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

  In contrast, her prisoner’s words and actions suggested that the moon-marked dragon might be homing in on him instead. If so, then a disappearing golden dragon might send the black dragon elsewhere to seek out more accessible prey.

  With that assumption in mind, Amber tickled rootlets lining the earthen wall and begged for one last round of assistance from the Green. Soil itself was more passive than the plants that sank their roots into its depth—harder to speak to, but also easier to convince. So Amber wasn’t surprised by the flood of magic draining out of her fingertips, bloodless this time but equally exhausting despite that minor boon. She wouldn’t have many more tricks like this one up her sleeve until after she found time for a meal and a good night’s sleep.

  But, for now, stockpiled strength was sufficient. Rock ground against rock and dust filled the air as soil closed the rent above their heads, blocking off the last hint of daylight. Immediately, the mushroom in her hand glowed more vividly to life, and Amber spared the fungus a trickle of her own energy in order to expand its reach. After all, mushroom illumination was the only light source she planned to use while leading the enemy through the back alleys of the witches’ shared domain.

  “Clever,” murmured the shifter behind her back, his voice even quieter than before.

  Amber couldn’t blame him for the recent lack of verbosity—threatening to gag someone with stinky walnut leaves did tend to have a quelling effect on further conversation. Still, she found herself unaccountably wistful as the last rumble of his melodic voice disappeared into the darkness.

  Perhaps that’s why she didn’t pay attention to her own good sense and park Zane against the wall with a few sturdy roots to bind him. It would have been both safer and easier to head off on her own, popping back to the surface at intervals to lead the moon-marked dragon further astray. Instead, Amber found herself saying: “We’ll go a bit deeper. Confuse the trail.”

  Of course, she started kicking herself as soon as she heard her prisoner’s soft footsteps echoing down the tunnel in her wake. There was simply too much to lose by allowing an enemy to traipse through even the outskirts of the earth witches’ hidden retreat. What had she been thinking when she allowed him inside in the first place?

  Fear grew as eyes slowly adjusted to twilight. Not that she minded being able to see. But Zane’s vision must have been expanding in the same way. Was he even now accumulating evidence that the cavern they passed through wasn’t merely a hole obediently opened by the earth?

  The line of electric lamps running along the ceiling seemed painfully obvious to Amber’s familiar gaze. But perhaps dragons didn’t bother with electricity, their own inner fire providing as much light and heat as they craved?

  Wires aside, the walls were suspiciously smooth and straight for a natural formation. There were no stalactites or stalagmites, no dripping water to carve out the earth below. Even the natural wildlife of hump-backed cave crickets and spotted orange salamanders were few and far between in this human residence deep beneath the surface of the earth.

  Granted, this particular tunnel was well off the beaten path and in relatively bad repair. So maybe the dragon would be snookered by crumbling earth and damp stones. Or maybe he’d think they were following the path of some gargantuan prehistoric worm.

  Nothing I can do about it now, Amber reminded herself, choosing yet another downward-spiraling tunnel in an effort to break whatever connection had set the moon-marked dragon on their trail in the first place. Well, there was nothing she could do about the problem other than giving Zane something to think about beyond the inconsistencies in their surroundings.

  So, gathering her courage, she answered his very first question at long last. “I’m Amber Gardner,” she said, staring straight ahead rather than glancing back to see how her conversational gambit had been received. “And my very impressive goat is called Thea.”

  ***

  Zane’s arm ached like the dickens, but he found himself smiling at the earth witch’s receding backside anyway. She was warming to him, he could tell. Perhaps silence was just as powerful as golden words.

  But he didn’t press the point. Instead, he merely picked his way through the underground passage in silence, enjoying the quiet comfort of Amber’s calming presence.

  She was just as sure-footed underground as she had been above, and the goat was even more so. At first, Thea stopped at intervals to snack on roots creeping through the earthen walls, but all signs of plant life save the kudzu slithering across Zane’s skin disappeared within the first few minutes. Then all that was left was rock and wet and dirt.

