examination, a little like a promise: him waiting for her to react, if she’d deepen the activity or leave it for now.

She chose to deepen, hands sliding up to cusp his cheeks, loving the rough stubble there, and the smell of his skin beaded with sweat.

Yeah. One time wasn’t enough. God help her, she was going to have a difficult time keeping her hands off Garek. Now his tongue swept against her bottom lip, a request for entry, and her mouth parted wider, allowing him inside. Their breathing once more became short and ragged, her palms rubbed against that stubble…

An image jumped into her head. One of a rather puzzled dragon, with the question attached: what are you two doing?

“Shit!” Elena ripped her mouth away from Garek as if his burned like hot coals, overshot her reaction and fell off the bed with a squeak. “Shit! Fuck. You think she saw everything?”

“I...” Garek fell silent as Elena scrambled upright, now searching for clothes to wrap herself in. “I’m not entirely sure. It wasn’t like we were thinking to her at any point, was it?”

But we were definitely thinking, Elena thought anxiously. Thinking vividly, with amorous, not safe for work images, the kind that a baby dragon certainly shouldn’t be subjected to.

Evidently, Garek had responded, though the baby didn’t visually share his response. A new thought entered her brain. Okay. That makes sense.

“What did you say to her?” Elena demanded, trying not to blush the color of a strawberry.

“I said we were with each other because we were friends, and sometimes we want it to just be us two.”

“Yes,” Elena said flatly. “Just friends. Doing friend things.”

“Aren’t we?” Garek grinned, his eyes raking her form once more. He didn’t linger long on anything other than her face, and it felt respectful, somehow. She appraised him for a moment, staring into his light brown eyes, before climbing back into the bed and brushing away an offending strand of straw blond hair.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s not like we started off friendly. And I still kind of hate you for messing up my last big heist.”

“We’ve been getting on better,” he pointed out, lightly stroking her face with surprisingly soft fingertips. “I mean, you’ve reduced your death glares down to just five a day, so in my opinion, that’s a great improvement. And sometimes you laugh at my jokes.”

Elena considered this, stomach churning at the thought he considered her as more than an acquaintance. The sex didn’t matter. Strangers could have it. But the idea of a friend? That did. “So…” she said carefully. “Friends?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, a genuine smile ghosting his lips. “Sounds right.”

“As long as you don’t give me any more jokes. They’re all terrible.”

She matched his smile, though she couldn’t help but think in that moment that she wouldn’t mind being a little more than friends with benefits. Not that she planned to voice that particular desire any time soon. She had a hard enough time just coming to terms with the aftermath of her own reckless desire, and she didn’t want to give it too much thought. She only wanted to feel. She crawled back onto bed and captured his lips in another kiss.

* * *

Watching Garek do as simple a task as making a drink for himself over a lit flame was… interesting. Now that she was really paying attention, she noted the toned muscle under his clothes, the way his rear really popped out when he bent over to grab something, and how even a loose top somehow looked good on him. She liked his ruffled hair as well, it gave him the appearance of someone who’d just rolled out of bed and didn’t want anyone to breathe a word his way until he’d had something to kickstart his brain.

Her father was very much like that in the mornings as well. Communicating only with grunts and occasional vowel sounds, until he’d had a good old mugful of swamp coffee, which in Elena’s opinion tasted like bitter thoughts and mud. Not her thing. In this place of quiet, far away from help, Elena found plenty of time to reflect on herself. Minus the whole prisoner thing, the guards watching, Garek, and the unexpected dragon hatching out of an egg, this was close to the kind of life she’d envisioned her life to go after her last, grand heist. Somewhere alone without the world bothering her, preferably with a lot less snow than what fell in the grasp of what seemed to be a permanent winter in the mountains.

She wondered if Yvonne had located her parent’s stall yet. If they were hauled in for questioning, if the stall was left to rot among the bustle of the Realm Market. If Yvonne had encountered difficulties entering the Realm Market, since after all, it wasn’t that easy to get an invitation. Elena’s signet ring only worked for her. If someone else took it, its functions would cease to manifest in their hands.

I wonder if my mother will know I betrayed her, when she risked everything to come see me, to reassure me she was working on a way to get me out.

Shit, she was a bad daughter. But it was also hard to focus on those kind of issues when she thought about how strangely content she was now. Not when overthinking her situation. Just when she looked at Garek doing something perfectly ordinary. When she didn’t crave her sealed magic or think about the soupy blackness where memories should have been.

The now was all that mattered.

* * *

Outside the house, the dragon lay on her belly, tail twitching as she experienced some kind of dream. Sometimes she made little snuffling noises, but otherwise seemed content by the dying embers of the bonfires used to keep her warm. Her dreams usually took on qualities of the human she was bound to, absorbing their thoughts and images, the ones they dared share, and sometimes others that they didn’t have complete control over.

The thing that woke her out of her dreams of flight was the unerring, tingling sensation of wrongness. Her great yellow-gold eyes scanned the skies, where snow still gently tumbled from ethereal heights, some of it landing upon her exposed snout. She picked up on words, images in a language different from the humans, but understandable to her.

Kill the queen. Find the hatchling, kill her before she matures! Images of a golden egg being crushed under huge claws flooded her mind, along with other images, of a baby golden queen, with sharp teeth wrapping around her neck, and biting down until all the life seeped out. The images were violent, bloody, and she understood all the destruction and imagery that followed. Dragons hated humans. Dragons believed the humans had stolen their lands, killed their ancestors for sport, and had built River’s End on sacred hatching grounds centuries ago.

The greatest offense of all, taking away the holy nesting place, condemning generations of children to sickness and weakness, without the magic of the land to feed from.

That was her birthright. To rise up, claim the old lands, keep the humans underfoot.

A small growl rumbled in the back of her throat, as more images of death, hatred, anger and fear seeped through, bleeding out only to other dragons. No other species outside the draconic mind could hear the frequencies of thought.

She had hatched to the presence of great magic. It smelled so delicious, so tangible and untapped, that it drew her very essence to it, and she bonded to two humans. Two soft little fleshlings with such latent energies between them that it kept her strong, and made her grow up fast. Even now, when she flicked out her tongue to taste, she sensed their magic like a fine wine caressing her tongue. Magic that was blocked off, somehow, so had built up over the years into an elemental storm of potential.

Her humans were a little harder to understand than her own kind, because she didn’t grasp their language instinctively, but she was getting there. She’d figured out the rhythm of their words, the songs in their hearts. And it honestly astonished her to the bone, to see the small dragons working with the humans, and the special horse ones, who were supposed to have a natural enmity with dragons, uniting them all together. It unfolded within her brain as a cerebral crack of possibility. A future no one else had envisioned, and what the strange little water witch had only hinted at.

A future where fleshlings, horses and dragons did not fight, kill, and curse one another with their dying breaths. A future where the ground wasn’t scorched earth, or the dragons broken and fizzing under human and horse boots, and Albalon a ghost country, with scavengers picking among the ruins.

Her humans still thought her pure and innocent. She saw it in their carefully regulated thoughts, and it brought a smile to her soul. They wanted to “raise her right”, like she was worth the effort. The other humans hated her chosen ones, but they were hers. She raised her wings in a defensive, protective way, eyes fixed on two specks in the sky. All the hideous images of death and war came from them.

Are you okay? Garek’s thought, along with projected concern teased into her brain. She instantly flashed back at him yes, and an image of sleepiness, which he seemed to accept, though a dubious air hung about it.

She didn’t want her humans to know how much she knew, how much she understood yet. It already alarmed them how rapidly she grew and picked up stray words. If Elena knew that her dragon’s mind had already been scarred by heavy thoughts, heavy emotions… it’d likely hurt her greatly.

Garek and Elena were her people. And a future awaited her people. Dragons and unicirim and humans alike.

In that moment, the dragon knew her name. It hit her like a bolt of lightning, like it’d always been there, just waiting for her to uncover it.

It wasn’t an Albanese name. She’d teased the information from Elena, from the strange lexicon of words and cultures and customs stuck in her head. It was a name they gave their women. A common name with a wonderful origin.

A name that meant: victory of the people.

Nicole. The name clicked, and it sent a mental shockwave that would assault any dragon’s mind within miles. The naming of a queen was big, big enough for it to sink into them, no matter how far away. Even those in River’s End would know it.

In answer to her naming, she heard wordless howls of fury and fear from the closest dragons. No! She’s named herself! She has a filthy human name… this is sacrilege!

Flaring her wings out in triumph, Nicole trotted out of her makeshift shelter, knowing that her smugness, her name would draw the two dragons to her like honey.

Garek. Elena, she hummed gently to them, along with a brisk sense of urgency. We’re in trouble.

She didn’t feel like trouble, though. She felt whole. She felt complete.

* * *

“Trouble, she said.” Elena dashed out, fully clothed and disheveled, followed by Garek and their guards, and the two nervous servants who had crept into the kitchen followed suit. “What kind of trouble? And what the hell can we do?” She scrubbed at her band, feeling frustrated once more at her inability to do anything. Garek caught up and rested his fingers on her shoulder, reassuring with his presence, even though there was a faint, nauseating sensation associated with it.

“I’m sure it won’t be anything big… it’s not like many people can reach this area...”

“Except the kind of people that can fly,” Elena said darkly, glancing upwards to see two shapes in a steep dive, heading directly towards them. “Oh, fuck. Fuck.”

“What’s happening?” The chunkiest guard asked, and Garek pointed to the skies.

“We might be under attack. Any of you happen to be proficient in magic?”

Two of the four guards stepped past them in their gleaming gray armor, nodding. “Air witch and water witch.”

So we did have more than just walking punching bags, Elena thought, watching as one of the guards lifted into the air as if suspended by strings, and the other began moving their hands, leaving blurry trails of red in the air.

“The queen warned us,” Elena continued, rapidly heading to the baby. “But I don’t think she can fly yet and escape...” Now more than ever, Elena felt inherently useless with her contained magic. Not that she saw how exactly they’d be able to stop this attack.

How did they know?

A stray thought from the baby dragon reached them. I know my name. Garek and Elena glanced at one another – both were hearing this at the same time. I know my name; and so do they. Accompanied was the emotion and image of the dragon sending out a wave like an expanding shield, buzzing excitement in her, and anger from those within the vicinity to hear the name.

Which made Elena snort out a laugh in spite of herself. “Seriously, she called herself Nicole?” When Garek stared at her curiously, she composed herself enough to say, “Uh, it’s a pretty common human name back on earth. It’s not really a name I’d expect a queen dragon to have.”

“What did you expect her to have?” Garek asked, now standing by Nicole, who nuzzled at his head with her large snout.

“Not that one.”

The dragon, freshly named Nicole, didn’t seem so bothered by the two potential attackers, even though it signaled that their so called safe spot in the mountains wasn’t so safe anymore. She kept opening and closing her wings in nervous excitement, the energy running high, infecting the humans as well. A soft growl rumbled in her throat, and Elena swore she felt her own bones vibrate from the sound.

Was Nicole planning to fight the dragons? She was far too young, far too small in comparison to them. However, Elena sensed something else. Nicole was… breathing them in. She saw a brief glimmer of it in the dragon’s mind from an errant thought. Her and Garek caught in what looked like turbulent winds, and Nicole inhaling in the winds as if they infused her with life. Smoke from a cigarette, oxygen from a tank. It was the first time Elena had ever seen anything past simpler, admiring thoughts from the dragon, and a shiver of unease went through her.

The air witch worked with the water witch, who turned his water into glinting icicles, to shoot off, propelled by additional windburst towards the attackers. The attackers swerved with ease, and their jaws opened, spouting massive plumes of fire towards the humans. Elena’s whole world turned to a blaze of fire, and the brush of intense heat near her skin. The water and air witch lit up instantly, and writhed in the flames for only a few seconds, before slumping onto the snow hardened ground. The other two guards received the same treatment, and Elena could only watch in horror as they burned, and the smell of cooking meat reached her nostrils. The only reason Elena and Garek were safe was because Nicole had surged forward, her wings covering them both. The heat had passed over them, leaving only the faint suggestion of what might have happened warming up their skins. Nicole tilted her head upwards, before opening her jaw to spit out flame in return. It would have been impressive, but Nicole could only manage a tiny plume of bright blue flame, as opposed to the yellow-orange of the attackers.

The enemy dragons landed with heavy thumps, their wings buffeting air towards them. Gibberish, incomprehensible words flitted across Nicole’s mind, no language Elena understood, but she did understand the emotion of defiance, of standing ground despite the threat faced.

“They’re communicating,” Garek hissed, aghast. Both he and Elena felt utterly useless. The dragons had made embarrassingly short work of the witches and the other two guards. The servants were safe, having stayed in the house, likely cowering in the basement. For all their magic, one blast of flame had been enough to finish them off. Just one blast, and everything had turned to ashes.

They’d never be able to stop these dragons. All of them would die, and Elena would never get to explore the pit of her own feelings concerning Garek, recover her memories, see her parents…

She scrabbled furiously at her cuff, unable to dig underneath, to get any purchase on the blasted thing at all.

Nicole stepped forward, her wings wide and shivering, her tail high, each pad of her paws purposeful. The two enemy dragons, for some inexplicable reason, were side by side, unmoving, though their teeth were bared in snarls.

“What’s going on?” She sent this to Nicole as well as asking Garek. Despite the fear, despite the horror of four people burning to death in front of her eyes, flipping her stomach and leaving acidic bile stuck in her throat, there was also tiny, morbid curiosity. Why the dragons had stopped. Why Nicole had stalked forward, and known to shelter them, and communicated in a language Elena was fairly certain none of them had bothered to teach her.

“I wonder,” Garek whispered, closing the gap between them so his hand clasped hers. His eyes were wide and curious, fixed on the enemy. “I know nothing about dragons. Nothing.”

“Same,” Elena said, closing more distance, so that her elbow locked around his. “We run?”

“Nowhere we can reach in time before they get us,” Garek said. Smoke wafted into the air from the burning bodies, and Elena couldn’t repress her shudder of revulsion. Combined with the confusing presence of Garek, her head spun, and the acidic taste grew stronger in her mouth and throat.

Nothing else to do than to watch their small, brave queen dragon face down two killers.

Nicole arched her wings higher, and they shook as trying to cast off water. Her tail slashed from side to side, rather like an angry cat’s, and more incomprehensible images passed between her and the two dragons. Accompanied by snarling, spitting and deep, rumbling growls.

One of the enemy dragons snapped and blasted flame at them so suddenly, all Garek and Elena were able to do was yelp, before Nicole’s wings flared out, protecting them once more from the brunt of the flames.

After Garek and Elena registered that they were still alive, Garek whispered, “Why aren’t the dragons attacking? Why are they delaying this?”

Elena agreed with his words. It didn’t make sense. The two dragons could easily smash down and kill Nicole, but if anything, they seemed reluctant to do so. Twice, they’d breathed fire at her, but fire didn’t hurt dragons. It hurt the humans around the dragon, but not Nicole.

“Maybe… maybe they don’t want to kill her,” Elena whispered back, nervous when Nicole’s wings rose up again. “Maybe it’s against their basic nature to harm a queen dragon. It’s be like a royalist being told to commit regicide. A presidential supporter being told to shoot their president. They probably don’t want to do that.”

