Page 51 of Dragons' Future

“Well?” Autumn prompts.

“Your Highness?” says Cyril. He looks utterly relaxed, though I know he is anything but.

“Well, are you going to ask me what you really want to know?”

Cyril crosses his legs. “Which is?”

“You want to know why I’m here, when there are plenty of other people who could have delivered the political news to you.”

“The question had crossed my mind,” Cyril agrees. He leans forward and there is no longer anything casual about the way he braces his forearms on his knees. “Why did my brother want you here, Autumn?”

“Because you have the head priest of Orion in your backfield but don’t know how to leverage the order’s magic to save your pack and your throne.”

“And you do?” Cyril asks.

Autumn nods. “And I do.”

CHAPTER 29

Kit

"Are you ready for this?" Cyril asks, his blue eyes surveying every inch of me. After three days of hard flight, Nyx Cliff now looms ahead of us. The seas separating us and Nyx are violent and black in the night’s darkness. Even with my enhanced dragon sight, all I see spreading before me is a vast liquid abyss. Nyx doesn’t stand on a cliff—it is carved into the cliff’s stone, a maze of passages and holding cells that make this above ground dungeon the impenetrable prison it is. An island surrounded by deadly sea.

There is only one way of getting into Nyx—flying to the cliff’s apex, then descending down. If Cyril and I are spotted in the skies, we’ll be apprehended before we make landing. Worse, our approach might make Salazar’s people decide to execute the pack from an abundance of caution.

Actually, that would be the smartest move on their part. I touch the rune Autumn had tattooed onto my wrist after spending a couple of days with Emric. The mark still feels like it's sizzling my skin. In a way it is. The intricate sunstar pattern gathers my power, letting me channel it with a strength and control I never imagined possible. Cyril has a similar marking, along with several more that Autumn thought could help. Most important though, are the marks she placed over my sternum. That rune is a siphon designed to unite the power of our pack. It’s something she devised based on Emric’s knowledge and her own background with quint magic that warriors in Slait Court are gifted with. We couldn’t test it since it requires all five of us to be physically connected, but given the success of Autumn’s other runes, I’m hopeful.

“Are you certain we should not wait until the tide goes down?” I ask Cyril.

There is one loophole even to Nyx’s defenses. A hidden underwater passage, magically keyed to open for the Massa’eve sovereign. It would have opened for Ettienne, had the late king been able to conquer the water. It should open for Cyril now. If we can get to it. The passage is meant to be hidden, and is only accessible in low tide. Even then, with great peril.

Cyril shakes his head. “We will lose the cover of darkness if we wait.”

I tighten my jaw but don’t rehash the dangers of channeling the amount of magic required to shift the water now. Autumn made it clear that with the enhanced power the runes give us, come increased dangers as well. Burning out. Losing our lifeforce. Even losing the dragon inside us, which is even more frightening.

"It will be cold,” Cyril says, his battlefield calm wrapping like a shield around me. “Cold enough that you will think you cannot breathe. But that’s an illusion formed of panic. You’ll be able to take in air. To move. And you’ll have to keep doing both.”

“Right. Got it. Breath and move.” Dressed in woolen tights and form-fitting tunic—the best battle attire we could scrounge up from the pooled resources of Agatha’s cabin—I try to project the kind of warrior calm that he wears like a second skin. I don’t think it’s working well enough to fool him, not with my stomach knotting so tightly it hurts—but I try. I check the weapons sheathed along my body, the steel I’m bringing both for myself and my mates, and hope its weight doesn’t drown me. “One question though. Where did all this stuff go while we were in dragon form?”

Cyril gives me a bewildered sidelong glance. “This came to your mind now?”

“It came a while ago. I was saving it for when I could use a moment of procrastination.”

He snorts. “I have no idea. The same place as our clothes go. If magic can shift us from fae to dragon and back again, keeping track of our clothes seems like a small matter.” He runs his hands over the buckles of my weapons even though I’d done that already, then secures a rope around me. His movements are crisp and certain, not a single flick of the hand a wasted motion. If all goes well, there should be only a bit of swimming involved, but he isn't taking chances with my skills. My lack of skills.

I hope I don’t drown us both.

“Anything else you want to do before we get to it?” he asks.

“I’m good.”

“Nymph.” Cyril’s voice softens, but the hand that comes up to grip my chin is as solid as the weapons strapped to me. His scent brushes over my skin. “You are here because you are powerful. Because we are all more powerful when you are beside us.”

Our bond punctuates his own certainly in his words and I nod, the knot in my stomach eases slightly. “I’m ready.”

"I know you are." His warrior’s calm is infectious as we step into the water.

Black water assaults me at once, a wave crashing over my head within seconds. Cyril's hand is firm on my back, keeping me from tumbling over as the cold shock of the sea engulfs me. A tiny sliver of his magic flares, pushing the water away from our faces.

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