Page 176 of I Dream of Dragons

He looks like he’s chewing on a bitter rind. “I don’t know if it’s me or Phaethon, but yeah. I feel a change.”

That sounds… terrible at best. If Phaethon has gained more powers while Jai hasn’t, then he could take over Jai more easily from now on. I’m not sure what to make of Phaethon thus far. He seems to like me, but at the same time…

“Has he changed his mind about aiding the king?” I ask.

Jai shakes his head, eyes darkening.

Damn.

We stay like that for a while. The waves crash against the foundations of the island, below the terrace. The sky is still brightening. In the distance, a massive shape curves out of the sea surface, then splashes back into it. A sea serpent or sea drak. Its crest glints like metal before it vanishes back into the water.

He’s so warm against me, so tall and strong andmine.

He’s mine, and it breaks me that we can’t go back in time to that river shore and just be together. Share blood, mark one another, say our vows and start a family.

Live happily ever after.

I have to stop the king, and now that my magic is back, I may be able to get it done.

How can I kill the king without killing myself? I don’t think it’s possible.

No matter. I’ll be happy to take him down with me. Let that be the one good deed of my life. After all, when I arrived here, I hadn’t expected to survive my mission. I hadn’t thought past my goal, yet somewhere deep in my mind I had meant for it to be the end.

But stopping the king isn’t enough. What about Phaethon? He is the one with the actual power to open the gate. How do I stop Phaethon without harming Jai?

My head aches. There’s a hammering inside my temples, a war drum beating behind my eyes. Panic is twisting my thoughts into thorny knots.

What is the answer? There has to be an answer. If only I could calm down, sleep on the problem and dream, maybe then I’d look at it with fresh eyes and see a better solution.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks quietly, kissing the top of my head—just like he used to do, back then. It makes my chest go so tight I can hardly breathe.

I don’t want to tell him of the dark thoughts filling my mind, so I grasp for something else. “If humans turned into fae by crossing the gates… does that mean there are fae on other worlds, too?”

“It depends how you define them. It’s a… distortion in one’s nature. Magic is a distortion of the forces of nature, linked to a person.”

“Explain,” I demand.

“Every creature is born different, and crossing turns it into something else. It’s how species evolve in the Nine Worlds. The gates mix them up. Transmutes them. It’s a generator of life, turning death into new forms. The fae and us… we aren’t that different. We all pass through death and remake ourselves. The fae did that by crossing a gate into a different world. You and I… it’s more complicated than that. You never crossed a gate. And I… I seem to have crossed too many… We are all different versions of this altered state of being.”

“You seem to know so much about it.”

“I used to. Like I said, some of it is coming back.”

“The king said he wants to open the gates and return home, to his home world.”

“He said that, did he?”

“Was he lying? Are you from the same world as he?”

He hesitates, then nods. “I think so.”

“Did something about you change when you crossed, as it happened with the fae?”

“I already wasn’t human when I crossed.” His dark gaze finds me. “And you… Phaethon told me things I’m not sure I can trust. How did you turn into finnfolk? Rae… Drowning doesn’t automatically make you one of them. If that were so, every person falling into the sea would become finnfolk… Just tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what magic turned me. The sea queen told me that when you have unfinished business in your human life, sometimes you are granted a boon by the sea Gods and become finnfolk, but it felt…”

“It felt?”