Page 9 of Magick and Lead (Dragons and Aces #2)

CHARLIE

T he motorcycle thundered beneath me, the smell of sea air filling me with each breath, the wind in my hair.

The ride from the farm to McNally Air Base was thirty minutes down a strip of fresh asphalt bounded by nothing but farm fields and, closer to the base, the dark, choppy waters of Stanley Bay, glinting with morning sun.

The motorcycle had been a gift from Cousin Bo, one of several wrecks he’d picked up from a junkyard and rebuilt, intending to sell it. And he had sold it—to me. I loved the thing. It gave me the same sensation as flying, a feeling like I just wanted to keep on going forever.

I especially felt that way today, given my destination.

What were the pricks in the front office going to have to say to me, I wondered?

Would they decide I was a traitor and clap me in the brig, or send me back to the barracks to get suited up for another sortie over Dorhane?

Either way, two months of freedom at the farm was coming to an end.

And my most important goal—finding Essa again—would be further away than ever.

But there was no escaping the inevitable.

All too soon, I was motoring up to the gate of the airbase, then stepping into a low-ceilinged room with the words Military Justice stenciled on the door.

Walking in, it had the feeling of an ambush.

Several officers sat behind a long table in their stiff uniforms, still as statues.

General Peckham wasn’t here, and none of the faces were familiar.

I didn’t even recognize the secretary who sat at a table to one side, her fingers poised over the typewriter.

Several rows of chairs stood before the tribunal table, all of them empty. I walked down the central aisle and saluted. “Good morning, gentlemen,” I said, trying to sound snappy despite the nerves roiling my stomach.

“At ease, Major,” the presiding officer, a colonel, said, gesturing to a small table opposite them. “Sit.”

I did as instructed, and the colonel proceeded to open a manila folder and read the official account of the events that had happened two months prior. It was excruciating to listen to.

I’d flouted orders, flying when I was to be grounded, punched a fellow pilot, stolen his plane, and taken off. Once airborne, Major Carter Blaize claimed I’d attacked him during the course of our mission and impeded his efforts to engage with the enemy.

It was all true, every damned word. But I hadn’t done enough. Because he’d still shot down Essa’s mother…

I would never forget the sight of that magnificent dragon falling from the sky, or the glimpse I’d gotten of Essa’s face as she looked upward at her attackers. At us.

Carter had been flying my plane, the Silver Wraith. But surely Essa knew it wasn’t me who’d attacked her and killed her mother, the queen. At least, I hoped she knew that.

But hearing that officer drone on, reading the report, images from that terrible day flashed before my eyes once more.

The hatchery where the dragons lived—destroyed.

The walls of the mighty palace Charcain—falling.

The splendid city of Issastar—in flames.

My sweet baby dragon Parthar—cut off from me.

Parthar. God, my baby dragon. I’d never intended to become a dragon father, but the damned thing had imprinted on me, and that, apparently, wasn’t the sort of thing that simply went away.

I still felt him sometimes, like a string pulling on one of my internal organs.

But his voice, his words, were lost to me, cut off by the distance.

I’d tried to ignore the feeling of loss.

Tried to forget about Parthar, to refrain from wondering where he was and whether he was okay.

But being bonded to a dragon, they say, was sort of like having a twin, being a parent, and having a best friend who could read your mind, all rolled into one—with a dash of magical soul-connection sprinkled over the top.

Even though I’d tried to deny our bond, the truth was every time I was searching for Essa, I was searching for Parthar, too. I couldn’t help it.

Parthar. Essa. Can you hear me? I asked, reaching out with my mind using the power the Skrathan called simnal. But the response was the same as it had been for the past two months: silence. I was cut off from them. And it felt like being cut in two.

Silence…

Suddenly, I realized this room was silent, too.

I looked up from the desktop I’d been staring at to find the officer had stopped speaking. Everyone was looking at me.

I cleared my throat, glancing around.

“Didn’t you hear him? He said you’re reinstated, Inman. Cleared of all wrongdoing,” one of the officers said. “You’re to report for flight duty at zero-seven hundred tomorrow morning. Don’t you have anything to say to that?”

I’d be in the air again. Expected to kill dragons, when at least one dragon now felt as close as blood to me. And I’d have no more time to search for Essa… ‘

And yet at the same time, I was an ace. That was my identity, who I was.

