The great stones of the fairy circle lay toppled over like storm-crushed trees.
No way in.
He stopped within reach and tossed his head back, shouted his rage to the dark sky, waking the birds in the trees. He would murder the men who had done this. He would pick off their limbs one by one. Slowly.
He picked up the nearest stone, then hurled it, and then another and another, their crashing weight shaking the ground. His chest heaved with murderous rage.
He didn’t know how much time passed before he quit and turned to look for Einin. Then he roared again, because she was nowhere to be seen.
If she ran, gods help me…
He scented the air. When he caught her scent nearby, he calmed some. She was just hiding behind a tree.
“Come out. I will not hurt you, lass.”
She did so with caution, stopping as far from him as the clearing allowed, hesitating. Her gaze cut to the stones, then, filled with questions, returned to him. Her voice held undisguised awe as she said, “That’d be the fairy circle, then?”
Draknart wanted to pull trees up by their roots. He restrained himself. “Aye.”
“Who would destroy such a wonder?”
“Men.” He could smell a faint trace of their scent.
“Why?”
“Why do men do anything? They have no more reason than sheep.” He ground his teeth, plotting bloody murder. “I’d wager one of their priests was involved.”
Draknart leaned closer to the stones to catch more of the scent so he could hunt down the villains. His dragon blood demanded a swift dispensation of justice. He would—
Wolves howled in the distance.
Einin took several hurried steps toward him.
Draknart sniffed the stones one last time, the scent faint. The men had been gone for days, perhaps as long as a sennight, and he could not fly until first light.
Einin rubbed her arms against the chill of the night. Her stomach growled. She kept looking in the direction of the wolf howls.
“We’ll return to the lake.” Draknart swore under his breath as he strode back to the path that had brought them to the circle. He went slowly, to make sure she could keep up with him in the darkness.
On the sandy beach, he picked up enough driftwood to last the night, then built a fire. He could cough up a spark or two even in his human form when he tried hard enough. When the goddess had cursed him to be halfling, she also had to bless him, to keep balance. So she’d blessed his human form to retain some of his dragon abilities: keen eyesight, sharp smell and hearing, extraordinary strength, and the odd spark here and there. Not enough. Not nearly. He didn’t want to be a man with a dragon’s senses. He wanted to be dragon.
“You can wash up, if you’d like. I’ll keep track of the wolves,” he told Einin, then he went back to the woods for the rabbit he scented nearby. Just now, he didn’t have the patience to start fishing as a man.
The hunt was short. He was barely away from Einin at all. When he returned, she was knee-deep in the water, her britches rolled up to midthigh. Draknart dropped the rabbit next to the fire and turned his gaze from the strip of Einin’s bare skin that caught the moonlight.
She hurried out of the water, rolling her britches down, avoiding looking at his naked body. She used her sword to skin the rabbit first, then to gut it, then she ran a sharp stick through the small carcass and held it over the fire.
She was quick and efficient. Draknart left her to her task and set her from his mind. ’Twould not do well to dwell on the thought of spending another night with her. He had enough problems. He strode to the lake and walked in, ducked under the water, and held his breath, swimming far and fast, his mind a hornet’s nest of questions.
As the fairy circle has been destroyed, can it also be rebuilt?
The stones, yes, he could put them all back together. But what about the magic of the place? Would Belinus himself be needed for the opening of the portal? Were the circle whole again, would he come?
Draknart swam as he thought. When he surfaced, nearly in the middle of the lake, he still did not have an answer. Nor did he gain it while he swam back. As he walked to shore, he shook the water out of his hair, then returned to Einin.
He dropped next to the fire, opposite her. She immediately offered a hind leg to him on the tip of her sword. He shook his head. He was tired of bite-sized meals.
She kept her gaze on him as she ate a juicy strip of roasted meat. “Do you not eat when you’re a man?”
