Chapter 2
two
A knock on the door convinced me Rían had followed me to my room to check on me, but it was Fayne who stood waiting in the hallway wearing a tracksuit and sneakers with her hair pulled up in a ponytail.
“If you’re recruiting for a running club, I only run if something is chasing me.”
“I’m going to teach you how to summon your fire.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Unless recruitment still isn’t your thing. Then I’ll go help myself to one of those tartlets everyone’s raving about in the kitchen.”
“No.” I leapt at the excuse to get out of the house—out of my head—with both feet. “I’m in.”
With a quick change of clothes, I was about to follow Fayne into the hall when she ducked in the room and used my window as an exit instead because of course she did. Liam and Goldie had to have learned their bad habits from somewhere, and I was starting to think I had located the source.
“Hold on.” I threw on the brakes. “Where are we going? I need to let Sloane know.”
Though she was a Walsh, and therefore no longer my Sartori-issued bodyguard, she still worried about a reprisal from Carmichael.
He ought to have his hands full with the challenge I absolutely wasn’t dwelling on, but she would come unglued if she couldn’t find me when I had been home only moments earlier.
Um. Not home. Rían’s home. Yeah. That was what I meant.
“I left a note,” Fayne assured me. “I even left it somewhere they’ll find it.”
From the smile curling her lips, I could tell this amused her, and it convinced me she often left notes filled with pertinent information where they wouldn’t be found in order to give her plausible deniability.
Which was why I left the window open as a clue.
“Mmm-hmm.” I cut her a look. “Any reason why you didn’t tell Rían to his face?”
“You don’t need any distractions, and my grandson is a rather large one.”
“He is awfully giraffelike.”
An unladylike snort blasted out her nose, and she broke into a light jog. “I hope you tell him that.”
“I do.” I scanned my left and right, but I couldn’t pinpoint a reason for this burst of activity. “Repeatedly.”
“Good.” She checked on me over her shoulder. “He doesn’t laugh as often as he should.”
“Glad I can provide some comedic relief then.” I cleared another block before I began to regret leaving my room. “This is starting to feel a lot like the running club invite I turned down.”
“Patience.” She pointed to a sign for Lendman Park. “We need open space to practice.”
“That makes sense.” I picked up the pace. “There’s lake access too.”
Lake Harris barely deserved the title, but it was the largest body of water in three counties.
Large enough to quench a fire should a dragon botch their first attempt at summoning.
“That’s the other reason I chose it, but I haven’t had time to explore the area myself.”
“There’s a pavilion for picnicking and a paved path great for bikes. I bet Goldie would love it.”
“You should mention it to Rían. Perhaps you two could bring her here, since you’re the local expert.”
Her suggestion smacked of setting me up with her grandson for a date, but I didn’t mind. Goldie was a mature kid but acting her age for an hour or two would be good for her. And spending time with Rían… I didn’t hate the idea of us maybe eating a lunch I packed with cookies I baked for us.
Though I would have to pat down Goldie and make sure she ate hers and didn’t save them to sell to her friends later.
Anxious I might have an audience for my first bumbling attempt, I scanned the area.
As far as I could tell, we were sharing the area with a single fisherman, but I wasn’t too worried about an audience.
He was stretched out, unconscious on a yellow poncho.
The empty bottle of vodka clued me into the reason.
“We’ll have to report him.” I puffed out my cheeks. “I don’t want him to roll into the water and drown.”
Thanks to copious PSAs on water safety, residents tended to behave themselves near the lake except around the holidays, when booze and fireworks got involved. Sadly, Old Man Jenkins was an exception.
“We’ll keep an eye on him until we finish. We can stop by the police department on our way home.”
“Sounds good to me.” I slowed to a walk alongside Fayne. “So, how does this work?”
“First, if you don’t mind, I would like to see the scale that sent everyone into a tizzy yesterday.”
“Oh.” I lifted my tee, exposing my plain cotton bra, and resisted the urge to ogle myself. “Ta-da.”
“It’s pearlescent.” She hummed. “Scalloped.” She leaned in. “Almost translucent.”
Hope swirled through me that she might have answers. “Does this mean I’m a wish dragon like Mom?”
“There’s not enough pigment to tell for certain.
” She smoothed a fingertip over the domed surface.
“I’ve never known anyone who presented scales while in human form.
This would be a first.” She straightened and motioned for me to lower my shirt.
