ChapterSixteen
How couldI not have recognized that the change in Nessie hadn’t come about naturally?Then again, possession?Not something that would have ever occurred to me.I’d assumed Nessie had simply tired of being a prisoner of her loch.That the sweet dragon I once knew had finally succumbed to despair.
Guilt filled me, torturing me with the fact I’d walked away after our last argument and not done more to help my oldest friend.I could make up excuses, like the fact that she’d told me to go, screamed it actually, and that I’d thought giving her space would help.And to be honest, a decade for a dragon of our age was merely a drop in the bucket of time.It must have felt an eternity, though, to Nessie, trapped inside her body, a victim once more of her wretched twin.Could I find a way to separate the two?
“Alistair, what are we going to do?”Davina whispered.
“Escape, of course.”A blasé answer that those watching and listening would expect.I took note of them.Blue Men stationed at each of the four arches that led out of the chamber.Another quad of Red Caps a few yards away, huddled playing bone dice—made of literal bones.
A stirring of the water had me bracing for Tiamat’s reappearance, but instead, a sleek seal popped into view, not Astaria but her sister, Fiona.She humped onto the floor before changing shapes.Her long, wet hair draped her naked body as she stood.
“Hi, Ali.Sorry about everything that’s happened.”She wrung her hands in agitation.
“You should be, considering you’re the reason I’m in this situation.Care to tell me why you’re working for Tiamat?”Because if anyone knew of the dual souls in one body, it would be the seer.
“I didn’t have a choice.She sent a message saying if I didn’t come serve her at Loch Ness she’d exterminate everyone I knew.”Her lips turned down.
“If you’d come to me, I would have provided protection.”A bit of a rebuke, but softly delivered.
“I could have; however, that path didn’t have the best outcome,” she countered.“Hence why I chose a different branch to the future.”
A chain rattled as Davina joined the conversation.“You decided to help the split-personality water dragon?Gotta say, it’s an odd choice.”
“Not when you’ve seen what I have.”A stricken-faced Fiona paced.“I wish I could tell you more but—” A glance at those listening pressed her lips tight.
But I’d learned enough.Enough to know Fiona had chosen to help Tiamat because she’d seen something that terrified her enough she’d abandoned her home and family, as well as betrayed me.
“Tiamat knows about the hatchlings.”I couldn’t help a chiding note.
“Of course she does.She’s the one who encouraged the doctor to find and hatch them.”
“But you told her you saw me meeting them.She thinks I’m going to help her trap them.”
“You won’t,” Fiona reassured.“I didn’t reveal the entirety of that vision, but at the time, I had to give her something to distract.”
“Distract from what?”Davina asked.
Again, Fiona glanced at those guarding.Her voice lowered as she whispered, “Tiamat isn’t the threat you need to worry most about.”
“Not from my perspective, locked in a cage,” my dry reply.
“That situation is about to resolve itself shortly.”Fiona took a few mincing steps closer and lowered her voice.“Whatever happens, Malone has to be stopped.”
“The human doctor?”
Fiona nodded.“He’s about to do something monumentally stupid.”
“More stupid than igniting volcanoes to hatch dragons?”
“Very.”A grunt and smack of something hard on rock had her head turning to look over her shoulder.The Red Caps had abandoned their game to focus on her.“I have to go.”
“Before you swim off, can you at least tell us if we’ll survive our captivity?”Davina asked with a quaver.
“Yes, but you might later wish you’d died here, given what is to come.”
Ominous, but I couldn’t ask Fiona about her claim, as she turned back into a seal and dove into the mini lake of water.
Davina sighed.“Well, that wasn’t exactly reassuring.”
