Dragon Fate (10 page)

“Wait.” Anjali swallowed hard. “I’ll do it.”

Piper studied her. “You don’t have to.”

When they’d been housemates, Piper had dealt with Esme’s occasional health scares like the good, eldest daughter of a large family, and her calming demeanor had always helped Anjali as much as Esme. But this shouldn’t be her task alone.

Not when it was Anjali’s fault.

She waved her friend back and strode toward the bedroom with a steadiness she didn’t feel.

Because she suspected she knew where Esme’s nightmares were coming from.

She pushed through the unlatched door. The bedroom was almost as large as the living area, but the shades were pulled, casting the room in still, quiet shadows.

Like a damned mausoleum.

She marched to the windows and threw back the curtains. The March sun didn’t have the force of high summer, but there was promise in it.

That sounded as much like hooey as the quartz crystal nonsense, but she’d take what she could get. Just like she always had.

She turned to the bed. “Ez?”

Instead of sprawling in the huge, cushy bed, Esme was centered on one pillow, her hands crossed over her chest.

Oh god, she wasn’t dead…

Anjali hurried to the side of the bed. “Ezzie? Wake up.”

Esme had gone from pale to almost transparent. Blue veins ran across the backs of her hands and at her temples, the lines like aquamarines under her white skin.

Even her lips were pale blue…

Remembering the ice water that had poured from her own lungs, Anjali grasped Esme’s shoulder and pulled the slack body into her arms.

It was too easy. She often had to lug heavy merch around the shop and never had trouble, and Esme had always been a scrawny thing, but Anjali lifted her like she was a blow-up doll. Filled with helium.

No water pumped from her, only a thin wheeze.

At least she was still breathing.

“Esme,” Anjali said. “You have to wake up.”

Another wheeze, but with words this time.

Anjali bent close. “What did you say?”

“Awake,” Esme whispered. “I am awake.”

Careful of the fragile jutting bones, Anjali hugged her friend. “It was Ashcraft, wasn’t it? He tried to get me while I was sleeping too.”

“Not sleeping.” The words barely stirred the air. “When I close my eyes, he takes me. I’m gone.”

A shudder wracked her, and this time, Anjali hugged her tighter. She remembered how the cold had sunk into her bones, but Esme didn’t feel chilled. Or fevered for that matter.

She felt like…nothing. A ghost.

“You’re not gone,” Anjali said resolutely. “You’re here, with us.” She couldn’t even imagine what horrors the warlock was wreaking on her fading friend.

As if she heard the thought, Esme whispered, “Not for long.”

“Forever,” Anjali growled. Not really forever, she knew, since no one lived that long…

Except dragons.

Esme slumped back to the pillow, clutching the covers under her chin. The blue of her sunken eyes looked fathomless, leviathan shadows coursing far below. Anjali’s throat tightened and she took her friend’s frail hand.

She smoothed her thumb over the ring that was a more polished version of her own, the silver and gold braidwork tighter, the bezel cup perfectly smooth. But why on earth had she chosen obsidian for blond Esme? The black volcanic glass had a striking star effect—even the pale spring light gleamed across the filaments caught within—but it was such a moody piece. And now it was too big for her hand.

Anjali blinked hard. She knew she hadn’t let any stupid tears fall because she didn’t want Esme to see how upset she was, but the star in the obsidian suddenly flared brighter.

Her grip clenched involuntarily, and Esme’s eyes widened.

She looked down at her thin hand. “Oh. My ring is back. I took it off when Lars…” She trailed off, but Anjali knew she’d removed it when she’d taken Ashcraft’s ugly diamond engagement ring. “Why…?”

“You left it behind for Piper to find when I took you away from the Keep,” Anjali reminded her, refusing to downplay what she’d done. “That’s how Piper was able to find us.” Or how this dragon-shifter king named Bale had found them.

Dragons had ichor that healed, and this dragon had already saved Esme once…

A surge like the glint of the star obsidian sent Anjali to her feet. “Ezzie, I have an idea.”

Chapter 9

“This is a terrible idea,” Piper fretted as she guided Esme into the private elevator that serviced an off-limits part of the Keep. “We should wait for Rave.”

Anjali thought she had a semi-decent sense of direction, but she couldn’t understand how they were still in the casino/hotel after walking so far. It felt like they were halfway to the mountains.

