Page 68 of Silent Jay

A ball of rotating gold coalesced around the wands.

But she wasn’t here. Until I knew she was safe, she needed to stay where I could protect her.

“Aim true.” Ogden dramatically pushed his hands out, and the gold shot toward whatever the twins had found. Both wands exploded in little balls of green fireworks, and their smoking ends bent at weird angles.

Something dropped into the ocean with a plop.

“Rehan, bring it to us, but don’t touch it,” Ogden ordered.

It took me an extra second to process the warlock's command, but I rushed to the edge of the boat and easily called on my water magic. Objects did not move fast through water. While I dragged it towards us, the fire dragons came up on either side of me.

“What is it?” One of them asked.

The pod came into view. More oval than round, the outside was so dark and smooth I saw my blurred reflection in it. Standing on its end, it would come up just past my knees.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ogden said. “But there are literally hundreds of those in our shield.

Unease filled my stomach, and phantom bugs crawled over my skin. Although I couldn’t see them, these unknowns literally surrounded our entire island.

“We should take it to fire and study it,” the fire dragon immediately said.

“No,” one of the twins crossed his lean arms over his chest. “Magic is our domain. It comes with us.”

“Then pull down another one,” the fire dragon snapped.

“We cannot.” The same twin waved his broken wand in the air. “It will take weeks to remake our tools.”

The other twin threw a net over the side. I extracted myself from the fire dragons and helped him secure the pod. I half expected the net to disintegrate upon touching the thing or something magical to happen, but the dragon tendon lines wrapped around the pod and held.

Behind us, fire and earth argued.

Ogden came up to my side. “For a minute there, I thought you weren’t going bring the pod to us.”

I grunted. “The command in your voice caught me off guard.” I side-eyed the earth dragon. “When you’re not going with the flow, you tend to ask questions until I find myself acting on something you said without you telling me to.”

Ogden grinned before shrugging. “I find academic debate essential and understanding key to getting good results.” He wrinkled his nose, and his confidence dropped. “So if I commanded you to come to the fire temple with me right now, would you do it?”

I raised an eyebrow. Over the last few days, Ogden had asked a lot of questions about Jay. Given it was the one topic, I found myself more than happy to talk about.

“I can’t go into fire territory.” I ground my teeth. “It’s why Tyson takes her back and forth.”

Ogden put his hands up. “I have an open invitation to observe the preparations for Tyson’s fire lighting ceremony. I’m sure the same invitation was extended to water as the ceremony is core elemental magic.” When I still hesitated, Og continued. “This object we just pulled out of the Ley Lines will spend days waiting on bureaucracy. The moment it lost contact with the Ley Line, it went inert. It can’t hurt anyone. Ofri is using every spell and trick we have to make a replica. There’s nothing else we can do here.”

I took a deep breath. It wasn’t really a hard decision. “Why are we still standing here?”

I thoughtmy skin would crawl, or the air would change when I flew into fire territory, but nothing like that happened. Maybeit was a little hotter inland, but the familiar air currents still smelled of salt and eucalyptus. A single fire guard flanked us, making sure we landed on the sleeping volcano’s top.

I shifted out of my dragon skin and pulled on my board shorts and flip-flops. A new hole punctured the edge of my shorts from where they snagged on one of my dragon teeth. Next to me, Ogden’s pants and long-sleeved shirt still looked pressed and neat.

The earth dragon stepped forward, and I followed him, putting my hair up as I walked. A group of priestesses dressed in red robes gathered around their eldest, who made dramatic motions with her hands as she spoke.

“I just can’t,” she wailed dramatically. “Her hands must be just so.”

Fortunately, I didn’t see Jay among that group.

Ogden slowed, and I almost tripped over him. My mate bond made me look left, in the same direction Ogden was now staring.

Jay sat shoulder to shoulder with a broad dragon shifter draped in white robes. I didn’t like how close they sat. They both looked at her phone. I shifted my ears.

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