The more Elena thought about it, the more it made sense. It was one thing to be told that they had to kill the queen, but another to see her in front of them, so beautiful, radiant and glittering with a vibrant gold sheen. Emanating power and some kind of scent that screamed of dominance.

In front of Elena’s eyes, the two, murderous dragons, big enough to sweep away little Nicole with one bat of their tails, bent themselves forward, clawed paws sinking across the ground in an unmistakable bow.

“You see this?” Garek said, though it was more rhetorical. Neither of them expected the murder-dragons to bow before Nicole.

What’s happening? Elena sent to Nicole, slightly nervous she might break the concentration of whatever Nicole was doing.

A new image flickered back. Nicole visualizing something in a surreal mirage of colors. Moonlight above them, and several silhouettes shaded under the light. A circle made of all the native, intelligent species of Albalon. Dragons, exiles. Humans, unicirim, werewolves. Plants blooming around them, and tranquility sedating them. They accept my vision, Nicole thought to them. They accept my name. Victory of the people.

The mood wrought into the vision brought tears to Elena’s eyes, and she felt horrified at the sudden emotion. The image itself didn’t affect her that profoundly, but Nicole’s mood, her belief, her determination stirred up hidden recesses of feeling. Elena hastily wiped away the stray tears that formed, and she noticed Garek doing the same.

How can you trust them? Elena thought, attaching anxiety to the question.

They are bound to the current queen, but they promise to be mine when she dies, Nicole thought back. They will leave us alone. They will say we escaped. Additional images attached themselves to emotions. Elena got the impression that neither of the two dragons were sorry that they’d killed humans, because it was ingrained to them to treat humans like cattle. However, they accepted Nicole as a strong queen, with a powerful vision, and that they perhaps were too compromised.

It… didn’t exactly feel encouraging to Elena, because it sounded as though the dragons were still their enemies, but Nicole’s confidence did prop them up.

When the enemy dragons lifted their wings and took off flying with a great sweep of wind in their direction, Garek and Elena stood frozen and numb for a moment afterwards.

One thing was clear.

Their dragon was far, far more intelligent than they’d previously suspected.

8

Garek

Unbelievable. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any crazier in his non-conventional and uprooted lifestyle, this happened. Dragon attack in the middle of nowhere, not so long after making things much more enjoyable between him and Elena… and the queen dragon – no – Nicole, had somehow done something to those two dragons.

She was intelligent enough to communicate in a language neither he or Elena could understand. Powerful enough, even with her tiny queen body in comparison to the monsters dwarfing her, that she was able to subdue them, and…send them away, no more violence involved.

He huddled up with Elena now, leaning against Nicole, who was sleeping, content to have her humans next to her.

These same dragons that killed four humans without even blinking their fierce orange eyes, had just sedately left after some posturing and snarling from the queen, and that overwhelming, shining image of the future she’d shaped in her mind. All races working together. All races communicating.

Which honestly sounded like a nice dream, but Garek didn’t think it’d work in reality. No one person shared the same vision. Everyone had different ideas of an ideal world. Some wanted people to live in harmony, others thought harmony occurred once they’d converted everyone to their religion or wiped out all members of a race they hated.

Whatever Nicole was, clearly, any of his vaguely formed expectations of leaving the dragon alone, trying to pick up some sliver of his former life was impossible. Something bound the three of them together. He didn’t know if it related to the blotted-out memory in his mind, or if that was just a coincidence.

Damnation, though. He didn’t want to be responsible for some grand future. He was barely responsible over his own pursestrings and where he chose to invest his money in. He also hated the circumstances all this had started in.

Though, admittedly, he didn’t hate Nicole, or Elena.

With Nicole finally asleep, it left him and Elena all alone with two hysterical servants, waiting for the next drop in visit from Tara or Janus and Yvonne, and for them to clean up what remained of the bodies. A daunting, morbid task that none of them particularly relished. They’d ended up burying the guards in the corner of the garden, where the ground was softest, and not frozen over by permafrost.

It was emptier without the guards, and Garek dreaded when they received their next visit from Bastion. If the visitors might think Garek and Elena were responsible for those four deaths. If the servants might consider lying.

After the burying, and washing themselves down with heated water inside, followed by a bland meal cooked by their subdued servants, Garek and Elena had wordlessly collapsed into bed together, neither even thinking about spending the time alone. Garek tried to sleep, feeling all lust and enthusiasm drained out of him from the confusing events of before, of recalling the faint, cooked meat smell from the bodies.

“I can’t sleep,” Elena confessed in a raspy voice, tucked in his arms. His back ached, and the cold seeped into them, even though they were draped in two extra blankets.

“Me, either,” Garek said. “I’m a light sleeper, anyway, but…”

“Yeah,” Elena said. He didn’t need to finish the obvious. “It seems our, uh, baby is slightly smarter than we gave her credit for. And scarier.”

“I don’t get how she could have learned all of this in just over a month,” Garek admitted, nervously chewing on his bottom lip. He dragged his mind away from personal worries to focus instead on Elena, breathing softly against him, pressing warmth into his arms and chest. A small glimmer of attraction lingered at the back of his mind as well, but mostly it got drowned out by the tight knot in his stomach, and the very real concern that neither of them exactly knew what Nicole was. He’d taken it lightly, really, the whole idea of a queen dragon, being forced to babysit her. But now it suddenly hit home that this wasn’t just some universal joke. Something big was going on here. Big enough that people wanted to murder this dragon, and big enough that at the tender age of one month and a little, her brainpower seemed far more developed than anything else he’d known.

They say dragons are creatures of magic. Maybe that’s all it’s about. Maybe she’s just… magically obtaining her knowledge. His clients, the shadowy dragons talking behind their exile servants, had shown nothing but disdain for the humans, but still employed help anyway, because they recognized they needed humans to infiltrate humans. And who better than the morally unscrupulous, those who only sought extra gold lining in their pockets?

“That’s the least of our concerns right now,” Elena said, shifting against him, now in a firm sideway embrace. “We knew she was learning fast. But I don’t think we’re safe here at all. How can we be? Four people – four people burned in front of us, Garek. We couldn’t do a damn thing. We just watched it.”

“Ssh, it’s okay,” Garek said, though he felt just as useless and frustrated. He thought briefly about kissing her, seeing if she’d roll with it, and they could both distract themselves from everything else.

Instead, Elena took a deep, sad breath, and said, “We’re not going to be able to leave, are we? Even if we get the chance… it’s just not going to happen. Not like this.”

“No,” Garek agreed. He placed his mouth next to her ear, tickling the hairs around it with his breath. “There’s something I want to tell you, though.”

“What?” Elena shivered under his hot breath and he took the opportunity to press his lips feather light on the lobe.

“That question you asked before… about if I’d harm you or Nicole to escape – my answer right now is no.” Very gently, he sucked her earlobe into his lips, and dabbed the tip with his tongue, before releasing it. “I wouldn’t harm either of you.”

She inhaled sharply, and her hands gripped tightly onto his biceps. “I wasn’t expecting that. Sure it’s not a lie?”

“How would you know?” He closed his eyes, finally deciding he’d prefer to sleep. After a moment, her grip relaxed, though he felt her pounding heart still.

She didn’t respond, and he began to lightly drift. He thought he heard, somewhere in the background, a voice murmuring, I hope it’s the truth, but it swirled in the flickering abyss of thoughts, where other words and images prevailed.

* * *

Although Elena was just delightful, Garek didn’t think it was anything serious. Flings happened. They were alone, connected, and it was convenient. Sure, she smelled good, tasted divine. Had a nice laugh, a roguish sense of humor behind some awkwardness… and both of them were stuck in the same tricky situation.

It was normal, really, they’d gravitate to one another. He watched her stroking Nicole’s snout in the snow-covered grounds, not saying anything. How her hair glinted in the sunlight reflected from the snow and streaming from above. That she was wrapped in so many clothes, she resembled more of a spherical shape than a human shape.

We can’t stay here, Garek thought. It was clear this place wasn’t a safe haven anymore. But additionally, he knew they couldn’t leave without informing the royals in Bastion their plans, because not knowing the location of their queen dragon might pose a slight issue in future endeavors.

He knew now as well that Nicole feasted on the magical energies trapped under his and Elena’s skins, perhaps exacerbated by whatever thing Elena’s mother had done to suppress their memories. Tasting that raw energy had persuaded Nicole to burst out of her egg, and seal them in a strange bond where they could share thoughts and images, emotions and heartbeats.

Closer than anything he’d ever experienced before. Closer than nights with the boys, a fight to the death in some rugged alleyway, or a night in a bed with a beautiful woman.

It was… odd, really. He’d never be in this situation of his own free will.

“Are you gonna keep staring at me like a pervert or are you gonna come over here and play with the baby?”

“First off, I’m not staring. Besides, I’ve seen all of you anyway. Second – she’s not a baby. She towers above other living creatures and has a mind far beyond her age. I don’t think we can compare by human terms.” He approached anyway, wearing a smirk, hands in his pockets to give off a casual vibe as his breath frosted in the air.

“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I was just thinking… about what you said before. That you wouldn’t have harmed us.”

He paused, hoping she wasn’t about to get all heavy and emotional. “What about it?”

“Do I take it to mean that you’re planning on sticking around for Nicole? Or do you still want to escape?”

Well, that was a loaded question. “Honestly,” he said, with an apologetic thought sent Nicole’s way, “I never intended to stick around. It was just a situation I happened to be in, and I hoped I’d be bailed out one way or another. I still want to escape… but I also think I’d be crazy to do so. Some interesting events happen around this dragon.”

“You could say that,” Elena muttered, wiping at her nose. “God, I just want to get out of this place.”

We will, shortly, Nicole beamed to them, and Garek examined the dragon in interest.

“Oh?”

One of the exiles is sending a message to me. He’s carrying people on his back, and two of the royals are with him. I’m telling him about the attack.

The external communication worried Garek, simply because he hated potential liabilities. No way to know for certain what had transpired.

“That’s just great,” Elena said. “Please try to tell them that we didn’t kill anyone, especially if Yvonne’s there.”

Nicole didn’t answer that, so Garek and Elena absently gave her scratches all over her scales, which caused a deep, vibrating rumble in her chest, not unlike a cat’s.

Finally, Garek thought, when their new visitors flew into the retreat. They landed by the house, and when transformed back into human forms, the five of them huddled close together in conference, while Garek and Elena watched cautiously, in case something went wrong. It always felt like they were on high alert nowadays, since despite Nicole’s reassurances that the dragons who left would not reveal their location, he didn’t entirely trust the proclamation. Maybe Nicole felt sure. But maybe she was too trusting, too.

Elena’s hand reached for his and gripped it tightly. He squeezed back in a reassuring manner, again feeling the sting of vulnerability for his suppressed magic. Janus, Tara, Yvonne, a dumpy woman he didn’t recognize, and the exile he also didn’t recognize seemed agitated.

“My mother,” Elena whispered, pointing at the dumpy woman. “They brought my mother here.”

“Her?” Garek hissed, feeling an irrational surge of anger. Aimed toward a woman who had done something to his past without permission. Someone he didn’t remember. “Why would they have your mother here?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t look this surprised,” Elena retorted back, though there was a slight tremble in her hand. Either from nerves, or the faint nausea running through their systems at their close contact.

Easy enough to overcome when engaging in certain horizontal activities, but right now…

“She doesn’t look like a prisoner,” Garek remarked, unable to see any cuffs on the older shadow witch.

Elena chewed her bottom lip, worry expanding over her face. “My mother would have wanted to rescue me. But I don’t see her going willingly with these people. She hates being a puppet of other people.”

“Like mother, like daughter, hmm?” Garek grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes in return.

“We’re nothing like each other at all. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was tense, nervous, and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. If that was Sylas turning up… he’d be wondering what in damnation was going on as well.

When the five people stalked closer to them, Garek prepared for the worse. So it came as a surprise when Yvonne beckoned him forward to undo his cuffs. Same for Elena.

Both shadow witches stood there, dumbfounded, as magic sputtered back into contact in their veins. Garek let out an involuntary sigh of relief, resisting the urge to test out his powers there and then by shifting into the shadows. He stared down at Yvonne, not sure why she’d do this, however.

“What’s brought this on?”

“Complications, mostly,” Yvonne said, before indicating Elena’s mother. “Sue here will explain some of it.”

Sue ran a hand through her graying hair, acting as nervous as Elena. “The people at Bastion have a task for you two,” Sue said, and Elena’s eyes narrowed further. “But that task can’t be completed until your memories are unblocked.”

Elena’s jaw hung open. “What?”

What? Garek privately echoed.

“Mother,” Elena said, her spare hand rising into the air, animated, “didn’t you just spend a lot of time telling me that my blocked memories saved me?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you… warn me away from the person whose memories I was blocked of?”

“Yes…” Sue said, lips thinning. “But it seems clear to me that you two are gravitating together anyway. That’s the nonsense about your Bonds. Still working, even when they shouldn’t be.”

“That’s nice and all, mother, but I still don’t get your u-turn on this.” Elena jerked her head in the direction of Yvonne. “You don’t like working with other people like this. You like taking your own jobs.”

“Might have persuaded her,” Yvonne said, and Elena’s expression went dark.

“If you hurt my mother…”

“She didn’t hurt me, don’t worry,” Sue said, touching her daughter by the shoulder. “I may have received some additional information since we last… visited,” she said, and Elena flushed, though Garek didn’t know why. “Information that tells me that what’s been done to you will be… harmful if you two remain in close proximity for extended periods of time. But it seems like… because of the dragon… you’ll have no choice.”

The longer Garek held onto Elena’s hand, the dizzier he felt, and the stronger the urge to throw up came. They both let go of one another, and the nausea faded to a mild build up in the back of his throat.

Yvonne cleared her throat. “Not to mention that we also would like to make use of your shadow witch talents. And Tara and Janus are here to make an offer.”

“An offer I can’t refuse?” Elena said, one eyebrow arched.

Garek scoffed. “You expect me to jump on this?” He shook his head. “After how you’ve shepherded us around like we’re little more than dirt on your shoes, you expect us to work for you? After you threw water into my lungs? You’re crazy.”

Yvonne shrugged. “Well, you were a no-good criminal trying to steal the egg. So forgive me if I’m not going to let that slide. Or do you think I should have been happy? Or do you think your mentors would react the same if I tried to steal off them?”

She had a point. Not that he appreciated hearing it. “That doesn’t justify now. What’s going to stop us feeling like prisoners again?”

The water witch paused at this. “Being paid a lot of money?”

“It’s a start,” Garek conceded. “How about not having people up our asses all the time inspecting us? Or locking our magic away again?”

“I suppose… we can do that, too,” Yvonne said. “Though we would need to check in from time to time. Not as a prisoner thing. As a ‘you’re important to our mission and we should make sure you’re still alive and with it’ thing.”

“Fine,” Garek said. “Just don’t bother us any more than necessary.”

“Us, huh,” Elena whispered then, and Garek flushed slightly. He’d assumed he and Elena would be staying together without even thinking about it.

“I mean, don’t bother us… wherever we’re staying.”

Elena laughed softly to herself. Then her expression turned serious. “You’ll really get our memories back.”

“Yes,” Sue said. “With this fixed waystone.” She held up a black waystone the size of her palm, with a carved mark of a star on it. “It’s bound to a specific placed in the realms. Though the person was able to remove your memories from a distance… they need you near to return them.” She had a sorrowful look on her face. “I hope you won’t think badly of me when you see them.”

