Chapter Nine
She’d brought trouble and disaster to this place when all she’d wanted to do was be free. Nadia’s head and heart swelled with rage as her body swelled with magic.
She shot up through the smoke like an arrow, trumpeting threats at the top of her considerable vocal range. “I will not let you harm them! Stop now or I will show you what I have learned since my escape.”
Which was approximately nothing, at least when battle was involved, but Charmaine was depleted, and iron dragons were slow.
“This is too easy.” Shula’s river of fire engulfing the van choked off, only to be redirected at Nadia.
But she was in the air. She was on top. She dodged. Barnabas suddenly appeared behind the flaming vehicle, and the blue shimmers of water magic burst around it.
Hopefully the gnomes inside had survived.
Nadia swooped down the incline, grabbed a large boulder, and darted straight for Shula. She passed through the barrier, and the spider-web sensation coated her skin.
“Fliss, we have her!” Shula screeched. “Help me now or your granddaughter—”
Whatever else she was going to say was drowned out by Nadia’s rage. Yelling the nastiest curses she could think of, she bombed Shula with the boulder. The wizard used ice to deflect it. Was her fire magic depleted? What other amulets did she wear? She wouldn’t go after Fliss unless Fliss came after her.
But the elderly, grey-haired wizard stood a good distance beyond as if she’d hightailed it away from the conflict. She was coated in what looked like mud and held an amulet stiffly away from her body. And she had not aided Shula.
“The tracking amulet works now.” Fliss gestured in the air in the signal for her dragon to land. “It’s got to be this barrier. The scholars will be fascinated.”
Nadia, looking for another boulder, didn’t see the iron dragon coming. She whooshed past, grey wing nearly razing Nadia’s skin.
But she also hissed, “Silver, you must flee!”
She didn’t recognize the little iron, but the other dragon could have hurt her. Badly. Iron dragon wings were weapons in and of themselves. Was her kindness due to Fliss’s influence or dragon comradeship, like Charmaine during the battle at the springs?
But dragons with thrall crystals had minimal choices. She landed beside Fliss, who was tugging another amulet from under her muddy dress. Barnabas, meanwhile, had the fire on the van out and was using a different amulet himself.
Plants shot up around Shula’s feet, quickly growing into cactuses. She yelped and cut them down with an ice blade. Before he could conjure more, a sputtering stream of fire blasted at him. He dodged behind the blackened hulk of the van. No sign of the gnomes. Those poor people.
While Barnabas was occupied with extinguishing more flames, Shula shot ice daggers at Nadia. She swerved through the sky and behind the rocky protrusion for a moment of protection. This time she got four boulders, one for each set of talons.
Alas, she hadn’t had much practice with aerial assault, and her first throws weren’t even close.
Wind buffeted her suddenly, tossing her through the air. Around and around she twisted, losing her sense of direction. But she did know which was up, so that was where she went.
She nipped above the mini-twister, got her bearings. Shula was twirling an amulet in around her like a lasso. Very theatrical, when all she had to do was hold the damn thing to use the magic in it.
She hurled her last boulder at Shula, and because of the crazed air currents, it nearly hit.
Shula cursed and barely deflected it in time, but it did eliminate the cyclone.
Barnabas began to pelt Shula with stones, stalking forward, his arms out beside him. She had to raise a wind shield to protect herself.
Between Nadia and Barnabas, could they vanquish the red wizard? She needed more boulders. Or perhaps she could just squish Shula with her big silver ass.
“You’re not welcome in Magic!” a gnomey voice shouted at Shula. At least one had survived. “Begone or we’ll shit you down like the old bat.”
“You won’t be welcome in Castle Valiant anymore, either.” Fliss was astride the little iron dragon now, and she looked angry. It was telling that she hadn’t attacked Nadia, Barnabas, or the gnomes, despite whatever danger there was to her granddaughter. “I’m fetching Victoria to clean up your mess. She won’t be happy with you. At all.”
“Do you think I’m alone in wanting Victoria to shed the silver?” the fire wizard retorted. “Do you think I’m the only one who thinks it has made her pathetic?”
Fliss pushed a dirty strand of hair off her face. “I’ll be sure and make Victoria aware of that, too.”
“This isn’t the end.” Shula snarled and lifted an amulet. The pop of transportation magic echoed across the smoky, stinking hill as she and a crying, pitiful Charmaine disappeared.
Fliss and Nadia faced off, and Nadia didn’t know what she’d do against iron magic—against her blood boiling and exploding. But perhaps the dragon didn’t have enough energy to spare.
And perhaps Fliss didn’t want to kill her like Shula did.
“I don’t suppose you’ll just come home with me, young lady?” Fliss asked hopefully. The dragon’s snout was wrinkled as they hovered in midair. It took a great deal of flapping and angling in the wind currents, but it could be done.
“Never,” Nadia responded. She swooped closer to the ground, ready to defend Barnabas and the gnomes if need be. “And I’m going to…”
What was she going to do?
“I have my own wizard now,” she declared. “I hired him. Like the free person I am. And he will do as I say and predict everything Victoria thinks of to catch me again.”