  All told, it would have been hard to choose a less conducive spot for a fire elemental’s continued survival. In fact, by the time they stopped in a chamber so broad the mushroom’s glow reached neither walls nor ceiling, Zane was forced to use a little of his carefully hoarded inner fire to prevent his teeth from chattering together. Between the encircling earth and the broad stream just waiting to quench his vitality, he felt caught between a rock and a hard place.

  Or is that a rock and a wet place?

  “Are you alright?”

  And that is a much more heartening sight. Turning, Zane found the witch standing an inch away, her eyes morphing into twin pools of darkness in the dim twilight. She was concerned about him, he realized. Which made absolutely no sense given their initial meeting. Still, when his captor raised both brows in a request for permission, he nodded and wasn’t at all surprised to find her untying the knots on his restraints rather than yanking the rope tighter against his abraded skin.

  She wasn’t particularly good at tangles, but Zane enjoyed the extended moment anyway as her head tipped down and her hair tickled his exposed forearms. Tendrils of green magic licked around the witch’s fingertips, and for once the shifter felt a kinship with the kudzu as it stretched over to bask and dance in the otherworldly glow.

  Actually, Zane had initially expected the earth magic to burn his skin the way actual flames never did. But, instead, the emerald haze soothed as it traced a path up his injured arm. It lulled him like a mug of honeyed tea served by the loving hands of his foster mother, and he found his eyes drifting shut in contentment as Amber puttered over his wound.

  “I can set the bone,” the witch offered after a long moment of consideration. “Maybe heal it too. I’m not sure. I’ve never worked on anything that wasn’t human.”

  “I’m human.” Zane wasn’t trying to sway her, although he did open his eyes to watch Amber’s head tilt upwards in reaction to his voice. She’d drifted a hair’s breadth closer until the warmth of her skin licked at his inner flames like a breeze sent to waken glowing embers.

  And, for the first time, his companion’s scent enfolded him in its richness. She smelled like garden soil, of course, but also like sun-warmed apples whose delicate sweetness filled the air before teeth ever broke through resistant skin. Despite himself, Zane opened his mouth and let the flavor roll across his tongue like a fine wine.

  He wanted more than a taste, he realized. He wanted everything.

  For a long moment, they stood frozen. Dripping water echoed through the darkness and tiny rocks clattered behind his back, presumably knocked loose by the antics of a frolicking goat. But Zane didn’t turn aside to look. He didn’t want to break the connection slowly forming in the damp air between dragon and witch.

  Then his captor shook her head as if to clear it before elaborating. “I don’t know if my magic blends well with fire. But if you want, I can try to heal you.”

  “Please. I’d be eternally in your debt.” And, strangely, Zane felt like perhaps he already was. Never mind the fact that his arm wouldn’t have been broken in the first place if it weren’t for Amber’s ties to the Green. Never mind that he was collared and bound by her hand alone.

  Still, his belly was strangely quiescent, as if he’d found his way to the exact spot where he was meant to be. With exactly who he was meant to be with.

  “It’s important that you
don’t scream,” his witch said breathily. Her words should have ruined the moment, but instead they only made Zane consider covering her lips with his own. After all, no treacherous sound could emerge if his mouth was consumed with a much-craved-for kiss.

  “Men don’t scream,” Zane started, having decided not to risk scaring his companion away with a more physical reaction. But the rest of the sentence fled along with his breath when his companion wrenched his arm straight out to the side.

  Okay, so he’d lied. Men jolly well did scream when women who looked like delicate flowers yanked broken bones back into place without so much as a warning first. Still, he managed to keep his reaction down to a strangled howl and was rewarded when a tingle of warmth led to the itch of rapidly healing flesh.

