Page 20 of Dragon’s Rogue

Assuming she’d bought it. Hell, for all he knew she could have stolen it, inherited it, killed a village full of people for it.

His mystery sorceress had just become even more mysterious. And a little scary.

And so had his fellow thief. Out of all the expensive baubles in Blaze’s gallery and her vault, this was the one she’d gone after.

She probably knew exactly what it was.

And now Zane wanted to know, too.

Chapter 11

Zane listened to Thorne and Tyr arguing about what they should do next. Whether it had been stupid to break into Blaze’s house.

Whether it would be even stupider not to try it again.

“We could just go to her door,” Tyr said. “You know. Ring the doorbell? Ask her for the Seal?”

“We tried that, numb-nuts. Remember the gate? That she wouldn’t open for us?”

“We could fly over that.”

“And explain it how?”

Tyr went silent. Then, “We could kidnap her.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You want to kidnap a dark witch? And keep her where? For how long? What do we do with her afterwards, when she’s all pissed off and wanting to curse us?”

“Maybe she’ll fall in love with you and give you the Seal.”

That got Zane’s attention. If anyone was kidnapping Blaze and making her fall in love with him, it was going to be Zane.

Shit. Even he realized how insane that sounded.

To keep from killing his brothers, he started picking up the papers Tyr had knocked to the floor. An embossed invitation with gilt borders fell out of a pile of mail, addressed to Thorne at his art gallery. The gallery was a legitimate business, and well-respected, even though Thorne left the day-to-day management of it to someone else. For Thorne, it was just a useful front for tracking down, buying and selling magical artifacts.

Zane picked up the invitation and froze, gazing at the gold lettering. The answer to their problems, just lying in a pile of trash.

Maybe there was something to this destiny thing.

“What about this?” he asked, holding out the invitation.

Thorne glanced at it. “What about it?”

“You’re invited to Jean-Claude D’Amboise’s annual suck-up-and-kiss-ass party on Saturday.”

“So what?” Thorne said. “He tries to get me to go every year, and every year I tell him to fuck off. It’s full of dark wizards and dealers in shadow artifacts. You know Jean-Claude has his fingerprints on every purveyor of magic in Portland. If people who aren’t dragons and couldn’t annihilate him with a few well-placed belches want to stay in business, they all have to…”

Tyr raised his head, eyes sparkling. “They have to go to the ball. And kiss ass.” He stared at Zane. “You think Blaze McKenna will be there.”

“She has to be,” Zane said. “I say we conjure up a few tuxes and go make D’Amboise kiss our asses. And introduce us to Blaze McKenna.”

Thorne tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. Finally he nodded. “Okay then,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to a party.”

Zane left the Batcave—not by the elevator, but through the ancient wooden doors carved with the Guardians’ coat of arms. Beyond them was a huge stone atrium, big enough for three full Draken to stand side by side. Stone tunnels led off in several directions, carved through the ridge by dragonfire. He stood for a moment, indecisive.

He should go upstairs and grab something to eat. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but there were old movies on Netflix, or the gym to work out his excess energy. Or he could fly up into the night, higher and higher, where the air grew thin and the stars grew impossibly bright, until his wings wouldn’t hold him and he hurtled down back to earth.

But he could feel one of his dark moods stealing over him, when guilt and sorrow and loneliness ate away at him until he wanted to find the darkest cave he could, crawl into the back and sink into dreams of a woman with red-gold hair, a treasure worth more than caves of gold.