Verdant Magic: A Standalone Dragon Shifter Adventure (Dragon Mage Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  For a split second, Amber’s sweet scent bubbled up out of recent memory. The evening before had felt like the beginning of a journey that could fill a lifetime. Zane had lost himself in coaxing girlish giggles out of his usually serious earth witch’s enticing throat, had counted how many smiles he could capture out of the corner of one eye while his partner thought no one was looking.

  He’d hoped to rack up hundreds, thousands, millions. But now images of death and destruction filled Zane’s mind instead while a tightness in his chest made it difficult to breathe. As he attempted to slow those heaving gasps, Amber’s not-quite-fiancé scrambled to his feet amid a stream of scathing invective.

  Charlie was either more used to heavy drinking than the rest of them, or perhaps more resistant to dragon glamour. Either way, his legs were steadier and his motions less tentative than those of the dragon shifters he now faced down. “If something’s happened to my sister, you’re all going to be kudzu fertilizer,” the human growled before running out the open door.

  Without bothering to reply, Zane followed.

  ***

  “You trust those vines to anchor my ship but not tear it apart?” Amber’s companion asked.

  It had taken the Intrepid half an hour to reach a safely sheltered valley, but the captain had no trouble bringing the airship down low enough to ride out the raging storm once the clearing was in sight. And now the worst of the tempest had passed and it was Amber’s turn to call upon her powers once again. Could she lock the vessel in place without Sabrina wasting the remainder of her magic managing final gusts of unruly wind?

  “If you leave the ship powered down and if the dragons stay in the upper levels, we should be fine,” Amber promised, sprouting additional kudzu seeds by feel as pre-dawn glow lit the early morning sky. Thanks to Thea’s visit to the observation bubble the day before, it hadn’t been all that tough to rustle up a small pile of goat manure along the transparent floor. Add water and magic, then vines quickly did their work—preventing Sabrina from clambering down a sopping-wet rope to moor the ship against the not-so-distant ground.

  “So, a wind witch, eh?” the Watcher asked at last, wiping sweat off her brow with one manure-laden finger. Okay, so it hadn’t been precisely easy for even Amber to turn kudzu into guy wires. But she’d gotten the job done.

  “Yep,” Sabrina answered. “Speaking of which...” She turned away and rummaged through a drawer her companion had missed along the single non-glass wall at the bubble’s rear. Colorful fabric danced over the captain’s shoulder and landed lightly in Amber’s waiting hands, folding itself neatly but not before the recipient caught sight of what she’d been given. A shirt, pants, socks, underwear. Then, more gently, a pair of empty boots high-stepped their way along the ground of their own volition, bumping enticingly against Amber’s bare feet as they came within range.

  “I...” she started, intending to reject the offering out of hand. After all, fabric wasn’t easy to come by down in the tunnels of Greenwich, and this change of clothing would have been worth most of a season’s harvest back home. Up here in the air? Amber couldn’t be certain, and she didn’t like the idea of placing herself in anyone’s debt either.

  On the other hand, she had just helped Sabrina save the airship from a freak thunderstorm while the captain’s entire crew was distressingly out of the picture. And the Intrepid was very definitely worth more than even such a fancy set of duds. So maybe Amber and the captain were even after all. “Thank you,” the former said at last, swallowing her pride and accepting the gift in the manner it had been intended.

  Sabrina’s answering smile was both more tentative and more real than the brassy grins the captain had sent her way previously. “I figured I owed you,” the wind witch replied simply.

  Gift given and received, the pair sat back and watched dawn quietly fill their valley, the chorus of songbirds muted by distance and by transparent walls of the observation bubble itself. Below, the formerly menacing shapes of burned-out trees materialized into sticks of black and gray as returning sunlight illuminated a thick layer of fog coating the ground. Secrets, Amber thought again. Even the Green seemed to be hiding itself from her today.