  Shaking out a limb that he’d been cradling against his belly for a very long hour, Zane was surprised to find not so much as a single twinge of pain remaining. His kudzu hitchhiker was less thrilled by the motion, though. Wiry vines bit into his neck and turned easy breathing into a rasp, prompting Zane to lower his arm slowly back to his side.

  No point in irritating the fellow.

  Still, his inner flames leapt a little higher when the earth witch traced one finger across swollen skin that was already beginning to mellow back into its original orientation. “All good?” she asked quietly.

  “All good,” he replied.

  But subsequent words caught in his throat because, suddenly, he wasn’t good at all. How could he be when the harsh prick of a knife pressed into the tender skin of his unprotected back?

  Chapter 8

  Electric lights flickered on above, before, and around them. “No,” Amber breathed, spinning as she searched frantically for the culprit.

  “Why?” and “Who?” and “How can we escape?” ran through her head in an instant. But it was too late to point fingers. Because the cavern had been lit to full brightness, signs of human habitation painfully evident in every direction.

  The spring room was the deepest chamber within Greenwich proper, well off the beaten path and seldom visited in summer months. As a result, Amber had figured she could linger there in solitude as she healed her prisoner and picked his brain about the moon-marked dragon who appeared to be their joint foe.

  That plan might have worked, too, had the lights stayed off. But with fluorescents humming into life above her head, the slatted bins of leftover spring carrots were far too obvious. Processing tables flanked the root-storage zone and the creek dipped down into a broad filter that cleansed the water before pumps drew liquid up to higher levels for drinking.

  No, Zane would never mistake the spring room for a wild cavern. And, given the present company, he’d never mistake his captor for a lone witch either.

  “What are you doing here?” Amber demanded, spinning to face the new arrivals. She should have been relieved to see Jasmine and Charlie safe in the depths along with her. After all, both had been aboveground during at least part of the dragons’ battle and the latter might easily have been harmed by the black dragon’s belated return.

  But Amber found herself worrying about her prisoner’s future instead. Why was her best friend’s face so grim as he stood behind Zane’s back? And was her apprentice really reaching for the wall intercom as if she planned to alert the rest of the colony about potential invasion?

  “Don’t touch that, Jasmine,” Amber warned in her most authoritarian Watcher voice, cutting the latter problem off at the pass. Her apprentice was far too accustomed to Amber’s teachings to disobey, so the girl’s hand quickly dropped back to her side as her neck bent in immediate apology.

  Unfortunately, Charlie wasn’t nearly as malleable. “The dragon has her under some sort of spell,” he countered. “Call for help.”

  For a second, all four froze, waiting to see whose word would win out. Poor Jasmine turned back and forth like a brier-tangled goat, attempting to find a path through the thorns that didn’t involve disappointing either teacher or brother with her actions. Meanwhile, Zane’s eyes bored into Amber’s with equal intensity.

  Which begged the question—was he manipulating her yet again? The Watcher wanted to think she’d elude further spells just like she’d sidestepped her prisoner’s first attempts...but she couldn’t actually be sure.

  Before either Amber or Jasmine could make up their minds, though, the tightly coiled energy within the prisoner exploded. One moment, he was stationary, his regard focused entirely on his original captor. The next moment, his arm spun out faster than the eye could follow, a wicked-bladed knife clattering against rocks at his feet before slipping away beneath the surface of the nearest pool.

  A weapon. Abruptly, Amber realized that she’d never so much as patted her prisoner down before releasing him from the Green, never considered that he might go on the offensive without utilizing either fire or words. Still, she found herself hoping she’d been remiss enough to allow an armed shifter into their stronghold, because the alternative was much harder to bear.

  Because earth witches were peaceful by law and by nature. Thea’s milk and her flock’s eggs were the closest Amber had ever come to consuming meat. She’d never struck anyone in anger and couldn’t imagine Charlie lashing out not only with fists but also with a sharp-bladed weapon that might easily have ended the shifter’s life.

