A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(114)

“Let’s stop right there before it goes any further,” I said. “Because it will. It always does. And Ryan, stop looking so godsdamned smug. It’s disturbing and you haven’t earned the right.”

He scowled at me.

I turned back to Ruv. “I can’t in good conscience let you be bait. And even if I wanted to, it’s not something the King would allow. I am here as an extension of the Crown.”

“Sam,” Ruv said, reaching out and squeezing my arm. “Your concern for me is sweet…”

“It’s really not,” Ryan muttered.

“…and I know you don’t trust me, but I know what I’m doing. I’ve gotten to the… island before.”

I frowned at that. “But you’ve never seen the dragon?”

“It wasn’t meant for me to see,” he said simply. He looked at Gary, Tiggy, and Kevin. “I will help them. I promise. But you must promise me that unless it’s absolutely necessary, you stay back.”

Gary glanced at me. I nodded. He narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Ruv. “If anything happens to them,” he said coldly, “I will hold you personally responsible. All jokes aside, I will make sure you never leave this place.”

“Ditto,” Tiggy said, cracking his knuckles menacingly.

“Double ditto,” Kevin growled. “There won’t be enough of you left to bury by the time we’re finished. I once ate a woman who threatened them, and I’m a vegetarian. That should show you how serious I am.”

Ruv swallowed thickly, and that made me feel a little bit better to know he could be intimidated just like anyone else. “Understood.”

“Don’t die,” Gary said to me. “But if you do, I get all of your stuff.”

“I want some stuff,” Tiggy said.

“How touching,” I muttered. “Okay, so how are we going to do this?”

Ruv picked up the wooden contraption and fixed it to his pack again. “One step at a time.”




WHEN ONE is crossing a sea of sand with gigantic monsters circling sight unseen underneath, one tends to get slightly nervous. Couple that with the fact that one’s best friends are waiting behind, offering such pearls of wisdom as “Don’t look down!” and “If they start to eat you, poke them in the eyes or something!” it tends to make the situation a little tense.

“Would you guys shut up?” I growled.

“Someone’s moody,” Gary muttered. “And you guys have only moved like five feet. This is taking forever.”

He was right. It was taking forever. Ruv was in the lead, with me behind him and Ryan bringing up the rear. Both of them were crowding me slightly, causing Kevin to make some crack about wanting to be stuck in that sexy sammitch. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have demanded the sand mermaids kick his ass.

But it was slow going, and the island looked as far away as it did when we first stepped out onto the pathway. It hit me with that first step that there had to be some measure of trust in Ruv, but not because I was willing to follow him out (I’d always been a bit stupid), but because I was allowing Ryan out on the sand. Granted, Ryan would never have let me go alone, but still; I trusted Ruv enough that he knew what he was doing.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

And it certainly didn’t help that I could feel my magic as I always could, wrapping around me and Ryan, almost like it was a sentient thing. It knew him, because I did, because of what he was to me. But it also pulled toward Ruv. Nowhere near as much, of course. Ryan and I had been through too much together for that to ever happen. But it was there, a possibility. But it was a door that I firmly held shut with all my might. Ruv said he understood. I might have trusted him to have our backs, but I didn’t trust him about the cornerstone business. I doubted I ever would.

So there we were, far from home in the middle of the Luri Desert, the sun burning down on us, shuffling through the sand, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Ruv was looking ahead, seeing some path that neither Ryan nor I could see. Ryan still had his sword drawn behind me, and I knew he was keeping an eye out for any sign of movement in the sand.

Me?

Well. That was another story.

Because between the pull of my magic toward Ryan and Ruv, there was something else. Something more. I felt it the moment we stepped out onto the sands. It whispered to me, low words that I couldn’t quite make out, like a breeze across my mind. It was warm and familiar and old. Gods, it felt old.

And it was pulling me forward.

I felt it in my head.

I felt it in my bones.

And I wanted nothing more than to find it.

We shuffled our way forward. For the most part, the path was straight. There were times when we veered slightly right or left, and how Ruv knew to do that, I didn’t know. Either he’d walked this path many times before or the so-called trial and error had been ingrained into him. Either way, I was thankful for it.

It wasn’t until we were halfway to the island that things went to shit.

Because it was pulling me more now.

And I could see where it was pulling me to.

Through the ruins, through the remains of what had once obviously been a castle of old, stood the dome, crumbling and cracked. There was a large stone archway at the bottom. I didn’t know what it’d been, what purpose it’d served, but it was where we needed to go. I was sure of it. We needed to— I took a lurching step forward.