Page 88 of Rescued By The Dragon

“Say something,” I said, walking out onto the small balcony for privacy.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “My grandmother has always said some woman did that to her when she was a child for touching some tree.”

My heart began to hammer in my chest. “Yeah, she mentioned that. We had to leave after she began to have a meltdown, and then we went to eat. There was a river your grandmother mentioned and we went to see it. We saw people that looked just like Amara in the woods.”

I could hear Toby swallow on the other end. “That’s creepy as Hell, Boss. What are you two going to do?”

“Spend the night and try to reach out to some locals. One younger girl was going to talk, but her boss shooed her along. I think I’m going to track her and ask her what is out there. I need you to tell the others to be on call if something happens. I’ll signal with fire.”

“Don’t start a fight you can’t handle, Dorran.”

“I’m The Dragon Prince. I can handle them, Toby.”

However, I wasn’t completely sure about that.

Amara walked out forty-five minutes later in different clothes and blown-dried hair. She seemed content, but I could tell the wheels were turning. “I think we’re going to follow Eva’s scent and figure out what she knows.”

Amara reached back and began to French-braid her hair with nerves written all over her face. “The lady looked angry that you were there today.”

“She looked pissed.”

“Maybe I should go alone.”

My eyes rounded in shock, and I folded my arms across my chest to keep myself from shaking some sense into her. “Amara, do you seriously think I would let you—scratch that—my dragon would let you go alone? We don’t know who they are or what they are capable of. I can’t and won’t let you go alone.”

She frowned. “They looked shocked to see me, not angry.”

“We can’t go off looks, Little Mouse,” I said, tracing my knuckles against her jaw. “Let’s see what we can find out before you decide to go all Detective Amara on me.”

She smirked. “Let’s go sniff this girl out then.”

I led Amara outside of the hotel and toward the restaurant. Eva had a very light scent, so it wasn’t as easy to pick up on, but once my dragon had it, he led me toward a small cottage between an herbal store and a park.

The door opened before I could knock.

Eva didn’t look surprised to see us. “I wasn’t sure if you two were going to come or not since my mother interrupted. I was hoping you would. Come on inside.”

She opened the door wide for us, and the smell of cookies and tea wafted out. Amara and I stepped inside the small cottage. It looked like a stereotypical twenty-year-old lived there. Cheap furniture, with a bit of Asian culture tossed around.

“Sit down,” she said, gesturing toward a plate of cookies on the table. “I made these in case you came, and I was just going to eat them if you didn’t.”

Amara plucked one from the plate. “So, we want to know about the people we just saw at the river.”

Eva sat down and rubbed her palms against her thighs. “Yeah, you really look like them.”

“We noticed,” I said, leaning against the wall, afraid I’d break the furniture. “What do you know about them?”

“Our culture calls them the water people.”

Amara’s hand halted inches from her face, her cookie halted in mid-air. “Water people?”

Eva grabbed a cookie. “Yeah, but my mother has lived here most of her life, and she is deathly afraid of them. She doesn’t even want to speak of them, because she thinks it’ll curse our entire family. She didn’t tell me any of this, she wrote it down, so no one would know we spoke of them.”

“What are their powers?” I asked.

Eva thought about it, twirling her finger around her ebony-colored ponytail. “I think they all have different powers. They all come from the same bloodline, so they all have blonde hair and blue eyes. They’re beautiful and charming. My mother said they lure people to the river and take what they want from them. The old ones eat them.”

Amara covered her mouth with her hand. “Eat the people?”

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