“That remains to be seen.” Elena stared haughtily at her mother. She was pissed off, and had every right to be pissed off. Garek, meanwhile, simmered beneath the surface, torn between wanting the memories back, and liking who he was right now. Ultimately, it didn’t make sense to deny his past.

* * *

Transporting via waystone was always an odd experience. The world shifted around, changing colors, energies, sceneries. Transporting via a fixed waystone was more fun. The ring signets to the Realm Market were fixed, allowing passage through gates – or to locations that were bound to the specific stone used.

The place they all ended up in was cloaked in darkness, with stars scattered across the skies. Trees surrounded a small, grass strewn clearing, and a pool ringed by stones sparkled in the middle, disturbed by creatures within it. Next to the dark waters: a small, wooden hut no bigger than a single room stood crooked, and a small fire flickered just outside the doorless entrance. A stranger sat in a chair within the hut, bathed in dancing shadows.

The whole setting, to be honest, felt like to Garek that they had been dropped off at the end of the world. He kept expecting to peer beyond the trees and see an edge that tipped off into nothingness. As for the eerie figure slumped on the chair, Garek felt an innate sense of threat, and wanted to cloak himself in his magic for protection. It was always an automatic reflex to resort to magic. Being untouchable while blending in with the world, shifting past people like a ghost, knowing they couldn’t see or hear you, except perhaps for that stirring of soft, baby hairs at the backs of their necks…

“Well, this is creepy,” Elena said, and he felt her hand brush his. “Staged, much?”

“He likes a bit of peace and quiet from time to time,” Sue said, though her voice sounded much higher pitched than normal.

The stranger moved towards them to greet. Garek’s brain froze in utter shock when he registered the man’s shadowed face.

“You,” he hissed.

The man’s wrinkled lips smiled thinly. “Me,” he replied.

Out of all the people he’d ever expected to find in this situation, in some hut, some clearing trapped in a globe of night and stars, it wasn’t this.

Sylas.

His mentor.

The person who’d taken him out of the Realm Market years ago, trained him up as a thief, and treated him far better than other thieves. Almost like a son.

“What is this...” Garek stared into his mentor’s face. “What in damnation is going on?”

Sylas’ wrinkled face stretched into a lazy, almost sinister smile. “A necessary deception, child.”

“You two. You – you two are the reason my memories...” Garek spluttered, barely able to express his outrage.

“Who is this man? How do you know him?” Elena said sharply, while the others looked on curiously.

“He’s my mentor. He’s the one who took me from the Realm Market. Is that it, then? You took me not because I was some blossoming talent, but it was part of the deal? Separating me from her?” He felt utterly betrayed. Every interaction now, every moment he’d spent since came back to him as a lie. A deception that encompassed almost two decades.

“It was a necessary deception. And a necessary reward for my services, too.”

“But,” Garek spluttered, not quite thinking through his words, “I thought you said you didn’t have magic!”

“Obviously,” Sylas said with a slight sneer, “I lied. Most people are… unaware of my magic. I prefer the anonymity of the realms for it. People come to me to remove unwanted memories, block connections… and sometimes, but for a steeper price, renew them.” He scratched at his white beard, appearing unimpressed. “Sue here paid a substantial amount to erase the connection from you two. But now with the emergence of that dragon… and the fact you two will be in constant close proximity… the magic will begin to have adverse effects on you, and on the dragon.”

Anger continued to boil within. “What I don’t get,” Garek said with gritted teeth, “is why you sent me that letter. The letter where you wanted to kill the dragon. Only to have people from the den then break into the castle and attempt to kill the dragon.”

Now Sylas looked puzzled. “I never sent a letter.”

“What?” Garek spluttered. “Yes you did. It was your handwriting. It had your personal seal. You said you loved me like a son, and hoped I would help you kill the dragon. None of that rings a bell?”

The older man shook his head, the frown on his face deepening. “No… I sent no such thing. But I can think of a few people skilled enough to forge my handwriting. People who would intend to test your loyalty to the den. I will… have words with them when I return. I’m sorry.”

Somehow, the knowledge that Sylas hadn’t sent a letter disappointed Garek more. “Oh,” he said, his voice a croak. “Right.”

He should have known, really. Sylas didn’t throw around that much affection. But he’d been so happy to see it – even if he’d rejected the mission within the letter straight away, and essentially betrayed his mentor.

Seemed like his mentor had betrayed him from the start, though.

Since Sylas was the one who removed their memories.

“Do you have the payment?” Sylas asked of the royals, Janus and Tara. Both appeared solemn and sad in the dim light, and the shadows dancing over Yvonne’s painted face transformed her into something sinister. Elena drifted closer to him, once more looping her fingers with his which he recognized as her go-to comfort gesture. He didn’t mind the comforting himself, though he certainly wasn’t used to being touched so much.

This was their memories, after all. A secret about to be revealed at long last. What would be so awful that the adults of their time wanted it all gone?

Tara and Janus presented Sylas with something small. Garek couldn’t see what it was from where he stood, by judging by Sylas’ pleased smile, it was of worth. Probably some ancient royal heirloom, or a powerful magical artefact, or something far beyond Garek’s knowledge.

“Excellent,” Sylas purred, tucking the object away in his voluminous robes. “Much appreciated…” he then examined the pair of them with a dark smile on his face. “That’s quite the secret you have, isn’t it?”

“What secret?” Tara’s voice was sharp.

Yvonne sighed, before snapping, “Watch it. Two people here don’t know. Let the royals reveal it when they want to.”

“Hmm… I’d imagine you wouldn’t want anyone to know,” Sylas said with a raised eyebrow, now examining Tara and Janus. “Given the… implications behind this, and the rules you restrict yourselves to.”

Janus’ face was cherry red, at stark contrast to his straw-colored hair. Garek examined the royals in mild interest, wondering what sort of secret lingered between them.

Sylas did appear to not continue the conversation at least, instead beckoning for Garek and Elena to come to the pool with him. He treated Garek with that same cool professionalism, and again, Garek felt little snakes wriggling in his stomach at how all the interactions with Sylas were based on a lie.

He took Garek’s memories, then bound him in service. Possibly even as payment for the memory taking. It seemed like the sort of thing Sylas might do.

Another thing irritated him as well.

Did he even want his memories back? They weren’t giving him an option, again. Sure, it made sense, because it interfered with their current arrangement, but he wasn’t desperate to get his memories back.

Maybe to get rid of the increasing nausea he felt every day, but other than that…

No.

Once again, he considered the deep temptation to just vanish, and maybe drag Elena with him as well. But the tingling unease sweeping through their locked hands reminded him why they couldn’t.

Irritated, he waited by the pool with her.

Sylas crouched by the pool, and raised his hands over it. Something within the pool’s center glowed a deep, unsettling blue, pulsing like a heart. “Enhances my magic,” Sylas croaked, drawing upon the light. “Makes it easier to do this.”

He lifted his hands, now glowing the same deep blue of whatever adorned the pond, and pressed his hands against their foreheads.

Unconsciousness hit Garek faster than he could blink.

9

Elena

The market swarmed with activity. Elena skipped through the market, swerving around a small blue dragon inspecting butcher’s meat.

Even at this distance, she felt Garek’s emotions, and his own excitement infected her. She loved the way their emotions combined, making everything so much bigger. Just when she thought she already felt so much, there he was, making everything better and the world seemed to her a wonderful place. Her skipping increased until she was taking huge, adrenaline-laced bounds, startling people.

Are you hiding, Garek? she thought to him, because there was something muted in his presence today. By that big statue of the horse?

…No, Garek replied, a little annoyed because she’d guessed correctly. This is lame. I can’t play hide and seek with you anymore if you can just find me in a second.

Behind her, several customers shook their heads, swaying as they walked. She examined them in mild interest, knowing something about her energy caused them to do so. Grinning, she turned up the energy, and saw one of the customers begin to gloss over in shadows, like her magic. The same dimple pattern appeared on her own hand.

Hmm.

She didn’t have a lot of control over it, but it always pleased her to see what she could do. Garek’s emotions grew stronger and stronger, until she sensed him close enough to slip into the shadows herself. She could only slip when he was nearby – she didn’t have enough control yet. But she’d only get stronger over time, right?

Together, with Garek, she could do anything. Ever since they first met, in the street next to the orphanage, there’d been something special between them. That little mark on their hand was proof – it only appeared when they shook hands. Then their magic began flaring.

Her mother thought it was too early for the magic to show, and when Elena had shown Sue the palm mark, Sue’s face went all tight and worried like it did whenever they didn’t sell very much over the week. Father was working on expanding his selection of market items, but they were yet to make a choice of what to sell.

“Found you,” Elena crowed in triumph, placing her hand directly where she sensed Garek to be. Instantly popping into her line of sight, he pouted, before grinning.

“I was testing the powers earlier,” he said in a loud voice. “I know no one can hear us like this. Or see us. Look!” He bounced over to an old man sitting on a bench, dragging Elena with him. Elena noted Garek had different clothes from the other day – a neat black cardigan, black pants – clothes too sophisticated for an orphan. Had he stolen them? Mother always said she shouldn’t associate with someone like Garek. he’d teach her bad habits in no time.

“Hello, you stupid old man!” Garek screeched in the man’s ear. He didn’t react, continuing to stare at the marble coated ground instead, perhaps even being lulled to sleep.

“That’s crazy,” Elena whispered, still a little unsure about raising her voice. “He really can’t hear us?”

“Yell something! Go on. He can’t!” Garek beamed with excitement, and when Elena did a monkey-like screech by the man, she started giggling hysterically when there was no reaction.

This magic thing was so cool.

“Makes it easier to pick apples from the stalls when I get hungry,” Garek said slyly then. The nine year old boy grinned, and Elena swatted him.

“No, stealing’s bad. You can always get food from us.”

“Stealing is fun,” Garek corrected. “You get such a feeling when you do it right...”

Elena’s resistances crumbled, listening to the way Garek described it. She always protested a little at first, then fell right in with Garek’s plans. Eventually, the two of them began running through the market stalls, picking up goods here and there. Each time Elena took something, she felt that intoxicating mix of committing a crime and getting away with it.

I’ll only do this when I’m with Garek, she thought. My power is stronger with him anyway.

They often behaved like this, ever since their powers flared up together, and they could reach into each other’s minds. They scampered through the streets, invisible, and sometimes the shadow of their magic touched others, making them dizzy. Sometimes it made Elena dizzy, too, because she had so much, and didn’t know what to do with it.

She wanted to spend every waking moment she had with Garek. It was an addiction. With Garek, using the magic, running riot through the streets. She heard stall owner’s complaints that things were going missing, felt her mother’s heavy suspicion, but she always left what she stole with Garek, because she knew her mother would locate anything. Plus, her mother was a shadow witch, too. She likely suspected that if anyone could steal without detection, it’d have to be another shadow witch, and only Elena had the chance of developing powers.

She wasn’t sure if her mother knew she’d been developing her powers at the tender age of 8.

It didn’t matter, anyway. She loved her freedom – but the more they roamed together and exercised their powers, the more she started to see things go wrong. Like that one time where someone died of a heart attack because they became irrationally afraid, and it was after Garek had screamed in the old woman’s ear, taking delight in the fact no one detected them.

But that person dying of a heart attack… a weird coincidence.

Or that some of the regular stall owners who came to talk to her parents were saying they were getting nightmares, about shadowy beings reaching for them in the darkness, and sometimes they woke up and thought parts of their bodies were missing.

Or the strange, wracking pains Elena experienced from running her magic so much, like a hot knife was sliding through her body, causing her sometimes to just keel over and clutch at her stomach in a silent scream. Garek said he felt something similar, too, so maybe they better cut down on the magic.

Neither of them did. The power was too addicting. The thrill beautiful. And they had to be together, experiencing one another’s emotions and thoughts, Garek promised her at one point they’d be together forever, and she agreed, because she always wanted to have a forever person.

But the pains got worse. More people died. More people outside their control were partially slipping into the shadows, some of them returning, missing limbs.

Terror through the market, visitors dropping, and Elena remembered her mother cornering her one day, demanding what was happening – and on reflex, Elena curled into the shadows to escape the admonishment. Her mother had stood there with a big o on her lips, eyes wider than dinner plates.

When she materialized again, her mother had seized her dirty hand, and when cleaning it, spotted the mark upon it.

“You’re Bonded,” her mother had whispered. “Who to? Who to? Show me, now!”

Elena took her furious mother to Garek, and her mother grew paler and paler, watching Elena and Garek together.

“You shouldn’t be developing your magic so young. And Bonded… that young, that uncontrolled...”

“We’re fine,” Elena had said, though she knew they weren’t. She was starting to think those deaths in the market were because of her. Because she was too addicted to being with Garek, using the magic.

She just couldn’t stop.

“A Bond enhances your magic, you understand that?” Sue had crouched to face Garek, who didn’t appreciate an adult telling him off. “If you keep using your magic like this, it’ll have serious repercussions.”

“What’s that mean? Reper-cushion?” Garek had retorted, sullen.

“It means a lot of people will be hurt. Including you two,” Sue had replied, trembling slightly as she spoke.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Garek said, his hard, dark eyes on Elena’s mother, blonde hair a scraggly mess.

“Yeah, we’re not doing anything wrong!” Elena piped in. “We’re just having fun.”

Sue had run her fingers over her lips, staring between the two children. “How long have you been Bonded for?”

Neither child answered, until Elena, compelled to answer her mother, reluctantly said, “seven months.”

Sue’s face went blank. “And people have been complaining about nightmares, missing limbs, and untimely deaths for six.”

Both children glanced at each other.

“Maybe if I get antimagic bracers...”

“No!” snarled Garek. “You won’t take the magic away from us!”

Elena felt his fear, his anger, and when he slipped into the shadows, she followed him as well, convinced in that moment her mother intended to strip everything away.

Her mother tried to follow, but was unable to.

Garek and Elena stayed cloaked in the shadows, running over to the gates ten minutes away, that led to the different realms.

“She’ll take your magic away,” Garek said, quivering with anger. “Adults are all the same! They want to keep us quiet and not let us do anything.”

“Yeah,” Elena agreed, heart pounding fast. “Yeah, she wants to get those antimagic things.”

“You can’t go back,” Garek said. He then held onto Elena tightly. “I can’t lose this. The magic. You.”

“I don’t want to lose it either.”

Both children had decided then and there that they would hide in the shadows, steal until they had enough to buy a place of their own in another realm, and then hide there, so they could continue to practice their magic in peace, without interference of adults.

Adults, after all, were the enemy. Not allowing them to have their freedom.

But my mother cares, Elena thought. But then she remembered how angry her mother was, and decided life would be much better with Garek. He didn’t mind her doing bad things. He didn’t yell at her for it.

She and Garek hid with each other for two weeks, constantly using their magic. Things got worse in the market. The pains in Elena’s body intensified. When Garek felt pain, she felt it too, and she’d been waking up drenched in sweat, throat dry, lips parched, but unable to stay away from the magic, from Garek.

She needed it.

Both her and Garek were sleeping wrapped in each other’s arms one night, cloaked in their magic, and she woke up at one point, watching him shake and sweat in her embrace, feeling tremors under her own skin. She missed her mother, but refused to leave Garek’s side. And now she was convinced all those people hurting and dying in the market were because of her, but she still couldn’t stop.

