A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(125)

“He needs someone to keep him calm,” I said.

“Who is this unnamed foe who dares to touch my hoard? Why, I oughtta knock his teeth in! Does he know who he’s messing with?”

“And that someone has to be me,” Gary said flatly.

“I’m the Beast from the East! Lord Dragon to the gypsies! A god to people who ate entirely too much corn to maintain a healthy diet!”

I shrugged. “Who better than you? You love him.”

“I do not.”

“Sheep fear me. They cry and scream and run whenever they see me coming, and while I won’t eat them, I will gobble up their delicious terror!”

I rolled my eyes. “Just do it, Gary.”

“I will have my revenge, Sam,” Gary hissed. “Mark my words. One day when you least expect it, I will have my revenge.”

And he totally would, too. Years could go by before he enacted whatever diabolical plot he concocted. Unicorns were assholes like that. “Just… nothing with the face. Or my hair. I’ve got really good hair.”

“Oh, I make no promises.” Gary chuckled evilly.

I looked at Ruv. “Make sure they don’t do anything stupid.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know! Gods, Ruv. Show some initiative for once in your life. Sand mermaids, magical plans, it’s like I’m doing everything here.”

“Yikes,” Ryan said. “That’s not even what happened.”

“You got yourself sucked under the sand by a monster,” I said. “You’re lucky I’m even inviting you to be on Team Sam at all. So shut it.”

“Bitch,” Gary coughed.

I ignored him. “Now, do what I told you to do, or I’m going to light someone here on fire, so help me gods.”

Tiggy grinned smugly at Gary. “I get to go,” he said. “Team Sam for the win.”

“Fine,” Gary said with a sniff. “We’ll just have Team Gary out here, and everyone knows Team Gary is the better team. We get to have cool things like cupcakes and fascinating discussions about what people love best about me.”

“Cupcakes?” Kevin asked, ears perking.

“Not that kind of cupcake,” Gary hissed. “I’m trying to make a point.”

“Thanks for this,” Ruv grumbled. “Really. You should go before more things happen.”

“Gods, what is with all of you and jinxing me? Team Sam, front and center!”

Tiggy snapped to attention, standing straight, legs together, arms at his sides, chin tilted up. Ryan drew his sword again and posed, because he was a douchebag and he couldn’t not.

We were going to die horrible and painful deaths.




STEPPING INTO the dome was a surreal experience. The sandy ruins of the castle in the dry, scorching heat gave way to cool, dank air redolent with the strong perfume of flowers and the crisp scent of the trees, as if we’d walked through some kind of portal to a land far, far away from the desert. I thought maybe it was an illusory magic, that the dragon or whatever caused this was projecting, but if it was, it was the most convincing fa?ade I’d ever seen. The grass and leaves were soft beneath my feet. The tree bark was rough against my hands. The flower petals were velvety, the pollen sticky on my fingertips. If it was a lie, it was good. But if it was real, it was extraordinary. The stories we heard as kids said that dragons were beings of pure magic, more so than any other creature in existence. That their blood was made of stars and had led to the Creation of Man. Man, so it was said, came from pieces of stardust. If dragons were made of stars, then it was thought we came from dragon’s blood. I’d always listened with wide eyes as a child but fell into cynicism as a teenager, as children often did.

I’d never asked for Kevin’s blood. I would never have done that to him, no matter how much it could have advanced my Grimoire. Others had tried, he’d told me in broad strokes. He’d been captured and hurt before managing to escape. It was where his distrust of wizards had come from. It’d taken me a long time to overcome that with him, and I’d never do anything to set us back.

But still. If this was real, if this dragon had awoken and created all that I could see in this interior, from the plants to the bees that flitted between the flowers to the birds that sang out from the trees, it was something beyond anything I’d ever dealt with before.

Kevin was a dragon. He had magic, we knew. We just didn’t know how it would manifest. Kevin said it was because he didn’t want to show us yet. I thought it was because he didn’t know, and Morgan and Randall were convinced that he was too young.

But this dragon did.

“Smells like home,” Tiggy said, brow furrowed.

“Like the castle? Or the woods?”

He shook his head. “Like before. Before you. Before Gary.”

Ah. The ever-vague before. I exchanged a quick glance with Ryan, who looked startled. Tiggy didn’t often speak of before Gary, and I thought it was because he didn’t like to think of a time before Gary. From the bits and pieces we’d been able to put together, we thought it sounded like Tiggy had been cast out with his parents at some point for being a half-breed, however unjust that was. Usually, such discrimination was found to be appalling (though, with my experience in Mashallaha, it apparently was more prevalent than I thought), but the giants hailed from outside of Verania, beyond the mountains to the north. Tiggy couldn’t remember much, but the last time we’d been within a week’s journey of the land of the giants (after an ill-advised trip to the elven realm in which I only found out later Gary had been tied up and spanked by a centaur—don’t ask, long story), he’d refused and made us travel south as quickly as our feet could carry us.