Page 65 of Magic Forsaken

A dragon stood in the middle of Sheridan Avenue.

His scales were a deep, fiery red, and while his dragon form appeared to be smaller than Callum’s, he did not seem appreciably less deadly. His body was sleek and muscular, with spikes that flared down the length of his neck, and armored plates covering his chest and belly. The head that loomed over us was slender, but had longer fangs, and featured four wickedly sharp horns over pointed ears. His tail whipped back and forth like a cat’s, and in one clawed foot, he held the ruined door he’d ripped from the SUV.

I finally managed to recover my powers of speech long enough to form a sentence. “Who is that?”

Callum moved to stand beside me and let out a sigh that sounded simultaneously annoyed and aggrieved. “That,” he informed me reluctantly, “is my brother.”

I was still gaping up at the red dragon when he bent his neck, brought those terrifying teeth within an arm’s length of my face, and grinned.

Followed by a very deliberate wink.

“That’snotDeclan,” I declared firmly, fighting the urge to smack the smug grin off the giant lizard’s face. Not only had he just saved my life, but it would be an incredibly stupid way to die.

Callum raised a decidedly unimpressed eyebrow at our savior. “Stop flirting with my staff, or I’m going to tell Mother you’ve gotten bored again.”

The red dragon recoiled with a look of exaggerated horror.

“You are correct,” Callum confirmed. “That’s Ryker. He’s been posing as my driver ever since I arrived. We were hoping to keep his presence quiet, but I probably should have known better than to expect he could keep a low profile for longer than ten seconds.”

Not that I was going to complain.

I heard a pop and a hiss from the smoldering car, just before Callum grabbed my arm again. “Stay back,” he warned, not even looking at me as he tugged me firmly away from the vehicle. “The gas tank might still explode, not to mention that whoever hit us is probably out there waiting for another opportunity.”

But I didn’t think so. Not after I’d gotten a good look at the remains of the SUV.

A chunk of stone had been dropped squarely on the engine block, which meant Ryker had been almost absurdly lucky. The driver’s side window was down, which was probably the only reason he’d managed to escape. But if they’d only dropped that stone just a little bit further back… If they’d only kept the flames going a little bit longer, and a little bit hotter…

We would be dead.

So why weren’t we?

The aftershocks finally hit me. My heart rate accelerated, I started gasping for air, and my limbs began to shake as if I were about to freeze to death. I was all too familiar with the sensations of delayed panic, so I dropped down into a crouch on the sidewalk before my knees decided to quit working.

Some bodyguard I was.

But even as I struggled to focus on slowing my breaths, Callum knelt in front of me and took me by the shoulders. “Raine. Look at me.”

I saw what it cost him to make that gesture. Saw him wince when he tried to use his right arm—now a bloody wreck from when he’d used it as a battering ram to save me.

Chaos still surrounded us. The SUV was still smoldering, and traffic was stopped in both directions, with horns blaring, human drivers swearing and gesturing angrily, and a dragon standing in the middle of the street.

Butthisdragon was utterly focused on me, and it was bizarrely comforting even in the midst of disaster.

“I’m fine,” I murmured, closing my eyes and counting my breaths. Focusing on the feeling of the concrete beneath my fingers, the pressure of Callum’s grip on my arms. The acrid scent of smoke and the sounds of angry drivers. Grounding myself through these simple details.

I’d survived yet again. I was still here, despite the odds stacked against me.

I opened my eyes, and, with Callum’s help, rose to my feet. “I’m okay,” I repeated. “But we need to call the other delegates. Find out if any of them were also attacked.”

Callum stared at me intently—as if he could somehow detect lies if he glared hard enough—then pulled out his phone, which was miraculously still intact.

Meanwhile, Ryker set down the mangled piece of his brother’s SUV and somehow managed to ease out of trafficwithout stepping on anything or anyone. The first police car pulled up, sirens blaring, just as he maneuvered carefully onto the sidewalk and wrapped his tail around his feet.

Nothing to see here—just a polite, civilized dragon, sunning himself without a care in the world.

But because he was currently unable to communicate and Callum was on the phone—and was the sort of person who had “people” to talk to other peopleforhim—it fell to me to assure the Oklahoma City Police Department that we had been driving along, minding our own business when someone dropped a giant rock on our hood.

Thankfully, no other cars were damaged, and I couldn’t see any signs that anyone was hurt. The fire department seemed happy to take charge of the smoking vehicle, and as the traffic began moving slowly around us, it quickly became evident that the human police had little to no interest in squabbles between Idrian factions. When they realized we’d been attacked by one of our own, they glanced at each other, gave me a sternly worded warning about cluttering up the city streets or allowing our affairs to harm humans, then got back into their car and drove away.

---