A strange, treacle-like sensation crept over her body. It started at the tips of her toes, and crept over her skin molasses slow, until seeping into her head. Panicking, she stepped away from the still slumbering Garek, stumbling outside the near empty inn and the bed they had occupied without permission, the sensation burning in her like a fever.

The last thing she remembered was falling flat on her face outside the inn, cheek pressed against cold marble, and the magic sputtering out of her, leaving Elena visible to anyone who passed.

“It had to be done at a distance,” Sue was saying, as Elena emerged from unconsciousness, out of the revived memories, of all the shit she and Garek had done together, and their dangerous, reckless need to be close, to abuse the magic, to harm others. “I wanted to put the antimagic cuffs on them, but of course, they’d disappeared. Elena wasn’t coming back home. I couldn’t find her. And everything was getting worse. So my only solution left was to find someone who could neutralize her from a distance.

Listening to her mother, Elena felt an incredible wash of shame and guilt. She understood exactly why her mother did what she had to. Because Elena wouldn’t have listened. For crying out loud, she’d run away. Acting out some feverish obsession with magic and Garek.

Stirring up from the ground, Elena glared at her mother. “Fuck, mom. Why didn’t you tell me this?”

Sue sighed, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe me. You’d instead be convinced I ripped you away from that boy out of spite. You weren’t always a nice child.”

You got that right, Elena thought, insides writhing in guilt. She was a horrendous child. “How the hell did you put up with me, mom?”

“As mothers try to do,” Sue replied. “And fathers. He knew a little less of your situation, but you better believe he was worried sick when you vanished like that. And…” Sue sighed, before saying, “your out of control magic was poisoning him as well. He was having nightmares about missing limbs. It would have continued progressing from there.”

Fuck. Elena folded her hands in her lap, an icy chill sprouting through her veins. She was… she was awful.

Garek, also awake, was rubbing his head, before he touched her by the bare skin of her forearm. The nausea that usually followed the act was gone. Instead, the connection fizzled to life, flickering through her like it did all those years ago. Along with the connection, so did emotions, and it was super confusing, to say the least, to not only feel Garek lodged in there with her, but Nicole as well.

“Man,” Garek said. “We were terrible kids. Terrible adults, to be honest,” he added mildly, mouth twisted in a wry way.

“Terrible adults linked to a queen dragon who has called herself Nicole,” Yvonne said, “With the future of all of Albalon in your hands. Taking River’s End is one thing. But securing the hearts and minds of the dragons and preventing future wars… that’s another thing entirely.”

“Not really the kind of people you’d want that kind of future of the world placed on,” Elena said lightly, though inside, she felt cold, a little numb, a little… self-loathing of herself.

“Another thing,” Sylas said, after crouching in front of them to make sure that they weren’t disorientated, “the magical strength between you two is unusually strong. Generally, two shadow witches who are Bonded make for bad news. You tend to suck into each other’s darkness, and it pulls everyone else around you into it. But… you have a magical being that requires magical energy to thrive. So as long as this Nicole is around, you should be able to find some balance with your magic. She’ll just need to eat it out of you.”

Well, that sounded… ominous. “So you mean she’s like some giant flying leech?”

Tara sighed. “You didn’t just call a queen dragon a leech, did you?”

“Maybe.”

Garek tamped down on a laugh. Elena smiled, but the influx of returned memories and magic left her exhausted, and her thoughts drifting slightly. It’d been so long, she hadn’t realized she’d been using her magic at half power. Far too long to be cut off from the source. Far too long to be missing a part of herself.

“Guess we’re gonna be big damn heroes,” Elena said, rubbing at her eyes. “But whoo, I feel like I’ve been hit by about a dozen shots of alcoholic regret.”

“Alright, we’ll carry you if you can’t walk,” Janus said with a kindly smile, though his blue eyes seemed sad to Elena.

“What… what was the secret they didn’t want you guys to talk about?”

As Janus gathered Elena in his arms, and Garek was supported by Tara and Yvonne, he didn’t say anything for the moment, his lips tightly pressed together. Then, before any of them activated their waystones out, with Sylas watching them from the light of the fire, Janus showed his palm to Elena. “I’m Bonded to my twin sister,” he admitted, quiet enough so that no one else could hear. “I hide the mark, but it’s here on my palm. And since, well, marriage between siblings is frowned upon, and… marriage is compulsory if you’re a royal unicirim… it’s not the best situation.”

Elena’s eyes went wide at the sudden confession, and she examined the prince incredulously. She wasn’t sure why he chose to confide in her, but all the same… “Do you… do you both…?”

“No,” Janus said. “We’re not intimate that way. We know and feel everything about each other, but… we plan to marry separately.”

“That’s…” Elena shivered. “That’s awful.”

Janus smiled, but didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. The rules the royals had set down for themselves worked against Janus and Tara. Likely they faked not being Bonded, acting like they still needed to find it, just to keep up the pretense that people wouldn’t look at them and think their relations as incestuous. Sure, they spent a lot of time together, but that was normal for twins.

Exhaustion crowded Elena’s brain, befuddling her thoughts further.

What a shitshow this all is, she managed, all the same, because one thing was for sure. Out of all the people she could pick to be responsible for the future fate of Albalon, she didn’t think this motley crew as top of her list. Bonded twin royals, two reckless, morally compromised thieves, a water witch who wore too much paint on her face, and a dragon with a perfectly normal earthen name, with a less normal future – if she survived long enough.

Elena fell asleep in Janus’ arms, oblivious to the journey they made back to Albalon.

10

Garek

“So… you want us to do what?” Garek said, horrified and alarmed at the request being given of him from the royals.

“Did I stutter?” Janus raised an eyebrow, smiling at the two thieves and their queen dragon.

Garek wished he had stuttered. Or said something completely different from what came out of his mouth. “You want us… to cloak… your army… in shadows. So you can sneak up to River’s End. That’s insane. You know how much energy it takes? There’s thousands of soldiers!”

“We’re somewhat aware, yes,” Janus said, now running a long-fingered hand through his blonde hair. Garek, already sporting a headache from last night’s excessive drinking due to not being able to process his own newly re-acquired memories and emotions, and also unable to process being too close to either Elena or Nicole, because they added a whole extra dimension of confusing emotions on top of everything. Bad enough he needed to process his own mess. He didn’t want anyone else digging into his skull either. Not without some appropriate time given to process everything.

“Well, you should know that what you’re asking is virtually impossible.”

Tara, sitting down on one of the four armchairs on offer within the little cabin they stayed at, on the fringes of the Realm Market, sighed. “I’ve been told differently. By both Sue and Thorn, and both of those are experienced shadow witches.” She raised one delicate finger in the air, and Garek found himself searching for her palm mark, even though she’d hidden it from display. Janus had told Elena, and Garek picked up what Elena knew shortly afterward. Both royals accepted they knew, and Garek wasn’t sure what to make of such a secret, but had no desire to act on it.

“Your Bond enhances the magic within you,” Tara continued. “And since both of you have the same magic, it means those powers intensify. Then you have a Bond to a magical being, who siphons some of your magic, but in turn, gifts you with far more than you’ve taken. So altogether, that’s… a lot of magic. I mean, I can practically smell your magic from here, and my amazing ability is turning into a unicirim. And getting people to like me.”

“To be fair, that’s a magic in itself.” Now Garek paused in his pacing. “You seriously don’t have any magic? I thought everyone who was a part of the Bond possessed magic.”

Again, Tara sighed, and Janus gave a small smile as he said, “Our magic is already the transformation into unicirim. And when our partners are the traditional kind, witches, we absorb some of their magic. But when both are unicirim… well. You don’t find many unicirim who also have magic beyond their shifting. So, you’re a special pony, Garek.”

Special… Garek had heard that used in referring to him. More than once. A thief that could utilize the power of flight and invisibility achieved a lot more than a thief who had neither of these things.

“Thank goodness for being special,” Garek muttered. He began lightly pacing again. “Are we being paid for this?”

“You are, actually.” Tara nodded. “Figure it might help you feel freer than us ordering you around.”

“I appreciate that…” Garek rolled his eyes. A part of him still wanted to stubbornly refuse any kind of offer these people had made, given the way they started with him. Though at the same time… when he really thought about it, he wasn’t sure if life before had been any better.

Before, he was a thief contractually obliged to jobs. Now, it seemed he had the chance to be a hero. That word wasn’t one he ever thought suited him. It never would… but then again, he never exactly expected to be asked to help in one of the biggest military operations of modern Albalon, either.

“You’ll have time to practice, of course. We’re not monsters,” Janus said with a grin. “I’m sorry for the way things were done. Regardless of reasons and justifications, I do wish we could have met in better circumstances. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some lingering resentment going on there. I can’t say we’ve treated you the best.”

“Eh, I’m over it, now,” Garek said. It was mostly true. The royals left him to his own devices soon afterwards, giving him the option to continue sitting there and wallowing, or follow the tug at the back of his mind that led to Elena or Nicole.

Elena. The memories he’d made with her recently contrasted vastly with the memories of the past, still fresh and raw in his mind.

Even back then, he knew he’d been intrigued by that fierce, devoted little girl, who was prepared to give up everything to be with him. He knew it, he exploited it, even, knowing that whatever he said or did, she’d be right there at his side. He’d abused her friendship, selfishly wanting to throw away everything for him. To run away from the orphanage, the Realm Market, and find somewhere different where they could use their powers to take from others and live together like adults did.

He hated the contrast of his child self to the self he was now. Even though so much had been stripped from him, it was a reminder that once again, he wasn’t a good person.

It was one thing knowing it and joking about it. It was another to feel that conviction deep in his bones, poisoning the parts of him he thought had been untouched.

Each stray reflection on his past, on who he was now provided a problem. Only way to process it… would be to confront the past. Accept. Move on, preferably not poison his liver in the process. With a sigh, he bid his farewells to the royals, intending to seek out Elena. To have words with her.

He found Elena easily, since he was connected to her completely. At least she was no longer the pushover of years past. He couldn’t bully her into his schemes. He needed someone like that – who wouldn’t bend to his will.

Elena was out in the woodlands with Nicole, who had now grown too big to hide. She was almost the size of an exile dragon now, and likely wouldn’t stop growing until she outsized most traditional dragons as well. Elena was clad in a light blue dress with fur seamlines, white leggings beneath the blue, boots, and a cloak with a hood that was pulled up to hide the frizz of her hair. Nicole’s creamy gold scales glinted in the dappled light that filtered through the trees, making her seem as if she was made out of pure gold itself, worth more than what entire empires could muster. His heart skipped a beat at the sight, at the simple emotion of seeing these two together, of knowing their connection to one another. Nicole was stretched out on the ground, front arms crossed, wings tucked in, tail twitching.

Yes, Nicole was saying to Elena, we pick everything up by osmosis. When we’re in the egg, we pick up stray thoughts and magical energies from anything in proximity to us. So when we’re born, we already have an imprint on our minds, and we just have to grow and soak up more. I joined humans late in my egg stage, so I didn’t have as much time to absorb them – I needed my weeks growing to fully understand human communication, customs, feelings.

You learn so much faster than us, Elena responded, and her mind voice seemed small, uncertain. Are all dragons so smart? So knowledgeable?

Sadly, not. It depends on what they’re exposed to, and if the mind they are molded to is open or closed. Learning is exponential at the start, but crawls to a standstill once we reach adult stage. It’s very hard to teach an adult dragon new things. Humans have the ability to constantly change, break themselves down and reshape themselves again. Dragons do not have that luxury.

But you changed the minds of those attackers, Elena protested. That seems like a big change.

There was no changing. They are conditioned to obey the orders of a queen, to protect a queen at all costs. I am a queen. That is stronger than their order to kill. It would be like a human being asked to kill their own god.

Garek whistled inwardly, alerting them to his presence, as they were so absorbed in one another. This is heavy conversation for a sunny afternoon.

Garek! Elena faced him, and her lips spread into a wide, beautiful grin. “How nice to see you. For a moment, I was convinced you were planning to avoid us for the next year.”

Garek coughed uncomfortably. “I was… considering that,” he said, half-joking, half realizing it sounded like a valid option.

“After the connection we’ve made? Bad of you, Garek,” Elena said, her smile taking on a mischievous glint. He knew exactly what kind of connection she was talking about.

“Oh. I mean, I’m definitely up for more of that.” He smirked, folding his arms, allowing a salacious picture to run through his mind. Judging by her raised eyebrows, she’d seen it. “But I admit… I’m having a chore of a time trying to match…” He paused, thinking of what he wanted to say. “The old memories are fresh, still.”

“I know,” Elena said softly. She glanced at the grassy, twiggy ground. “I admit… I kind of hate myself for what I was like. I feel like I haven’t changed so much from that person.”

He nodded. That was something he related to. “Yeah… we were awful.”

She quirked a smile. “No wonder we went into thievery.”

“Yet they want to put the hopes of a war on us. Crazy idiots,” Garek said.

“I know, right? Fucking stupid.” Elena rocked back and forth on her heels a little. He felt a small wave of emotion from her, though he wasn’t able to identify it. “I’m a little weirded out by the fact we were… supposed to be together, too. Like, something out there decided this Bond would work with us. And even when it was taken away… we still found a way to meet all the same. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“That’s… well…” Garek rubbed the back of his head. “That’s fate for ya. If you like to believe in that sort of thing.” Now he moved forward, giving Nicole a pat on her great snout. “I’m still amazed how little Nicole worked out, here. Can’t say I ever thought I’d end up in a situation like this.”

Nicole rumbled in amusement, her eyes closing as she nudged firmly into Garek’s hand. Her scales were warm under the touch, and she made a small, contented purring sound. A rush of affection teased his insides, and he almost gasped with the intensity of the emotion. Yeah, this was going to take some getting used to.

I’m worried, Nicole said then, and her human guardians instantly began soothing her wherever they could, though Garek suspected she didn’t feel as much with a touch anymore. Maybe it was just the gesture that counted for her, and the intent behind it. I know the humans are expecting a lot from me. So are the dragons. I… confess I’m not sure if I will fulfil expectations.

“I think people expect too much of you, to be honest,” Elena said, giving Nicole a huge, rough series of pats on her side. “Just like they do of us. None of us ask to be put into the places we are. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Nicole hummed, and now Garek had a tiny inkling as to why they might be better suited to Nicole than most. He didn’t voice it out loud. But he smiled, and bumped shoulders with Elena. “We’re not your keepers. But… I suppose we can help each other.”

Yes. Nicole butted her snout into Garek’s stomach, making him stagger a few steps backward. “I think we’ll get used to this. Though I’m worried we’ll… we’ll end up doing what happened before as well,” Elena admitted.

“Give yourself some credit,” Garek said. “We’ve got a lot more control of our powers since then.”

Her eyes lifted up to meet his, and he was momentarily captivated by the sight, of the clear darkness in them, and the way the light caught her cheekbones. It was beautiful, almost artistic. He’d been worrying so much about other things that he hadn’t given himself time to appreciate the majesty of the other shadow witch he was Bonded to.

I hope we’ll get more time, he thought sincerely, just about stopping himself from reaching out a hand to stroke the cheek accentuated by light.

They spent the rest of the day together, enjoying one another’s company, not worrying about what the rest of the world planned for them. Arrangements for the shadow witches to practice were put on hold, but they found moments to practice with one another anyway, under the watchful eye of Nicole, and whoever else came along to look at them, though fears they’d run away in the night had apparently diminished. That strange witch, the red-head with an almost permanent melancholy expression on her face seemed to feel that they were trustworthy.

