Page 16 of The Storm of the Empire (Flyers Of The First Kingdom #3)

FIFTEEN

HAZEL

I was coming out of my skin with worry over Alora’s egg by the time I surfaced in the morning. I’d slept fitfully and dreamed badly. Mom had already left for the training schools, and my brothers were gone to the fields. Only Dad remained, and he was serving a hefty breakfast to Luka in the kitchen when I walked in. I felt pulled to Luka’s room even after we spoke, and I hated feeling this restless.

“Oh, good, you’re up. I made you a plate, too,” Dad said, placing a kiss on my forehead as he passed me.

“Thanks, Dad.” I took the seat opposite Luka, who smiled as he took a bite.

Dad set a plate before me. “I’m going to be down in the hydroponic garden if you need me,” he said, then left us to our meals.

“How did you sleep?” Luka asked.

“Not well,” I admitted. “You?”

“Pretty well, but I spent two long nights on a ship sitting up on the floor and not getting a wink before that, so a safe bed made for good sleep.” The way Luka appeared contradicted his claim. He seemed as overtired and restless as I felt.

But why wouldn’t he be honest? Did he not want to insult my family’s hospitality?

“I was just going over and over it all in my head. What are we going to do? If Alora loses that egg, we won’t have another dragon for Storm in who knows how long.” Maybe until I decided to have younglings, if I ever could. “So many dragons are finding out they can’t year after year. And then even if they have an egg, more than half of them aren’t viable or die in the year it takes to hatch.

“So she has to sit on that thing for a year waiting for it to hatch?” Luka sounded incredulous.

“No, she doesn’t have to sit on it. We use hot sand to create a nest. We can heat the sand with our flame, and it stores the heat for several hours. The egg just needs to be guarded and tended every so often, rotated and such.”

Luka nodded and went quiet in thought.

“I have a question,” he said suddenly, sounding decidedly unsure.

“Hmm?”

“Will Zaria lay an egg if they have younglings?”

I barked out a laugh. “Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. All this egg talk had me thinking, and then it just occurred to me, will Zaria have to lay an egg?”

“No,” I said trying not to keep laughing at him.

“So if they have young, they won’t be dragons?”

My shoulders sank, and I tilted my head. “I thought you said you know how our reproduction worked?”

“Well, now I’m seeing there might be more layers to it than I thought. So explain it to me.”

“If the mother is not a dragon, then there is no egg. They will have a fae gestation and birth a live youngling. While some dragons are born to dragon/fae pairings, it’s not a given. More often, their young will not carry the shifting gene.

“Also, dragons don’t have to lay their young, they are capable of live birthing in fae form, too. It’s just not the preferred method. You see, when a dragon is pregnant and they choose to live birth, then shifting in later gestation can risk the youngling. So it requires a commitment to stay in fae form throughout the entire gestation.

“If they choose to lay, then they need to stay in their dragon form for a full moon cycle in order to produce an egg. Once laid, the egg can then be cared for by the community, which is how we do it here, but in the rest of the realm, they use the priests to tend them in nurseries. That way they are given the best care and chance to hatch safely. Didn’t you learn all this in school—” I cut myself off when I realized what I’d said. “Right. You didn’t.”

He didn’t make a big deal of it, moving on. “Why don’t they let them go to the priests here?”

“Storm Dragons need the charge in the air from the storms. We can’t be hatched in nurseries,” I said. “I always felt like the kingdom providing care from the priests was just the King’s way of not interrupting a dragon’s service because they decided to have young. We all know how he feels about all dragons being in the capital if they are fit to serve. If they chose to do it on their own, he has no choice but to allow them leave, but it’s not what he wants, so he provides the perfect solution.” My stomach sank with a thought. “What if the priests have tricked us into believing it’s better to lay our young, just so they can steal them?”

Luka’s hand covered mine, bringing me back to the moment. “I’m sure that’s probably what they are doing, but to what end? What would they want with dragon’s eggs?”

“I don’t know.”

“So she’s not sitting on the egg, but does she leave it at all?”

“The females of the community take turns helping her watch it. She doesn’t just sit in the sands with it for a year.”

“So the only time the priests could take it is during their inspection, right? If it’s that guarded.”

I thought about it for a moment. “I think you’re right.”

“So we need to try and stop them somehow.”

“The priests are trusted by everyone. How can we stop it from happening?”

“We could let them take it, then follow it and steal it back?” Luka suggested.

“That needs to be a last resort. It would be too easy for them to lose us.” Even the thought had panic rising inside me.

Luka blinked at me, coming to a realization. “Could we steal an egg from the temple and switch it ourselves? Then if they do take it, we still have Alora’s safe.”

“I don’t know if that would work. What if Alora catches us switching her egg? She would never believe our story if she caught us in the act.”

“Hmm. When are the priests doing their health check?”

“Later today. It will be after the storm hours because they won’t venture to the sands until it’s cooler.”

“Then it can’t hurt to go and try to locate the eggs to at least see if we could steal one. That way, we have one, and maybe we can convince Alora to let us switch it, or maybe we will have to do it in secret, but at least we will have the option.”

“That could work.” I nodded, thinking it all through. “ Do you think the eggs are still here in Neilius?”

Luka shook his head. “I don’t know if they were ever here. Like I said, I lost them when we got here.”

“Do you think they ever came on shore?”

Realization dawned on his face. “I don’t think so. I think they just off-loaded us so we wouldn’t know. It’s like they are keeping secrets in secrets.”

I sat back with a sigh. “So we have no idea where they might be?”

Luka sat up straight. “Can you sense storm magic?”

“Yes…why?”

