Page 18 of Dragon Blood (Dragon Island #3)

A stred focused on her breathing, fingers digging into Kai’s forearm as the tree ate them. Heart pounding, she gripped him hard, pressing ever deeper into his chest, suppressing the overwhelming urge to resist.

The swaths of color and intense clarity of her senses had distracted her from the knowledge that she would be consumed.

That word terrified her.

She wasn’t sure she could let go long enough to allow it.

Even for just a little while.

Memories of the terrifying eyes filling her childhood vision, the power, the imposing voice in her head, shaking her bones as her body drew taught against the overwhelming connection that she was not ready for.

I can’t breathe .

The Mother.

That first experience of connection collided with the experience happening now as she and Kai sank into the heart of the tree, engulfing them whole.

I can’t breathe!

She began to struggle.

Kai’s arms tightened around her.

‘Astred.’

The sound of her name in his voice, though she didn’t think he’d spoken.

The need to fight ceased rising and slowly eased.

As the potion worked to bring her into alignment with the tree, the tincture surged through her pounding heart. It wasn’t until she accepted Kai’s protective embrace, trusting that he would ensure all was right, that she came into sync with the tree’s life force.

Without his touch, his reassurance, she knew that she would have used her dragon strength to rend and tear the Nexus apart to free herself.

She would have allowed her fear to destroy it.

Which she never would have wanted and for that reason, she would be forever grateful for his presence.

Kai brought comfort to her spirit, her soul.

He eased her raging need to combat the world and stake her claim to it.

He always had.

In his arms, together, they could simply exist, like the gentle fluff that floated past her blurring eyes right before the tree swallowed them whole, clinging to one another.

They floated in a cocoon of darkness, drifting like the fluff.

These terrifying moments abruptly threw Astred into her most cherished memories—all the time she’d spent, just like this, in the sanctuary of his embrace.

These rich memories dominated every other part of her life and relationships.

She still didn’t trust that the tree wouldn’t just eat and keep them for eternity.

Would their bones be found millennia from now, preserving their need for one another long after death, too late for life?

The macabre thoughts left her mind as their bodies gave way, tumbling through nothingness into the satiny shadows of the Astral.

Kai’s arms tightened around her, staying the panic of unrestrained free-fall.

Her instinct was to fling her wings out, claw for purchase on anything that would stop the horrible sensation of being completely out of control.

She burrowed deeper into Kai’s embrace, linking her fingers through his, eyes squeezed shut.

The sensation of being protectively enveloped in warmth eased the icy fear lodged in her throat.

Safe.

While there was no distinct impact, the turmoil within her suddenly stopped.

Drawing a shuddering breath, she listened.

“Astred.” Kai’s voice caressed her temple.

She didn’t want to open her eyes just yet. Instead, she clung to the wisps of knowledge that she wanted nothing more than to remain in the safety of his arms, his world.

I can’t.

And yet, she had to let go.

She opened her eyes, blinking against the change of scene, realizing they weren’t huddled on the ground, but stood facing the narrow entrance of a glittering crystal cave.

Silky shadows lightened, receding from the perimeter, seeming to gather behind Kai before disappearing.

Her gaze dropped to their hands, fingers still entwined, then up to Kai’s face.

He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze as his eyes trailed above her head with a smile and a respectful nod.

Astred turned with a gasp.

That’s me! Us!

Her dragon loomed behind her, sniffing at Kai and the two figures that flanked him.

His dragon and his tiger.

Astred swallowed the lump in her throat.

She wasn’t alone.

She wasn’t just one soul making this journey.

They were five.

Where Astred’s dragon scales shimmered in earthy tones, Kai’s held the metallic glint of his mother’s celestial line. His tiger’s ethereal white fur was brought into balance by the sooty striations of his coat. Blue eyes pinned on her.

Luminescent threads of ever-changing color connected Astred and Kai to their beasts. Another thread disappeared up into the darkness of the overhanging root system.

The sudden sharp sounds of crackling from within the glittering crystal maw drew Astred’s attention back to their task.

There was only one way to go.

In.

She stepped forward, fingers still linked to Kai’s. Narrow and jagged, the entrance was just wide enough for a human-sized being, and maybe a prehistoric-sized tiger. She glanced back. Her dragon continued to sniff at Kai’s much larger, shinier embodiment.

