Kiss of Destiny (14 page)

“They will try,” Petra agreed.

“If only he hadn’t lost the scale,” Aura whispered. “If only he hadn’t become vulnerable.” She was aware of the way the two women glanced at her, though she guessed they didn’t want her to notice. Even the
Pyr
missed a beat in their breathing, their attention caught by her words.

They weren’t surprised by what she was telling them, so it was common.

They were expectant. She guessed that she had to do something, or say something.

Aura pulled Thad’s lost scale from her tunic to display it to them. “Can it be put back, once he’s healed?” she asked, and felt their relief.

“Only by you,” Petra said, squeezing Aura’s other hand.

“That’s what will heal him,” Katina agreed.

Aura was fiercely glad she’d stayed with Thad and that she’d chosen to be with him. She watched as the color returned to his skin and his breathing became deeper. The dragons breathed more dragonsmoke, exhaling with power, and Thad’s eyes opened suddenly. He looked around, smiling when he saw Aura. He started to sit up and she went to his side, wanting him to take it slowly, but there was no holding back her dragon once he saw his friends.

“Damien! Alexander!” he cried with joy. He was on his feet then, even before the pale blue shimmer of light flashed. In the blink of an eye, two men were embracing Thad. They all had that black dragon mark on their skin, although they wore it in different places. Thad reached up and ruffled Damien’s fair hair. “You look like you saw a ghost,” he teased.

“Something like that,” Damien said, giving Petra an intent look. Aura noticed that their son was fair-haired, too.

She’d have to ask for that story.

Thad turned to Aura and introduced her to his friends. She was pulled into their circle and savored the warmth of their friendship. “We all served in the Dragon Legion together,” Thad explained.

“The hunters of vipers,” Aura said, closing her eyes with joy when Thad held her tightly against his side.

“The Dragon Legion,” Alexander agreed.

But Thad was looking down at Aura with surprise. “What happened to the firestorm?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot that we satisfied it?” Aura teased. The women chuckled, but Thad frowned down at her.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“I’ll tell you everything later,” Aura promised. “It kept burning because I wasn’t mortal before. Now I’m an Airdaughter, and mortal just like you.”

“And you’ll bear my son,” he murmured with an awe that warmed her to her toes. “Aura, you shouldn’t have given up so much.”

“Shouldn’t I have?”

“But I’m glad you did,” he said with a grin, then kissed her with enthusiasm. His friends began to laugh, and Thad reluctantly broke his kiss. He kept Aura tightly against his side, though, and she was glad to be there. He demanded to know what had happened to the
Slayer
and she told him, as well as the fate of Tisiphone and Hera’s prophecy.

The new arrivals exchanged glances again. “Do you know what it means?” Katina asked Alexander.

“I know it has to do with the future,” her partner said. “The darkfire sparked for the first time in eons when we were there. It was what brought us back to this time.”

“Maybe it’s taken Jorge and Tisiphone back to that time,” Petra suggested.

“Hera said we and our children and our children’s children would be safe from her, but that one day, the
Pyr
would have to pay the price,” Aura supplied.

“What happened to the rest of the Dragon Legion?” Alexander asked Thad. “Are they here, too?”

“I can’t smell them,” Damien contributed and Alexander nodded agreement.

“They’re scattered throughout time. The darkfire took each of us to our firestorm,” Thad explained. “Each warrior was left in the time and place of his destined mate.”

“The darkfire took care of us after all,” Damien murmured.

“It saw destiny fulfilled,” Petra said, taking her dragon’s hand.

“But what about Drake?” Thad asked. “He was with me at the end and the darkfire took him somewhere.”

“He can’t be here,” Alexander said. “Cassandra has died and Theo is in training with us at Delphi.”

“Maybe Drake is further in the past,” Katina suggested.

“Maybe he’s in the future,” Petra said.

“We’ll find out if he’s here,” Alexander said with resolve and the others nodded. “But I think the darkfire must have had other plans for him.”

Aura noticed that the three
Pyr
looked thoughtful then, as if they were remembering some experience they’d shared.

“That still leaves the Dragon’s Tail wars,” Alexander continued. “If the darkfire’s gone and we’re here, how can we help the
Pyr
in the future?”

“Wait! We already are!” Thad snapped his fingers.

“I don’t understand,” Damien said, shoving a hand through his hair. “It looks as if I’ve made things worse for the
Pyr
by being here.”

“No,” Thad said, pointing to the sleeping Orion. “You had a son, and he will have a son, and his son will have a son. Because we are here, two millennia before the
Pyr
we came to know, we can build an army for them.”

Aura gasped in understanding. “Thad’s right! We have time on our side.”

Alexander laughed. “It’s perfect! We can pass that prophecy along, from father to son, so Erik will learn of it in time.”

“And we can mark the flesh of our sons,” Damien said, indicating the black dragon mark on his arm.

“That’s why the darkfire marked them at Delphi,” Katina said with excitement. “It was showing you what to do.”

The
Pyr
nodded and Petra spoke. “They’ll carry the sign of the Dragon Legion, so that they can recognize each other.”

“And best of all, the darkfire didn’t abandon the Dragon Legion or the
Pyr
,” Thad concluded. “It put everything in motion so the
Pyr
can triumph.” The three of them were so pleased that Aura feared they’d missed the point.

There was a new threat against the dragon shifters. Even if she-who-should-not-be-named had been banished to another time and place, she wasn’t going to see Thad struck down like that ever again.

“First we have to fix Thad’s scale, and we have to fix it now,” Aura interrupted, holding up the scale. “Tell me what I need to do.”