They were only about twenty-five feet in the air. Fliss glanced down at Barnabas who was tending the injured gnomes with his healing amulet. “Like that, is it?”
“I’m a free dragon. This iron dragon should be free. All dragons should be free.”
The little iron bobbled in the air as if tired—or unhappy. She wouldn’t make eye contact with Nadia, her long neck curved toward the ground.
“Before you stir up rebellion in my new girl, I believe I’ll head for the portal.” Fliss bucked her heels into the dragon’s sides. “Enjoy your vacation, Silver. Victoria will be here soon, and this barrier won’t stop her now that I know its secret.”
The deep foreboding that filled Nadia as she watched the iron dragon shrink to a dot in the sky didn’t require a prophecy spell. It only required logic.
Victoria might not be the maniac that Shula was, but she did not brook defiance. She would come for Nadia and rain fire down on Magic and its residents as Barnabas had foreseen.
There was nothing left to protect the town besides Nadia’s surrender.
# # #
Nadia paced around the tiny living room of her brother’s house, checking the front window obsessively. They were resting and recharging, attempting to ready themselves for any attack that might come. Their first agreement had been that they would not venture into Magic proper, to spare the town Victoria’s vengeance.
So far, however, she hadn’t convinced Barnabas to let her end this the easy way. “Perhaps we can run,” she suggested. “Victoria isn’t here yet, and Shula can’t find me.”
Barnabas waved a fried chicken wing at her. “Victoria may not be in a great rush to leave her demesne, but she will eventually come to fetch you and punish Shula, no matter where she tries to hide.”
“She and whatever bonky wizards she’s enlisted.” The dragons had their hierarchy in the stable, and the wizards had theirs. Despite the fact that Victoria had achieved more conquest than any governor in modern Tarakonan history, that did not mean her reign was entirely peaceful.
“There is no government so secure that no one dreams of a coup,” Barnabas agreed.
“But back to the issue at hand.” She hadn’t spoken with the townsfolk as much as she’d have liked the past three days as they’d prepared for battle, but she’d learned a few useful things. “There are other dimensions besides these two. One called Glacien is supposedly made of ice. We could go there. It wouldn’t be as hot.”
“The amulet will track you anywhere. It crosses dimensions, just as I crossed to here in search of you.” Barnabas had explained that he’d had no issue tracking her through Tarakona. The amulet had only grown inexact once he neared Magic. Since he’d meant her no harm, the amulet had eventually brought him straight to her.
They’d literally fallen for one another, yet her first chance at a real romance was going to screech to a halt when Victoria murdered Barnabas and half the town and took her captive again.
Nadia was coming closer and closer to asking him to absorb some of her magic and glimpse the future, but would it do any good when he didn’t know how to focus it? Blast it all, why couldn’t dragons use their own power? “We could find one of these space ships I’ve heard about. The alien people can take us somewhere nobody in Tarakona has ever heard of.”
“Victoria would use a crystal dragon to create the necessary portal. I believe she has two.”
“Yes, she’s nearly as proud of them as she is of me,” she said with a sigh. “Except half the stable doesn’t resent the crystal dragons.”
“Dragon magic is one of the most penetrating forms our scholars have discovered, and they know a great deal. I don’t think running will do us any good.” Barnabas patted the chair. “Would you come and finish your supper, love? You need your strength.”
She halted next to the table. “If we aren’t running and Magic’s citizenry can’t fight, how exactly is your plan going to work? How can you possibly think to fight off Victoria and her dragons? Not to mention anything Shula cooks up.”
He fixed his eyes on hers. “I will get the amulet, and then I will transport us away. But we must destroy that amulet. And that means we must get close enough to Victoria to allow this to happen.”
“And you’ll snatch it how?”
For the first time, a hint of uncertainty crossed his handsome features. “I plan to use the talisman that was created for me to destroy your thrall crystal.”
“There’s a spell for that?” she asked, surprised. “How does it work?”
That kind of magic could free so many dragons. Perhaps the DLF wasn’t the moony band of traitors most of Tarakona assumed it was. Even Aiden hadn’t had a sterling opinion of the DLF, but if they had in some part shaped Barnabas—if they were in any part responsible for his bearing, his determination, his upstanding nature—they were not to be discounted.
“It’s a bit like one of these transporter beams in the television programmes we watched. I believe I can recalibrate the amulet to focus on the blood tracker itself instead of the thrall crystal inside your body and essentially yank it into my possession.” He held up a fist. “I can use my blood tracker as a basis for the correct frequency.”
“Sounds scientific.” This transference was a type of magic she’d never experienced, nor heard of. Would it work? Since Barnabas didn’t seem completely certain, nor was she.
“I don’t suppose I told you,” he mused. “There hasn’t been time. The night you escaped was the night the DLF and I had planned a rescue mission. But you freed yourself.”
“That’s almost sweet.” She settled herself in his lap and took a bite of his chicken wing. “I didn’t need you.”
“But you do now,” he rumbled at her, his arm around her waist.
