Damon Drago ruthlessly squashed the urge to move restlessly as he sat waiting on the large plinth that was the seat of the dragon of earth.

The giant cave of hewn rock was filled by voices and shadows. Here, the council of elements met when there were serious decisions to be made that affected all shifters. And with the recently uncovered threat of a hidden society of villainous fire dragons who were hell-bent on conquering the world, meaning danger for dragons and humans alike, there was a lot at stake right now.

Nevertheless, even that knowledge didn’t mean that he had to enjoy listening to the water dragon’s prattling. Timothy Drago, who had power over the element of water, had just returned from searching the waters of the East Coast for any hint of fire dragon activity, and although there were unsettling rumors, he hadn’t managed to find a single piece of real evidence.

“Send me out again,” Timothy said heatedly. “There’s nothing to be won by sitting around and arguing—even though I’m sure that’s exactly what Damon is going to suggest.”

Damon’s dragon bristled at the insult, although outwardly, Damon forced himself to remain calm. With so much at stake, there was nothing to be gained from allowing the water dragon’s barbs to wound him.

“The water dragon doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he said calmly, his deep voice echoing through the large cave.

To his right side, the recently mated storm dragon Gregory listened attentively. Nearby stood his friend, the griffin shifter Jared. Damon had never been overly fond of the flighty dragon of air either, although his recent mating had finally seemed to make him see sense.

“To send a water dragon to search for fire dragons—ridiculous!” Damon straightened on his plinth. “I told all of you that we’d found find nothing but further rumors that way. Wherever they are hidden, we know for certain that it is not where the water element reigns.”

“So what do you suggest then?” Timothy snapped, his blue-scaled dragon tail whipping back and forth in annoyance.

Damon allowed a small, satisfied smile to tug on his dragon’s mouth. The water dragon was too short-tempered for this job, just as he had always warned.

“Send me back to Iceland,” Damon said. “You called me back before I could fully investigate. For weeks we’ve had rumors of dragon-related missing sheep.”

“Which suddenly stopped,” Timothy hissed, his tail coiling tightly around the plinth with the symbol of water engraved into it. “If they were hidden there, they must have left as soon as we became aware of them.”

“He has a point,” Gregory, the dragon of air, now suggested. “We've had no new rumors, no new trail to follow. But if they left, surely there would be new rumors. They might simply have gone deeper underground, as soon as they became aware that we’d captured one of them.”

“Has the captive spoken yet?” Jared, the griffin shifter, asked. He was currently in human form, dwarfed by the large plinths of rock on which the dragons of the council sat. Nevertheless, he moved with apparent ease among them, and Damon begrudgingly admitted that although no dragon, he’d been very helpful in capturing their fire dragon prisoner.

“No news from the fire dragon,” a disembodied voice came booming out of the darkness.

On the rocky wall before them, shadows shifted. For a moment, Damon could make out the silhouette of a dragon’s wings, then the tail of a serpent.

A shudder ran through him. As much as they all owed the master of the council, the cursed chimera was an unsettling ally, and another reason that Damon was always glad to leave Sky Home and the council behind.

“If we can’t make him speak, I petition the council to send me back to Iceland,” Damon said with determination. “Think of what is at stake. And think also of my element. If they are hiding in Iceland, the earth itself will speak to me in ways that you wouldn’t be able to hear. It’s a land of volcanoes. Lava is both of fire and of earth. If they are hiding there, I’ll know, even if I have to turn over every single rock.”

The water dragon snorted. “By that reasoning, I could go to Iceland myself!” he said. “The geysers belong to the fire and the water element.”

“Perhaps you could—if we could trust you to actually do your work,” Damon retorted.

Infuriated, the water dragon roared—and then the booming voice of the chimera once more filled the cave.

“Enough!” the master of the council said from the shadows. “Timothy, you have searched the coast. Go out and search the lakes. Damon, return to Iceland. As long as we get no further information from our prisoner, we have to follow old rumors and hope that eventually, those will lead us on a fresh trail.”

“I could go with him,” the storm dragon offered with obvious reluctance.

“No,” the chimera said, the shadows on the wall flickering rapidly, now showing a lion’s head, then that of a goat. “Your mate is pregnant. Your home was attacked. Stay and protect your people and your family. I won’t call you into battle until we have more than old rumors to act on. But I want you to fly through the mountains each day and listen to the wind. If the storm carries any whiff of fire or smoke to you, the smallest thing that seems uncommon, I want you to inform me immediately.”

“As you wish,” Gregory said.

Then the meeting was ended, and Damon stretched his wings with obvious relief. He ignored the water dragon, and after a terse goodbye to the griffin and the dragon of air, he took flight from the opening of the cave, leaving Sky Home and the council of elements behind to head straight back towards Iceland.

It was a flight that would take a few hours even for a dragon as powerful as him, but he did not mind the exertion. It was good to stretch his wings once more, especially after having to listen to the water dragon go on and on.

Also, and that was a reason he hadn’t dared to give to the council, his dragon was aching to return to the Blue Lagoon.

He’d been soaking in the mineral waters among the tourists, hoping that the rocks that surrounded this famous tourist trap might have soaked up some news of strange events, when a weird sensation had struck him.

He’d never felt anything like it before.

It was as if a hand had reached straight inside his chest and squeezed around his heart. And at the same time, a breathless joy had filled him, every nerve in his body vibrating with something just barely out of his grasp.

It hadn’t been connected to the rumors of fire dragons. He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d felt—but it didn’t have to do with any threat.

And then the call from the chimera had come, summoning him back to the council immediately. Leaving Iceland behind had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. It was as if something had hooked into his heart and was steadily pulling him back, so that every hour spent away from it was an endless, throbbing pain deep inside his chest.

He was meant to go back. He was meant to be in Iceland, for some reason he didn’t quite understand—it felt as if his life depended on it.

He’d honorably served on the council for most of his life, and he knew the duty he carried as a dragon who was master of one of the elements. But all the same, it had never been harder to do his duty—it was a feeling that threatened to nearly rip out his heart.

All the same, he was going back now. He was going back to Iceland, and he would soak in the waters of the Blue Lagoon again. And this time, he wouldn’t leave until he found out what had overwhelmed all of his senses in such a strange way.

That, and his duty, of course. He’d never fail his duty to the council. Still, there was no rule that said that he couldn’t combine his search for the fire dragon with the search for whatever had unsettled his dragon’s heart so.

The answer was in Iceland, and this time he wouldn’t leave until he’d found it.