Something about being able to sense emotions was the justification behind it.

With their Bond restored, it became apparent just how much of their magic was being held back by it. The shadows swirled in his veins, whispering to him, and slipping into them was like sinking into a hot bath – a blissful feeling to be blanketed by the world, to no longer be visible to anyone else, and to walk along Bastion’s streets and feel the suggestion of the people he could touch and drag into darkness with him.

Enhanced shadow magic could do a lot of harm in the wrong hands. It wasn’t long until he felt the seeping creep of darkness spreading beyond his control, but with Nicole in the vicinity, a plea to her, and she siphoned it up instantly, keeping him stable.

In the night, Garek debated sleeping on the couch, or sharing a bed with Elena again, wondering if it’d be considered presumptuous. Sleeping together without commitment didn’t automatically mean he had a right to the bed.

Elena, though, had other ideas. She approached him as he was arranging blankets on the couch, with a determined expression on her rounded face.

“No way you’re sleeping on that ratty couch. Plenty of room for two people here.”

“I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep if that happens,” Garek said. He probed his mind for Nicole, who was asleep next to the little house, enclosed in a small cave to keep her somewhat out of view of any potential passersby. “Since I remember the last time we shared a room together.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying awake,” Elena purred, lips curling into a confident grin.

He stared at her, willing for a spark of arousal to flare into life, but it didn’t come. “I’ll share, but I don’t want to do anything.”

Her expression fell slightly. “You don’t?”

Swallowing thickly, Garek nodded. “I… I don’t think I can do ‘just casual’ with you. I’d just be lying to myself. I find I want to… dig deeper into this connection. To… share more of those little games you have. And get to know you in a way that isn’t a selfish kid trying to run away from everyone else.”

At this, the female shadow witch sighed, nodding. “Man, I can’t get over how shitty we were.”

“Is it really any different from what we are now?”

“Yes,” Elena said, and Garek blinked, not expecting this response. “Because… I think I would have been a completely different person if I didn’t have these memories removed. And that’s fucking me up a bit.”

“There’s no point going down that route,” Garek said in a soothing voice, now walking over to rub her back, knowing from experience that simple gestures of comfort helped. He also believed his own words in the moment he said them. “We are who we are right now. That’s all that matters.”

After an age, Elena wiped at her nose, before saying, “I suppose you’re right. Feel like I could use a drink or two to handle this better.”

“You don’t need a drink. Maybe… maybe we can go for a walk, instead? Sure, it’s dark outside, but maybe some fresh air’ll help.”

“Sure.” Elena headed over to her coat, pulling it off the little rack and draping it around her. “Just a quick one. No magic.”

Garek agreed and took his own coat. Outside, the moon bulged, slightly deformed from full, shining tawdry light upon them. The air smelled fresh, as if heavy with spring fruit and vegetables, with the first bursting of flowers at winter’s end. Cold air iced his lungs, and he held light conversation with Elena, enjoying her company, enjoying sharing a little moment between them together, pure and simple, rather than brimming with ulterior motive or loneliness. That was nice. He needed more moments like this.

More chances to forge a connection.

They reached the walls of Bastion, near one of the main gateways into the city, and he pulled her into a sudden, breathless kiss, feeling the impulse and following through with it that same moment. Without the nausea gallivanting through them anymore, the kiss felt sweet, hot, and thrummed inside him, causing all of his nerves to light up. Arousal flickered inside, and he entertained brief notions of shoving her against the wall and taking her there and then. Reluctantly, he wrenched his mind away from the gutter, focusing instead on the genuine walk he wanted to have. Not everything had to end in sex.

Tempting as it was, all of a sudden.

Entering Bastion, deciding to do so in shadows, they passed stragglers, revelers, and soldiers. So many soldiers, and they expected him and Elena to cloak all of them, and sneak them close to River’s End for a full ambush.

Clearly, whatever they were paying, they weren’t paying enough. Because this was a ridiculous and near impossible task.

Not impossible if we trickle them in gradually, he thought, watching a group of dozens of soldiers wander their way over a bridge with shallow running water. There was something beautiful if uniform about Bastion. It was built for purpose, rather than elegance, yet there was elegance in its simplicity. He felt Elena’s hand wrap around his own and took solace in the touch, smiling. Together, they explored some of the different areas by foot.

Eventually, they chose to return back to Nicole, and there was another brief moment where Garek thought he might lose control of his libido, or perhaps Elena would. Their Bond seemed to amplify it, somehow, and make it harder for them to keep their emotions separate and distinct.

All he knew, the more and more they began to exchange thoughts, rather than words, was that he felt less inclined to run off into the unknown. He wanted to see things through instead. Preferably with Elena.

He already knew a lot about Elena, thanks to the returned memories, but he also knew there were far more things he didn’t know. Her experiences on earth were refreshing to him. A strange planet without magic or uncirim. A place where technology ruled.

In Albalon, a lot of technological advances it seemed had been replaced by magic. Why bother inventing things when a witch could conjure something up, or people could fly you from place to place? Although he was interested in the thought of looking at some of the earth cities with Elena. Less interested in having his magic taken away from him again, since magic didn’t work in earth, aside from weak points that allowed realm travel. Or being unceremoniously dragged away by a ravenous kelpie that had a taste for human flesh.

But hopefully no one planned to be dragged away by a kelpie anytime soon.

Over the next week, they tested the limits of their magic. How many they could take with them in the shadows. If they could do it without physical contact.

And how long it took before they dropped into a dead faint from magical exhaustion.

Garek’s limit was covering ten people for a few hours. Going above ten drained his magic at a ferocious rate, and the same result came with Elena as well. The less there were, the better for their magic. As for distance… they could drag other people under without touching them. But again, it took a frightening amount of magic to do so. It was simpler just to touch the people directly. But also useful to drag people in – just in case they needed saving.

Garek couldn’t help but be reminded a little of their past, of the constant usage of their powers and the dangers it caused them. They left it a few days without magic use at all to recover energy levels… but apparently, general Witslaw and the royals didn’t intend to wait much longer to force their plans into action.

Plans that meant leaving Nicole behind. The intelligent baby dragon didn’t want to be left behind, but she understood.

I wish I could have powers like you two, or be easy to sneak along. It’s a shame I can’t shrink myself. Nicole had sounded rather morose at this declaration.

Being small is overrated, Garek had replied, which prompted a snort out of Nicole.

Be safe, she responded sadly, which led to Garek and Elena cuddling in a rather sad ball that night. Nicole stayed with some of the exiles, not wanting to sleep outside.

11

Elena

The soldiers in front of Elena were understandably nervous. Her mind was still caught in a loop of early morning, where her and Garek’s platonic sleep together turned slightly less platonic, and it ignited the blood in her veins yet again. They’d managed an entire night without succumbing to their desires, but morning arousal did wonders for people attracted to one another. Elena and Garek didn’t get much time to themselves before they were escorted to the waypoint by Tara and Janus. Which of course, sent additional doubts through Elena, who still didn’t know if she was capable of doing what was asked.

Despite their practicing beforehand.

Transporting an entire army through an established waypoint wasn’t as easy as it looked. Not that anyone exactly thought it’d be easy.

For a start, the waypoint couldn’t handle more than five or so people at a time. Any additional people standing in the weak spot simply weren’t able to transport at all.

And since dragons did have spies watching the waypoints, because if you had a fully established and known point to those who used the Realm Market, it made sense to keep an eye for any suspicious movement in the area.

This meant that Elena and Garek, waiting on the River’s End side of the waypoint, stayed cloaked in shadows, and they needed to turn the arrivals invisible almost before any potential spies could register what was happening. Elena stayed by the point, ready to pounce and cloak any arrivals, and Garek led the group of soldiers to the established spot within the coasts of River’s End, in the various cave systems that existed along the tidelines. The mountains were a no-go, since the dragons also nested among the heights. They disliked low points, so the coasts were mostly left alone. The smuggler’s cove by the bay was the single biggest hide-out, which the exiles offered without hesitation. Though it wouldn’t fit all the soldiers.

Elena and Garek worked exhaustively, spending hours upon hours cloaking and escorting the tiny trickle of soldiers.

They stopped at a certain time in the night, slept during the day, and then did it all over again when the next evening fell. They were lucky to even transport one thousand soldiers a day at this slow rate, along with food supplies being carried along to ensure the growing army didn’t suddenly run out of food and begin starving right under the nose of the dragons.

Flexing the magic for so long left Elena feverish in the mind at times, when everything around her blurred into shadow, and sometimes she couldn’t let go of the magic, as if the magic itself was stiff and arthritic. There was also the forced separation from Nicole, which taxed Elena and Garek far more than they ever thought possible, even though the three of them exchanged thoughts and feelings on a daily basis. Mostly Nicole beaming images of the things she was experiencing, admitting she was worried for them, and them trying to filter down their exhaustion and magical sickness by showing her the beauty of the surrounding country around River’s End, from the rugged coastlines and pebbled beaches, to the snow-capped mountains with faint glowing fires smudging the darkness and pre-dawn hours, to the vast, wide redwood trunks of the forest in the west, and the crooked sprawl of River’s End itself.

She liked having those new images to work with, and it gave Elena something else to focus on.

One thousand soldiers a day, out of an army of around thirty thousand. A logistical nightmare. A month of torture where only sleep spared Elena. For each person concealed by shadow magic there was, the more pressure it squeezed out of her. Shadow magic didn’t like sharing itself.

Days blurred into weeks. Soldiers blurred into one another, and each day, Elena stayed curled up in bed, not wanting to move, to put herself through those nights again, clinging to Garek like he was a lifeline.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she told him, somewhere deep into the little hell they’d made for themselves.

“Then don’t,” Garek had whispered, his forehead pressed against hers, looking every bit as drained and tired as she felt. “Just run away. Let them fight their own damn wars.”

When he said that, of course, she suddenly found dozens of reasons why she couldn’t just up and leave. Her impulse to run dampened, but it didn’t remove the digging fear that they were abusing their magic too much. They would devolve back into their childhood times, where the magic was everything, and would eventually consume them.

“They better pay us so much money that we can retire comfortably for the rest of our lives,” Elena growled, tugging the blue blankets up to their necks.

“To be fair, at least we still have lives,” Garek pointed out. “Pretty sure some of those soldiers won’t be returning.”

“Are you trying to guilt trip me, Garek?” Elena arched an eyebrow, examining him with playful suspicion.

“Not at all. Trying to make you feel better. We’re not on the front lines. We’re not being marched at swordpoint to go and needlessly waste our lives. We’re still allowed to operate… in the shadows,” he said, apparently disgusted with himself that he’d committed to a pun, “And Nicole doesn’t have to do anything, either.”

“I feel like they expect her to,” Elena said doubtfully, thinking that Nicole would be quite the target if she was ever to fly with the exiles and unicirim into battle. A bright gold dragon did tend to stick out among a sea of greens, browns, blues, blacks and whites. Garek himself was a beautiful, creamy white unicirim, though she was definitely uncomfortable with the idea of flying in any shape or form. He’d shown off to her his unicirim form, with a long, wavy white man, a speckle of gray around his muzzle, long eyelashes over dark eyes, more gray splotches just above each hoof.

She loved the way he looked, honestly, though it was hard to remember sometimes that he could transform. She’d never seen him transform when she hung out with him as a child. He never told her what he was, either. Maybe he didn’t know. He was an orphan, after all, and as far as she knew, the power didn’t manifest until later years, like magic was supposed to do.

“When this is all over,” Elena said cautiously, because she and Garek hadn’t exactly made any solid future plans with each other, and she didn’t know what to label their current position as, “do you plan to retire from all this? Keep with the thieving jobs? Travel the worlds? I mean, since you discovered that Sylas wasn’t the person you thought he was. And you seemed convinced you couldn’t go back to the Smuggler’s Den.”

Garek screwed his face up in apparent concentration, though Elena wasn’t sure if she’d accidentally insulted him. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve not thought that far ahead. I just wanted to get this business out the way, survive abusing my magic for a solid month, then wait and see what happens next. Assuming there’s no complications, and we don’t get caught and burned alive or anything.”

“Nice,” Elena muttered. “I’m trying not to think about the bad outcomes too much...”

“Should always be prepared for any outcome,” Garek said with a lazy smile, before deciding in that moment to spread languid kisses over her cheek, jawline, then lips. “You got something in mind?”

“Mmm...” Elena’s eyelids fluttered shut, before she said, “Well… I know I probably shouldn’t leave Nicole behind. I had this whole idea I wanted to go and live in some cabin in the mountains somewhere. I still have it… I’m just not sure where you and Nicole come into it, because I realize… I wouldn’t mind involving either of you in future plans.”

“Is that so?” He drew back, and his eyes became immeasurably soft. The expression caused Elena’s insides to flip over somewhat, because she wasn’t used to such tenderness in another person’s gaze that wasn’t immediate family. “I wouldn’t mind… potential future plans with you either.” He breathed the words against her mouth, and his hot breath dug into her, warming her soul.

This was why she could endure the hellish nights with the soldiers and her magic. Because she had something to return to in the early hours of the morning. Something to support her when it grew too tough, to kiss her asleep or suck her into a whirlwind of pleasure, of bodies entwined together.

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to the idea,” she said, feeling a sudden impulse to backtrack on her words, because they sounded a little too intimate for her comfort. Instead, she lightly punched him on the shoulder, half wanting to hide herself because emotional spillage wasn’t really her thing. “Just maybe I’ll need another shadow witch around to make life easier. And I bet Nicole will complain a lot if we leave her hanging.”

“Sure. That’s why...” Garek didn’t bother correcting her, and smiled in that way that sent her insides fluttering. Her body’s reactions were really quite annoying. However, she didn’t really know how to process her feelings. And honestly, with everything going on, she didn’t want to focus too much on things she struggled with understanding anyway.

The cuddling grew more aggressive, and the light kisses turned heavy, mouths hungry for one another, hands seeking bare flesh, nails leaving fiery scratches along the skin.

The mood varied on what type of session it turned out to be, but right now, Elena decided she wanted, hard, hot, and the chance to surrender. To let Garek take her in any way he desired, to be at his mercy and revel in the thrill of it.

While they still had some energy, they committed to one another. Their rapid, hungry kisses passed hot, shallow breaths between their lips, or pressed the air onto their necks or just behind their ears. Elena didn’t want slow or sensual. She wanted rough, hard, to dive into it with furious passion, until neither of them could move, and they forgot the rest of the world around them.

Clothes vanished fast, tossed to random corners, and they wrestled each other on the bed, bodies slick together, becoming lost in pleasure.

Elena managed the upper hand, though Garek seemed quite happy to give it to her, when she straddled him on top after sliding a condom a little too eagerly onto his erection, and leaned down so that they were chest to chest, her hands pinning his wrists. Her hair trickled over his skin as she kissed his nipples, enjoying the hiss of pleasure that escaped his throat from the stimulation.

She bit down lightly, and he let out a huff of arousal from his lips, and she felt his heartbeat hammering fast, as if the organ was threatening to hit a way out of his chest. She liked how sensitive he was with the stimulation, how he squirmed under her touch, and thought she might just get addicted to the sensation. Heat pooled between her legs, and he began to buck impatiently, trying to seek a way inside her.

