CHAPTER FIVE
ALL CREATURES HAVE numin but whether or not they can cast a spell depends on many things.
For example, elementals are bound to their element.
They can neither stray far from it, nor act against it.
So nereids and wood nymphs alike cannot cast fire spells, as water douses fire and wood is destroyed by it.
From Ozora’s personal journal.
I didn’t want to linger or even be there but, standing next to a dragon should give even Fraser Connell pause. I hope! Why does she even need to talk with him? The question burned, but to be honest, I didn’t care. I wanted to run. Run and hide. Behind the dragon, anywhere that man couldn’t see me.
“Do we really need to do this now? We’re all tired. Maybe we should come back after we’ve had a chance to sleep on it?” I asked in vain. “Maybe just you should come back, leave me out of this. I’ll only complicate things.”
“No kidding.” Taenya gave another cough but, this one sounded self-deprecating. “Nope. We need to have this talk right now. All of us.” The last came out with a grumble that sounded frustrated rather than angry.
“Maybe I should just go wait behind the dragon. Out of sight.” I tried. It didn’t work.
“Cassyrra,” Taenya corrected. “And no.” She muttered something else, but I couldn’t catch it.
I shivered even though the night was balmy.
Fraser could go full scary person in a heartbeat.
Even with my defensive magics, he was fast, and I hadn’t anything prepared or close at hand, which meant he’d have the advantage.
“Listen. He won’t be happy to see me either, I’m...” Taenya hesitated, closing her eyes briefly, then opened them to meet my curious gaze. “It doesn’t matter. He won’t be happy to see me either but, I did just save his ship.”
Cassyrra coughed, then rumbled. The air against my skin tingled.
“Sorry, love. You just saved his ship,” Taenya answered the dragon as if she had spoken aloud.
A few moments later, Fraser Connell stepped onto the field.
I remembered seeing a stairway carved into the cliffside, glowing magelights illuminating the way up as we’d flown in. The boats must’ve beached there.
Two others soon joined the Captain, stepping wide to flank him.
They made quite a dramatic picture, striding across the field.
Fraser Connell’s teal and indigo hair tumbled to his shoulders in careless waves, and his skin was burnished copper from so many years on the sea.
Both moons had climbed into the sky by that point, and thus it was easy for us to spot each other in their bright golden light.
A fine tremor ran through me, so I grounded hard, gripping the dirt and grass with my toes.
He came to a sudden stop as soon as his eyes met mine.
The leather of his sword belt against his close-fitting breeches and plated vest creaked as he swayed. Silence dragged after his gaze, trailing over me from head to toe.
“You.” He smiled like a shark, lots of teeth, but zero humor.
All the things I’d done and said rose in my memory, reminding me what we’d had, what I’d torched. I did it for all the right reasons, though. I just never thought I’d be this close to him again.
It said quite a lot for his courage, and of his men’s, that they marched up to a dragon without breaking stride.
“She’s our apprentice, Fraser. So whatever issue you had with her, you now have with her.
” Taenya spoke up before I could open my mouth.
She hooked her thumb at the dragon at her side, a new, resonant chime in her voice.
In the dark, her eyes lit with a faint lavender glow that mirrored the dragon’s numin.
Fraser’s burning blue gaze turned to the woman next to me, a different recognition spreading across his face.
“By all the gods above and below, Taenya DeLange!” Honest surprise, and that same laugh I’d once loved, burst out of him.
A ripple of surprise passed through me as well, hearing her full name.
Of course, I’d heard of the DeLange family mutiny and their history with Fraser. I was momentarily forgotten.
“Look at you! Back home at last. Did you forget our last time? I didn’t.” His handsome face beamed with delight. I’d seen that look before. Fraser was at his most dangerous when he was at his most charming.
“Gahan’s nutsack! He must be glaring at me tonight to bring me both of you.
Both of you? Tonight? Last I saw you, Taenya.
..” Fraser tapped his chin and rolled his eyes as if searching for the right memory.
“You and your brother were galloping out of Hastrior. I was feeling generous that night and didn’t hunt you down.
You seriously thought to start a mutiny on my ship and get my men to kill me?
Very reckless of you,” he chided, shaking his finger at her as if scolding.