She shuddered at what might have become of her if she’d flown to the spring that day alone, without Barnabas to transport her to safety. Most likely she would be dead at Shula’s hand already, and she wasn’t sure if she’d rather be dead or Victoria’s captive.
She did enjoy living. Eating. Breathing. Flying. Laughing. Learning.
Making love to Barnabas.
She’d still be allowed to live, eat, and breathe, anyway.
But she had no doubt her recapture would involve Barnabas’s death, and the deaths of many more. In fact, since her magic had been used to predict it, she was sure of it. It seemed that illogical responses to various situations hadn’t been enough to change the future.
Or had she yet to be illogical enough?
Nadia took a long drink of Barnabas’s lemonade and then shoved all the plates and cups out of the way. “Make love to me. Now.”
He only hesitated a moment before digging his fingers into her hair and kissing her with all the passion he could muster. Which was, incidentally, quite a lot. The man seemed uptight and crusty on the outside, old before his time, but once she ripped off his clothing, he was a veritable tiger in the sack.
Not that she’d know the difference, having only made love to one person in her entire life. At least to completion. But he certainly displayed no reluctance to taste, taunt, and tantalize every single part of her for hours at a time.
With a growl, Nadia shoved his shirt up and over his head, straddling his lap and pressing herself against his hardened cock. He returned the favor, deftly managing to unclasp her brassiere along with the blouse. His mouth found her nipple and clamped down before she could do much more than gasp his name.
“Barnabas!” The sensations that speared through her didn’t equal what she knew was to come, but each moment with him was a treasure, a delight. She leaned against the table behind her as he bathed her breasts with attention. How could so much friction arc from her nipple to her core? When he plied both of her nipples with his fingers and kissed his way up her neck, she couldn’t stop herself from grinding her hips against his.
How she wanted him!
How she would miss him.
How she needed a better plan to save him, and this whole town, from destruction.
But first, she would take her pleasure one last time with the man she’d grown to love.
He caught her lips in a steamy kiss that didn’t falter when he stood. Supporting her ass with his strong hands, he thrust her onto the counter and dropped to his knees before her. Dazed, she could only watch as he yanked her shorts and panties over her hiking boots and spread her open like a blooming lily.
“Beautiful.” He parted her folds and slowly licked her from stern to tip, sending luscious swales of sensation all through her. Dragging her to the very edge of the counter, he sucked on her clit as he drove two fingers deep into her.
She cried out at the delicious invasion. Tightening around him, she quivered as he pleasured her, bringing her quickly to a climax.
But she stopped him just in time. “No. I want you inside me.”
Her body thrummed with eagerness as he shoved down his pants and drawers, revealing his hard, seeking cock. Dark curls twined around its root and his warm, full scrotum. She fondled him long enough to make him pant before guiding him into her body.
He entered her slowly, staring into her eyes as he did so. “Nadia Silver,” he whispered. “Don’t give up. I will find a way.”
“Just…go fast,” she said, closing her eyes. She couldn’t bear to see the tenderness on his face, the glimmers of a life she’d never get to lead.
But he wouldn’t let her turn from him. “Look at me.”
She lifted her knees high and yanked him against her. He landed deep, and hard, hissing as he strove to maintain his composure.
He always did that. Slowed down. Waited for her. Satisfied her again and again before taking his release. Could she say always after only four beautiful days?
He reached between them and found that sensitive nub that drove her insane. “Look at me, Nadia.”
When she didn’t, he pinched. Fiercely. She squealed, and her eyes flew open in shock. His dark brown eyes pinned her in place.
“I love you. Understand that.” He kept the pressure on her clit until she was squirming and batting at him, but not convincingly. Her pain threshold approached. Or did it? He smiled and she wriggled away from him, but he trapped her against the countertop. His hips drew back and he began to thrust.
The ache and burn of pain in her clit turned to something else, something sharp and sweet. His remorseless drive, his power over her body, soon returned her to the verge of climax. His other hand guided her hips, kept her from bumping away from him. His fingers pinched her flesh, trapping her. He ruled her completely.
When his cock swelled larger and his pace became frenzied, she knew he was close to his time. With a gasp, he shuddered, spurting his pleasure. And then, when he slowed, he let go of her clit.
Blood rushed back into it, and she screamed. He stroked her off as an orgasm more intense than any she’d ever felt in her life blasted through her. She squeezed his cock with her inner muscles over and over, and he shoved himself as deep as he could go. With a shudder, he groaned against her neck. “I love feeling you come.”
Nadia whimpered and clung to him as the spasms finally trailed off, allowing her to breathe again.
“I love you, too,” she said.
And then she spilled almost all of her magic into him until he crumpled to her brother’s kitchen floor with the force of it. Silver shimmered in a network throughout his mahogany skin, as if he were the dragon, not her. His eyes, when he squinted up at her, gleamed like the moon.
“What have you done?” he managed.
“What I had to do.” Knees week, heart aching, she slid to the floor, kissed him one last time before the visions hit him, and escaped.
She knew how to save him, and now he couldn’t stop her from doing it.