5. Chapter Five #2
“I’m fine. I just feel kinda dumb right now for never associating the two before,” I admitted.
“He told me that they were looking for the sanctuary city that lay beyond Serpent’s Ridge.
Serpent’s Ridge was also what the dragons who pointed us in this direction called the mountains around Dragon City. ”
“They were coming here,” Ionus said.
“Yes, and they were attacked not long into their journey,” I explained as the brother’s shared a look.
The rhythm of Ionus’ drumming was different this time. Slower and more deliberate, almost as if he was counting, deep frown lines etching grooves in his face.
“When Alex came to us, questions about his ancestry led us to spend a great deal of time in the archives and gave Caro and Emerson the chance to finally realize that they were mates. Upalo came here looking for Ronan and brought you, another protector’s mate.
It stands to reason that you could be meant to lead us to Quint’s. ”
“The dragon in the ice?” I murmured. “Do you think…. never mind, now I think it too.”
“Do we tell him now and risk giving false hope, or do we wait to learn more first?” Mattias asked.
“For now, we hold off in informing him,” Ionus said.
“We can’t afford for him to not have his head in the game.
He’ll want to seek them out immediately and right now, we do not have enough information to start.
A long search would leave Dragon City and our compound too vulnerable, and we cannot risk him out there alone without anyone to watch his back. ”
“Understood,” Mattias replied.
“Let’s take this into the office where we have room to study the maps of that region,” Ionus said, chair legs scraping against the stone floor as he stood. “You said he’s been there for centuries. We are going to need Emerson. I hate waking him in the middle of the night, but this can’t wait.”
“Breathe.”
Caspian’s voice and the breath that ghosted up my neck when he spoke helped ground me, but it was the way Mattias tugged me against him that truly helped settle my nerves.
“I need a moment with my mates,” Mattias declared.
“Of course, brother, my apologias,” Ionus said before leaving the three of us alone in the kitchen.
Mattias took my face in his hands. I waited so long for him to say something. He kissed me instead, with his whole soul, until I didn’t have to ask if he was disappointed or felt like I’d deceived him. He wasn’t, he didn’t, and I was his until the end of time.
Caspian spun me around the moment Mattias broke our kiss. His was just as much of a claim as Mattias’ was.
He pressed our foreheads together and hummed a soft song that sounded like the roll of the waves against the rocks.
Could it be true? Was something or someone keeping me from using my abilities to their full capacity. Was it because of my connection to the dragon in the ice? Was someone afraid that I’d free him? I would have if I could have found him during the time we’d spent in that region.
By the time we reached the study, Emerson was there with several maps they’d unrolled, ends weighted down by rocks that were usually on the shelves behind them. Was that what he’d collected them for, or was it a happy accident that they were on hand in moments like this?
“This is the most up to date map of Norway and the Norwegian Sea that we have,” Emerson explained, pointing to the one he was currently arranging on the table.”
“Can you pinpoint where you were when you felt the strongest connection to the dragon in the ice?” Ionus asked, stepping aside so I would have an unobscured view of the map.
“That’s where you were when you spotted me!” Caspian said, pointing to one of the many islands in the Norwegian Sea. “My people live deep beneath the water around these islands.”
“Connecting with the dragon in the ice was easier here, but the place where his signature was strongest is well away from this area,” I said, searching for it on the map.
“Here, over Bouvet Island. We did not land. It was too cold for Upalo and Canyon, so we returned to the base we’d established closer to the mainland.
We were only in the area for three weeks before moving on.
We didn’t realize until yesterday that Caspian was the Seadragon I spotted against the sky while I was keeping watch one night. ”
“My people stay away from that island,” Caspian said. “There’s always been something almost, I don’t know, toxic I guess, about the water around it that repels those who get close.”
“Let’s look at that island on the other maps,” Ionus said, moving around the table to the older versions that Emerson had supplied.
Anyone watching from outside of the room would have laughed at the way we cocked our heads, leaning, studying the maps from one side, then the other, looking for anything that might be in one that wasn’t in another.
“What can you tell us about the island, Emerson,” Ionus asked.
“Uninhabited. It is the most remote island in the world. The subarctic temperatures keep people away. It was formed by a volcano that has since gone extinct.”
“It was beneath a volcano where we found the remains of the Blackburn clan imprisoned,” Ionus said. “I do not believe in coincidences. This is a pattern.”
“I agree,” Mattias said.
“My people have been hunted throughout this island chain,” Caspian said. “They’ve forced us to swim deeper and find hidden places to hole up in where we once had free reign.”
“Dragons?” Mattias asked. “How? I would have known if they were waging war beneath the seas.”
“We don’t know what they are,” Caspian explained.
“They look like tiny lampreys. Once they latch on to someone it’s like a beacon and more come, swarming them and swimming off with them to who knows where.
They’ve squeezed through the smallest passages in the caverns we’ve hidden in, but once they were inside they were easier to kill because the others couldn’t swarm with the same kind of speed as in the open ocean. ”
“More leaches, just a different kind,” Ionus growled, slamming his fist on the table. “That is going to make the journey even more dangerous. We can’t risk bringing even one of those things back here. There is no way of knowing what kind of information they’re able to communicate.”
“So where do we go from here?” Mattias asked.
“I do not know, brother,” Ionus said, “and that scares me.”
Hearing him say that sent a shiver through me, followed by a sinking sense of dread.
If the leader of the Primordial Protectors didn’t have the answer, who were we supposed to turn to?