How did I feel? What did I have to say? I didn’t know, and I had no words.

But I wasn’t born yesterday. This was a war. In a war, you were either one of the good guys—or you were an enemy.

I managed a weak smile. “Hooray.” I said.

The officers all grinned, their stony facades melting. Two of them broke into applause.

“Yeah Charlie!” one of them said. “Honestly, I’m a big fan of the Silver Wraith,” he said.

“We all are,” the colonel added.

I turned to find General Peckham had entered; he stood near the back door, giving me a thumbs-up.

“The Silver Wraith is back!” he said.

I was outside the MP building, about to climb back on my motorcycle, when a voice called my name. “Charlie!”

I recognized that voice. It was the person I least wanted to see.

Kitty Rowley. The most prominent reporter at the biggest newspaper in the country—the Ironberg Times. And my ex-fiancée. She flounced up to me, her mane of short blonde curls bobbing, her heels tapping fast across the concrete.

With a sigh I turned to her, “Hello, Kitty.”

Her big blue eyes, circled with eyeliner like an actress in a moving picture, welled with dramatic sadness, and her red lips pouted.

“First you dump a girl, then you ignore her? Come on, Charlie. I thought I meant more to you than that.”

“Ignore—?”

“You walked right past me back there.”

“Oh. I guess my mind was someplace else.”

“I’ll say,” her eyes narrowed. “So?”

I saw she held her reporter’s notebook in her hands. She tapped her pen on the page.

I frowned. “So… what?”

“So, give me a statement, silly. You’re going to be flying again. The Silver Wraith is back in action.”

I leaned close to her. “Right. Except most people don’t know I’m the Silver Wraith, remember?”

“Fine. The man rumored to be the Silver Wraith,” she amended. “The base press office has given me permission to tease out your identity. To reveal you, bit by bit. Now that the tide of the war is turning, maybe pretty soon instead of flying planes you’ll be a full-time celebrity.”

Nothing could have pleased me less than becoming a full-time celebrity . I was about to tell her so when Michaels, the General’s chief aide, jogged up to us.

“Major Inman. Excuse me. We were supposed to give you this,” he handed me an envelope, saluting.

“Thanks,” I said, returning his salute.

“Oh, that must be your invitation to the medal ceremony,” Kitty said. “Can you give me a quote on that, at least?”

I glanced at the envelope in my hand, then at Michaels. He gave me a nod.

“What medal ceremony?” I said, tearing open the envelope.

“You haven’t heard? You’re getting a Platinum Star for your spy work—” Kitty said. “It’s to be handed out by the president himself.”

I’d gotten the card free of the envelope, and my eyes scanned the gold calligraphy. She was right. I was getting the highest honor my country had to offer… for betraying the woman I loved. I fought the urge to crumple the card and throw it on the ground.

Michaels cleared his throat. “Sir, if you don’t need anything further?—”

“Dismissed,” I said, and he turned on his heel and departed.

“I’ll be covering that event, too,” Kitty said, sidling so close that her breasts brushed against my arm through her sheer dress. “You can’t avoid me forever, Charlie. And listen, just because you don’t want to get married doesn’t mean we can’t still… be friends.”

I was keenly aware of Kitty’s body, so close to mine.

She’d always been pretty, but the past few times I’d seen her, her beauty had seemed sharper, more perfect, as if her skin had become not flesh but porcelain.

She’d always been attractive on a chemical level, too, but now she was positively magnetic in a way that felt more like hypnotism than pure chemical attraction.

I felt her draw, her magnetism, almost like a drug, or like the intoxication from Prelate Kortoi’s tea back in Maethalia.

The feeling didn’t make me want to be friends with Kitty.

And it didn’t make me want to bed her, either, especially with the way I felt about Essa.

No. Kitty smelled of danger. Seeing her now only reminded me that I didn’t want her in any way. Honestly, it made me want to run.

I stepped back from her, turned, and threw a leg over my motorcycle.

“Here’s your quote,” I said, firing up the bike’s engine and shouting over its rumble. “I love flying. Planes are a hell of a lot easier to handle than people.”

“I’ll see you at the medal ceremony, Charlie,” she shouted over the grumbling engine.

Instead of answering, I released the clutch and roared away, leaving Kitty in a cloud of smoke.