“I’m not sure we should leave them alone.”

Kai chuckled, brow lifted. “They won’t fit. Lead on, Captain.” He jerked his head toward the opening.

Astred growled, eyes narrowed on her dragon.

Behave.

Her dragon snorted, otherwise ignoring her.

Don’t do anything I’m going to regret later.

The dragon cracked an eye in her direction, then pointedly rolled it away.

With a deep breath, Astred stepped toward the crystal cavern. They walked, time meaningless, along a downward winding stone path illuminated by the crystals, reflecting light from an unseen source, until they reached a hub with a curved wall containing darkened passages.

The deeper they went, the stronger the power flowing through and around them. Astred lost her sense of embodiment, though she could see the illusion of her limbs and body. Her sense of vulnerability poked at her awareness, checking her wonder and anchoring her to her mission.

To understand the vision that brought her here, in order to save her mother and ensure the safety of Aeleftheria. As she stepped more fully into the hub, the tenor of the energy surrounding them shifted, causing her nape to tingle, despite the fact she realized that her corporeal body remained at the surface. Beneath the thin layer of flesh-toned scales protecting her chest, her breast bone ached and vibrated in time with the Nexus’ energy.

Her gaze dropped to her feet, where scorch marks marred the stone beneath them.

Three blackened circular imprints.

She crouched, fingertips dusting the gritty surface, exposing the familiar image of Aeleftheria’s emblem. A dragon entwined with a flame, backed by three connected spirals. Clearing the other blackened spots revealed the imprint of the seal that King Jori Mountainside’s tribe protected, bearing the image of a dragon and a man. The third displayed a man and a flame.

“The three seals,” Astred murmured. “Were they enchanted here?”

“Three seals?” Kai asked, studying the images.

“Together they unlock the treasure that Aeleftheria protects. Centuries ago, they were spelled to enforce a peaceful partnership.” Her fingers drifted over the incinerated stone. “It looks as though the spell was crafted right here.”

“By who?”

Astred shrugged. “Some immortal being determined to keep the dragons from destroying themselves. For the greater good of the earth, as I understand it from Odson’s stories.”

“The Divide?”

Astred nodded.

A sudden wave of disorientation sent her reeling.

Familiar images bloomed up around them, as though they were being immersed into a hologram. It was the exact vision that Regina had shared with Astred.

A shooting star streaked the sky over a tree bent with age, its trunk so vast it seemed to devour the clump of earth it clung to. Surrounded by rings of rippling water, it drew her forward until a black, smokeless flame appeared to engulf it. It neither burned nor withered as it disappeared into the heart of the flame.

The blaze brightened until painfully blinding, when a pair of blue eyes appeared. The eyes then formed into the body of a white tiger, emerging from the searing fiery light as the falling star sped toward them.

In the distance, oily smoke and writhing clouds grew as they tumbled toward her like an avalanche of blackened debris.

The tree disappeared, leaving only the smokeless flame, as its tendrils reached skyward toward the streaking light overhead. It rushed louder than a dragon barreling through the air, its scream denser than a freight train across a winter landscape.

In the distance, Aeleftheria’s walls stood tall. The image flickered as another Aeleftheria, its towers crumbled, villages streaming with blackened smoke, fought to superimpose itself over the original. They were in the midst of it as the chaos erupted around them. Screams, smoke, wind and flame buffeted their non-corporeal selves.

Dark figures writhed through the air, alight with fire, smeared with soot, while more clamored across the ground, clashing violently. Other structures rose behind the citadel, surrounded by protective shadows that emerged to blanket the sky, turning everything dark and obscuring the aerial battles.

Kai gasped. “The eastern temple.”

Shadows expanded, thickening, surrounding Astred and Kai.

“The eastern temple?” Astred repeated Kai’s words.

“That structure is a temple at the Air Dragon palace.” He glanced at her then, face pale. “The scratch marks your mother left in the wood grain aboard the Crimson Claw.”

“You said you didn’t know what they were,” she growled, gaze following the writhing darkness around them.