“So you can feel it and follow it? That’s how your brother’s know where the stones are—Cal said they can feel them.”

“Where are you going with this?” I asked because it felt like he was connecting dots I didn’t see yet.

“If the opals absorb your storm magic and the eggs are coated with them, then theoretically, the eggs are like the stones. You could find them like your brothers find the lost stones after a big storm.”

“I think so.” I was starting to understand what he was saying.

It all clicked together. The lessons we had in training camp. The way the feel of storm opals was drilled into our minds so we could find it day or night. We’d prepared for the worst since we were children. The once-in-a-lifetime storms that would scatter the opals far and wide or fling them into the sea, and then we’d all be called back to search for them.

“Finish getting ready, then we can go try and steal us a dragons egg,” Luka said enthusiastically. Why would anyone be excited about such a venture?

When I came back, he was dressed in the clothes I’d gotten him yesterday. He looked odd. Maybe I’d grown used to him as a priest.

I couldn’t hold back a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think I prefer you as a priest,” I said, not sure I should be admitting it.

He raised his brows. “Is that what you’re into?”

“Stop!”

We headed outside to start our hunt. I closed my eyes, reaching out with my power, spreading it in every direction but focusing on the temple. I felt none of the feedback I would expect from the stones, nor any hint of dragon. I would think if there were a group of eggs together like that and I was reaching out to find them, I’d get a sense. But nothing. They had to have been moved from the temple.

I swept my power further and further, losing myself in visualizing the land. I swept the fields, sensing the stones there and beyond to the coastline. I was beginning to think the task was beyond my competence and maybe we should ask my brothers since this was their area of skill, but then suddenly, I sensed a concentration of opal where there were no fields.

Luka’s fingers brushed my face, and my eyes snapped open.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to break your concentration.”

“It’s fine. I know where they are,” I said, breathless.

“Where?”

“Near the Wild Mountains.” I was already stripping off my tunic. “I’ll go. We don’t have enough time for us both to get there on foot.”

His brows rose at my disrobing. I always forgot how different we were to non-shifting fae while I was at home.

“What?” I asked, hands on hips.

“You’re going to shift?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah. I can fly ten times faster than we could both get there. You’ll just have to trust me.”

He shook his head. “No, I just meant—” A smile spread on his lips. “I haven’t seen your dragon before. I can’t wait to see!”

“Oh.” I toed the ground self-consciously, suddenly aware I didn’t do this in front of others too often these days. Shifting was second nature for me here, but I rarely did it in the First Kingdom. There, it was something I mostly did in private because without a ryder, it just felt like drawing attention to my failure. I was respected as a weapons master, so reminding them that I could be more was just counterproductive. I preferred to quietly slip away to shift and fly when I needed to.

“This might be a little forward, but couldn’t I ryde you?”

“Excuse me?” I choked.

“You can take me with you. I’ve ridden before. Jaxus once brought me all the way back from the Second Kingdom.”

I side-eyed him, but he was right. Besides, it would be better to have him there since he was the one who could blend so seamlessly. “Do you still have the priest’s robes on you?”

He pulled the bag off his shoulder. “Of course. I didn’t know if we’d need them. Or if you’d want me to put them back on for other reasons…”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine then. Get changed—we need to go.”

He changed into the robes, then put my clothes in his bag before turning to me and swallowing hard.

“Don’t look at me like you’ve never seen a naked female before.”

“I’ve seen you naked, but am I not allowed to still enjoy it?” He was tenting his robes.

“Goddess.” I looked to the sky before I let my dragon form take me.

His eyes didn’t leave me as I shifted and shook out my wings. It felt good to let my dragon free in the warm air of my home. It always felt better here.

“Wow,” he whispered, stepping closer to reach out his hand. I allowed the touch and stood while he trailed his fingers down my flank. “I’ve never seen a dragon this color before.”

Well, he hadn’t seen a storm dragon before. We were all shades of the turbulent skies. I was the deep magenta of an evening sky over our land, warning of worse storms to come. Unusual, yes, but I would rather stand out than blend in. I took after my mother, and her colors were known and respected throughout the Twelve Kingdoms.

“It suits you.”

He wasn’t intimidated by my dragon—I guessed I should have expected that.

“You’re smaller than Nyx and Jaxus, but I bet that helps you in the storms.”

I dipped my head in agreement, unable to speak to him like this, but he’d know. I lowered down so he could climb on my back.

He climbed onto my back like a natural. “Is it wrong I’m turned on?”

I huffed out a blast of smoke, and he laughed.

“Sorry."

I took off suddenly to shut him up, and he whooped, keeping his seat perfectly. I was impressed.

I followed the spot I held in my mind and kept low to the ground, flying in the valleys between the mountains, skimming the trees. I didn’t want to alert them we were coming if I could help it.

I landed far off from a tiny temple at the base of the Wild Mountains I didn’t even know existed.

“They’ve got to be in there,” I said after shifting back.

“What are the chances they are easy to get at?” Luka tossed me the bag with my clothes, then tried to tame his hair.

I held back a laugh. “You’re fighting a losing battle.”

“Whatever.” He dropped his hands. “Do you think you can lead me to where they are? Or maybe give me a location to search? It might be better for me to go in alone.”

“Let me try.” I walked to the edge of the tree line, the closest I could get to the temple without maybe being seen, and focused in again. “Not far inside the walls. It’s murky because of the stone, but I know it’s there. In the south, southeast. That corner.” I pointed out the vague location where I could sense the opal.

“Stay here so I can find you again.”

I grabbed his arm before he could leave. “Be careful please.”

“I will. I promise.”