Page 22 of Wildfire Witch

When he had something else to share, Seth would speak up. He made the occasional noise as he clicked and typed away.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” he said sullenly. I snuck a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He was staring ahead, unfocused, talking like he was sharing his thoughts out loud. “I thought the foretelling of my life would end with romance, not a car chase. I sure didn’t think she wouldimmediatelyget kidnapped right out from under us.”

“It’s not time to despair yet,” I muttered. I really was the last person who should be trying to comfort him. “The one thing that foretelling did right was make sure we formed a partnership. We’ll find her, save her from her enemies, and break her curse.” I was too proud to say that I was glad of his assistance.

He’s a worthy partner, even if he doesn’t know how to fight well.I had to remind myself of this, since it could be easy to blame him for losing Nix in the first place. Yet there was little Seth or I could do against a fire dragon, the rarest and most deadly breed of draconic shifters. We’d been caught by surprise—why hadn’t Nix mentioned the shifters hunting her?

Her hesitation haunted me. In the stillness of the car as we inched forward, the moment came back in perfect clarity.

“Do you truly remember me as your husband? Or am I still a stranger to you?”

She’d bitten her kiss swollen lips, hesitating. Her flush of desire was offset by the confusion in her gaze. Nix had looked at me like she was truly lost and that I was not the salvation I wanted to be for her. “You’re both. You’re neither.” Her answer stung like a thousand nettles over my skin. “I don’t know for sure.”

I was clearly too much of a stranger to trust with such vital information. Maybe if we’d had more time, she would’ve opened up about it and why.

“Recognize this?” Seth’s question pulled me out of my ruminating. He’d focused on seeking out information, his way of helping. He turned the image on his screen toward me when traffic came to a dead stop. It was of a tattoo placed prominently on a man’s flexing arm, showcasing a stylized fist holding curling flames. The whole thing was made of red ink.

“Should I?” I answered coolly.

“Some of the shifters you killed had this tattoo. They all probably did. It’s the mark of the Fire Brotherhood, said here to be a supernatural gang composed of an alliance of a mixed race group of shifter packs united under one of the last flights of firedragon shifters. The list of crimes is…impressive.” Seth whistled low as he scrolled with increasing speed. “And the bounties for their leaders are all seven figures or higher. Dead or alive, too.”

I grunted. “As interesting as all that is, I don’t hear a motive for them to kidnap Nix.”

He scrolled and tapped, lips moving as he read a few sections on one tab before navigating to another. The supernatural side of the internet was more open and informative about the activities of the world and its various pockets of magic users. I’d learned how to use it to keep track of phoenix sightings and—my guilty pleasure—the ever-complicated dramas between fae courts. Watching my kind scheme against one another was never not entertaining.

“There’s nothing that would suggest a reason why they took her,” he finally said. “But before you daydream of flying away from this car to go get her on your own, membership in the Fire Brotherhood is suspected to be about five hundred shifters.”

“I would kill them all. Gladly,” I said, fingers tightening on the steering wheel.

He dropped his voice. “I know, Cer. But you have to think strategically. They’re going to be expecting a pissed-off wind fae and his water witch sidekick now. If they bring in iron weapons, we’re fucked.”

I scoffed. “They have my heart. I’m fucked anyway.”

“Yeah, well, who says you have to fight them in the first place? Your glamoring magic clearly works on tattoos.”

Both my brows raised straight to my hairline. The fae in me approved wholeheartedly in the trickery he was suggesting, but… “They will know we smell off.”

Seth grinned, already having a quick answer for that. “Someone’s clearly never been hunting the human way.”

He outlined his plan from there and I nodded along, won over. All it would require was a scent blocker humans had devised for hunting deer, of all things, plus the clothes and glamored identities of two Fire Brotherhood shifters.

Then Nix would be back in my arms, where she belonged.

NIX

“Nix…”

My eyelids were fused together and every muscle in my body had become lead. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

“Nix, wake up…”

A groan escaped my lips at the persistent voice. I drifted up from the heavy fog wrapped around my mind and felt my skin light up with prickling pain from head to toe until it narrowed down to the arm and shoulder I was lying on.

I could tell I was sprawled on a hard surface and that a pulse of heat had my heart in its fist. The temperature was a warning: I was on the edge of yet another episode, this one promising to be fatal if I called upon any more of the fire element.

Two men were having a conversation nearby while I considered how fucked I was. Without magic, I was helpless. But considering I’d been moved who-knew-where by the fire bros, Ialready was. I was nothing to these people, just a jar with a stuck lid, containing what they really wanted.

“And report when she wakes up,” one of the men was saying. His deep voice was unmistakable; it was the fire dragon shifter.

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