* * *

Drake sat opposite Erik in that
Pyr
’s loft apartment. The kitchen was austerely black and white, the single yellow gerbera daisy in a vase on the table making a bold splash of color. The sunlight streaming through the windows and touching on the daisy was bright enough to make Drake think again of Greece. He had slept and eaten, and he had told Erik all that he knew. He was still exhausted and Drake feared that this weariness would persist.

His men were lost.

The darkfire crystal was extinguished.

He didn’t know what the point of anything was anymore.

For the moment, he was content to just sit, to just be. He was aware that Erik watched him closely and that the other
Pyr
saw far more than even most dragons. On some level, he hoped Erik would make a suggestion or give him an assignment. On a deeper level, he wanted this tranquil moment to continue undisturbed.

Erik, however, was not as tranquil as Drake. He got to his feet and paced to the window, moving with a deliberation that didn’t disguise the tension within him. Drake watched and appreciated that Erik was tempering his impatience. Dragons weren’t always so kind to each other.

“Partial eclipse today,” Erik murmured, recalling Drake to the moment.

“Is there a firestorm?”

Erik shook his head, not looking away from the window. Then he stilled, as if listening, then shook his head again. “It is so strange,” he murmured, then continued in old-speak.
“I thought you would know more.”

They had been through this several times. Drake couldn’t explain the light Erik was seeing, or the sense of impending doom that apparently all the
Pyr
were experiencing.

Maybe it was time for dragons to fade from the world. Drake felt old at that thought and refused to say it aloud.

The silence embraced them again, just the faint tinkle of Erik’s dragonsmoke audible to Drake. He liked the sound of it, the comfort of it, the appearance of security it gave him. He knew that he couldn’t have slept anywhere else these past days.

The sound of a key turning in a lock made Drake jump. Erik turned as Eileen spoke to their daughter, Zoë. The little girl should be the next Wyvern, Drake remembered, for she was the only female child of one of their kind and the former Wyvern was dead. Drake knew that Erik was impatient for the child’s powers to develop, just as he knew that Erik expected no such development until Zoë came of age. Male
Pyr
came into the bulk of their powers at puberty, when their voices deepened and their bodies changed.

He watched Zoë with interest, but saw nothing remarkable about her. She appeared to be a solemn child, with her father’s dark hair and green eyes. She couldn’t have been four years old, though she was tall for her age. That trait would have come from both of her parents. Drake knew that she went to a daycare at the university, where her mother taught. He never felt much connection with young children, especially girls, so he returned his attention to the yellow daisy.

To his surprise, Zoë appeared suddenly beside him. She could move with her father’s silence and stealth, and her gaze was fixed upon him with the same intensity. “I made this for you,” she said, then put a large piece of paper on the table before him. Drake was too surprised to speak. Children did not give him gifts. In fact, no one had given him a gift in a long time. She stared at him for a moment, then followed her mother to the fridge.

It was a drawing.

The drawing was clearly the work of a child, but still Drake recognized the location. There was a black oval in the middle with blue spraying out of a block in the center of the oval. Drake knew it was a fountain. There were green curly lines around it, evoking the shrubbery of a park, and the sky was colored in black with yellow dots for stars. Two stick figures sat on the lip of the fountain, and Drake guessed that they were men. One held a blue-green rectangle in his hand and there were rays of blue and green emanating from it.

It was Thad and Drake, just before Thad had felt the spark of his firestorm.

Drake looked at the little girl with shock. Zoë was drinking a glass of milk, more interested in how many chocolate chips were in her cookie than the attitude of her father’s friend. Eileen must have noticed his expression because she came to his side.

“It’s the park at the university, I think,” she said. “We pass it every day.” She frowned. “We’ve never been there at night.”

“Who are the men, Zoë?” her father asked quietly.

She shrugged and bit into her cookie. “They wanted to be there.” Her gaze barely flicked at Drake, then she finished her snack and went to her room, picking up her pack at her mother’s reminder.

“It’s Thad and me,” Drake said. “This is where the stone brought us the second to last time.”

“So close,” Erik mused. “But not so close that you could sense my presence, or that I would be much aware of yours.”

“Were you?”

Erik slanted a glance at him. “I felt a glimmer a few weeks ago, but it disappeared. I thought I had imagined it, because it was so fleeting. How could you be here and gone again so quickly as that?” He pressed his fingertips to one temple and closed his eyes. “The darkfire is changing everything,” he whispered, then grimaced.

Drake was on his feet in a moment, knowing something was wrong but unable to name it. Before he could speak, Erik’s eyes flew open and he stared at the door. He crossed the room with long strides, and Drake guessed that he had felt a breach of his dragonsmoke barrier.

There was a knock at the door. Erik inhaled deeply, frowned, then cast open the door.

The corridor was filled with unfamiliar men, young and vigorous men who held themselves with determination. There had to be three or four dozen of them.

They were
Pyr
. Drake stood behind Erik and breathed deeply, not believing his own senses. How could there be so many
Pyr
of whom he knew nothing?

“We are the descendants of the Dragon Legion,” said the
Pyr
in front. He tugged up his shirt sleeve, showing a tattoo on his upper arm that was the same as the tattoo Drake and his men had gotten as a sign of solidarity. Drake considered the young man with wonder, liking the intelligence that shone in his dark eyes. “I am named Theo, for my forebear, the son of Stephanos who became Drake,” he said, his words startling Drake. “We come to pledge ourselves to the leader of the
Pyr
, Erik Sorensson, as we pledged to our fathers, who pledged the same to their fathers and their fathers before them.”

“So this is what I sensed,” Erik said, almost under his breath.

Theo offered a piece of paper. “We surrender to you this prophecy, made millenia ago but for these times. We have kept it in trust, preserved it and awaited the moment it should be revealed.” He handed an envelope to Erik.