Chapter 14
Delaney pulled the SUV into Far North Bicentennial Park just before eight in the morning on a Saturday. Emmy had told Spence and Zander she needed a day trip to Faerie to fly as a dragon, and that she’d be spending the day with her mother.
Zander had originally wanted her to go with security by her side, but having her mom with her canceled that out, since her mother always travels with security.
And Emmy had been surprised to learn Zander actually has a few people on his local team who are familiar enough with Faerie, they could go and manage the job.
But since wolves are like vampires, and only allowed in Faerie with special permission, Delaney would not have been her guard, if Zander had sent one.
The park was close enough to campus she’d driven past it countless times without thinking much about it. Today, though, her dragon wings were eager to form and stretch as they approached the parking area.
Sophia waited near the sign to the trailhead, dressed in practical hiking clothes, her long blonde hair pulled back in a braid.
Beside her stood Jonathan, the leopard-shifter guard who’d been with her mother since childhood, his posture relaxed but alert.
Jonathan felt like part of the family, since he’d been around all of Emmy’s life.
“Mom.” Emmy climbed out and hugged her mother, breathing in the familiar scent of swan and magic.
“You look well, darling.” Sophia held her at arm’s length, studying her face. “Happy.”
“I am.” Emmy glanced back at Delaney.
“This is Jonathan. You’ve officially handed me off.” It bugged Emmy that she and her mother were more than capable of defending themselves, but they still needed guards, but whatever.
Delaney chuckled. “And so I have. You know who will be waiting for you this evening. Do not go with anyone you do not recognize, even if they are dressed correctly.” She looked at Jonathan.
“No one will arrive to wait for five hours, since Emmy plans to be gone a minimum of eight hours. If you bring her back before then, you’ll need to wait approximately fifteen minutes for her security to arrive.
She does not have her phone, as she says taking it to Faerie sometimes bricks it.
We’ve provided her with a burner, but she warns we may get it back inoperable. ”
“She is correct. I carry two hardened phones, one smart and one dumb, in case the smart one malfunctions. I have the number to call, should we arrive early, but I don’t anticipate that. Time in Faerie doesn’t always line up with the time here, but it most often goes long. Rarely short.”
Emmy walked with her mom down the well-maintained trail, Jonathan following at a discreet distance. After about ten minutes, Sophia turned off the main path onto a steep, barely visible game trail.
They climbed in comfortable silence, mother and daughter picking their way over roots and rocks. The air smelled of damp pine and moss, the kind of clean cold that bit at the lungs and sharpened every sense.
Finally, Sophia stopped in front of two massive trees that looked ancient, though were probably only a couple hundred years old.
Still, Emmy recognized the possibility of it being a portal, seeing the trees’ massive root systems, twisted and intertwined like the fingers of sleeping giants.
It took two sizable trees to anchor one.
If she blurred her eyes just right, she could see it was a portal by the little wavy patterns in the background, but a human would likely never notice it.
Emmy’s mom offered her hand, and Emmy took it. They used to all hold hands to walk through when she was young, two of them holding her mom’s hand and the other holding Jonathan’s, when they went without their dad, but they hadn’t done so in years. It felt nice.
The two stepped forward, and the air shifted . One moment they were in an Alaskan forest, the next they stood in a sun-drenched clearing in Faerie with a waterfall thundering, the air warmer, crisper, sweeter, and saturated with magic.
Jonathan materialized beside them, and Sophia reached for his hand as well. “Hold on.”
The world blurred, and Emmy’s stomach lurched with the familiar sensation of teleportation.
When reality solidified around them again, they stood in a courtyard of the Swan Castle — all soaring white towers and graceful arches, and the moat shimmering with crystal-clear water that reflected the impossibly blue sky.
“Oh,” Emmy breathed. She really didn’t need to go this long between visits ever again.
The truth is, she’s as at home in Faerie as she is in Midgard. Her mom is the Swan Queen in both places, and her dad is the Dragon King in both realms.
Both her parents have castles in Faerie, and if Emmy ever becomes Dragon Queen, that castle will be hers.
She spent probably a third of her time in Faerie, as a child.
