Chapter 24
TARIAN
H e’d already been on his way back, after launching the magical tracker far away from Kenna, sending it to the bottom of the deepest part of the sea—but then he’d felt something on the connection between them.
Not movement but something , and after how his Seris had been treated— Kenna, Kenna, Kenna , he repeated to himself, trying to get his head clear—he was scared.
Him—a creature capable of destroying cities, leveling ships, leaving only terror in his wake—was scared of losing one small, fragile human girl.
He arrowed back to the cave where he’d left her, flying in at speed, not caring if she saw him now as long as she was safe, and then landed, half in the ocean, half in sand, sending water and bits of gravel splashing up as he careened to a stop.
And much to his relief, Kenna was there. Standing in the cave’s entrance with her jaw dropped.
“You’re real,” he heard her whisper, and then he needed his own mouth back, to ask her if she was okay.
He snarled at the dog, who knew what he meant, getting his poorly treated pants for him, and Kenna also picked up the clue and turned around.
He was human again in an instant, and half a second after that was clothed. “What happened?” he demanded. “Are you all right?”
She looked back over one shoulder, full of caution. “Yeah. Are...you?”
He heaved a great sigh, partially relaxing. He would not be “all right” until everyone that had designs on her was punished, but seeing her whole was soothing. “Yes.”
“I—I just, ” she said, finally turning, gesturing between his chest and hers.
Hope flared impossibly bright. “You remembered?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head fast. “I just felt connected to you. Somehow.”
“As I am to you,” he agreed with her. “Yes.”
Rocky shuffled up. “What’s the plan?” he asked, and Tarian decided to address the group.
“It’s too cold to fly you now, and my brother’s is too far besides. We’ll wait out the night and start off in the morning, heading straight there.”
“You have a brother? There’s more than one of you?”
“Well, no other dragon is precisely like me, of course, but, yes.” He gave her a half smile and pointed past her. “Go back there so no one can see you, and so that you can stay warm. I’ll go get more food in a moment,” he said, putting his hands to his waist.
Kenna didn’t do as she was told. She was so like Seris, it hurt.
“What if I don’t want to go to your brother’s?”
He blinked at her.
“You seem to be forgetting that I had a life, Tarian. One that I am interested in getting back to.”
“Your life, as you knew it, is over.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t accept that. You—untracked me.”
“They already knew who you were. Where you lived.”
“Then—put me in some sort of dragon-knowing witness protection program,” she said, and he had no idea what she meant by that. “But I’m not going to go to ground for the rest of my life, with a stranger, his brother, and a talking dog.”
Tarian tried to build the walls he’d been letting crumble back up, but he couldn’t; her words hurt him.
“And are you sure I am such a stranger to you?” he snarled, panicked—her seeing his dragon had been his last, most desperate card, and if that did not trigger her memories, he had no idea what else might.
He pointed at the sky behind him. “I felt you out there. I know you felt me too! Do not lie to yourself anymore!”
It was the exact wrong thing to say—he watched her anger flare, brighter than the fire behind her. “I’m not lying! I don’t know you!”
The words hit him like a slap—especially because he knew that they were true.
“Then I am no longer asking that,” he said, his chest heaving with sorrow, looking at the ground, feeling lost, before daring to raise his gaze back up. “What I am asking, then, is this—could you...want to?”