Green eyes.He knew my mother’s name. My name. I didn’t know what it all meant. A young teenage boy about thirteen or fourteen years old peeked his head around the corner and smiled atme.
“It’s safe, Geoff. You can come meet them,” the father told the kid, and footsteps sounded on the staircase. Logan sat eerily still next to me, clutching my hand. Neither of us said a word, not evenmentally.
“They’re like us?” the sonasked.
The father looked at Logan,unsure.
They’re likeus.
Logan nodded, and the father then nodded to the son. I was about to just blurt it out, ask if he was skyborn, when the woman came down the stairs. She was waddling, one hand around her heavily swollen belly.Pregnant.
Oh. My. God. A baby. A babydragon?
“Sloane!” she gasped and waddled faster to get closer tome.
I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just had my mouth hang open as weird sounds cameout.
“You look confused…” she surmised correctly. “You know what you are, right? Your mother toldyou?”
You know what you are…I couldn’t deny it any longer. They were skyborn. They had tobe.
“No, she didn’t.” I answered, once I finally found my voice. “I found out … after anaccident.”
“Oh, honey.” Her face fell, she picked up a photo album off a shelf, and came to sit next to me. Her long, curly blond hair cascaded around her petiteshoulders.
“You came just in time. The baby is due in two weeks and we weren’t sure what we were going to do when she had her first shift,” sheexplained.
Whoa. That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind when I’d seen herpregnant.
I put a hand out. “I’m sorry. Can we back up? How do you know my name?” I felt like I was in theTwilightZone.
She smiled and patted my hand. “Yes of course! I’m so sorry.” She opened the photo album and pulled out a photo. It was of my mother and I right before she got sick. I was thirteen and had weird boobs and acne. Logan tried to hide a smile andfailed.
“Your mother kept in touch with us—with all of us—to make sure we were still doing okay. Still concealed. She sent us pictures and letters,” she toldme.
Okay.
“My mom was a druid. Why would she want to help conceal skyborn?” There, I said it. Both words. Druid andskyborn.
She didn’t look alarmed, just smiled. “Lily was nothing like those monsters. She helped the queen create us. Took an oath to protect us until death. Don’t you knowthat?”
Confirmation. Right there, in that one sentence everything became clear. My mother did help create them; I’d seen that through the Eye. Or at least the beginning of that journey. My mother had spent her life protecting Logan’s kind. My kind. My throat tightened, as I tried to keep the emotion from spillingover.
Eva took this inopportune time to blink into room withoutwarning.
Everyone shrieked, including me, and the husband brought his hand to his waistband, where a weapon must have beenhiding.
Eva threw her hands up defensively. “Oops. Sorry about that. I’m with them. I’m a sorcerer that helps the skyborn aswell.”
The mother eyed me skeptically and I nodded. “Sorry, she’s with us. We weren’t sure if this was a trap, and we would needbackup.”
The woman relaxed. “Of course. Have a seat.” She gestured toEva.
Once Eva was sitting and I was sure the husband wasn’t going to shoot her, I thought back to what the wife had said about my mom. “So … my mom helped hideyou?”
The woman nodded and produced a small red ruby amulet from her shirt. The husband and son did the same. Tears filled my eyes when I recognized them. My mom went through a jewelry-making phase. I thought nothing of it, but I remembered her making these. Tons ofthem.
“Her magic, it’s in these. It’s what keeps us seeming human, unable to shift,” the womansaid.