  Maybe the emotion came through on her face because Sabrina’s mouth quirked to one side before the latter offered more information than Amber would have dared ask for. “No, the dragons don’t know about me. Neither does my crew for the most part. Witches aren’t exactly accepted in post-Change society, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Well...” Amber started. She’d made the same assumption a week earlier. Had accepted that Greenwich only traded with a select few outsiders for the sake of keeping their enclave safely beneath the radar.

  But Zane had acted so level-headed in the face of her magic, had treated Jasmine with kid gloves despite the youngster’s budding power. It was easy to think that Amber and Sabrina might both be wrong, that hiding their powers was a protective measure they could have safely done without.

  Perhaps hiding her heart the night before had been equally unnecessary and counterproductive to both Amber’s and Zane’s own futures?

  “The dragons aren’t what they seem,” Sabrina continued, changing the subject. Or maybe not. Maybe this was the wind witch’s explanation for why she’d chosen to wake a passenger she barely knew rather than going to her employers for assistance when the storm first blew in. “There’s more to them than fire and flying.”

  “I know. Zane has a way of making you do what he wants....”

  Sabrina snorted. “Parlor magic. Who knows what trickery the others get up to when no one’s looking?”

  For a moment the two sat side by side in silence, watching the sun rise through dissipating fog. One moment the orb was a smudgy lighter patch along the eastern horizon. The next, tendrils of water vapor had burned completely away, revealing a glowing circle too bright to gaze into with the naked eye.

  “But magic is just magic,” Amber said at last. “It’s what you do with your birthright that counts. And Zane’s trustworthy. I know that much.”

  “You think he’s trustworthy now,” the captain countered darkly. “But I’d recommend you watch your back.” She paused, cleared her throat, then changed the subject yet again. “Anyway, the clothes aren’t really what I meant to give you.”

  “Oh, here...” Amber said, reddening as she reached over to hand the bundle of precious fabric back to its original owner. But Sabrina just rolled her eyes and waved them away.

  “I mean they weren’t the only thing I wanted to give you. In case your dragon doesn’t turn out to be all you’d hoped for, you can call on me if you ever need help out of a tight spot.”

  The wind witch opened one hand as she spoke, revealing the tiniest machine Amber had ever laid eyes upon. It was a clockwork butterfly, minuscule winding knob creating the insect’s tail while brilliant blue wings opened gracefully as if testing the air. “It’s beautiful,” Amber breathed.

  “And useful,” Sabrina added. “Look.” She nudged the clockwork insect with one finger and the device sprang instantly to life. It fluttered upward, wings the size of Amber’s smallest fingernail beating rapidly as it battered itself against the wind witch’s waiting face.

  A homing device.

  Plucking butterfly out of the air with careful thumb and forefinger, Sabrina explained: “Just release it and it’ll come find me. Then I’ll come find you. Here, we can put it in your locket.”

  And just like that, the magic of the morning was broken. “Wait...” Amber cried, reaching up to grab hold of the small metal heart that had hung around her neck for the last fourteen years. Momma’s memory locket, given to her for safekeeping....

  “Don’t open it in front of anyone,” her mother had admonished. “Keep the contents dry and protected. This memory could be all of our salvation.”

  Amber had accepted that responsibility just like she’d accepted her role as Watcher. And when Baine had burned her parents to ash, the teenager had clutched Mom
ma’s locket as she sobbed out her loss. At least her mother had possessed the foresight to give precious memories into her daughter’s care before running out into the woods to risk her own life. At least Amber could preserve this one small fragment of her lost parent even if the woman herself would never walk the earth again.

  Now, though, the memory keeper wasn’t fast enough to prevent her newfound friend from flicking the tiny latch that sat on one side of the ornamental metal heart. She wasn’t fast enough to prevent Momma’s memory—a flat plastic rectangle with a bite out of one corner—from slipping free to clatter tinnily against the observation bubble’s transparent floor.

  Technology from the Before lay staring up at both of them from between two pairs of feet. But at least Sabrina’s the only one who saw it, Amber told herself, scooping up the memory card with trembling fingers.

