“W-we can’t let the head of the clan go out unaccompanied!”
Corin sighed. He’d thought having a retinue made him look powerful, when he first took over, and had enforced it.
And see how that ended up.He hadn’t even thought about the fact that he was being tailed by a group of draconic meatheads the night he went after Maya—until he realized that, from her perspective, he’d run her down with a full army at his back.
But he wasn’t going straight back to her, and he would be able to shake off this lot before he returned to Hideaway Cove.
Besides, these dragons were so … young.
“Why not?” He braced himself, and it took him a moment to figure out why. Leading out a troupe of young dragons wreathed in their own power was precisely the sort of chaos the Dans delighted in. “I suppose Aedan, Braedan, and Caedan will leap out of the woodwork at any moment, now,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Oh, er, um … they, er…”
“They’re not here!”
“Shutup, Han!”
So it was Han, after all. The boy stuttered into silence as another kid shushed him.Kid?They were all in their late teens or early twenties. Older than he’d been when he began training for his position.
But how much of the world had any of them actually seen?
“What’s the furthest any of you have flown, using your power for speed and to hide from sight?”
The ducklings exchanged nervous looks. “A few miles?”
“Over what sort of land?”
More nervous looks. “Mountains?”
“Some deserts…”
Places that were largely uninhabited, and had never seen the sort of concentrated pain Corin was used to flying through. He set his jaw.
“Listen to me,” he said sternly. “We’re heading to the forest estate up north. You’ll need to use your powers to hide yourselves. And there are certain dangers involved in that. You must be prepared…”
He’d been right to worry. The journey from the Blackburns’ town buildings to the forest estate was lined with hurts. His magic soaked them up, using them to speed through the air like a shadow, but the youngsters flailed in the air.
*Stay above the clouds,*he urged them.
*But it’s awful! It … it’s so sad. Is this all there is, down there?*
Corin’s dragon hissed unhappily. *Of course not. The land is full of happy memories, too. But our magic only feeds on the sad ones.*
*Are there other dragons who feed on less shitty feelings?*
*Quite possibly.*
*Lucky them.*
Privately, he agreed. Out loud, he stayed strong. *This is our power. We should use it, not be afraid of it.*
The conversation moved on. His younger cousins buoyed one another up, joking and supporting each other when the magic threatened to drain the joy from their veins.
It should have comforted Corin but instead he was troubled.
He was a hypocrite. He’d told the kids that they should use their magic, not be afraid of it, when he was terrified of what his magic could do to Maya. Or to anyone else who wasn’t a Blackburn. It was a weapon, a threat … and nobody from outside their clan could do anything against it.
How did his mother bear it, when she married his father, knowing what the Blackburns’ magic was?
