Page 108 of Dragon’s Rebel

For a moment there was nothing—and then she felt the faint sense of his presence. He was alive. She turned to go help him, and heard him speak in her mind. Get the Seal. It’s powerful. It defends and heals.

She pressed her lips together, sent one agonized look back towards the house, and then she ran.

The secret garden seemed impossibly still and quiet after the chaos inside. Dimly she could hear shouts and gunshots, but she couldn’t focus on them.

All her attention was held by the fish pond. She yearned toward it, as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered. Everything else seemed far away.

She looked into it, touching it with her fingers. The water was perfectly clear all the way to the bottom, where she could see the leaping dolphin mosaic, so similar to the picture on the bracelet Thorne’s dragon had made for her.

Plants waved softly, giving her a glimpse of the elusive silver fish. So clear…

Which made no sense, Rebel realized. This place had been abandoned for years. The water in the pond should be green and scummy, the bottom covered with silt.

The fish should have been dead long ago.

If it was a fish.

She stretched her hand out over the pond, palm down. “I am the Keeper of the Seal,” she said. “You belong to me!”

The silver fish leaped out of the water right into her hand. It wasn’t a fish at all, she realized, but a miniature dolphin.

And the minute she closed her fingers around it, it turned into a round silver disc, flat on the bottom and rounded on the top. She turned her hand over and saw the leaping dolphin embossed on the top.

She’d found the Seal.

“Very nice.”

The voice came from behind Rebel, startling her, and she whirled around. The gate in the wall was open, and standing inside the doorway was the last person she’d expected to see.

Mr. Johnson. And he was holding a gun.