Esme was leaning hard on Piper, who stood sturdily under her taller friend even as she fussed. “I could just go back to sleep,” she murmured.

“No,” Anjali told both of them. “This can’t wait. And since when do we wait anyway?”

“Since dragons are very scary,” Piper grumbled. “Bale especially.”

Well, Anjali couldn’t argue with her there. “Rave should answer your texts faster if he doesn’t want you doing terrible things.”

And Torch hadn’t even bothered giving her his number…

Oh lord, was she really mooning over a guy who’d ghosted her? A guy who wasn’t a guy but a dragon?

Speaking of terrible ideas…

“Look,” she told Piper. “You said Bale Dorado was able to read Esme’s ring and find her, and she wasn’t even wearing it. If the stones do absorb and emit energy like my uncle’s wacko customers think, then maybe Bale can tell what’s wrong with Esme, how Ashcraft is still influencing her. And since you said Bale won’t leave his suite, we have to go to him.”

Piper shook her head, the furrow in her brow not letting up. She’d explained that Rave had a secret place, and Anjali already knew about Torch’s aerie. She could only imagine what sort of sweet demesne the king of dragons kept.

“He doesn’t leave his suite because…” Piper pursed her lips. “He can’t.”

“None of us can leave, really,” Esme murmured, clinging to Piper. They’d dressed her in a simple, long-sleeved shift dress, the easiest thing to get on her uncoordinated limbs. And it hid the gaunt lines of her body.

Anjali scowled at the defeatist attitude. “I know you said the petralys has affected him, but you said it was in Rave’s ichor too, and he’s obviously out and about.” Considering he had brought down Ashcraft’s corporate jet and turned it into a smoking steel marshmallow.

Piper looked at the elevator numbers that had been going up, up, up. “Bale has it worse.”

Before Anjali could ask how much worse, the elevator doors opened.

Since they had to be at penthouse level, the view should have been amazing. Instead, unrelieved blackness faced them.

“Uh…” Anjali hung back as Piper shuffled Esme forward. The sound echoed hollowly in the dark. “I thought we were going up.”

A low voice grated from the abyss. “Hell lies in every direction.”

“Please, Bale,” Piper said, and Anjali remembered that gentle tone from the day she’d had to tell her friends she was dropping out of school and her life as she’d dreamed it would be was over. “Can we have just a little light?”

To Piper, there was always a little light somewhere.

Something metallic rattled in the darkness, and a fireball arced toward them.

Anjali flinched back into the elevator. Not just from the red-yellow tangle of flames but from the hunched shape fleetingly revealed by the light.

And she’d thought Torch was a monster…

Piper didn’t move, and the fireball landed in a low brazier where it leaped once, angrily, before confining itself to the wrought iron cage.

Behind Esme’s back, Piper gestured to Anjali to move forward. She did, reluctantly, and the elevator door slid shut, casting them into the primitive, fire-lit darkness.

Cut off from the light, her senses expanded. The crackle of the flames whispered off into some invisible distance that hinted at a ceiling higher than Torch’s aerie. But not glass. Anjali had worked with enough stone and metal to recognize the scents of both.

It was as if they were buried in a dragon’s tomb, a treasure lost to time.

In the firelight, Esme’s white shift looked even more ghostly, the hem drifting around her calves in some restless wind.

“Thank you for the light,” Piper said. “And thank you for letting the elevator come up here.”

“You are the only one who dares use it without my calling.”

To Anjali’s consternation, Piper grinned. “It wasn’t me this time.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “It was Anj.”

Anjali straightened abruptly. The intensity of the firelight in the darkness made it impossible to see past the brazier, but she sensed the creature in the shadows with the same atavistic awareness that warned her which men not to go home with after a night at the bars.

Predators. But this time, her warning had failed her.

No, she’d ignored it. To make amends for her other mistake. Because she hadn’t recognized the monster in Lars Ashcraft.

She cleared her throat. “Piper says you know gemstones and metal and magic. Apparently I should know these things too. What do I do?”

A rasping sound rent the dark. Was that supposed to be a laugh? “So you want all Nox Incendi wisdom right now, right here?”