  As if sensing her upset in the face of violence, Zane pulled his punch and twisted Charlie’s arm up behind his back instead of pummeling his opponent further. It wasn’t a painless hold—the expression on the farmer’s face was pinched and his breathing jagged as he dropped onto his knees. But at least there was no blood, no overt wound that might fester and fail where modern medicine was hard to come by and a mere scratch had often before morphed into a nightmare.

  For a long moment, they remained poised—man, woman, scared apprentice, confused goat, and the shifter who had stolen the limelight from them all. “Do you want...?” Zane started.

  And then the kudzu struck.

  Perhaps the vine sensed Charlie’s anger. Or maybe the latter possessed just enough magic to bend an already violent being to his will. Whatever the reason, trailing vines twisted before Zane could combat them, lashing arms against sides then cascading over his head, around his neck, and into his mouth.

  In dragon form, Zane could probably have called upon fire to singe the lone plant into submission. But under the influence of a magic-dampening collar, a mere man was no match for foes that attacked from every direction at once. He struggled, he swore. Then, within moments, her prisoner was once more fully shackled, only eyes glowing forth from amidst a shroud of green.

  ***

  “The knife was a mistake,” Charlie said, drawing Amber’s attention away from the prisoner. Her friend leveraged himself to his feet as slowly and stolidly as the farmer he was, and Watcher found it surprisingly easy to forget his earlier brutality in the face of this verbal peace offering.

  After all, Charlie had always been there for her. Every single one of her earliest memories revolved around this boy-turned-man who might make mistakes...but who just as quickly set them right.

  “You’re not the boss of me!” her friend used to crow back when they’d both boasted unknown magical potential. Then, after their parents had reached an unofficial understanding, Charlie’s refrain had morphed yet again. “You have to do as I say!” he’d sing. “I’m gonna be your husband. I’ll be the boss of you!”

  They’d both accepted parental mandate as a security blanket rather than as the ball and chain it might have appeared through someone else’s eyes. After all, why not get married when they were already inseparable?

  Over the years, Charlie had helped his young betrothed replace fallen birdlings in their misplaced nests and had listened thoughtfully when she complained about parents so consumed in their scientific experiments that they sometimes forgot their daughter existed. On other days, Amber was the helper, boosting her friend over tall stone walls or tending to his skinned knees. And although they never sai
d the words aloud, both agreed that the world was a big and scary place...easier to navigate when you knew at least one person was always unconditionally on your side.

  Unfortunately, the only certainty in life is that life is uncertain. So it was little surprise that neither of their futures had panned out as expected.

  Over the last ten years, Amber had filled her parents’ shoes guarding the sky while Charlie’s father had stepped into the newly minted role of Mayor. Meanwhile, the young Watcher had grown into her magic, turning out to be twice the mage of her father before her. Charlie, in contrast...poor Charlie was gradually revealed to be a magical dud.

  Which hadn’t mattered one bit in Amber’s eyes. Her friend was also thoughtful, brave, and kind. And when he forgot that his fiancée was the strongest earth witch in the enclave and he the weakest, they did indeed make excellent working partners.

  Now, Amber held her breath, prisoner momentarily forgotten. For the first time in years, the same spark and willpower colored her friend’s stance that she recalled from shared childhood adventures. Perhaps, like her, Charlie had realized that their relationship couldn’t remain eternally at a dull simmer, that their bond was truly a treasure worth fighting for.

  Sure enough, her friend advanced across the cavern floor with the same cautious intent he’d used to herd skittish chickens back into their enclosure after they’d fled the coop. He was trying not to spook her, Amber could tell, trying not to send her fleeing before he could make his move.

  To that end, Charlie sidled sideways until he was located as far from Zane as possible while still easing into Amber’s own personal space. Then, like kudzu, he struck.

  Tucking one arm around her waist, her friend pulled her close until her chest bumped against his ribs, bearded jaw scratching against reddening cheeks. His lips were urgent when they parted her own, his breath hot against her mouth. Willingly, Amber relaxed into the unexpected embrace.