The dragons were swooping down, all grace and beauty and danger. They shifted as they landed, looking impossibly godlike, as they were dragons one moment, skimming the ground, and the next they were stepping out of the air as easily as taking one last step down.
Fieran landed lightly and lowered me slowly to the ground since he was so much taller than me, keeping his arm around my waist until I had my footing.
I swallowed a thick mouthful of my nausea and wished I had another mint but didn’t want to ask.
He took my wrist, surprising me, and then pressed a little foil-wrapped candy into my palm.
He moved away from me without acknowledging the gesture.
But as I unwrapped the candy, I caught Nixi staring at me. She seemed to dislike me, just like Maura, for reasons that made no sense to me—weren’t we mortals too far below the shifters for their distaste?—and so I held eye contact with her as I popped the candy into my mouth.
She just quirked an eyebrow, still staring me down. It was hard to feel as if I were above her contempt when my stomach was threatening to turn itself inside-out.
I promised myself that if I did vomit, I’d find her first. I followed Fieran’s broad back as he moved away.
We were at the edge of an enormous rock scrabble, grown over with moss.
Dairen and Az stood at the mouth of one of the caves.
“This is a big cave system,” I said, pretending as if I were here to be useful as a guide to them all.
“Do we know where it leads?” Fieran asked, frowning as his gaze swept along the ground.
“It goes deep,” I said. “Lots of different routes, but it runs under the village and through the mountain, too.”
“He means the rip on the other side,” Nixi said.
Fieran said gamely, “I need to know both.”
I nodded, feeling embarrassed.
Anayla emerged from the mouth of the cave, a length of rope tied to her belt and also looped up in her hand, where she had been gathering it. Az held the other end. Dairen gripped a rope, too, his still uncoiled and slack into the cave.
“I hate it,” she said, stripping off her gloves before mopping her forehead with her arm.
“It’s hard being petite,” Dairen said sympathetically.
Az reached out and pulled something out of her hair, his face expressionless as he shook it off his fingers.
“Are there spiders in my hair?” She touched her hair, wide-eyed. “I don’t care that you’re the size of the Yera lighthouse, Dairen, you can go in next time!”
“No spiders,” Dairen told her, then smiled at Az, who was already giving him a quick shake of the head. “Thanks to Az.”
Anayla shrieked and stroked her hand down her hair, bobbing around as if to make herself inhospitable to spiders. I wasn’t sure how that would help, unless arachnids were as prone to nausea as I seemed to be.
“Let’s not let the mortal know even shifters are scared of spiders,” Dairen chided her.
“And we have other friends here,” Az observed, which brought Anayla to a sudden halt.
She and Dairen turned to look at Haron, Nixi, and Ander.
Just then, there was a wild scrabbling sound within the cave, just before Maura heaved herself out.
“That rip is deep inside, and I fear it’s not the only one. We’re going to have to come back with proper gear. Preferably in the morning,” she was saying, before she saw the others, who they were all staring at.
Then she said, “What the hell are you doing here, Nixi?”
Nixi’s eyes blazed, and Ander stepped between the two of them. “You knew we were being sent to reinforce you. You must have known to expect Nix—of course I’d bring my best.”