Grinning, she gave one last suck of his nipple, letting it pop out of her mouth, before she slid her hands up to his chest, and raised herself to let the tip of his erection brush at her entrance. She swayed teasingly, until hilting herself upon him with a gasp. His eyes widened at the sudden feeling, and his hands clamped around her hips as she began to rock back and forth upon him, seeking out her own pleasure. It took a moment to find the perfect angle, but when she did, she focused on hitting that sweet spot within. Their moans and cries mingled together, and she could have sworn the temperature of the room increased around them as heat simmered through her body. Her thighs ached from the effort, and her chest ached from the fast movements she committed to.

When Garek began rising his own hips in time to assist with that perfect angle, she was a goner. With a shuddering cry, the tightness in her stomach expanded into a full orgasm. She lost control of her body, unable to support it, and he took the opportunity to flip their positions, grinning as he hovered above her, before chasing out his own orgasm.

This was how she’d survive the grueling use of her magic. Sharing moments like this with him. Sometimes just lying wrapped up in his arms, other times forcing the rest of the world out of their minds.

The more they connected, the more she knew: she’d get addicted to him. Addicted like she had been as a child, always wanting to be in his presence, to sink her teeth into magic, to experience the warmth of their Bond.

With his release, he flopped by her side. Maybe he’d try again in a moment. Maybe they’d both sink into an exhausted sleep, knowing in a few hours’ time, they’d be up again to escort more soldiers.

But for now, they only had each other to worry about.

* * *

It didn’t feel like she got much sleep, either way. With the soldiers, her life boiled into rinse and repeat. More soldiers escorted away in the darkness. More nights passing, blurring into one another. Until at one point, Yvonne informed her that it was less than three thousand left to go.

Three more days of personal torture. Those last set of hours blended into one another, and the soldiers gathering at the coasts were put under strict rules with severe punishment if they did anything that might potentially alert the dragons to their whereabouts. Elena was vaguely aware that the royals intended to create a diversion to draw away the larger part of the dragon armies, but she also knew that the dragons had spies within Bastion, and they’d likely notice an army gradually disappearing, if not understanding exactly where they were disappearing to.

On the final day, Nicole came through the portal, and Elena almost choked a cry of surprise when the golden, glimmering scales emerged, along with a small group of witches.

That was so fun, Nicole said, stretching out her wings, even as Elena blanketed Nicole in safety. I’ve never used a waystone before.

Jesus Christ, Nicole was getting big, Elena thought to herself. Nicole’s size wasn’t that far off an adult dragon now, and she could likely carry a dozen or so people on her back.

You are… wow.

Big, right? Nicole sounded proud of herself. I even managed short flights the day before. My wings need to be a little larger, though.

Garek whistled high in their minds as he collected the witches and Nicole, taking them under his magic. As a father, I’m very conflicted by my child being twenty times my size.

Must be all the protein you’re feeding her, Elena thought wryly, grinning when Nicole echoed with laughter in their minds. As far as Elena knew, dragons didn’t really laugh, but she’d picked up that habit from the humans, and loved it.

Cute.

Why are you here, though? Garek asked, suddenly suspicious. I thought you would be staying away from danger.

I wanted to come, Nicole responded serenely. And I got my point across. I don’t think any of the humans wants to cross me, though it’s a shame I can’t communicate to them like I do to you two.

Why? Elena folded her arms, still keeping an eye in case another group of humans transported, wondering if any of the royals or witches were throwing a fit because Nicole had chosen to come.

I think I might be needed, Nicole replied simply. And I might need you.

Okay. This was probably some dragon intuition going on… but again, Elena felt that strange tug in her gut, She’d thought it had vanished after meeting Garek, but apparently it still lingered there.

Maybe they did need Nicole after all. Or maybe they didn’t.

With Nicole here, it felt like their mission had fresh life breathed into it. Elena was really here. She was really helping to disguise an entire army as they prepared to invade River’s End and reclaim it for the humans and unicirim and werewolves of Albalon.

Except it was also reclaiming it for the exile dragons, too. Man, this shit was complicated.

“We have people waiting on the other side of the waystone as well,” Yvonne informed them, “but if things go wrong, we’re only using this way back for our most important members. The generals, the royals, and the strongest witches we have. The rest… we have an escape route planned with the exiles, similar to what we did when we evacuated the city beforehand. But I think the dragons will be more prepared for it than last time. They’ve introduced a kind of mineral within the city that counteracts Helen’s powers.”

“And Helen’s the… the Wanderer?”

“Yes.” Yvonne nodded. “Possibly our strongest weapon, but she’ll only be able to affect those outside River’s End now. So we’re hoping to bait them. We have one more priority, too. And this may be another mission for you two.”

“Another mission?” Elena shivered at Yvonne’s intense stare, because for once, it wasn’t layered over with harshness, but softness, and belief. Like she believed Elena was capable of this, and Garek as well.

“We want to try and secure the next generation of dragons that haven’t hatched yet. With Nicole… her receptiveness to us… it becomes clearer and clearer to me that fighting the war and winning it is not the end game. It’s changing the future generations that follow afterwards. Otherwise… we’re probably just going to have a similar invasion from the dragons some decades down the line. Passing the baton of Albalon between our species until there’s nothing but dust and ash.”

Elena blinked at this eloquent description. Looking at Yvonne, however, and how invested she was in Albalon felt strange. Because she knew Yvonne was a Zorin water witch, and as far as she knew, the swamp-laden region didn’t care for politics of other countries. And no one would be insane enough to invade the place, as the jungles, swamps, animals and insects, and even the air would kill people. No amount of vaccinations existed to survive a place like that unless you were born into it, or naturally resistant.

“Forgive me for saying this, Yvonne, but… how come you’re so invested in Albalon? You’re Zorin. And you’re risking your life, everything for another country to succeed. Why?”

At this, the water witch cracked a dark, mirthless smile. “I don’t care about Albalon. But I do at least care about my friends. I came here because of Renne.”

“The crown prince? Is he the one you love, then?” Elena raised her eyebrows, genuinely curious, but of course, Nicole and Garek were in earshot. The soldiers, however, trailed behind, uncomfortable in the embrace of the shadows.

“He’s just a friend,” Yvonne said.

“I highly doubt that,” Garek snorted. “That’s a very special friend you got if you’re prepared to commit to an entire war for them. In my experience of life, people aren’t that altruistic.”

Yvonne glared at him, before raising her hands up into the air. “He’s just a friend,” she repeated. Her jaw was set in anger, but after a moment of Garek doing nothing but just stare and wait for her to speak, she finally let out a huff of resignation. “It’s not him. It was…” she hesitated, seeing Elena drift closer, clearly eager to listen. “I’ve not even told Helen yet, and I like her more than you two.”

“Precisely why you should tell us,” Garek said blithely. “Why do we care?”

“I’m not sure of the logic there…” Yvonne shook her head. “If you must know, I was interested in Tara.”

Elena’s eyes rose upwards. “Wait. Tara. As in… princess Tara.”

“Yes.”

“Princess Tara, with the…” Elena gestured helplessly in front of her chest, making a slightly inappropriate squeezing motion.

“Yes,” Yvonne said.

“But she’s a…”

“I know.”

Elena fell silent again, processing. Garek, meanwhile, just smiled.

“I didn’t realize you were a gay,” Elena finally finished, which prompted a silent snort from Garek, and a glare from the water witch as they trumped down a coastal slope, heading for the shoreline.

“I’m not,” Yvonne said. “Or not like you’re thinking. I can be… attracted to male and female anatomy. But regardless, it doesn’t really matter. As you’re aware, she’s Bonded.”

“Does she know you… like her?” Elena’s eyes were still wide, as if she’d heard the juiciest piece of news ever. “Have you told her? How long…?”

“She’s aware,” Yvonne said dryly. “And she’s not interested in the same sex. I’m cautious just to keep the secret of her Bond.”

“But… you’re still infatuated by her, aren’t you?”

At this, Yvonne’s lips twitched sadly. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get over it in time.”

“It’d be easier if you didn’t associate with the royals so much, though,” Garek said dubiously.

“Perhaps. But like I said; I’m also Renne’s friend, and loyal to him.” Yvonne steeled her gaze, and just like that, the conversation was over. Elena mulled over the confession, thinking briefly of the lengths people went to for those that they loved. Even if those people they helped would never fully understand it or maybe even want to.

Like her mother. A strange chill swept through Elena at that thought, along with a pang of guilt. Shit – her mother did care for her. And she’d been angry, never quite convinced her mother had done what she did to actually help Elena, though she pretended to accept it.

She just didn’t believe it.

Finishing escorting the last of the army from Bastion, Elena, Garek and Nicole were joined by Helen, her husband Callum, Yvonne, and Tara and Janus. Three out of the four royals – Renne and Maya were going to lead the war effort, being the most proficient fighting duo in the entire army.

“We’re the ones who will secure the next generation,” Tara said. Elena overtly studied Yvonne’s face as Tara spoke, but saw nothing in the water witch’s expression that betrayed her feelings. She was clearly good at hiding them. “We will find the brooding grounds – Callum and Helen already know where some of the eggs are, since that was where they found Nicole.” Tara appeared slightly apologetic when she announced this.

No hard feelings, Nicole thought, and Garek expressed Nicole’s sentiment out loud.

Tara smiled and her fingers briefly brushed Yvonne’s shoulder in a friendly gesture. Only then, Elena thought she saw something flicker in Yvonne’s face, but just as quickly, it had vanished.

Garek cleared his throat. “Why not use the Wanderer within the city? I heard about the evacuation. She helped evacuate thousands, didn’t she?” He then glanced at Helen. “You have a lot of power.”

“I can’t do it again,” Helen said simply, smiling in a mysterious way. “They have prepared the city to resist my influence. I’m more effective elsewhere.”

Garek nodded, and Elena thought she felt an external influence pushing at her emotions, probing and testing. It reminded her of when she had first dashed past the woman, how she’d picked up Elena’s emotions, sensing something different in her surroundings, and the shock it sent through Elena at that revelation. How far they’d all progressed since then. She hardly believed her new position now.

“The idea will be to have Nicole fly us, since Nicole’s queen presence will hopefully work for those Helen can’t influence, and under the cover of shadow magic, we would begin to relocate the eggs. There’s a chance the dragons will relocate or destroy the eggs rather than let them fall into enemy hands, so we ideally want to do this before our army begins the assault.”

Elena’s jaw dropped. “That sounds like a really bad idea. If we’re caught… we alert the dragons early.”

“We’re shadow witches. We don’t get caught,” Garek scoffed.

“Oh yeah? And why are we here again?”

That shut Garek up.

“More likely they will notice their eggs starting to go missing,” Janus said then. “Which is why it’d only be started a short while before the attack. A few hours before, we’re thinking. You can manage the cloaking for that long?”

“Yes,” Elena said, privately thinking it’d be yet another personal hell to force through such extensive cloaking again. Even if her magic was enhanced with Garek and Nicole’s influence. “But I will hate you for it afterwards. When will the attack happen?”

“About eight hours from now,” Tara said casually, and Elena had to suppress a squeal of outrage.

“That much time, huh?” She was pleased to see Garek appeared as disconcerted as she felt. “We’ve been abusing our magic for a straight month. I thought we’d have some time to recuperate.”

“You do. About four hours,” Tara said. “I’m sorry, we would give more time, but we know the dragons have spies in the Realm Market and Bastion. We can’t afford to waste any more time than necessary. It will eventually reach a point where they’ll be completely prepared for us, or even discover and rout the army before we’re fully in position. Right now, the advantage is with us.”

Elena snorted, before grabbing Garek by the hand and dragging him away, Nicole following automatically. “Don’t disturb us for four hours or I’ll personally rip your face off,” Elena said.

Yvonne chuckled, and Nicole happily curled herself on the ground, letting Garek and Elena crawl into the space between her paws and neck, absorbing Nicole’s warmth. Nicole began purring without conscious thought, and honestly, it was both a surreal and relaxing experience for Elena. Connected to both of their minds, feeling both of their emotions and thoughts, and feeling for the first time in a long while, complete, rather than hollow. Like the universe finally made sense. Though she wouldn’t exactly call being stuck on the coastline of hostile territory a particularly smart place to be.

Left alone at last, Garek and Elena were simply too exhausted to do anything else than actually sleep. Nicole’s soothing rumbles helped them over the edge to a dreamless, blissful recuperation.

* * *

Nicole flew through the air gracefully, like a glittering golden angel, and Elena and Garek clung to her back. Elena once again was reminded of just how much she hated flying, as they soared through the air cloaked by shadow, guided by Helen and Callum to the location of any potential nesting grounds. They reached one part of the nesting grounds with ease, high up in the mountains that towered over River’s End. The cold whipped through Elena, and she clung to Garek’s waist tightly, not wanting to let go, trying to keep herself calm.

They had to slide off Nicole as she was perhaps big enough to accidentally bump into the two dragon sentries, but their first brooding cave yielded bad results. The eggs had all been removed except for two, but they scooped them up anyway, because two dragons were better than none. Dull green eggs, which hatched into the most common color present among the dragons. The second brood cave was empty. The third had broken eggshells and dark fluid-like stains on the ground, as if someone had rampaged through the batch and squashed them. The more they looked, the more the group’s collective hearts sank. Something had already happened to a majority of the eggs.

The final cave in their explorations, however, finally yielded results. It also had far more dragons guarding the entrance than the others – eight of them in total, with four of them directly inside, by the eggs, zealously keeping watch over a large mound of green, blue, red, gray and brown eggs. No gold. Nicole was as rare as they came. As the others figured out how they’d smuggle out or secure the eggs, Elena stayed with Nicole just outside, cloaked, while they watched the spires of River’s End, lit up with faint firelight and starlight, knowing any minute that the invasion would start.

What happened to all the eggs, do you think, Nicole?

The queen gave a soft snort of air through her nostrils. Something bad. The rooms smelled like death. Nicole sounded a little distressed, as if the thought of those broken eggshells pained her. It also sounded like Nicole wasn’t sure about what had happened to the eggs.

“It’s starting,” Elena whispered, watching Nicole’s shadow-covered wings raise up and down in a nervous habit.

Mixed with the firelight and the stars, and the swell of the moon above, came the flickering of lightning, of blue, tendril-like bolts of what Elena knew to be ice streaking from above. Renne and Maya together, attacking with their deadly ice magic, raining death upon the dragons.

It felt strange, watching the battle from a distance. She didn’t have any stones in this battle, any investment for it to be won or lost, really, but she was still a direct contributor to the effort. All those people had been smuggled there under darkness, without detection, right under the noses of the rulers who had prepared for everything except for the combined, ridiculous power of two shadow witches. Since normal shadow witches struggled even with cloaking one additional person for longer than a couple of hours at a time. But Elena and Garek had used their magic for hours and hours, flexing it like a mental limb, always pushing it to the limit, perhaps brushing over that limit a few times… but never breaking.

I can hear their rage, Nicole said sadly, as blasts of dragonfire coated the air, attempting to incinerate soldiers. They could only see the battle by the lights – the figures were too distant to make out otherwise.

The dragon guardians behind them grew agitated, stretching and twitching their wings, their necks, jaws moving. What are they saying? Elena urged Nicole, knowing that the others were stuck within the nesting room, still figuring out the best thing to do with the eggs in the middle of all the flickering fires that kept the heat high for the eggs to incubate.

