Page 36 of Magical Mission
“I’m not sure how I got here,” I admitted. “But I know I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
I turned back to the egg, kneeling now, the warmth of it pulsing faintly in the air.
“The Academy’s awake,” I said. “It’s not just alive, it’scalling.And people are answering. All kinds of people. The kind who’ve been cast out. The ones who’ve been told they’re too much or too little or toolate.”
The mother dragon blinked slowly.
“And they need magic again,” I whispered. “Not the kind in spells or scrolls, but the kind that reminds them they’re not broken. That theymatter.”
I reached out, stopping just short of the egg’s cracked surface.
“I’m trying to build that place. For them. For me. For… you.”
The den didn’t respond.
Not in words.
But the young dragon leaned in, brushing her warm snout gently against my shoulder.
Just once.
And the mother, impossibly large and impossibly still, curled her wing tighter around the egg and shifted just enough that the light of the den flickered across her scales like a smile.
I swallowed hard as a lump caught in my throat.
“I swear,” I said. “I’ll protect this place. All of it. And all of you.”
I didn’t expect an answer.
But I think I got one anyway.
The hum of the den deepened, slow and rhythmic.
And the egg gave the tiniestclick.
Like a heartbeat.
Chapter Nine
I was halfway down the moonlit corridor as my thoughts tangled around the lavender-hued eggshell and the heat of sleeping dragons, when I heard footsteps behind me.
I didn’t startle. The Academy had its way of telling you when someone meant no harm.
And this someone?
I felt him before I saw him. I always did. There was just something about the guy who made me feel.
Keegan stepped into the soft, flickering light. He looked like he belonged here, and I was beginning to think he always had.
His eyes met mine with that steady, half-storm gaze that somehow made the rest of the world fall quiet.
“Well,” he said with a deep and velvety tone. “You’ve got the look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get when you’ve just done something secret and probably magical and you're definitely not planning on telling anyone about it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re imagining things.”
