“We have to get down to the party or they will send someone up here to look for us.”
“The bed is too soft to leave. Our bed. One bed to rule them all.” I laughed at my joke.
“You can hibernate once we finish sorting out our friends.” She pulled on my hair a little mean.
“Or we can hibernate now and let our friends be mature adults and sort out their own problems.”
“Wait,” she said. “Have you met our friends? We literally scooped half of them out of eight kinds of trouble and brought them back here.”
I cracked an eye open. “Good point. I don’t want to burn down the keep—yet.”
I took time to craft a meticulous structure for a spell to layer Evie in a royal purple gown of a thousand gossamer petals. It flowed around her curves and teased me with her body. I had never been much for crowns, but I would make one for her to go with the dress. Evie was convincing me to do a lot of firsts, whether or not she knew it. I took her over to the mirror to show her the gown I created, and she blushed.
“I… I…”
I buried my face in her hair. “I hope that means you like it. Try something with me.” I held out my hand.
“I thought the adventures were over, Ward.” She took my hand anyway.
“They’re just beginning, Evie. You don’t make magic the way I do. We’ll have to learn together how you do. When you search inside yourself, what do you see?”
“The mate bond.”
I sent her a brief pulse of lust through it, and she gasped. “How are you doing that?”
A smile spread across my face. She was too adorable. Seeing her marvel over all the things I learned as a cub was refreshing. “You’re doing it too, viper. Just not on purpose.”
She crashed a wave of love through the bond in her typical fashion—an ocean that nearly drowned me. I locked my legs so they wouldn’t buckle. “A little less,” I panted, working the structure of a shield spell that would help save me from her wonderful but awkward attempts. She could dial it down enough for me to speak again.
“Next to that, or surrounding that, should be your own magic. I access mine through a mathematical structure, but yours could be different as a dragon.”
She looked down at her perfectly human hands. “I guess I have to accept I’m a dragon at this point.”
“Dane confirmed Brad was right. Everyone in your village has at least some latent magic in them from many years of mixing with the races in the Harrowlands. Since only the elves were aware of you, it had to be them. Your bloodline manifested as a shifter when you met me.”
“You mean the kidnapping?” She said it with a smile, like she was proud of me.
“You’re never letting that go, are you?” I summoned my formal wear—bear fur edging a cape that covered a doublet with a deep ‘v’. Buttery leather pants held Evie’s avid gaze.
“Why would I when I can hold it over you for the rest of our lives?” Evie giggled, and I growled into her neck, hugging her close.
“You’ve been deputized to wrangle the village humans. The dragon time will be a win, according to Dane.”
Evie laughed. “Okay. I’m definitely going to need magic wielding then. Let’s go. This can’t be harder than the snake with legs part.”
I understood we didn’t need to do this now, but I wanted to face all of Harrowood with confidence. “With your permission, I will take some of your magic first and show you how I do it. Hopefully, it’s easier to see how you’ll access it after that.”
“I… I trust you.”
I closed my eyes against the satisfaction those simple words brought me and I reached through the mate bond and out into her vast ocean of magic. I was stunned at the size of it. Thank Godds Evie’s response to guarding the Heart of Veretis was ‘it will be an excellent addition to my collection’ rather than ‘I now have ultimate power over all shifters in the Harrowlands’. No shifter would want the Heart in another’s hands, so she should be safe from most of our hunters. No one had to know they should be more worried about the fact she had enough magic to destroy us all.
I took a handful of her magic and whispered the structure of a Ferromancy spell. The crown it built on her head was light as a feather but as elaborate as any the Queen of Flesh might have made. Gold chains dripped down her long, warm, brown hair and brought out her gold highlights. The gold bear's claws gripped in dragon scales studding the sides were a nice touch. At the front, rays of otherworldly light matched her bright magic. Because it was of Evie’s magic, it suited her perfectly. I just gave the magic a way out. Still, I wanted her to love it.
“We can make something else if you want,” I told her.
Her eyes misted as she looked in the mirror. “It’s beautiful. I want you to have one, too!”
I didn’t need one, but the fact she wanted us to match was too irresistible. “Whatever you want, Evie.”