  Unfortunately, a masculine growl from the trap door above proved her wrong. The memory card had been sighted, Amber had failed in her duty, and Momma’s secret was finally out.

  Chapter 22

  Vaguely, Zane noted that his brothers had split up. One ran deeper into the belly of the ship while the other followed him up the ladder to the passenger level one floor above. Meanwhile, Charlie’s footsteps preceded them down the dim hallway, fading away as the human took the final flight of stairs two at a time while hurrying toward the ship’s open deck.

  Perhaps Zane should have seized command and given each searcher a spot to start looking. But the shifter couldn’t seem to pry clenched teeth apart long enough to speak. Instead, his vision tunneled in on the door he’d closed behind him a few hours earlier, the door that should currently be sheltering his witch from prying eyes.

  Still closed, he noted with relief. Dawn had just begun to brighten the sky when he left the berthing gallery moments earlier and now early morning sunlight shone gently beneath the crack to illuminate the otherwise darkened corridor. Amber could easily be sleeping in, Baine’s treachery irrelevant as she enjoyed a few extra hours of well-deserved slumber.

  Zane was loathe to wake a sleeper. But he had to know. So, as quietly as he was able, he flung open the door...and stared across the room at the entirely empty bed.

  Amber was gone.

  Any shifter worth his salt should have entered the room slowly. A dragon always relied on his senses first, teasing out tendrils of odor and sound to determine whether an enemy lay in wait before diving into an unknown situation. After that, predatory instincts should have kept him cautious as he physically checked every nook and cranny before zeroing in on his goal.

  Instead, Zane rushed inside on human feet and with an entirely human disregard for consequences. Only when a hard weight barreled into the back of his knees did he recall his draconic nature, lashing out as he fell.

  “Maaaaa!” Thea bleated as she dodged the blow. Then the critter’s eyes widened and her tail tucked as she cringed back against the wall.

  Zane didn’t speak goat, but he knew agitation and terror when he saw them. The animal’s emotions perfectly mirrored the churning in his own gut, in fact. So even though Amber was missing and his murderous twin was on the loose, he pressed calming hands on either side of the critter’s jaw and turned her head so he could stare into one watery blue eye after the other.

  “I’m going to find Amber,” he promised. “Ideas?”

  In less than a second, Thea went from panic attack to cud chewing, her cheek bulging as she coughed up a wad of half-digested greenery to re-process. Then, lifting her tail, a smattering of damp pellets fell to the floor, one bouncing up to land in the opening at the top of Zane’s boot where it sat stickily against his skin.

  Delightful. And entirely unhelpful.

  Sighing, the shifter ignored his caprine companion and returned his focus to the otherwise empty space instead. The bed was mussed but was still ship-shape beyond the single blanket he’d draped over Amber’s sleeping form the night before. Other than that, it was hard to tell if anything was missing since his earth witch hadn’t brought possessions aboard the Intrepid beyond her pet and the clothes on her back.

  Zane, on the other hand, had left some very important documents behind in this room the night before. So, flipping up the pillow, he brushed hurried hand across the empty space underneath. Perhaps white papers had merely blended into white sheets and evaded seeking eyes in the dim morning light?

  No such luck. Only after tearing the entire bed apart did he admit the obvious. The dossier that Nicholas had entrusted him with and which he in turn had left for the eyes of his earth witch was gone without a trace.

  A cold weight settled into the bottom of his gut at the sight. “Maybe she woke up, found the papers, and took them with her,” Zane muttered to himself. But he didn’t really believe his own lie. Not when Baine had gone to such lengths to put every male on the ship into glamoured slumber. Not when his mate had gone missing when she should have been resting in her own bed waiting for the breakfast bell to ring.

  “Every room on this floor is empty,” Alexander reported breathlessly from the doorway, pulling Zane out of his brown study. Had he really been standing frozen in one spot long enough for his brother to finish searching each passenger cabin already? And how much further away had his twin fled while Zane wasted time, allowing the morning chill to cut into his inner fire?