“You’re well past the usual fledging timeline.
Perhaps that’s the difference? I’m not sure. ”
“This is proof, though.” I chewed the inside of my cheek, wishing I could bite down on my desperation for reassurance after a lifetime wasted on fruitless hope. “I’m a dragon.”
“Darling girl, we already knew that much.” She cupped my jaw. “Through his ignorance and lies, Sartori destroyed your confidence, but we’ll build it up again.” She tapped the center of my chest. “One scale at a time.”
A dull splash drew my attention toward the water, fear for Old Man Jenkins at the forefront of my mind, but he hadn’t budged. Aside from a few ripples, I didn’t see any signs of movement. Must have been a fish. A big one. “I’m not sure I ever had any confidence, but I’m willing to be optimistic.”
“That’s the spirit.” She gripped my hands, linking our fingers. “We’ll begin with a simple exercise you can practice with Rían between our lessons. An energy exchange. How does that sound?”
“You would know best.”
“This is how it works.” She pushed our joined hands toward me. “I send my magic into you.” She pulled our hands to her. “Then you send it back into me.”
“Okay.” I rolled my shoulders, attempting to sound confident. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Your magic will rise to meet mine, and as you grow familiar with the sensation, you’ll learn how to isolate your own unique energy signature. Then we’ll try circulating the two between us.”
Ready for my first lesson, I homed in on the sensation of her touch. “What is its purpose?”
“To call upon your other form, you must be able to touch your magic. This is a first step toward making a connection with that part of yourself. The same is true of summoning fire. To pull from your core to fuel your powers, you must identify that innermost well so you can determine when it’s about to run dry. ”
“Like when a wolf has pushed itself too hard and can’t turn back into a human until it rests.”
“Yes and no.” Her eyes brightened, and a hum slid over my skin.
“Dragons have magic in ways other shifters don’t, but it depends upon the breed as to how much and what kind they possess.
Rather than four legs, we tend to revert to two, which isn’t ideal in the middle of battle.
And, like witches, we can only summon so much magic before we burn out.
A dragon unable to shift or call fire is as vulnerable as a human. ”
“Okay, I feel it, I think, but it’s not budging.”
“Visualize us sharing breath. I inhale, you exhale. Each of your exhales should push magic to me, just as each of my inhales draws magic from you.” Her lips curved higher. “This will be much more fun with a handsome partner.”
Ah. There it was. Fayne always had a trick or two up her sleeve, and this ranked as one of her less subtle schemes. “Are you training me or suckering me into holding hands with your grandson?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“With you?” I didn’t so much as pause. “Yes.”
“Focus on your breathing.” She clucked her tongue like she wasn’t the problem. “Not on Rían.”
Just like being told not to picture a pink elephant, a pink elephant stampeded through my thoughts.
This morning in the kitchen with Rían had been…nice. His strong arms caging me. The soft brush of his lips across my skin. Sharing our hopes and fears.
“Well done.” Fayne grinned at me. “I thought that would help.”
“I did it?” I homed in on the circular breathing between us, amazed to sense the ebb and flow of energy as it entered and left my body. “How…? Wait a minute. You thought what would help?”
“You started thinking about Rían and forgot to stop believing in yourself.”
“You’re sneaky, you know that?” I paid closer attention to our exchange, slowly getting the hang of it until I was the one in control. “I don’t hate it, though.”
“I’m trying to be more forthcoming with you, but it goes against my nature.” She fell silent, her gaze dipping to the ground. “I hope you can forgive me when I slip up from time to time.”
Guilt soured the back of my throat, but I got the feeling I had to toe the same hard line with her that Rían did with Goldie to avoid being steamrolled at every opportunity.
I had leaned into her hard after she turned our recon mission for the Pampered Pooches employees into a rescue op without giving me—or Rían—a heads-up that was her intention from the start. But this situation wasn’t that one.
“I won’t hold benign sneakiness against you.” I ducked my head to catch her eye. “I needed to get out of my head, and you knew just what to do.” I smiled at her. “We’re all still learning about each other, so it’s okay if we don’t have it all figured out yet.”
“You sound like your father.” Fondness softened her features as her focus grew distant. “Deitrich was a peacekeeper, always ready to mediate squabbles or break up fights.”
To hear I was like my father…my real father…struck me like a second arrow. This one to my heart.
“What about my mother?” I thought back to the videotapes from this morning. “What was she like?”