A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(115)

I bumped into Ruv.

He glanced back at me, a questioning look on his face. “What’s—” His eyes widened. “Uh, Sam?”

“Yeah?” I said, distracted. We needed to hurry. I knew that much. Something was happening on the island, and I needed to get there.

“Do your eyes normally glow red?”

That got my attention. “What?”

“Your eyes are glowing red.”

“Sam?” Ryan asked, sounding concerned. “Sam, look at me.”

I did, and his rough hands came up to cup my face. Everything was awash in colors, shifting brighter than it’d been before, seen through a haze. The magic was leaking out of me, and the only other time I had to compare it to was that day years before with the bird in the forest. That had been unintentional. This was too.

“Sam,” Ryan snapped, as if he’d been saying my name repeatedly.

“I can feel it,” I said, voice slightly slurred. “Ryan, I can feel it.”

“Did this happen before?” Ruv asked him. “With the other dragon?”

“No,” Ryan said, thumbs rubbing over my cheeks. “It wasn’t like this.”

“Then why is it happening now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Figure it out,” Ruv said. “If this keeps going, we might as well just jump in the sand.”

“You worry about getting us there,” Ryan snapped. “I’ll take care of Sam.” He looked back at me. “What is it?”

“It’s….” I frowned. “I think it’s in my head. The dragon. It’s waking. I think it knows we’re here.”

“Shit,” Ryan breathed.

“I gotta get to it,” I said, trying to pull away. “Let me go. Ryan, you gotta let me go.”

“Never. You hear me? Never. Sam, I am never letting you go. We do this together, you get me?”

I did, and it was enough to push through the haze of magic. It was slightly startling in its clarity, and for a brief moment, I could see sharper than I ever had before. I blinked. “Ryan?”

“Hey,” he said. “There you are.”

“We have to hurry.”

“I know. But you need to breathe. Sam, your magic is everywhere. Even I can feel it, and you know what that means.”

It meant that any magical creature would be able to feel it too.

Say a unicorn. Or a half-giant.

A dragon.

Or a sand mermaid.

I was probably broadcasting like a godsdamned beacon.

I tried to pull it back as much as I could.

With Ryan there, it should have worked. He was my cornerstone. Even if I doubted everything else in the world, I would be certain about that. Ryan Foxheart was my cornerstone.

And I knew that every cornerstone worked differently for every wizard. I knew it was a private thing, a magical thing between two people, a bond unlike any other. He made me stronger. Better. We were building my magic into something that had never been seen before, if Randall and Morgan were to be believed.

So it should have worked.

It had in the past.

Any time I’d felt slightly out of control. Anytime we’d fought villains or faced danger, there was always a sense of control. He was my control.

So it should have worked.

And for a moment, it did.

I felt the magic dull.

The red in my eyes must have faded, because he smiled at me. “There you are,” he said. “I knew we could—”

Then:

Wizard, a voice said, low and growly. Feel you. Hear you. Smell you.

Everything came surging back. My spine snapped ramrod straight, mouth falling open as I shuddered against it.

“Shit,” Ryan said. “It’s not—”

“Ryan,” I gritted out. “Watch… your motherfucking… language.”

“Oh my gods,” he said. “You dick. How could you even think of that right—”

“Uh-oh,” Ruv said.

“What uh-oh?” Ryan said. “Why uh-oh?”

“We have company.”

“Uh-oh,” Ryan said weakly.

I had enough of my faculties left about me to know that wasn’t good. I looked where Ruv was pointing and almost wished I hadn’t.

Because off to the right, crawling slowly along the surface of the sea of sand, was a sand mermaid.

“Sweet molasses,” I managed to say.

When one thinks of mermaids, one thinks of fairy tales, of beautiful creatures with long flowing hair, ethereal skin, a fantasy built around seduction. The mermaids that had captured me in the ocean were just that, humanoid beings that sang their prey to them. Some could even be good, though, and had alliances with the King just like other magical creatures of Verania did.

This was not those creatures.

This mermaid had only the vaguest of human attributes upon its countenance. There was a nose, yes, flattened with slits running down the middle. And eyes too, deep black pools that glittered in the sunlight. But the gaping maw that was its mouth was most certainly not human. It was almost perfectly circular in shape, with rows upon rows of sharpened teeth wrapping around the interior. Its skin was green that faded into black, looking fetid and tight, like it’d died decades before and then been baked by the sun. Its arms were long and thick, the claws on the hands it used to pull itself toward us bigger than I thought they were, curved into wicked hooks that looked as if they were made for eviscerating. It was obviously female, breasts hanging down into the sand. The lower half of its body was fishlike, with iridescent scales that caught the sunlight and cast reflections onto the surface of the sand. The tail at the bottom had fins that curved off outwardly.