“Or you could save Esme right now, right here.” Anjali tried to keep her tone as gentle as Piper’s, but it came out sounding sarcastic instead. As usual. “You found her once. But she’s drifting away from us, so you need to find her again.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

Bitterly, she said, “It seemed pretty simple for Ashcraft.”

Piper rolled her eyes. “What Anjali means is—”

“No,” the creature called Bale said. “Her meaning is clear enough. She doubts whether I am truly destined to lead the dragonkin when a warlock threatens.”

“
She
”—Anjali interrupted—“doesn’t care who leads when her friend is dying.”

“Anj,” Piper hissed.

Anjali wasn’t sure if Piper was more distressed about talking back to a king or telling the truth about Esme, but neither mattered more than making things right. “If I have magic, I want to know. I want to use it against the ash-hole. I want...” She swallowed hard against the backlog of all the things she wanted. First things first.

“Dragons don’t do magic,” he said.

“But you know something,” Anjali pressed. “You knew the rings were…different.”

“The stones and metal were shaped with purpose. Your focus on your friends is woven into the work. Your knowledge of them resonates in the gems. Yes, there is magic in your art.”

She wasn’t going to choke up. Even if this was the first time anyone had ever said such a thing about her jewelry.

She focused on the key point. “So I’m a witch.”

“By birth, perhaps. But without training, it means little.” The rasping voice sharpened, like a knife on a whetstone. “Ashcraft may have intended to rectify that when he chose you for this task.”

She recoiled, anger and disgust churning in her gut. “I had no idea what he wanted.”

“But once you did, you were willing to carry it out.”

“By then he was threatening my uncle. And he already had Esme.”

Another rasping sound. Less a laugh and more a growl. “Not literally. She is untouched.”

Anjali growled too. “If getting her laid would cure her, let’s head off to the nearest whorehouse right now. We’re in fucking Nevada after all.”

“Oh geez,” Piper muttered. “This is going from bad to worse.”

“Shut it,” Anjali hissed back. “At least you’re getting some.”

The elevator chimed softly and opened.

To reveal Torch.

“Pot,” Piper snarked. “Meet kettle.”

***

Torch glanced around the cavern cautiously.

In the flicker of flames, he saw the stalagmites and stalactites bared like giant teeth in a dark mouth. But even his dragon couldn’t see farther than that. Still, he sensed his liege coiling in the shadows.

Mostly, though, he couldn’t keep his gaze off Anjali. Her red hair and the bright slashes of color in her sweater came alive in the firelight. If the temper snapping in her wide hazel eyes were any indication, he hadn’t come a moment too soon.

“Welcome to the party,” Bale growled.

“Rave sent me to…ah…”

“Keep anyone from being eaten?” Piper put one hand on her hip, the other arm wrapped around Esme’s waist.

Torch tossed her a grin. “He’s sorry he missed your text. You can snap at him later.”

“Enforcer.” Bale’s snarl was as sharp as an edge of shattered stone. “You’ve done a poor job of ensuring my peace.”

Torch straightened abruptly, his grin falling away. “My apologies, Reyex.” He used the ancient clan term for the strongest, oldest dragon. “I’ll see them out.” He swiped for Anjali who was closest.

“No, wait.” She twisted away from him. “We can’t go yet. I need to know about my magic. And what we can do for Esme.”

Torch latched on to her elbow and hauled her to his side, not quite as gently as Piper was supporting the listing blonde. “There’s nothing—”

“Leave her,” Bale said.

Torch stared into the blackness, his hackles rising. There. Was that the red flicker of his liege’s eyes? The dragon was lurking just under his skin, barely contained.

He knew the feeling.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said slowly, his own dragon tensing.

“That’s what I told her,” Piper muttered.

Bale laughed, a rough sound. “Not your mixed blood gypsy. Leave the ghost girl.”

At Torch’s side, Anjali strained away. “No.” Under her breath, she said, “I left her with Lars, I won’t leave her with…that.”

No matter how softly she’d spoken, Torch knew his liege had heard. He restrained a wince. “If there is one place the warlock can’t reach, it’s here,” he pointed out. “Isn’t that why you brought her?”

Anjali’s struggles wavered. “But I didn’t know he…” She swallowed the rest of whatever she was going to say.

“I will not eat her,” Bale said. “I am past such needs.”

Obviously that brought no comfort to Anjali, or to Torch, for that matter. Who
didn’t
want to eat a tasty virgin?