“Everything okay down there?” he called, tightening the rope and standing nervously at the edge of the drop-off. “Kade?”
No answer came.
“Shit,” Florian whispered, his heart starting to pound. His hands shook as he grasped the rope and carefully started down into the pit, his feet pressed firmly to the walls the way he’d seen Kade do it. Despite how effortless the other man made it look, it was a struggle to not fall straight down into the tree cover below. The friction burned his hands, and he kept sliding faster than he meant to, sending bits of dirt and rock falling down the cliffside and into the trees below.
“Kade,” he called again when he hit the canopy. He shoved past the scraggly top branches until he could see thicker-looking ones that might hold his weight. Carefully, he pushed himself away from the wall and placed one foot on the branch. When he leaned more of his weight against it and it held, he hastily planted both feet and grasped the tree, heart pounding. “Kade!”
“Shh,” he heard from below, so soft he wasn’t quite sure if it was Kade or just the rushing of the water, which had become much more noticeable now.
Quickly, he untied himself and clambered down the tree. Kade stood at the foot of a different tree next to him; he glanced over at Florian, but his gaze was far more focused on the bubbling spring that lay in front of them.
“There,” Kade whispered, nodding toward the spring. “Look.”
Chapter Two
Florianscannedthepool.Water trickled in a steady, thick stream from the far end of the pit, not quite a waterfall, trailing down to a pond about ten feet across. Mossy rocks and loose underbrush carpeted the ground, but the pond itself was quite clean, the water surprisingly clear. In the very center of the pool was what looked like an impossibly large pearl: a smooth, round, white rock the size of a baseball.
“What is that?” Florian asked softly, though he was unsure why Kade was whispering in the first place. It was the only thing that seemed odd, so it must have been what Kade was gesturing toward, but whatever it meant was lost on him.
Then the orb moved—it glided across the water toward them. A three-pronged claw came up to grasp the pearl, then the rest of the serpentine form ascended from the depths.
Florian’s breath hitched. A silvery dragon, its back mottled with greenish scales that looked like algae or moss, rose halfway up out of the pond. Its eyes were a clear, bright blue. It stared at Kade and Florian intensely, looking somehow stern.
“Oh, shit,” Florian whispered, eyes wide. He hadn’t thought it was possible for shifters to change on Earth—everything he’d been told was that the magic of the Veil was inaccessible here—but the dragon staring him down was undeniable. It looked exactly like every depiction of Japanese dragons he’d ever seen: long whiskers, a flowing mane, and antler-like horns. “What do we do?”
“Tell it who you are,” Kade whispered, his eyes also locked on the dragon.
Florian nodded and licked his lips nervously before taking a cautious step closer to the pond.
“I’m King Florian of the Winter Court,” he said, his voice sounding much stronger than he felt. “And this is Kade, from the wolf kingdom. We’re here to enter the dragon kingdom and speak with King, um, King Tetsuo.”
The dragon continued to stare at them, and for a moment, Florian worried it didn’t understand them. But then its nostrils flared, and it moved closer to them, the rest of its body coming up out of the water—the spring must have been far deeper than it appeared for such an enormous creature to fit within it.
It seemed impossibly long, but when it rose up enough to look over both of them, holding the pearl toward the stream of water that poured continuously from the opposite cliff face, its hind feet had yet to emerge from the pool. As it drew nearer to the running water, the pearl began to sparkle, and the surrounding air shimmered. Florian recognized the curtain immediately.
The dragon looked back at them with the same expression. Nervously, Florian glanced at Kade.
“Should we...?” he said slowly, and Kade nodded.
“I think so,” he said, although his eyes were still locked on the dragon. His brows were furrowed; Florian wondered if that meant he was equally confused as to how the dragon was even here at all.
But the dragon didn’t seem able to communicate with them, so they couldn’t ask, though Florian doubted they would get an answer. Instead, he took a few slow, cautious steps around the perimeter of the pond, trying to find a decent foothold to reach the curtain without having to splash through the spring. The dragon watched him impassively, still holding the pearl to the shimmering curtain. When it seemed obvious it wasn’t going to stop them, Florian reached out as far as he could, until his fingertips brushed the slightly humming point in the air that shimmered with magic. He pulled back, and a new view became visible.
The dragon let out a huffing sound, the only noise it had made so far. Florian gave a start, looking at it in fright. Its eyes narrowed as it looked at Florian, then turned to Kade and made a similar noise, a sharp exhalation.
“I think it wants us to go quickly,” Kade said, taking a step toward Florian. The dragon huffed again, as if in affirmation.
“We’re gonna have to jump,” Florian groaned, eyeing the space between their precarious foothold and the fragment of the Veil that he could see at his fingertips. “Fuck, I really don’t want to fall in the water... I feel like it’s gonna be mad at us if we do.”
The dragon’s expression remained the same.
“You go first,” Kade said, nodding toward the sliver of shimmering light. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Fuck,” Florian muttered, then eyed the dragon again. It met his gaze, and he managed a nervous smile. “Um, thank you.”
The dragon did not respond. Florian bowed his head slightly, the way he had seen so many others do in their few weeks in Japan. This the dragon seemed to recognize, and after a moment, it too gave a slow nod.
Florian grinned and steeled himself, then leapt over the water toward the curtain.
