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Chapter Three
“The mage you killed courted the dragon for seven years?” Angus asked Eletea, not quite understanding why it would take so long for a dragon to make up its mind about… Well, about anything.
“Might’ve been closer to eight, but she wasn’t there all the time.” The dragon repositioned herself.
It was cramped in the time-travel shaft, worse for Eletea than for him, since she was so much larger. The tunnel stretched to accommodate its occupants, but it didn’t leave any extra room.
“Say more about that.” Angus made a come-along gesture with one hand.
“Good thing my dragon friend and the mage weren’t in any rush, or I’d never have been able to discern anything was amiss.” She furrowed her scaled brow in thought. “Not that dragon shifters are a common occurrence, but enough candidates showed up, none of us paid them much heed. Unless they wanted to bond with us.”
“Were you ever chosen?” Angus asked, curious.
She shook her head to the accompaniment of jangling scales, bathing him with steam and soft dragon laughter. “Targeted might be a better word than chosen.” She laughed again. “For one thing, I’m too young. For another, I joined my life to a Highland dragon’s, which meant I left Fire Mountain.”
Angus poked around for a delicate way to phrase his next question, gave up, and asked, “Where’d you kill the mage?”
“Why is that important?” Eletea countered, regarding him with her whirling eyes.
“Likely it’s not, but if I summon a vision to see the event clearly, the more facts I have, the more accurate my revelations are.”
“I don’t get it.” Smoke puffed past her double rows of teeth. “What’s there to see in a sending? I told you all of it.”
“Nay. You told me your side of things. Visions hold all aspects. Besides…” He hurried on. “You’ve scarcely sharedall of it.”
“I told you the parts I deemed important.”
Angus narrowed his eyes and checked a node as it flashed past. They’d have at least another half hour, perhaps more, before the tunnel spit them out. He inhaled deeply, before pushing the breath out and doing it again. “How about if you tell me all of it, and let me judge what’s important.”
The dragon was silent for long moments. When she began to talk again, her words were halting, as if she wasn’t certain what she wanted to say.
“Danne—the dragon I was trying to save—and the woman who wanted to bond with him showed up in the Highlands to visit me and my mate. I hadn’t seen either of them in the years since I left Fire Mountain with Cavet to make our home on the Isle of Skye.”
“What was the purpose of their visit?”
“Danne and I were close—”
“How close?” Angus demanded. “Was he your intended before Cavet?”
She spread her jaws in a smile. “Nothing like that. He and I were egg-mates.”
Angus sensed there had to be more to it. “You must’ve had many egg-mates. What was special about him?”
“There were fifteen in my clutch,” she concurred, “but Danne and I came from the same egg.”
“Is that even possible?” Angus narrowed his eyes as he considered it.
“Of course it’s possible.” She bristled. “I’m here, aren’t I? But it is quite rare, and Danne and I share a bond I never felt with the other dragons in our clutch.”
Curiosity stirred in Angus, and he leaned forward. “What happened during their visit?”
“I’ve asked myself the same thing. Darkness shrouded the woman. Mitha was her name, and the same darkness clouded Danne’s mind. It was much worse than when I’d last seen him. So bad, he scarcely had any capacity left for independent thought. I drew him off, just the two of us, on the pretext of hunting, and tried to talk with him. He and Mitha were not yet bonded, so I held hope he’d see reason.”
“Never works that way,” Angus cut in, and then kicked himself for not holding his tongue. “Go on.” He made shooing motions with one hand. “Sorry for interrupting.”
Eletea nodded slowly. “Once the bond is forged, it’s quite difficult to sunder, yet Danne refused my counsel. He acted as if he and Mitha were already joined. After we returned, I conferred with Cavet in our private mind speech. I was afraid Mitha knew I didn’t trust her, and I wanted time to develop a course of action. Cavet advised staying out of it, but I couldn’t stand by and let that dark witch co-opt my friend to evil.”
She lowered her voice, almost as if she suspected the time-travel shaft held prying ears. “Some dragons bonded to shifters have disappeared. Others, like Malik and Preki, boast of powers few dragons possess. Their bonded mages hold the same dark energy as Mitha.” Eletea’s face developed a pinched look. “I know I’m young and untried, but I couldn’t stand by and allow Danne to consecrate his bond to Mitha. I couldn’t. If it had been any other dragon, I’d probably have stepped aside, but not Danne. Not my egg-mate.”
