Page 34 of Wildfire Witch

“You still will be. Listen up, here’s the plan.” Rusty spoke with the clipped efficiency of a military instructor. “I’m going to go out there and take my full second form. A pureblooded great wyrm like myself is huge, so everyone will take notice. You all will get into the car as fast as possible. I’m going to dig into the asphalt and make an opening to start a tunnel. It’ll be just big enough for the car and I’ll close the opening right behind it. We’llemerge in a field, or something, several miles away. They’d never be able to track us.”

Ceridor scowled and shook his head. “Seth shall do this with you. I will fly away with Nix while the Fire Brotherhood is busy trying to chase you.”

“What?” I asked, surprised.

“She’d be safer underground with me,” Rusty said, a line appearing between his brows.

“This tunnel will have the structural integrity not to collapse on top of my car?” Seth asked nervously.

“Earthendragon.” Rusty stabbed a claw toward his chest. “Manipulating rock and soil is kind of my thing. The tunnel will stay open for as long as I will it and the ground will go completely back to normal behind us.”

I glanced over at Ceridor, who lifted his brows in invitation. “I like the idea of flying away. The car’s important and all, don’t get me wrong…” But it sounded harrowing. I didn’t do well with darkness and tight spaces, no matter how foolproof his plan sounded.

“You’re my mate. I need you to stay with me,” Rusty said, a note of worry entering his rumbling voice.

“We will determine a rendezvous location later. I’ll call you, Seth,” Ceridor said breezily.

“Nix.” Rusty hissed my name, his dragon’s influence obvious.

I reached over, taking his bloodied hand between both of mine. Aodhnait took the opportunity to vent more of our heat against his impervious scales. “I’m not leaving you permanently. Ceridorknows I need you and Seth and wouldn’t whisk me away from you.” I turned toward the fae. “Take your glamor off so he knows you’re really a fae and telling the truth. Then tell him he’ll see me again.”

The disguises melted off of both Ceridor and Seth. Rusty took a moment to inspect their faces, nodding slowly to himself. “You two didn’t smell right,” he muttered.

I raised a brow at my fae husband, who sighed. “You will see her again soon. I know what it’s like to go far too long without Nix, and wouldn’t impose it on anyone else. Not even…a rival mate.”

“Rival? Why be competitors? You had good moves back there. I should’ve realized quicker that you guys were wearing a glamor. The shifters you resembled could never fight like that.” Rusty cracked a smile full of sharp teeth. “Besides, you don’t want to compete with me. You’d lose.”

Ceridor, who looked like he was considering opening up to the shifter, closed off again and fixed his usual cool expression in place. “It is foolish to think a competition with a fae would be a simple endeavor won by brawn,” he sniffed. “Let us be off before it’s too late.”

I nodded in agreement and joined them in rushing outside. Ceridor wrapped his arms around me, the wind whipping my hair in all directions as he gathered his magic.

Nearby, a mighty roar shattered the air as Rusty transformed fully into a dragon. His clothes fell off in shreds as he grew and grew, becoming a behemoth of a creature at least ten feet high, with an elongated body and tough ridges of scales on his head, chest, and underside rather than sporting horns and wings like a traditional fire dragon.

“Eyes on me,” Ceridor whispered. Our feet left the ground and my stomach lurched.

It’d taken him a long time to get me used to flying, in my first life, with no motion sickness or screaming involved. Looking into his eyes calmed me…it still did. His pools of darkened silver were calm while the world around us descended into a chaos of roaring, yelling, and revving engines. I heard the earth shatter from Rusty’s magic, but didn’t feel a thing.

We were light as feathers, Ceridor and I. Spinning on a breeze, though I could sense the amount of air motes clinging to our bodies. Nothing about the liftoff was effortless, though he made it seem that way as he constructed a bubble of still air around us and a cone of spinning wind over our heads to cleave through the sky. We propelled skyward from there with the rapid ascent of a rocket.

I looked down only once, seeing the fire bro’s cars scattering in disarray and the bulky tail of an earthen dragon disappearing into a massive hole in the parking lot.

NIX

Once,in my first life, the mechanics of flight for wingless fae had fascinated me. I’d peppered Ceridor with questions until he finally asked, “Would you like to try it for yourself?”

Foolishly, I’d agreed, and after a minute in the air, he’d set me back down so I could vomit in the grass. Thank the goddess that I hadn’t thrown up on him; I don’t think even being fated mates would’ve gotten him to overlook how gross that would be.

Flight was not made by cutting through the sky, parting the natural air currents like a knife. Especially not for wingless wind fae, who had to work some precise magic to keep themselves afloat. Wind magic buoyed their bodies, but without wings to stay upright, they spun on the whims of air currents.

Fascinating to me as a young alchemist, who documented the experience extensively. But also not something the human body was made to do without consequences, as we weren’t built for that kind of speed or motion. Modern people had cars, a barrier of metal and glass between them and the outside world whenthey went at top speeds. All Ceridor created was a thin film of magic to ward away the worst of the turbulence created by the swiftness he flew with.

I tried my best to remember the old days with him, when we’d take joyrides through the sky by evening. We’d built up my tolerance a few minutes at a time until I didn’t even notice that we were rotating in the air. It helped that I’d grown so enamored with him that his face and beautiful fae eyes were my full focus, rather than the flashes of the earth and sky as we spun together.

But this body, this life I was living, had never flown. The unseasoned breakfast Rusty had fed me threatened to come back up as Ceridor read the sky and tilted our momentum. “East toward the sunrise, and Spells Hollow,” he murmured.

I closed my eyes tight.Don’t throw up on him. Youlovedthat breakfast so much, you just want to keep it all to yourself.

He chuckled. “Do we need to land so soon?”

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