Page 67 of Devoted to the Dragon

Fennik pauses, the wolf shining in his gaze. “Can he infiltrate your dreams?”

I shake my head in reassurance. “Theoretically, but it’s a difficult skill to master. I don’t know if he can or if any of the serpents have retained the power.”

Gunnar, always curious, asks a follow-up question, head cocked to the side. “How does it work?”

“They can walk between light and dark, move their form to travel great distances, and emerge somewhere else. Sometimes, the somewhere else is a dream. The sex demon part is actually not accurate. It’s not just sex. Their powers are in feeding off emotional energy and in using their smoke to create emotional atmospheres that influence people. As the spawn of a trickster, they also create illusions.”

Gunnar whistles.“So,reallyfucking powerful?”

I wince. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Am I allowed to say it’s also kind of badass?” he asks.

Fennik throws an almond at him, but Gunnar catches it in his mouth. He gives a toothy grin as he chews. They tease each other, but my gaze flicks to the bag in my hands.

Face him. Time is up.

I tug open the strings and spill the bag’s contents onto the blankets. The stones are like pebbles on a beach, a rainbow of memories or illusions for me to collect.

Do I want to collect them? That’s the question.

The stones are different shapes and sizes, some finished and some rough. I reach to pick up one that’s a grainy desert rose, but Fennik grabs my hand.

“Is it safe? Can either of us help?”

I kiss him, rubbing my nose against his. “You make a very cute daddy wolf. I’ll be fine.”

Before he can stop me, I touch the rough stone.

I’m the crow again, all-seeing and back in a forest. It's not the same one as before, but the landscape is familiar enough. There’s a party of some kind. The scene reminds me a little of a Thunder—bodies are writhing, music is playing, a campfire sparks. I don’t see the serpent, but as I weave through dancing bodies, I get an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and longing.

A wisp of smoke, black tendrils mixed with pink, urges me closer. I follow it to Knox at the party's edge, watching but not joining. He searches the crowd, looking for something.

Another serpent, this one buff and covered in tattoos, appears out of the shadows. “Your mother is looking for you.”

The serpent searches the crowd one last time and turns away. “I’m coming. I can’t hear it anymore anyway.”

Smoke clouds my vision, and when I blink again, I’m staring at the fireplace in my dragon’s nest.

Gunnar grabs me and puts me in his lap, visibly shaken. He cups my face. “Are you all right? Your eyes went white, and you were frozen for, like, five minutes. It was freaky.”

“I’m fine,” I promise.

Fennik, who has been around Vandera and me long enough, looks at the two of us, his gaze full of empathy. “Anything helpful?”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of what I saw. “It was nothing that seemed important.”

Why would he share this with me? I’m missing something that feels as if it’s on the tip of my tongue. I reach for another stone, and Gunnar grumbles.

Smoke clouds my vision, and I’m the crow again.

One after another, I touch the memory stones. They’re random. I watch Knox hang out with his sister as the two eat their weight in candy and hiss at the things happening on some TV show. In another, Knox and another serpent race on an old desert road, the thrill of it exhilarating.

Underscoring those happy memories is the sharp tang of longing. I learn he’s bored with running the strip clubs and brothels his family owns; he’s obsessed with spicy foods; and he used to write poetry, but he stopped after his brother Bash made fun of him when he found his notebook.

Many are like the first. Knox appears in the same forest over and over, following something only he can hear. In the memory, it sounds like tinkling bells on the wind. Each time he returns, it’s with the same loneliness and longing as the first.

Embedded in a piece of snowflake obsidian, I watch him as a youngling, shadow-walking with his mother. She teaches him how to center his energy so that he can find and follow what she calls “tethers.” Once she is satisfied, the beautiful raven-haired woman holds his hand, and the world becomes a dizzying current of rushing air. It is dark and silky, strange and swirling.

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