“I thought my reputation alone would’ve convinced you how futile that attempt would be. ”
“You did kill my prince. And ruined my father.” Taenya was quick with her answer, her voice neutral, but her expression went hard as her jaw clenched.
“Your father was a brilliant man who gave his loyalty to a fool and paid the price,” Fraser said, sidestepping her accusation.
I wondered if she intended to strike Fraser with the fist at her side. “For what it’s worth, this wasn’t my idea, and I’m not thrilled to be here, either. But as Cassyrra told you, you need to hear this.”
“Flying in on a dragon, saving me and my ship, is one way to ensure I don’t kill you on sight.” Cassyrra growled in warning and brought her head next to Taenya, drawing Fraser’s attention.
“And I suppose you’re the voice in my head that told me to come to this cliff? You aren’t even supposed to exist,” he said. Real curiosity tinged his voice as he gazed at the dragon. In that moment, I saw again the Fraser I once knew, not the hardened mercenary, and my heart squeezed in yearning.
There was no fear in Fraser, only wonder for the massive creature glaring at the man who dared threaten her rider.
My heart’s longing only lasted for a second.
About as long as it took for that softer expression to linger in his eyes, and bring back the rose-tinted memory that matched his relaxed lips with that slight lilt.
He erased it with a shake of his head, and I squashed my own recollections.
“Never mind. Now I know why you wouldn’t tell me ‘who’ when I asked. Why are you here?” Expression and words hardened, as if he didn’t have time for this.
“Cassyrra has chosen the three of us as her first mage students.”
Fraser and I were both struck speechless, so Taenya kept talking.
“We are needed. This invasion is just the start.” Taenya lifted her palms in a wide shrug, as if trying to lift a heavy weight from her shoulders. “And, it has to be the three of us.”
Fraser snorted and crossed his arms, causing his leather armor to creak, and shook his head.
His laugh was slow and edged with derision.
“She—” he jerked his chin at me. “—is a deal breaker for anything you might suggest. Besides, I have no interest in being a mage.” He sounded calm, but his eyes were stormy.
“Look, I get that we all have history and baggage,” Taenya began only to be cut off.
“She torched my ship!” he yelled, and stabbed a finger in my direction. His rage-filled voice and flushed face said it still pained him. Well, it pained me to think of hippocamps being ripped away from their families to be sold.my
“You were raiding hippocamp pods!” I shouted back, letting my old rage boil up and turn me shrill.
It had nearly killed me back then, finding out. That the man I fell in love with was not only a mercenary but a merchant of innocent wildlife had ripped me apart like my spells ripped apart Skirmisher.
I know. Why were the hippocamps what flipped me into a rage?
I knew he was dangerous then, and well..
.a mercenary. But he was never dangerous toward me; quite the opposite, actually.
He was also handsome, charming, and wooed me like he meant it.
A heady thing for that younger me who wanted to believe he’d given up the pirate’s life to become Hastrior’s leader.
The city even seemed to embrace him, for the most part.
The deepest cut was he knew how I felt, not just about hippocamps but all creatures, and still, he deceived me.
We’d talked about it more than once; I’d even mentioned the close bond between a rider and eagle of my home clans.
It was never okay with me to rip animals away from their families.
All that bitterness hadn’t faded, only been locked away, and with the man himself in front of me, it roared out, took over all my earlier worries with something much more fierce.
His aquamarine eyes were still deeper than the ocean. Once, I’d wanted to drown in them, but in that moment, I wanted to burn them to ash. Just as familiar was the hunger that bubbled up in his stare. The look he gave me in the field had made stronger women than me melt into his arms.
Furious as I was, I wasn’t immune, and he seemed to sense it.
I couldn’t look away as his lips and tongue curved in a mockingly familiar flicker that made my fury burn even hotter, because it was entwined with a yearning I never wanted to feel again.
His soft laugh when I clamped my lips and looked away banished any remaining spark of resurgent desire.
I hated that with a single look, I still wanted to melt into him, brief as that longing had been. Bury one emotion, bury them all, it seemed. All I could do was wrap my resentment around me instead to quell the sudden, unwelcome flush of longing.
He practically purred, “Is that what you think I was doing?” Innuendo thrummed through his words, giving them an unwelcome inference.