Gaius’ hand quavered, remembering his touch with Cassia. The feeling was powerful, intense, and so disorienting, it was the other reason he removed his hand nearly as soon as he placed it there. Never had he felt the particles within himself move so quickly. He knew how to create movement within the particles of someone’s blood to excite or calm them. But his own had been pure mayhem in that moment. He ought to be in control of his own person.
And lastly, he had pulled back for another scary reason: his natural attraction to Miss Cassia had magnified to an unnerving degree in so short a moment.
Gaius suddenly became aware of Cassia staring at him.
“Is he...normally like this?” she asked. How long had she been waiting for him to clear his thoughts?
“You mean the purring?” He focused on her. She nodded slightly. Gaius couldn’t help his smile. “Well, yes, but only with those he likes.” He watched her breath catch.
He wasn’t supposed to find her so captivating. There she stood in a plain brown dress, hair slightly unkempt, eyes flitting between himself and the dragon. She was a pretty girl, but it wasn’t her sheer beauty that drew him in now. It was everything—from Ember’s approval of her, to her interest in the dragon, to the way her eyes didn’t quite berate him like they had yesterday. Today those eyes looked nearly golden-brown.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to focus on the dragon.
“I remember the first time I discovered Ember as a boy. My mother brought me here to visit her sister. I couldn’t stand it inside and snuck out to muck around in these woods. I was missing Pemberley woods, that’s when I found this clearing. This dragon was just a baby at the time. I was terrified at first, until his cloven tongue licked me and then a small fleck of a flame, an ember, came from the dragon’s mouth.P-Ember-leyI thought. And his name was born. Since then I’ve been as spellbound as you are now.” He didn’t mention the mind connection they’d formed that day.
Cassia’s eyebrows drew together tightly. “But it’s not a...a spell, right? He’s real, I mean? This isn’t some sort of illusion?”
“Right,” Gaius nodded. “As real as they come.” He patted the dragon’s snout. “Will you fly for us boy? Show off a little?”
Ember seemed to glare at him, still slightly offended, but then his eyes turned to Cassia. Finally complying with the request, the dragon dipped its head and took three bounding steps until it lifted off the ground. He circled the large clearing a few times, blowing a resplendent blue and purple flame on his last pass, and then landed again.
“He’s genuine, alright.” Gaius rubbed his hands together.
“And he gives off far more than an ember now!” Cassia’s eyes sparkled as she spun around. Her gaze followed the prance of the dragon as he gamboled about them.
“Forgive me, High Mage Darkwood,” continued Cassia, her eyes leaving Ember for a moment and traveling to his own, “but I thought dragons were...a thing of myths, extinct. Are there many like him?”
Gaius scanned the ground. “Not now. During Merlin’s day there were large dragons, but those were hunted to extinction, especially for their scales because they would burn as fuel for so long. It was only toward the end of the dragon siege, when this smaller variety remained, that people realized that dragons helped hunt for strong magical ley lines and were, themselves, drawn to them. A dragon gains power through ley lines too. But too many people exploited the poor creatures, forcing them into slavery, chaining them and dragging them around to do the will of hungry magic hunters. Most died from such exposure. So only a handful of wild dragons remain. I was very lucky to find Ember.”
She swallowed, her eyes searching his countenance. “Anddoeshe help you find ley lines?”
Her gaze on his face caused him to feel warm. He peered into the forest. He shouldn’t allow her to wield such power over him. But his answer was simple. “No. I would never ask it of him and don’t allow others to use him for such. Though he did follow me back to Pemberley all those years ago. He spends most of his time in Derbyshire, so I know he likes my ley lines.”
Another pang of regret at trying to use the dragon to learn about Cassia pressed on Gaius’ conscience.
Suddenly Cassia stopped staring at him and became still, venturing a gaze over her shoulder. “I had better be going,” she said. “I seem to have lost myself. I shouldn’t have been here alone, especially in your presence. Please, forgive the intrusion.” She offered a brief curtsy and cut immediately toward the trees. Ember’s ambling gait ceased, and he sniffed the air. She hadn’t said good-bye to the dragon, and Ember hadn’t liked it.
Gaius mumbled a confused, “Good-day,” and walked back to the great beast. He looked into the animal’s eyes and let out a sigh. “She didn’t mean it,” he whispered softly. Why did she have to go so quickly? Why especially point out she shouldn’t have been there with him? Hadn’t she enjoyed it like he had? An unsettling feeling bubbled into his magic, setting his particles whirling again. Somehow small tendrils of his power seemed to escape from his person, unchecked. The forest darkened slightly, and the trees pulled toward him.
Ember tilted his long head and Gaius caught the dragon’s gaze. Gaius dropped his voice, trying to pull his power back in control. “I’m sorry boy. I shouldn’t have tried to learn about her through you.”
Ember expelled a small puff of purple flame and turned his head in the direction Cassia left. “Will you forgive me?”
The dragon didn’t move. “Do you forgive me?”
Finally Ember glanced back at him and bowed his snout nearly to the ground. He let out a low sound, something like a growl mixed with a whimper.
“You wish she would’ve stayed too, huh?”
The dragon looked back at him, his huge eyes wide. Gaius shrugged. “I don’t understand her either.”
* * *
As the distance between her and the dragon grew, Cassia quickened her pace. Her mind swirled with fragments of what just happened. She had never been too fond of horses or dogs or any living creature, but something about that great winged beast—that dragon—had completely bewitched her. Ember was beautiful. Everything, from his gait to his flight, his great looming eyes to his iridescent scales, had drawn her in so completely that she had spent several minutes alone with High Mage Darkwood without shivering in his presence. Surely that was the influence of magic.
An awareness of something bristled her hand. She drew up her palm and slowed to a stop. She turned over her hand and studied the front, back, each finger. The appearance proved completely normal, but she couldn’t shake the feeling within it. She pressed her eyelids closed as she relived the moment. She had focused on what the dragon felt like, but now that she revisited it, there was something more there. A great surge of something had shot through her, starting at her arm and radiating through the crown of her head and all the way down to her feet. A penetrating power had engulfed her, and if she focused on it now, it hadn’t completely left.
It was a small glowing feeling, near her heart. Had she ever felt that before? Not of course to the degree of when she touched Ember, but a small spark within her?
