Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
brIANNA
I manage to put off giving any more many details about Declan until we’re checked into the five-star hotel my father insisted on for our girls’ weekend.
Ellie, for as nosy as she can be, waits patiently, rambling on about the various restaurants on site at the hotel and other that are not too far away, while I use a scanner to walk the room, searching for any listening devices.
I really want her to become someone I confide in, someone who really might understand when I admit to the fact that I’ve been seeing a dragon shifter. I doubt a lot of things in my life, thanks to my father’s ever watchful eye and seeing eye minions, but I want to trust Ellie, so I’m going to take a chance.
As soon as I give her the all-clear, she runs into the room and flops down on one of the beds, making pillows catch a little air as she basically body-slams the mattress. “Okay, I need details now. Come on, spill. Who’s the mystery guy that’s got you all giddy?”
I sit on the opposite bed, taking the time to toe off my shoes and pull my feet up under me in a cross-legged position before saying, “His name’s Declan. I can’t tell you much more than that unless you swear that anything I say doesn’t leave this room. And I need you to get real cool about some stuff, real fast.”
“Honey, there’s not much I’m not cool with. Declan’s kind of an old-school name. Is he older? Ooh, is he one of your teachers?”
“No!” I hate how high my voice gets as I protest against the assumption, but it’s too late to take back. “He’s…a shifter.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, reaching over to grab a pillow and hugging it to my chest. My mouth feels dry, my tongue swollen. My heart is thumping so loudly in my ears I wonder if I’ll even hear her if she speaks.
Ellie’s expression of excitement falls for a second, in shock maybe, but then her mouth slowly curves back up into a wide, toothy grin. “Fuck yes, girl.” Ellie’s grin is so wide, it looks like her face might open up like a muppet or something. “Tell me everything. How did you meet? How is he flying under the radar?” She covers her face with a hand as she snickers. “I did not mean it like that.”
“You know how my father is, right? How hard it is for me to even get a chance to leave the house. Well, he’s not just holding me prisoner. There are three shifters in magic encased cells in the basement.”
“And Declan’s one of them?” She raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re in love with your father’s prisoner?”
I nod slowly, hugging the pillow closer to my chest. I haven’t verbalized my feelings for him, not out loud, and certainly not to him, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
“I figured out a way to come and go without any issue, but I can’t figure out how to remove the magic, so he’s just stuck down there. They all are. I have to find a way to get them out. No one should be subjected to fighting for their lives, being locked in cells with no sunlight, no good food. They barely even get the chance to shower, nor do they have anything to pass the time. Even human prisoners get books and showers.” I’m rambling, the stuff I’ve been thinking about and dealing with for the last few weeks come pouring out.
“Okay, right, so we find out what sort of magic binds them. It shouldn’t be too hard to counteract. Or reverse all together.” Ellie sounds so matter-of-fact, so confident, it occurs to me she’s comfortable with this whole conversation. Like shifters and magic aren’t a big deal in her everyday life. She gestures for me to continue as she says, “But tell me more about your dragon. Have you seen him shift? What clan is he from?”
I blink at her for a moment, and then keep going, because I might as well at this point. “They wear cuffs with runes and there are runes and symbols all over the walls and door frames. I assume some of them keep them from leaving and the others keep them from shifting.” I squeeze the pillow bracing myself for the answer to my next question. “How do you know about dragons?”
Ellie’s studious expression melds into something a little more mischievous. “I know about more than just dragons. But we’re not talking about me, or what I know. I want to know everything about Declan. I want to meet him.” Her smile grows. “I want to know if you’ve fucked your dragon, and if what they say about shifters is true.”
“What do they say about shifters?” My eyes widening, it’s getting hot, and I’m in shock over the fact that we’re just casually discussing shifters and magic. That I’m able to talk about Declan at all. But Ellie knows about this stuff. How did I end up so lucky?
“Just that they’re well-hung. And very generous lovers.” She laughs, rolling onto her back before she scoots around on the bed so her head hangs off the side and she’s looking up at me. “So?”
“I can’t say for sure about any other shifters, but that’s definitely Declan.” More heat creeps into my cheeks and I look up at the ceiling, not wanting to meet her eyes. “He’s incredible. Long, dark brown hair that he lets me brush and braid sometimes. So muscular, and tall. But it’s more than that. We can talk about anything. He gets me, in a way that no one else ever has.”
“Okay, I’d call you rude, but that’s adorable. Are you his mate? Did he give you his heartstone?”
I hold up my hand. “Hang on, how do you know so much?”
Ellie shrugs and rolls over again before pushing up to shift into a seated position. Once she’s facing me again, she says, “We have plenty of time to talk about my secrets. We have all weekend to get into it. What’s important right now is, why hasn’t he given you his heartstone? Tell me you’re not head-over-heels for a guy who’s got some other mate out there.”
“We haven’t talked much about his heartstone. But he doesn’t have it. He does call me his mate, though. His dragon especially is focused on the mate thing.”
