Page 19

Aurora

S ettling himself a second time, Damian let his arms fall and his head rise ever so slightly, just as he always did before shifting.

Except he just continued to stand in front of me.

“Are performance issues a normal thing with dragons?” I teased after he tried a third time. “Do you need me to go hide behind a boulder or something?”

Damian’s face was tight. He didn’t find it funny. After trying a fourth time, his eyes opened to stare at me.

“Are you okay?” I asked, stepping forward. “You look pale.”

He shook his head, alarm growing. “No. I don’t think I am.”

“What do you mean? You said you were feeling good.”

“ I am,” he said softly, rubbing his chest with one hand. “But my dragon isn’t responding.”

“It’s being stubborn? I don’t understand.”

“No,” he said, a wild unease creasing the corners of his eyes. “I don’t think it’s there. It’s not there. It’s missing !”

“Calm down,” I said, grabbing his shoulders, hoping he would listen to me. If he didn’t, I had no hope of physically restraining him. “Talk to me, Damian. How can it be missing? Where could it possibly go?”

“Nowhere!” he shouted, pulling away from me. “It’s a part of me. It and I are one. Don’t you get it? It can’t go anywhere. But it’s not there!”

“So, you feel, what, empty? I don’t know what it’s like to have a dragon in my head. Help me out here.”

“It’s like having another part of you. A living part, with its own basic thoughts and ideas, emotions, desires. It’s all there , and it lives in a corner of your mind. It speaks in basic emotions and images, senses, things like that. We don’t actually talk , but we interact, for lack of a better word. When I go to shift, I let it out. I free the beast to exert control over our body. I stay in command of the brain, in charge of us, but it tries to take control sometimes, too. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain because it’s just who we are.”

“I think you did a pretty good job, actually.” I stepped closer again, reaching out. “Give me your hand.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need to stop and breathe and think about this. Freaking out won’t help. I’m sure once we get back to people, someone can tell you what’s going on.”

“I doubt it.” He frowned. “This isn’t supposed to be possible. I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone before. It’s not normal. ”

“That’s not good,” I said as he gave me his hand, letting me take it in both of mine. I held it firmly so he couldn’t pull away easily.

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”

“Okay. But we don’t need to flip out over it. Not here. Do we? We need to work together and get home.”

Damian smiled. “I’m sorry. This is probably terrifying for you, too, isn’t it? Don’t worry. I am … very confused and alarmed. But you’re going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”

“You’re sure? We’re a long way from anywhere.”

“Not that far,” he said. “It was only a four-hour flight to get out here. If we don’t report in tonight, the sovereign will send someone to follow up. And even if she doesn’t, the nearest town is a half-day’s walk, maybe a bit more.”

I glanced at the sun setting slowly over the island to our west. “Not tonight.”

“No,” he admitted. “We’re stuck out here for the night. But there’s plenty of fresh water further inland. We’ll wander and look for our missing guard. I think I know what happened to him now.”

The shiver that ran down his arm was extremely powerful. “What was that all about?”

“I was just thinking. I got close to the breach and stray energy smacked me down. Hard. What if our guard saw it and tried to go through to make sure nothing was out there? The energy that would’ve hit his dragon as he tried to pass through might’ve killed him.”

I couldn’t fault the logic. “Let’s hope not.”

“Agreed.”

Putting the breach at our backs, we headed off the plateau into the maze of rocky landscape that came right up to the ocean as far we could see. Our options on where to go narrowed quickly, presenting us with two paths, one through a narrow gorge and another seemed to meander around the edge of a high bluff. Stone and grass scree covered the slope on the other side, dropping away steeply at some point into the canyon below.

Neither option was maintained. It was either that or try to scale the bluffs even higher. With Damian unable to shift, that option was out. I was not a climber by any means.

“I’ll go first,” Damian announced in a tone that told me not to bother arguing, as if I’d been so inclined.

I wasn’t. I knew how tough dragons were. A fall from here wouldn’t hurt him badly. It could, however, kill me.

“Go right ahead,” I said. “Thank you for being so brave. I don’t like the looks of either of these.”

“Me neither,” he agreed, heading for the cliff-side path instead of the gorge. “We’ll go this way and try to get higher to see what we can see.”

I followed along, three steps behind, just in case. The pathway was narrow yet wider than it had seemed at a distance. Two feet wasn’t much, but it was easy enough to follow.

We were just about to go around a corner and out of sight of the plateau when disaster struck.

“It evens up out here,” Damian called. “Nice and solid ground.”

“Got it!” I called, happy to hear that as I took another step. “Does it head uphill at–”

I never completed my sentence because the ground beneath my foot gave way, leaving nothing but open air.