She’s quite close to her Faerie Godmothers, Mab and Titania — and had no idea they were queens when she was young.
It was thrilling when she discovered how powerful her two favorite adults were.
She learned, eventually, that with those two on your side, nothing will hurt you in Faerie.
Or, nothing intelligent, anyway, which actually still leaves a whole lot of room for danger, but Emmy wasn’t concerned.
And Emmy wasn’t surprised to see two fabric enclosures in the middle of a large part of the yard.
It’s ludicrous for a shifter to be so body-shy, but her mother refused to undress where others might see her, and she insisted on the same for her daughters.
So, they would both go into the temporary changing rooms, strip, and then change — obliterating fabric walls.
And when they landed, her mother would land literally on top of a robe someone had put out, so she could shift to human and immediately put it on. She’d practiced it until she knew exactly which dragon body part needed to be over the robe, so she’d be standing right beside it as a human.
But Emmy didn’t bother rolling her eyes, she merely walked to one of the enclosures and undressed.
Someone would fold her clothes and put them on a table in the courtyard, so she could put them back on when she returned.
There would be a robe for her as well, but Emmy had somehow turned into an exhibitionist, the polar antithesis of her mother.
She’d taken a psych class as an undergrad that had explained why kids are sometimes the exact opposite of their parents.
She’d wanted to call it balderdash, but parts of it kind of made sense.
Some of it was absolutely psycho-babble, but unfortunately, the rest of it was dead-right.
It’d been vexing at the time, but she’d managed to find humor in it by the time she was sixteen or so.
Emmy felt the change rising in her before she consciously called it. She really had gone too long, but mostly, it was the magic of Faerie calling to her.
She released the muscles that held her human form and felt her body change .
Like loosening a clenched fist, the transformation followed its own logic once she stopped resisting, her other form unfolding in a dancing kaleidoscope of fierce, roiling magic.
Just as the tree grows in The Nutcracker, to give the idea of the people shrinking, she saw the castle grow smaller, but it was actually just her suddenly becoming the size of a house.
Her massive wings unfurled, and she stood on four legs instead of two, with claws digging into the ground and a tail that balanced her perfectly.
Beside her, Emmy’s mother changed as well, and there were suddenly two dragons taking up a good portion of this particular lawn.
“Ready?” Her mother’s dragon’s voice was octaves deeper than her human voice, as was Emmy’s.
But Emmy didn’t bother with words. She crouched, lifted her wings, and leapt — and then beat the magical air into submission with her wings.
The air compressed beneath her, and the world dropped away beneath her.
The sensation was everything she’d craved since her last flight over the Arctic tundra and frozen ocean in November.
Here, the warm winds rushed past her scales, the play of thermals danced beneath her wings, and she felt the absolute bone-deep rightness of being dragon and being free .
Sophia flew beside her, and together they soared over Faerie’s landscape of rolling green hills dotted with wildflowers, crystalline rivers that sparkled like liquid diamonds, and forests that glowed with their own magical light, the sheer number of trees throwing off an aura clearly visible from above.
The warm air tasted of sunshine and growing things.
Emmy bellowed her joy in a thunderous, rolling reverberation that echoed across the valley, and Sophia answered with her own deep call.
They flew for what felt like hours, covering hundreds of miles of Faerie before angling down at the Dragon Castle to eat several sheep, and then continued on.
The family rule was to only eat livestock grown at either her mother or father’s castle.
Never the wildlife, and never from a random farmer’s fields.
Her father sometimes brought other stock in, for a change to their palate, but lamb was their absolute favorite and was always stocked.
Back in the air, soaring over Faerie once again, Emmy played, pushing to the edge of her speed and maneuverability. She flew inches over a mountain lake, chest skimming the surface so she could feel the cool spray kiss her underbelly.
She flew in circles around a flock of embercrows, similar to ravens but larger than eagles, their feathers black as void but streaked with veins of molten gold and ember-red that glowed.
As a group, they twisted and dove with her, challenging her to match their speed and agility. Flying with them was a celebration of chaos and cleverness, and her dragon’s soul thrilled at the fun.