  “Are you okay, bro? You’re shivering.”

  Turning at last, Zane took in his brother’s face. Beads of sweat stood out on Alexander’s brow and flames licked across tensed muscles. So maybe the morning wasn’t unseasonably cold. Maybe that teeth-chattering rawness that currently threatened to freeze blood in his veins stemmed from a different origin entirely.

  “Nicholas is searching below,” Zane said at last, forcing words out from between numb lips. “So we’ll go up.”

  Alexander shot him a funny look but shrugged and led the way toward stairs just shallow enough for a goat to ascend under her own volition. Shifter then goat then shifter, they climbed upward together. But Zane was the only one who lagged, whose thighs complained of fatigue as they lifted to the next step and the next step and the next step above that.

  Murmured voices swirled toward him when Zane crested the rise at long last. A high-pitched female voice...and that was enough to pull him up the final few steps and halfway across the deck with more alacrity than he’d been able to muster previously.

  Jasmine. He should have been glad, not disappointed, to discover the youngest member of their entourage cradled within Charlie’s corded arms. Instead, Zane’s hand rose to his throat, searching for a blasted collar to explain away the icicles cutting like daggers through his veins.

  But his neck was bare save for a thin layer of ash that flaked away beneath questing fingertips. And his legs nearly collapsed beneath him as he strode unevenly toward the only female he’d seen since waking from Baine’s glamoured spell.

  Jasmine was laughing. But it wasn’t the happy sort of laughter you’d expect from a fourteen-year-old girl snuggling into her brother’s protective arms. Instead, the cackling cut into Zane’s ear drums like shards of broken glass even as the sound sent his feet hurrying across the metal decking. Something was seriously wrong and Zane wasn’t going to allow a pesky Fade to hold him back from sniffing out the culprit.

  “I need you to talk to me, Jasmine,” the girl’s brother demanded. Charlie had taken off his own shirt and draped it across his sister’s slighter shoulders in an effort to slow the shivers wracking her body. But Jasmine was as wet as the deck around her and water merely leached through the skimpy fabric to form dark spots around her neck, beneath her hair, all along her spine. She, rather than Zane, was the one who should have been complaining about the cold.

  “Talk,” the girl muttered instead. “Talk, talk, talk!” This time, her laughter was closer to the honking of geese flying south for the winter, all humanity absent from the explosion of noise.

  Perhaps it was the sound of Zane’s approaching footsteps. Or the way Thea nud
ged her head under the child’s arm in search of reassurance. Either way, Jasmine glanced up at long last.

  And when her eyes met Zane’s, the maniacal smile on her face seemed to tilt, to transform, until someone else entirely looked out from behind the child’s warm, brown eyes. Her pupils dilated, her jaw tensed. And the words she voiced were deep, dark, and entirely male.

  “Brother,” she greeted him in Baine’s seductively smooth voice. “Sorry to run off and leave with the party only halfway over. But I’ve found everything I was looking for. Thanks for that. Now—” the strange voice emanating from the child’s face turned colder “—back off and give me some room to breathe. I’ve got a job to do. And if I see any of your ugly mugs in the near future, then your precious foster mother...well, I guess I’ll be forced to snap her brittle old neck.”

  ***

  Of all the people to catch Amber’s secret literally spilling out across the floor, Nicholas would have been her very last choice. The dragon shifter’s nostrils flared as he took in both memory card and guilt writ large across her face. Then those same fiery wings that had been so enticing on the back of her own dragon the night before thrust this far less enchanting shifter through the air to nab the scrap of plastic before Amber could reclaim the possession she cherished almost more than her own life.

  “I’d ask you to explain, but you’d lie,” Nicholas growled, not even bothering to meet her gaze as he yanked a small electronic gadget out of one pocket and popped the memory card into a waiting slot. The tablet wasn’t so different from the one Momma had keyed her own experiments into a decade earlier, so Amber knew exactly what Nicholas would see on the gently glowing screen.