Kent stood outside the doorway of the lodge, taking a deep breath. He would have to collect himself before he went in to talk to Mr. Mills. Fortunately, he had escorted Adrian back to her house and the clean-up crew had already finished with the job of disposing of the dragon-shifter corpses. The last thing the human needed at this point was to realize she was front and center in an advanced murder plot that neither of them understood.
Now that Kent was finally going to be able to talk to Logan, hopefully that was going to change. He wouldn’t leave without answers, and if Mr. Mills refused to tell him anything, he was just going to have to quit his job. Pure and simple. There was no way he was going to work for someone who didn’t trust him implicitly. Not at this point. It was too important.
“Mr. Black,” Mr. Mills said pleasantly. “Welcome. Come and have a seat. I made some coffee. Do you want some?”
“Please,” Kent said.
“I suppose we have a few important matters do discuss then, don’t we?” Mr. Mills said with a heavy sigh. Kent nodded.
“It seems that we do,” he replied. “Just so you’re aware, I’m not going to go anywhere without my answers, so you had better spill.”
Logan took the coffee he was offered and sat down across from Kent, taking a thoughtful sip.
“Look, son, I know this has all been really hard on you. We didn’t want to give you such an important task right away, especially not without a grasp on the bigger picture, but frankly, we had to think of Adrian’s safety at this point.”
“Okay, so what does Adrian’s safety have to do with me knowing things about what’s happening?” Kent demanded.
“If you were caught up in an ambush and weren’t able to perform your duties as her bodyguard, then they would have been able to extract some very important information from you that could have led to a potentially more serious attack on Oak Mountain. Do you understand how dangerous that could have been? It isn’t that we don’t trust you to do the job properly, we just didn’t trust our own intel on the situation at hand. Now we have a pretty clear idea of what the dragon-shifters have up their sleeve, and it isn’t going to be good.”
“I really don’t understand what’s going on, so if you could maybe just start from the beginning…?”
Mr. Mills nodded, and Ken shifted impatiently. He hated being led on like this. Sometimes everything was a run around with these people.
“Listen, Mr. Black. You come from a strong lineage. Your father’s family were incredible fighters. Warriors. And when it comes to my daughter, I am very protective, and I was thrilled to find that you are truly Arthur Black’s son in so many ways. I’m proud of you.”
Mr. Mills’ pride meant a lot to Kent, but it felt like more of a deflection than a genuine exclamation of approval.
“Thanks,” Kent said, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Mills. Logan laughed.
“All right. Here goes nothing. I didn’t want to tell anybody this before Adrian found out about it herself, but her father was kind of a diplomat. He was human, just like her mother, and he went between the shifter races in an attempt to make sure that the humans were doing their best to accommodate the shifters, and vice versa.”
“Does she know about that?” Kent asked, frowning. She hadn’t said anything to him about her father except that he had died. And that had only been implied by her saying she was an orphan too now.
“No, no,” Mr. Mills said quietly. “You see, her father turned rogue. All the power of the trust that he received from all parties, and learning their secrets and desires gave him an opportunity to start to twist all things in his own favor. He began small, skimming things off the top here and there. But soon, he was starting to stir the pot, setting up conflicts where there needn’t be any just to serve himself and his own selfish agendas.”
“Why would anybody do that?” Kent wondered aloud. He hated needless conflict. It seemed such a waste of time and energy to initiate conflict that didn’t have to exist. No purpose was worth that.
“Well, part of it was just for gain. But another part of it was for Adrian.”
Mr. Mills cast his eyes to the table then and let out a low, sad sigh. “The things a father will do for his daughter are at times unimaginable. I suppose the poor fellow thought that he wasn’t good enough. When he found out his unsuspecting wife was pregnant, he got into his head this image of the perfect life. He wanted to give his daughter everything he could, but he started to go about it in all of the wrong ways.”
“What happened? And why do the dragons want to go after her so badly?”