“I wasn’t sure,” he retorted, pivoting as something slithered through the mass, oily and dank, changing the tenor of the surrounding energy. “The first part you recognized brought you here, to the Nexus. The other looks like the location of the temple, the building in the vision.”

The air seemed to coil around them.

“Astred, stay close.”

Kai’s firm warning sent her into a defensive crouch, claws extending, eyes scanning the darkness for the implied threat. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“A remnant.”

“A what?”

“A liminal dweller.”

Astred growled. “Not any clearer, Kai.”

The scene continued around them as the pressure in Astred’s chest grew.

He spun, eyes following the inky thing through the darkness, hands elevated before him. Kai’s tiger mirrored his stalking. “Remnants are liminal dwellers. Former living beings sent to the death plane, but due to magical connection or some other power, are able to cling to the in-between places, such as shadows, and gateways between realms.”

“There!” The tiger pounced, snarling, snapping teeth and swiping claws as Kai’s hands flowed back and forth before him as though he gathered air.

Not air.

Shadows.

Astred moved, claws extended to attack the thing that dragged scents of death and rot with it.

“No!” Kai shouted, shouldering her away as the thing suddenly turned in her direction.

The shadows slipped from Kai’s grasped as he moved to protect Astred. The tiger screamed, launching itself as the remnant hissed, trying to strike Astred’s chest. The tiger sank its teeth into the back of the thing’s neck, yanking it away from Astred, the strike hitting her exposed shoulder instead.

Instinctively, her body instantly coated itself in dragon scale, though consciously she had no idea if that would protect her from this kind of creature.

It ignored Kai and the tiger, intent on Astred.

Overhead, the streak in the sky grew brighter, despite the thick shadows swirling around them.

Kai continued whatever he was doing to collect them, moving them about like a buffering shield to block the remnant from accessing Astred, all the while seeking its entry point. Together, man and tiger fought to contain the remnant within a roiling mass of thick blackness as he finally gained enough control to force it backward into the fissure it had emerged from; the inky stain at the point of the spell which had made the seals.

Astred lost track of Kai’s battle as she stood transfixed on the brightening sky.

The star that rocketed toward them—her—was blinding as much as it illuminated the conflict on the horizon, but Astred couldn’t tell if this blinding light was going to obliterate them or save them.

All she knew was that she had to reach for it, though she could never grasp it. This blinding light, this falling star, was not hers to control, but held some link to Aeleftheria’s destiny. Heart pounding beneath the protective layers of the scales coating her chest, she finally knew.

It was the Star Stone.

As her consciousness made the connection, the light surged, turning the entire scene titanium bright until the scream of the falling star extinguished into silence.

By the time Astred and Kai made their way back to the Nexus entrance, the magnitude of what they’d just witnessed had ingrained itself into Astred’s being.

The deep fear hadn’t gone away with the knowledge—the mission—it just shifted focus.

The Ascension, though many years away, meant the thinning of the veils as the worlds moved closer together and the gateways solidified; places where remnants could dwell, and potentially escape, adding even more to their problems.

Was this something else that the Consortium sought to control?

Astred had no idea.

Perhaps it was time to have a long, long chat with her mother and Kane, when all of this was settled.

She needed to know what the fuck was coming for them. Defending Aeleftheria wasn’t just an abstract value. The fate of dragonkind, and the world, depended on it. They would need their allies now more than ever.

Uniting the dragons was crucial, for good, this time.

They moved through the crystal path and stepped into the entrance, lost in deep thoughts of their recent journey.

Looking up, Astred chuckled. Kai emerged beside her, a grin spread across his face. Before them, their dragons lay curled around one another, napping, rainbow threads tangled.

Kai’s tiger slid his body along Astred’s shoulder, drawing her attention to his silky fur. She hesitated, then reached her hand up to stroke between his ears. Calm rooted out the deep sense of fear as she slid her fingers through the tiger’s warm fur.

Astred wouldn’t meet Kai’s gaze, instead considering the entwined dragons.

So many factors.

So much work to be done.

So much at stake.

But there was no longer any doubt. Regina’s words drifted back to Astred: ‘Everything will change after this event. You need to prepare yourself. It’s time.’

Regina had known it was coming. The Mother had told her.

Yes, it was time.