They are receiving orders, Nicole said, her voice suddenly cold. Her teeth displayed in a snarl. They will destroy the eggs if it looks like they’re losing.

Shit, Elena thought. That didn’t sound very good at all.

Garek’s voice interluded in their minds. We have no choice, then. We better take out these dragons before they have a chance to enact their orders.

Except none of them here were exactly equipped for fighting. Tara and Janus wouldn’t stand a chance against the dragons. Nicole… they absolutely couldn’t risk revealing her. As for Garek and Elena…

We weren’t supposed to engage in any action, Elena accused, feeling a tight band of panic hit her chest.

We have Helen, Garek said. Maybe she’ll be able to do something to them with her magic.

Elena didn’t exactly feel confident. She gasped when a huge, golden form flew over them, bigger than anything she’d ever seen living in her entire life. Three times the size of Nicole, and Nicole was already a humongous dragon by herself. Elena clamped her hands over her mouth, even though nothing should be able to hear them under the cloak of shadows. Nothing but people perhaps like Helen, who felt the throb of emotion with her every breath.

Nicole tucked her wings tight to her body, and looped her tail around in a gesture of fear. She’s so strong, Nicole thought, as the glittering and formidable dragon flapped towards the battle, golden light flickering around her.

Do queen dragons have magic? Elena’s stomach dropped at the sight, wondering if a golden was somehow the equivalent of a draconic nuclear bomb or something.

Yes, but it’s different for each one, Nicole said, and she sounded annoyed at herself for some reason. I don’t know what type of magic she has.

Elena sincerely hoped it wasn’t a magic that would fuck up the entire advance in River’s End.

Magic hummed out around them, and Elena felt a light push on her emotions. It wasn’t subtle to someone who was expecting the effects, and to Elena’s horror, she saw the dragons increase in their aggression, their snarling, before opening their jaws and belching out flames. The flames thudded into Nicole, making it obvious she was standing there, falling just shy of Elena, who was thankfully concealed by Nicole’s body.

“Oh, fuck,” Elena cursed.

What happened? Garek’s voice hit them in mad panic, and the dragons advanced on Nicole’s invisible form, still spewing fire.

Elena’s brain shut down in sheer, uncontrollable fear for a moment, before something in her galvanized. She stretched her magic out and stabbed it into the four dragons, bringing patches of them into the shadows.

Like when she was younger, and her magic strong and unrestrained, damaging others around. She pumped her magic into the dragons, choking them in the shadow until the divide between reality and darkness caused their limbs to separate.

Two collapsed, decapitated. The other two, suddenly missing major parts of their bodies, from wings to legs to lower jaws, flopped and gave gasping, pained growls, the fire completely dissipating in their throats. Nicole moved protectively in front of Elena, and Elena uncloaked her so she could finish the job on the last two and their suffering.

Thank you, Nicole said, and it broke Elena’s heart to hear the sadness in that thanks. Sometimes the things that needed to be done were the things no one wanted to do.

Trying to suppress the sick feeling in her stomach, Elena stretched her magic out over the other four dragons as well within the egg enclosure. The result was just as unpleasant, just as cruel, and when Elena finished, she was spat straight out of the shadows, trembling violently, unable to think, to function, barely remembering how to breathe.

Soft, warm limbs wrapped around her as another face emerged from the darkness, firelight dancing in his brown eyes. Words escaped his mouth, but none made sense. More words echoed in her mind, along with confusing images, but all Elena wanted to do was blot everything out, to just sleep.

To sink into oblivion.

12

Garek

Escorting the eggs out of the cave was significantly easier without any dragons barring their way. In human form, he was able to carry two at a pinch, though it meant being cautious with the steps. Nicole, unable to balance them on her back without risking them rolling off, was able to carry around six at a time in her jaws, and they spent the next few hours shifting the eggs. Not exactly exciting, thrilling work, compared to the raging battle in River’s End, but still important to their future plans. Of having the dragons bond instead to humans, of raising a new generation receptive to unity, rather than division. He thought he understood why raiders in olden times would take the children from conquered tribes.

Raising them into new cultures destroyed the divide. Though it was also a kind of tragedy to need to rob them in the first place. Perhaps what they planned for these unhatched was cruel.

Best not to think too much into that. Meanwhile, Elena was strapped to Nicole’s back, unconscious, but secure upon the dragon with the linen bindings looping around Nicole’s spikes. They barely had enough for Elena, since it was only Tara’s insistence on carrying some sort of medical tools around with her that enabled the bindings to be used in the first place.

The weakspot was a mile away from the caves, and it was so small, barely covering ten feet of ground, that it was little wonder that few knew about it. Tara and Janus did, thanks to general Witslaw, the one responsible for engineering their escape all those years ago. He’d told them about the secret passageways out of the palace, along the coast, and the weakspots in Albalon’s reality canvas that royals in the past had used to escape.

They were just shy of a hundred eggs by the time they finished. They used Garek’s Realm Market signet ring to transport everything to the market gates, since they couldn’t do a direct teleport to Bastion. The teleports only matched to their equivalent location in other realms. The Realm Market, however, had waystones attached to their location, which simply brought their wielders to it.

The teleporting took a while, too, since Garek needed to touch the objects with his bare hands to teleport them, and Elena was out for the count. Out because she had tapped into the twisted side of their magic, the part that threatened everyone else. The part he hoped he’d never have to feel again. There was something about that blackness which sucked at his soul, trying to taint it, and tug him into that state of nothingness.

Hired Bastion merchants stood at hand with carts, ready to wheel off the eggs through the Bastion gateway under heavy protection. Ten four wheeled carts pulled by mules were ready for distribution, and they were able to load around eight eggs into each one, leaving the final few waiting for an additional two carts, and some steady hands. Garek helped, and watched as Elena was carted off as well, hoping she’d wake up soon. His heart twanged slightly, watching her wind out of sight, cradled by the heavy armored guard called Gerran who belonged to prince Callum.

She’ll be okay, Nicole assured Garek, and he gave a small smile in return. Mission accomplished, he stuck close to Nicole, and saw Helen, Callum and Yvonne all appear anxious. Tara and Janus had gone to personally attend over the eggs, and now their little group all stood by the gates, slightly forlorn, perhaps feeling useless due to their lack of engagement with the battle for River’s End.

“I feel like we should be doing something,” Callum admitted in a low voice, his blue eyes narrowed. “We’ve done what we were meant to do, but… There must be more. Maybe to do what that shadow witch did to the dragons. Or get Helen to inject mass hysteria in the fighters.”

“I’ve already boosted our own fighter’s morale,” Helen said quietly, her fingers clasping together. “Before we left, I made sure to make them all confident and determined. My influence with the dragons now is weaker, they have something protecting them...”

“Taking down those dragons almost killed Elena,” Garek snarled. “Shadow magic is not to be taken lightly. Unless you want to put your soul through a grinder, I’d rather not use it in a battle.”

Yvonne rubbed at her chin, grimacing slightly. “I’m with Callum, in all honesty. Maybe we can –” but before she had a chance to finish, Nicole, without warning, scooped up Garek in her left set of claws – and they teleported directly back to the spot they’d left.

“What,” Garek spluttered, before instinctively cloaking Nicole with his magic, because she was slightly too visible at that point in time.

I need to be here, Nicole said simply, and didn’t elaborate any further. Pretty cryptic, but Garek wasn’t planning to argue with her. Not like this. Not when he felt the resolve shimmering off her. Within seconds, they were joined by Yvonne, Callum, and Helen.

“What’s happening? Where did…”

“They’re here, still,” Helen answered Yvonne, and Garek pulled them all into the shadow magic as well.

“She says she needs to be here,” Garek informed them, still feeling a little mystified. Unsure how to progress, not willing to leave Nicole alone. “No explanation.”

“Wherever she’s going, I’m going,” Yvonne grunted. “Not planning to let her die on my watch. Maybe you need some water magic.”

“Maybe you need my magic,” Helen said softly, and Garek nodded.

“Sure, whatever,” he said.

On my back, Nicole said. Garek relayed the instructions, and the two humans and two unicirim clambered onto Nicole’s spine, wedging themselves as comfortably as possible in the crook just past her wing joint, or perched between two blunted spikes for secure seating.

Still cloaked, they lifted up into the air, and Nicole headed straight towards River’s End.

“I really hope she isn’t planning to fly right in there and murder us,” Yvonne hissed. “I’ve got other things to do.”

Garek let out a half-laugh, half groan, his fingers icy on Nicole’s spikes, wondering what in damnation he’d gotten himself into. The lights of the distant fighting grew closer, until he was able to make out figures – smaller dragons weaving in and out of larger, fire-breathing ones. Unicirim flying – some with Bonded spitting their magic out, others with normal witches at an advantage from the air. Maya and Renne wreaked devastation with their icy arrows – but Nicole ignored all the biggest clusters of fighting, instead heading straight towards the enemy queen, who radiated destructive magic. Buildings collapsed around the queen, and exiles and unicirim and humans died under the golden, electrical blasts.

Clearly, the queen had enough power in her to take out huge swathes of their army in obscene amounts, and Nicole, naturally, was heading right towards the biggest danger. Cloaked in shadow, no one stopped them, no one knew they were there. Streets blazed beneath them, swamped in flames, and distant sounds of agonized screams mingled with the roars and curses of battle.

Despite all his insistence of staying away from the action, of not participating in the war… here he was. Clinging to Nicole, not sure how exactly he could help beyond not dying and invisibility. He didn’t want to tap into that darkness Elena managed. She’d used it, and it took her out, with no indication of just when she’d wake up again. He remembered how darkness tasted, with its horrible, cloying, magnetizing sensations that threatened to suck him in. With his returned memories, he knew how it felt, to be so close to the darkness that one wrong misstep would take him away. A slip of willpower might be likely, given how much he’d been challenging his own powers for the past month.

They approached the giant queen dragon, and he saw the others tense around him, Yvonne holding onto a spike with one hand, scanning for water sources to draw her magic from.

Show me, Nicole ordered Garek.

His stomach dropped to his boots, but he obeyed before he had time to raise up some really good counter protests. Nicole bloomed into existence in front of them, wings spread like sails to slow her glide to a hovering halt, and he heard her bellow out a challenge to the opposing queen, in a language his brain couldn’t comprehend.

The queen dragon slowed down and swiveled her head towards their group in a rathe ominous way. Garek tightened his grip, prepared to plunge them all back into darkness again if that was needed, though it wouldn’t prevent a gout of flames to the face. The queen responded. Garek had no clue what kind of exchange went down, but judging by the way the enemy queen bared her teeth and inhaled sharply, it probably wasn’t good.

We fight, Nicole said to Garek, and he hastily relayed the information to the others, who all looked as startled and determined as he felt. Yvonne instantly pulled on her magic, extracting from a water source below them, which came hurtling upwards like reverse waterfalls. Helen’s magic pressed into him, flooding him with adrenaline, cheer, conviction that they would win, empowering their entire team to action. His mind raced through possibilities, and he saw, from nearby, Maya and Renne flying through the air, joining them and spitting out icy arrows towards the glowing queen. The arrows landed, but seemed ineffectual. The enemy queen bellowed and spat blue-hot flames towards them, which Nicole dodged by ducking below, flying rapidly towards the queen as the stream of fire followed. They shouldn’t get too close to the queen – that golden crackling had killed dozens of people…

Helen’s magic pushed on the queen, trying with great focus to break into the emotions and stir fear and doubt. Yvonne’s waterfalls spiked towards the queen from all directions, frosting into icicles that aimed exclusively to freeze the wings. The magic dissolved into ineffectual water as it clashed against the crackling lightning.

Nicole belched out blue fire, but it wasn’t nearly as strong and powerful as the queen’s, and Nicole didn’t have that golden electricity surging through her either.

Adrenaline sent his thoughts and body into a frenzy, possibilities zipping through his mind as they dealt with the powerful queen. He saw dragons abandoning their attacks to leap to the defense of their queen, and knew then what he should do.

Calling on his magic, praying it wouldn’t be the single most stupidest thing he’d ever attempted, he sucked their entire group into the shadows – along with the enemy queen. Which was harder than it looked without physically touching her. He had to force it, even with the empowered magic, one molecule at a time. By the time he fully swallowed up the queen, he barely had any magic left to think, let alone do anything more exotic, like break her up into nothingness.

No wonder Elena had blacked out instantly when she did the same to the enemy dragons at the clutch: too much power was needed to drag people beyond, and the further the distance…

Flames extinguished instantly. The magic each side had been throwing at one another dissipated, unable to work in this place, while Garek clung desperately into keeping them all in.

Nicole, who had seen Garek’s intent to transform, curled upward, angling towards the queen’s body from below. She smashed into the wing of the now powerless queen, tearing into it before the queen had time to register what was happening. Nicole gnawed at the wing joint, and although she was huge, she seemed like a child compared to the opposing queen. Not childish enough to claw through the wing of the queen, however, who howled, only heard in their version of reality.

“Skies,” Yvonne yelped, all of the humans and unicirim clinging onto Nicole for dear life. Callum took deep, wheezing breaths, not happy to be on the back of a dragon. With one wing savaged, the enemy queen screeched as she plummeted towards the ground.

It might not kill her, Nicole thought to Garek. Dragons are strong.

The further away the queen fell, the looser Garek’s grip on her became, until with a gasping shudder, he yanked them all out of the shadows as if breaking the surface of water, just in time to see a lot of angry dragons crowding them in.

“I – I can’t do it anymore,” he choked, hands weakly holding onto Nicole’s spikes. Showers of water surrounded Nicole, transforming into icicles, and Maya and Renne, the only people he didn’t drag into the shadows – they were already circling, spitting off more icy arrows at the dragons. Some dragons peeled away to dive after their queen, others, howling and spitting in fury, lunged at them without any reason or grace behind it. Icy beams of magic shot around them in a cascade of bright blue, weaving with the orange, reds and yellows of fire, stars, and destruction. Nicole roared something with her mind, but it was the incomprehensible language of dragons, which swelled louder and louder until it reached a crescendo.

“Look!” Helen gasped through all the other sounds, and Garek’s focus fastened on the sight of several dragons supporting an unconscious queen, flying through the air, followed by dozens of others in a protective guard.

Renne and Maya made to sweep after them, but some of the dragons practically suicided themselves at the couple, utterly determined not to let any more harm come to their queen.

We must leave them, Nicole said. They would fight to their last breath to protect their queen; we would take her with heavy losses.

Wearily, Garek relayed the statement, which was greeted by exclamations of annoyance from Callum and Yvonne. It seemed, however, more and more dragons were joining the guard, while a few others stayed behind, preferring to die rather than lose the queen. Garek almost admired their zealous dedication, though unfortunately they were on the side of those would wanted to burn him alive. To think that he once took a contract from these creatures, to return the queen egg to River’s End, and then had the terms changed once Nicole was hatched.

The last of the draconic defenders fell, but a big majority of dragons had fled with their unconscious queen, gliding over the ocean to their original homeland on the other side. Though it seemed like many had escaped, many more were fallen in the city, their bodies crushing buildings, alongside the strewn corpses of ordinary soldiers. Flames danced in the gathering dusk, burning some of the dead, claiming additional lives under the inferno. Smoke burned Garek’s lungs, even as Yvonne converted her attacks to putting out fires, swooping water from various sources on the ground to douse the flames, while wind witches controlled the spread by cutting off the fire’s source of fuel.