“Adrian’s father stole something sacred from the dragon-shifters,” Mr. Mills said with a burdened sigh. “Something sacred. A statue that is said to be able to grant wishes and feed all the heart’s desires. He then buried it on Oak Mountain in a secret cavern… the place I took you for your first test.”
Kent’s body tensed up. He knew it had been a strange-feeling place. It made sense now that it had been built by a human to hide the relics of a sacred dragon artifact.
“He must have needed a lot of help to heft that thing out of there without any help,” Kent said quietly.
“Oh, none at all. He had secured some secrets from the dragon born on Mount Argon. They had helped him to activate the statue and he had wished for all his burdens to be lifted. With that power, he was able to achieve a great many evil deed, all in the name of the child my late wife bore. In Adrian’s name, hundreds of dragon elders were slaughtered, all thanks to a wish that one horrible human made.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Kent said, shaking his head. “But they should be going after him, not after Adrian. She can’t help what her father did.”
“And that is true and sensible thinking,” Mr. Mills agreed. “Under most circumstances, even the hot-headed dragons would be willing to concede the fact that the child is an innocent and should let her go. Unfortunately, there is a little bit more to the story than that.”
Kent sat back heavily in his chair. He wasn’t sure that he could handle any more.
“Part of Adrian’s father’s wish led to a sort of complication. The crux of the matter is that when your father made that wish, the power of the statue was transferred. Without Adrian present in the face of the statue, its wishing power is obsolete. It is just a meaningless hunk of rock buried in a lost grave.”
“But the dragons are looking for it. They know where it is.”
“Yes, And now that they’ve found it, that means that they also want Adrian. She was not safe in Stonybrooke. They would have killed her to return the power back to the statue. They still would if they had the chance. It was up to me to bring her somewhere that she would be protected at all times. I had to come to Blaine to come up with an adequate solution, but with you on our side, we’ll be able to settle the matter once and for all. We need to destroy the statue. But that will not happen without Adrian present. There’s a solstice coming up, and on that solstice the bearer of the statue’s power must be present.”
“You mean down in that mine?” Kent asked, panic welling in his chest.
“The dragon-shifters will be out in full force,” Mr. Mills said. “They will probably believe that the statue’s power is heightened on the solstice and attempt to access the full wishing state, whether they have the girl or not. But with all of us there at once, it’s bound to be a massacre. I need to know that you can guard my daughter with your life while Blaine, Coty, and I work the spell to destroy the statue once and for all. There is nobody else who can do it, Kent. We’re counting on you.”
Kent let the information slowly sink into his brain. So, Adrian’s father had been a psychotic diplomat who had caused all this grief. He was the kind of man who didn’t seem to take the needs of others into much consideration… and he was extreme. Maybe even a little bit of a drama queen.
Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, because Adrian was as emotional as they came. But who could blame her?
“What happened to Adrian’s old man, anyway?” Kent asked. “I mean I can kind of guess, but…”
“Oh, the dragon-shifters captured him long ago. The wish he made backfired. The only way to get him out of that little problem was to send him to the afterlife, where nothing would ever trouble him again.”
Kent looked down at his hands. It was a harsh fate, but at least the short-sighted and greedy man wasn’t calling any more shots for anyone anymore.
“I can do it,” Kent said firmly.
“What’s that?” Logan asked.
“I can protect Adrian. Those dragon assholes won’t know what hit them.”
Mr. Mills grinned, and suddenly Kent realized that what Logan had said was true. He really was proud of him. A surge of warmth spread through Kent’s chest and he stood up, crossing the room to shake Mr. Mills’ hand.
“I know you can,” Logan said. “Now go and get some sleep. You’re going to need to be rested up. This next week is going to be a doozy.”
“Yes, sir.”
He left the lodge feeling both heavier and lighter than he had when he’d gone in. While it felt good to know what the hell was going on, now he was more concerned than ever. The idea of Adrian being such a target, and for something that hadn’t even been her fault in the least, made him sick to his stomach. If her father was still alive, he would have gone out to find him and put an end to his bullshit right then and there. As it was though, there was nothing that he could do about it except fight.
And fight he would.