Page 14 of An Accident Waiting to Dragon

“What did you do?” he asked.

She lowered her hand into the water to help them both tread but didn’t let go of him. “I asked the sea for protection.”

She asked… Wasn’t she a moon pixie?

He’d been there the night her wings had finally appeared. Pixies didn’t find out what they were until their first flight. The wings told them. She’d been so proud to be a moon pixie like her mother, her small face aglow not just with the light cast by her pure white wings, but with a radiant sort of happiness.

As if she'd read his mind again, Gwen snorted. “Pixies can talk to all nature. We’re most in communion with our specialty, but not limited to it. You don’t remember that?”

In other words, he should’ve known. Except every time he’d asked Goran, or Gwen, or any of their large family questions, he’d been told that only pixies were allowed to know.

But now wasn’t the time to argue.

Asher kept silent.

After a second, Gwen eased up. He couldn’t see her, only feel her, so he had no idea how he knew that. But he did. Maybe the grip she had on him softened.

“This is a bit like a cocoon around us, bobbing around in the ocean. It will blend in with the rest of the water from above,” she finally said. “They won’t be able to see us, but the crack means we can breathe.”

What had she dealt with in the last decade that she’d learned that little trick?

“Smart.”

“Was that sarcasm?” she grumbled.

“No.”

Silence. Did she not believe him?

“Hopefully,” Gwen said, “the wraith and whatever it has controlling the weather will think we’re dead and give up soon.”

Asher couldn’t agree more. He was injured and treading water indefinitely might be hard for him. Was she thinking of that?

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

“I’m fine,” he said in a voice that the dragons under him would have taken as a sign not to ask more.

“Still a stubborn loner, I see,” she murmured.

Asher’s lips twitched. Gods, she sounded like she used to. Like no time had passed.

Still keeping me honest, I see. That’s what he wanted to shoot back with. But the fact that she hadn’t left him to die in the ocean, let alone drowned him herself, stayed his tongue. What he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and just breathe her in, make sure she was real. But she wouldn’t appreciate that.

After Goran’s death, when she’d run, he’d let her. He’d known she would need time to grieve, and he’d still had a war to fight. Dragons and pixies both lived thousands of years. So, he’d given her time and space, and he’d fought for a hard-won peace.

Now the gods or the universe or whoever was in charge had dropped her right into his lap.

What did that mean?

She was probably already thinking about how she could lose him the second this was over. He didn’t plan to let her. But still, trying to escape the wraith while stranded in the Flores Sea wasn’t the time to try to do anything with her.

What he needed for himself was a distraction.

“Let’s assume they leave,” he said. “Can you fly us to land?”

A tiny growl of frustration. “No.”

“Why not?” he asked without thinking. “Wings too wet?”

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