“Hmmm…” Ellie looks me up and down. “Interesting. I didn’t think dragons let much of anything stop them from claiming their mates. I didn’t think anything would separate them from their heartstones unwillingly.” She taps the tip of her fingers to her lips, like she’s trying to think through something. “Okay, we’re definitely going to have to go out and do some shopping tomorrow, if you’re up for it. I might just be able to help you and your dragon out.”
My brow furrows as she pulls out her phone and starts typing out something, her thumbs flying frantically over the screen. If she’s texting someone, if I’ve made a mistake in telling her all of this, I could end up worse than just shipped off to my grandparents. I could end up getting Declan killed.
Her phone chimes in her hands, and she claps her hands excitedly. “Ooh, he’s a tourmaline. And not just that, he’s a prince. You’ve got good taste.”
I fly off the bed and come around to stand over her, looking down at her phone screen. At a text string that has more information about Declan than I feel comfortable with a stranger knowing. “Who’s Zane?”
“My brother.” She lets the screen go dark. “Relax. All I did was ask if he knew Declan. Sounds like he’s a good one. Not that there are a lot of bad dragons, no matter what the news stations would tell you. The whole tourmaline clan’s been through a lot in the last few years, but I’m guessing you already know at least some of that.”
“I do. How does he know? How do you know?”
“All right, all right. I’ll share my secrets, it’s only fair since you shared yours…finally.” She stands up and sets her phone on the bed before she reaches for the ring she always wears on her left index finger. “I’m not exactly what you’d call human.”
As she pulls off the ring, the whole room spins in color and gets brighter. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, the sensation is gone, but so is my best friend.
Gone is the short blonde bob, the septum piercing, and most of the details that shaped Ellie. Even the color of her eyes changed.
Instead, a woman with spiky violet hair, bright green eyes, inhumanly sea foam green eyes, stands in front of me with, I kid-you-not, full on wings. Delicate wings fluttering in the dim hotel room light giving them the appearance of being made of prisms and glass..
No feathers, no stereotypical butterfly shaping. They’re amorphous, changing and shifting as they move and the light bounces off of them differently. As soon as I drag my gaze away from her wings, they fall on her pointed ears.
“I’m a fae. Ellie is short for Ellyandra.” She spins around once giving me a view of her back and spectacular wings. She gently slips the ring back onto her finger. “And since I’m spilling state secrets here, you can stop worrying about checking everywhere we go for bugs. No one hears any of my conversations unless I give them permission.”
“Oh. My. God.” I stare at her, my mind still trying to reconcile the woman I know with what I just saw. “You’re not human.”
“Nope. And thank the gods for it.” She chortles, and then holds up her hand as if she’s just realized that her statement could be offensive. “Not that all humans are bad. But seeing how they’re reacting to the supernatural, I’m more than happy to know better than to buy into all this mass hysteria or weird obsession.” She hops back up onto her bed before gesturing to mine. “Any questions you want to ask, I’ll answer what I can.”
My mind is spinning in a thousand different directions at once, and nothing seems even remotely coherent enough to try to put together an actual question.
“Or maybe we order up some room service and you can just sit with the information a while. You really don’t have to say anything. Except, maybe…” Her eyes fill with a concern I’ve never seen on her face before, one that almost looks like I could hold both our fates in my hands with how I respond next. “You still want to be my friend, right?”
“Are you kidding? This is amazing.” I quickly cross the gap between the two queen-sized beds to crawl up onto hers and settle next to her, draping my arm around her shoulders. “I never thought I’d have someone I could trust to tell anyone about Declan, or about the fact that I think the supernatural community is totally getting the raw end of this deal, and now, not only do I have a real friend, but I also get to be friends with a fae.”
She flings her arms around me and squeezes tight, laughing against my cheek even as I feel the dampness of tears trying to fall between us. “I have wanted to tell you for so long, but with how everything is, and who your father is, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to.”
I let out a slow, steady breath, and hug her back, just as tight. “Your secret’s safe with me. Just like I know you’ll keep mine.”
“Always. And not only that, we’re going to find a way to get your man out of captivity. No shifter should have to fight to the death in those rings. Humans have been up to all kinds of shitty antics long before now, but it’s getting worse.” She pulls out of the hug and wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. “There are plenty of people trying to figure out where they’re being held, to work out what spells bind the shifters. Some fae have even infiltrated the rings as fighters, trying to get more information. But they keep moving things around and the amount of magic they have at their disposal is downright bizarre. They have to have some powerful witches or fae or something working for them. Zane can’t even establish a money trail. Or a magic trail.”
“I feel like there’s so much to this whole world that I don’t even have the faintest idea about, and you’re talking about fae, witches, shifters…what else is real? The internet is wildly full of disinformation.”
She shakes her head and heads for the phone. “We’re definitely getting pizza and chocolate if you’re going to want me to explain the entire supernatural world to you in one night.” She scoots over to the hotel phone and dials the number for room service, ordering far more than either of us could ever possibly eat. “I can’t wait to tell you everything I know.”