The city burned, but it now belonged to the people. No longer to the dragons who had fled like rats, who had taken over this place for decades, trying to transform it into something that belonged to them.

He supposed they hadn’t succeeded very well. Likely there were still small dragon hold outs nearby, but the main one had been purged; the queen injured or dead.

Helen sent one last burst of fear towards some of the only dragons remaining, and Nicole descended to earth, until they were close enough to hear cheering, sobbing and celebrations.

The battle for River’s End was over. All that was left was to prepare everyone for the aftermath.

13

Elena

Elena blinked awake, though her eyes struggled to register the confusion of colors and brightness. It took a moment or two to adjust, until she comprehended what she looked at. A ceiling, dark and warm and wooden, with light witch orbs illuminating the walls rather than earthen electricity. So, she figured herself to be in Albalon, still.

What was the last thing to happen? Her sluggish brain searched through memories, until she remembered her descent into the dangerous side of her magic, of separating dragons from their limbs, and the utter, bone deep exhaustion that followed. Inspecting the room around her, she wondered what the hell had happened. Had the fight for River’s End been concluded? Did they win or lose? And how long, exactly, had she been out?

No one waited for her by the bedside, which slightly disappointed. She’d been hoping for her mother or father, maybe even Garek. Her mind reached out, trying to contact Garek or Nicole.

Hello? I’m awake. Are you there? Is everything okay?

Instant answers. Everything’s okay! Nicole sounded overjoyed to hear her, and an image of a happy dragon making loops through the air accompanied the thought. It cheered up Elena to no end, which intensified when Garek’s voice chimed in.

I’m coming to see you.

How long have I been out? She sent the thought and began stretching her limbs, which felt weak and creaky.

About two weeks, Garek said, and Elena gaped blankly at the ceiling for a moment.

Two weeks?

You were being fed a liquid diet. And wearing those baby nappies from your parent’s stall.

Flushing, Elena pushed off the bedcovers to see that she was indeed wearing a Pampers nappy, but thankfully, she hadn’t soiled these ones. Also, she felt a sudden urge to want to take a shower.

My god, my mouth feels rancid. I’m unclean. You guys can’t see me like this!

I’m sure you’ll have enough time to wash before my arrival, Garek thought wryly. I assume you want to know what happened in River’s End?

Oh. Right. That was something she’d temporarily forgotten. Uh, yeah. Did we win?

We did, Garek confirmed, and Nicole sent a crowing noise of sheer elation. We won, though the losses were quite heavy on both sides, I heard. The remaining dragons have fled to their island across the sea. People are busy repairing buildings, and we also missed the coronation of king Renne and queen Maya five days ago. Other than that… you didn’t miss much.

Are you kidding? Elena beamed back. Those are literally the two biggest things to happen in Albalon this century, and I missed both of them.

You did take part in the battle if that helps any? He replied, and she rolled her eyes.

When she staggered out of bed, finding out her limbs were still ridiculously weak, she got some assistance from a servant who had heard the commotion, and was halfway through dipping herself in a nice, warm bath, when her mother burst in. Elena shrieked and hid under the water, but there was only a thin layer of foam.

“Jesus, mom! You can’t just walk in like that! I’m naked!”

“Like I haven’t seen it hundreds of times before,” her mother scoffed, before striding over to give her daughter a hug. Elena reluctantly accepted it, draping wet arms over her mother, who didn’t seem to care. “I’m glad you pulled through. I can’t say I wasn’t worried, seeing you unconscious like this, with no signs of waking up… I wondered if you’d pushed too far with that magic of yours.”

I almost did, Elena thought with a shiver, but she didn’t want to say that out loud to her mother. “I’m fine. Garek’s visiting shortly, and… he’s told me that we won the battle. How long I’ve been out for.”

“Ah, yes, yes. Well, I won’t stay around too long, so you and your man can have some time to yourselves,” she said with an awful attempt at a wink. “But just remember, now all the madness is over, if you want to return to our little stall, you’re more than welcome. Otherwise… just… pay your old mother and father a visit from time to time, yes?”

“Of course I will,” Elena sighed, knowing that she didn’t want to go back to the Realm Market. Not with two extra additions to her life in the form of Garek and Nicole. Although Nicole was technically her ward, clearly Nicole didn’t need much more protecting.

At all.

My baby’s all grown up, she thought, which was accompanied by snorting amusement from Nicole and Garek.

Her mother gave another hug, and a rather sloppy kiss on her forehead, before leaving, wiping her eyes and humming happily. Elena finally finished her bath, warm from her mother’s affection, happy from the knowledge that their shuffling the whole army to River’s End had paid off. That no one she truly cared about had died.

Though… she was a little sad she missed out on the celebrations. Leaving the little cabin she was hole up in, she found herself on the outskirts of River’s End, and saw dozens of construction projects in place. People already renovating the city, tearing down the huge perches the dragons had made, or converting them into homes instead. She saw much smaller exile dragons and unicirim flying around with ropes and materials. People walking in the streets, people already selling, and others streaming gradually from the nearest waypoints. The royal banners covered the outer walls that weren’t damaged.

She’d helped contribute to this. And it made her feel damn good.

Nicole and Garek arrived a few moments later, Nicole swooping down and landing so that the grassy earth gave a little shudder.

Garek shifted from his creamy white unicirim form and enveloped her in a very human hug, lifting her off her feet, before exclaiming when she coughed.

“Oh, you might not be fully recovered yet! Sorry!”

“I’m okay,” she said with a smile. “Just a little wobbly on my feet is all.” Standing and moving took a lot of effort.

“Sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. Me and Nicole – we were watching people enter the new hatchery we have with all the eggs we stole. Seeing if any of them will hatch for humans or unicirim or exiles. None so far, but it’s only a matter of time, right?”

A new future with dragons. Sounded nice. Also sounded like something she wanted to see. But not before she drew Garek close to her, and kissed him for all she was worth, until stars exploded in front of her eyes, and she became breathless with passion. Also, exhaustion.

“Hey, hey. We’ll have plenty of time for that later,” he promised her, his fingers threading through her hair, soft and soothing to her body. She closed her eyes for a moment, shivers of warmth rippling through her.

Seemed hard to believe that she now had a very different future from the one she had originally planned. Maybe her heist had failed spectacularly when it came to stealing the egg, but it did provide her with a future, a partner, and a rather unexpected dragon child. She could think of a worse child to have, in all honesty.

Garek shared with her what had happened after she blanked out. The eggs they escorted, Nicole’s insistence to join the battle, and the fighting against the queen. It struck Elena that both shadow witches had contributed significantly to the war effort. More than people not that interested in fighting wars should have. But nothing compared to those who lay down their lives to ensure a brighter future.

“They mourned the fallen a day before the coronation,” Garek said. “They wanted to give it some time for the populace to grieve, for families to take care of their lost ones the way they wanted.”

It seemed… sad to her, somehow. Maybe in the future, they’d have a day to honor the fallen. Maybe not. Although it was hard to guess just what the future held in store anymore.

Come with us, Nicole insisted excitedly. We want to show you the hatchery!

With Garek’s help, Elena clambered onto Nicole’s back, and leaned against him as the golden queen launched into the air, heading for the newly established hatchery on the south-western side of River’s End, in a former dragon roosting spot on the ground. There was enough room for Nicole to comfortably move in and out, and Elena noted that in the south-western quadrant, the perches and remnants of the dragons were preserved – perhaps to support the new dragon population they planned to create.

This is the future, Nicole said proudly, as some of the humans on the ground waved at her happily, and a mother’s tiny child pointed at Nicole, his eyes huge, mouth hanging open in awe.

Seems you’ve already got some fans, Nicole, Elena said, a little self-conscious of all the attention on them. Inside the roosting chambers, carved and shaped like marbled caverns, she spotted a small line of people waiting to enter a room that radiated heat and orange light.

“That’s where people are meeting with some of the eggs, seeing if they’ll hatch for them,” Garek said, before noting Elena’s slight wobble and scooping her up into his arms, bridal style. She wrapped her hands around his neck and smiled, slightly flushed with embarrassment at how her limbs trembled like a newborn lamb’s. She probably shouldn’t be exerting herself like this so much, but she was also excited to see a new dragon hatch.

And hopefully not another one for her and Garek. That shit might be awkward.

I wonder if I’ll get a hatch-sibling, Nicole said, in confirmation of Elena’s suspicion. You two have such potent magic. Wouldn’t it be great if they all hatched for you?

Please, god, no, Elena moaned in response. Two of you in my head is enough. Dozens of you? I’ll be driven insane. She didn’t want so many baby dragons babbling in her head and them all trying to hold conversations with one another. No way.

Dreading this scenario, she was carried into one of the hatchery rooms, big enough for Nicole to trundle into, and spotted some familiar faces there. All of them were sat in chairs on one side, furthest from the blazing furnaces, talking. All the royals including the freshly crowned queen Maya, the two bodyguards that followed Callum around, Yvonne, Thorn, and Helen, with some crusty old man and a neatly trimmed man with crisp military uniform. Less familiar were the men and women with odd colored eyes, denoting them as exiles.

After greetings, Renne announced that they were all going to touch the eggs to see if any of them might hatch. “It’d be good for extra dragons to start hatching. It’ll prove to our people we can have all types of dragons as companions and friends, then. Nicole’s a little too unique at the moment. So here’s hoping…”

“Here’s hoping I don’t get another one,” Elena said, and although it made several of the others laugh, she’d been deadly serious. She had quite enough responsibility to be getting on with.

“I don’t know, maybe I could do with another. I’ve always been interested in the idea of two kids – one boy, one girl. Get the set.” Garek grinned and elbowed Elena, and she flushed, because that sounded awfully like he wanted to have children. With her. Which was ridiculous, of course, because they’d been caught in a whirlwind affair, thrust together after years, and only recently recovered lost memories that spoke of a stronger connection. A Bond tainted due to the power it held and the danger they presented.

One thing was for sure, however. Whatever happened in the future, she wanted to share it with Garek and Nicole.

Each person took it in turns to touch the eggs, and then wait awkwardly for results. It was clear no one actually expected the eggs to hatch, and certainly, there was no reaction with any of the royals. Nothing with the exiles, either, and several of them looked disappointed that a dragon didn’t hatch for them. Yvonne’s turn came like the others – a quick walk through the room, brushing her palm over each egg. On the fourth egg in the room, she froze after touching it, her previously calm face suddenly white and drained.

“Oh no,” she said. Right before she picked up that fourth egg – one with a blue colored shell – and walked to the corner of the room with it. “I… this one feels hotter for me than the others.”

A moment later, the egg began rattling and cracking. “Yvonne!” Renne exclaimed in delight, his dark eyes huge, mouth stretched into a grin. “Looks like you’re about to be a mother!”

Yvonne shot him a glare, but otherwise focused on the egg, until with one last crack, a snout pushed out of the side of the egg, wriggling its way through. In the background, Callum’s servants, Svane and Gerran, touched eggs as well.

A tiny, blue whelping slithered out of the egg, smaller than Nicole was when she first hatched – though the normal eggs were smaller in size than a golden egg, too. The dragon let out a squeak, eyes locking on Yvonne, and the water witch gave a tentative smile, before gently stroking some of the egg shell away from the dragon’s head.

Renne laughed, disregarding kingly posture entirely, and hugged his friend, who took the hug like a champion. Maya joined in, and there were claps, cheers, and a trumpeting bellow of triumph from Nicole.

More cracking noises followed. Eyes turned to lock on Svane, who had one hand resting on a green egg, which wobbled under his touch. Fault-lines developed and burst, and a green dragon wormed its way out.

“Two of them…” Garek breathed, almost reverent. “Two baby dragons hatched. For a witch and a guard.”

“This is the future,” Callum said, as Tara and Janus nodded, smiling. “This will be the first of many hatchings. The first of many dragons who don’t seek to destroy us, but to live with us instead. If they’re not exiles, of course,” he added hastily, suddenly realizing the rest of his audience.

Elena hooked an arm in Garek’s, watching these new miracles unfold, and Nicole eagerly leaning towards the new hatchlings, which would be a part of her queen tribe one day. Helen crept over to wrap an arm over Yvonne’s shoulder, which seemed to be good timing, as the water witch let her hair hide her face, and she aggressively wiped at her eyes. Svane, meanwhile, held up his new baby green dragon with two hands, thumbs breaching under and over the armpits. The baby’s little tail whipped like a cat’s, and it squeaked indignantly at the way it was handled.

“If these are part of Nicole’s brood,” Garek said in a low voice, “does that make us their aunt and uncle?”

“I’m not buying birthday presents for them,” was Elena’s immediate answer. She felt, rather than saw Garek smile, and let herself experience more of his warmth, his comforting presence.

The new hatchlings, the new hope indicted when so many were rebuilding River’s End, and others patrolling, in case the dragons returned… Albalon finally had its rightful people ruling.

“Fancy living in a nice place in the mountains?” Elena prodded Garek, and he gave a little shrug.

“Depends. Will they have good beer nearby?”

“No idea. We can always look.”

And hopefully, they had all the time in the world now to plan out their future. Without interruption, war, or other people dictating their lives. The whole world waited for Elena. Journeys through earth. Adventures through Albalon, without fear of attack at any moment. Looking after baby dragons – she figured Nicole would be happy to help, and she wouldn’t separate herself from Nicole for long. Her mother likely wanted to visit the dragons as well, and her father would probably try and work on finding some new product dragons might like to buy.

As for her and Garek… they’d probably bicker a lot. She still glared at him, though probably less than five times a day now. Still found his jokes awful, when he said them.

But… he had his moments.

Smiling, she went over with Garek to inspect the new hatchlings, tickling them both under their stubby little chins.

This is the damn future.

Garek tentatively reached out to pet Yvonne’s dragon, and it bit him on the finger. He yelped and leaped back.

“That’s my baby,” Yvonne said, now breaking into a huge grin for the first time. “Maybe you really are my dragon after all.”

“Naturally,” Renne said. “Let’s hope it inherits your good grasp of humor, too.”

“And fashion sense,” Elena added, smiling innocently as she glanced at the water witch, noting her the heavy black paint coating her cheeks. Yvonne clearly wasn’t sure if that was meant as a compliment or insult, and Elena was happy to keep it ambiguous.

Her hand lightly brushed a small red egg, and she froze when heat pulsed through the egg and up her arm.

“Shit,” she said, as the egg began to rattle.

THE END

More In This World

The Last Unicirim’s Bride

Get It Here

I was a regular girl, from a normal world -- the only world I ever knew.

But something terrible happened to me.

Drowning, gasping for air -- that's the first thing I remember.

His arms around me -- that's the last.

Are you God?

No.

What did he say? He's a prince Unicirim?

What the eff?

That's it, I've lost my mind.

Gone off the deep end.

Tell my mother I love her.

As soon as his warm, callused palm touches my hand, lightning zings up my arm and through my blood, sending shock waves through my system.

Did... did he just tattoo me?

What is going on?

I don't understand.

Why won't he let me go?

I need to go back home.

Why do his hands feel so good on my skin?

Why is he eyeing me again?

Oh no... this is bad.

I need to escape.

Now.

Copyright

© Copyright 2019 by Hollie Hutchins - All rights reserved.

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Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.