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“How’d you do it?” Angus asked, impressed by her courage and determination. “Powerful mages are hard to kill.”
Eletea’s eyes whirled faster. “Only hard after she and Danne bonded, which was another reason I had to move quickly. If I’d waited, she’d have become immortal along with her dragon. I flattered her, took her flying, and made certain she didn’t come back.”
The dragon swallowed hard, the motion moving down her sinuous neck. “When I returned, I told Danne and Cavet what I’d done. Danne challenged me to a duel to the death in direct combat.” She swallowed again. “I was shocked, my spirit wounded, yet I fought. Mostly to protect myself. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Danne.” Eletea shook her head sadly. “If Cavet hadn’t intervened, Danne might’ve killed me.”
She belched fire this time, not steam, her dark eyes defiant. Flames bounced off the walls of the time-travel shaft, and the chamber shuddered around them. “Sorry.” Eletea patted a gray-pink wall. “No more fire.”
She refocused on Angus and clanked her jaws in frustration. “Danne left, knowing he couldn’t fight us both. It gets even better, though—or worse, depending how you look at things. Danne hadn’t even cleared our skies before Cavet gave me a good dressing down. He was still chastising me when Ceridwen showed up.”
“Bad news travels fast.”
“You could say that.” Eletea tossed her head. “You know the rest. A First Born can either vindicate me or condemn me.” She hesitated. “Cavet’s waiting for the verdict too.”
Angus bit back words. He wanted to tell her that a mate who didn’t believe in her was far worse than no mate at all, but what did he know of such things? Instead he said, “I can dream the truth of this too. At least now I understand why Ceridwen sent you to me.”
“Excellent.” She clasped her taloned forelegs together. “Then we shall see an end to this soon, and I can return to the Highlands and my love.”
There it was again. Should he tell her to rethink Cavet? Angus ground his jaws together. No matter what he said, she wouldn’t listen. She was young. In love. A lethal combination, and not one amenable to reason. In a burst of recklessness, he envied her all of it. He’d been young, but love had never been part of any equation with his name in it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“Trusting me enough to talk with me.”
“We’ll be there soon,” she said, bypassing his comment about trust.
“Aye, that we will. I was thinking we should request a special council meeting, so we can state our business.”
“I wasn’t planning to be that direct,” she replied.
“If it was just you,” he countered, “you might get away with wandering from cave to cave hunting a First Born, but I don’t wish to tarnish the welcome I’ve always received from your kind.”
The cadence of vibration in the tunnel shifted, announcing their imminent arrival in Fire Mountain. Angus waited. If Eletea were insistent about keeping a low profile, he wasn’t certain what he’d do. There wasn’t much chance of him sneaking into the dragons’ homeworld undetected. He was about to point that out, when she eyed him, resigned.
“I’m not of a like mind, but we can do things your way. One of the things Cavet yelled at me about was I shouldn’t have gone off on my own without his agreement. Pointing out he’d never have agreed bought me nothing.”
“What are you saying?” Angus thought he knew, but wanted her to articulate it.
“Maybe a lesson I need to learn is how to play well with others—even when I know I’m right.”
“Your strategy may be right for you, but it’s not for me,” Angus said, keeping his voice gentle, non-confrontational.
“Which is why I capitulated.” The dragon clanked her jaws together. “You win, human. Don’t rub it in.”
“May I ask you a question?” He eyed her shrewdly, again almost certain of the answer, but thinking it would help her to hear it. At her nod, he went on. “Knowing the mess this created, would you do the same thing again?”
“Kill Mitha?”
“Aye.”
A feral light kindled deep in her whirling eyes. “Of course I would. She’s been so much trouble, I’m sorry I can’t kill her twice.”
Angus was still chuckling when the undulating gray-pink tunnel dissolved around them, and he walked out into the dragons’ homeworld. It was a place of heat and light. Familiar smells—sulfur and ozone—buffeted him, singeing his lungs until he inhaled deeply, breathing past the pain. A charred landscape spread around them, beautiful in its barrenness. Red, orange, and black scorched dirt stretched in all directions.
Most of this land was a continuous string of volcanoes and lava flows ringed around caves. Dragons could go for long periods with no food and little water. Their few water sources lay hidden deep within extensive subterranean caverns. Though far from plentiful, it had always proven sufficient for the dragons and small herds of wildebeest-related ungulates they fed on.
Double suns dipped beneath the western horizon, turning the sky a deep crimson, like a bloody gash across the world. Soon the only light would be from the ever-present fires.
