Furee Born: The Dragon Mage Series Book IV (16 page)

She opened her eyes and
sucked in a much-needed breath, a breath that should have burned, because she
was already engulfed in the heart of dragon flame.  Only she did not burn.  It
just took her a bit to come out of her own head and realize what it meant. 
Then she started to laugh, and the tears she shed now were hysterics mixed with
profound relief.  The fire cut off abruptly as both Graedon and Rendal stared
at her in consternation, and in Rendal’s case, confusion.

Riva smiled at them, a
bedraggled mess huddled on the floor, but physically unharmed.  “Dragon fire
does not harm a dragon mate,” she finally said triumphantly.

Graedon gnashed his teeth
as his biggest threat, her own fear, floated away on a puff of smoke.  Rendal
roared his own rage when he realized what it meant.  “Who?” he bellowed,
incensed.  “Who did you mate?  I will kill him with my bare hands.”

She looked right at the lord
and gave him the name.  “Furee,” she said with a satisfied bite.  “And I would
be more worried about what he does to you, Lord Rendal.”  She wiped her face of
tears and dirt with the scratchy dress and sniffed a wobbly smile of challenge
playing on her lips.  “What do you think he will do when he catches up to you?”

Lord Rendal hissed at
her, but she should never have taken her eyes off the real danger in the room.
He shifted and came at her from the side and struck her across the face hard
enough that she slammed into the unforgiving stone behind her.  She nearly
passed out, but she was awake enough to feel the whips of dragon magic flaying
her back and shoulders.  It felt like somewhere between fire and a whip in
furious revenge-driven hands.

“I will peel the skin
from your bones,” he shouted, his voice echoing in her head before it clamped
down with a vice.  “Heal me!”

The pressure in her head
built along with the mangling of her skin.  She screamed.  But she screamed, “No!”

Her last thought before
her eyes went black from the pain was that the old man was stronger than he
looked.  But before she could fade away, the pain in her head released and the
beating stopped, and Riva had enough thought left to look up.  What she saw was
a great bronze dragon standing before a new hole in the wall.  She had not even
registered the sound of his coming.

The great beast
transformed into Lord Theron of Seatown and had her wondering if maybe none of
this was real and she was just having a nightmare after all.  Because it looked
like Lord Theron, but his soul was twisted and dark and there was a dark blight
that clung to him like a virus.  She slipped into the calling
darkness
and felt no more pain.

Furee followed Clare
until he turned a final dark corner and ran into a host of the beasts.  These
ones looked to be close kin to the ones they fought in the tunnels of Isolation
the last time.  A mix between what looked to be crocodiles and moles, a combination
only noted in passing before he ordered Clare out of the way so he could blast
them with his fire.

Instead of leaving
though, Clare spoke.  “This is where I left her.” 

Then, she shifted into a phoenix
and herded the creatures closer together, poking and prodding while they
snapped at her and fumbled over each other to get to her.

“Clare?” Furee growled
out.

“Do it,” she said.  And
he took her word for it and loosed his flame, hoping he could stop if it looked
like she could not take the heat.  His fire roared over the creatures, his
anger such that his flame was hotter than it had ever been.  They literally
melted down and sloughed off.  Clare as a phoenix bathed in the flame where
even a dragon would be uncomfortable if not burned by this time.  And once the
creatures stopped screaming in terror, he heard the phoenix singing.  The sound
was so foreign and beautiful, like something out of a past life, half
remembered, that it had Furee faltering slightly, his flame sputtering.

When he stopped his flame
completely, Clare the phoenix shook off the excess as if she was stepping out
of a bath.  Furee narrowed his eyes at her glowing phoenix form.  “Does your
brother transform into a phoenix as well?” he asked, his voice careful.

Clare transformed with a
laugh, assuming her newly cleaned huntsman garb with the extra animal ears,
eyes, claws, and fangs, complete with freshly braided hair and two swords
across her back.  Strange since Furee was almost positive she had left one
buried in a beast a few turns back.  Transformed mage as far as he knew could
bring their belongings through a change, but he had never heard of one creating
them out of nothing.  That was a dragon magic, and while it was logical that
she should have expended more energy using her power the way she just did, she
actually seemed to glow brighter.

“No,” she said on another
laugh this one almost taunting.  “He has tried, but he can only transform to
creatures he has seen.”

They were both moving
down the next tunnel while he kept an eye before them and one on the mage
beside him.  He did not realize he was leading right away, but when he did
notice, he realized he knew which way to go.  Despite being somehow magically
cut off from his mate, he knew the direction now.  His heartbeat increased, and
he felt all his senses sharpen as the dragon came closer to his surface.  She
must be close. He lowered his voice and readied his sword as they walked and
talked.

“Whereas you can
transform into . . .?”

“Anything I see or
dream
about.”

“You dream of the phoenix?”

“I dream of many things,”
Clare said with a strange look coming over her face.

Furee just had one more
question he needed answered before he stopped and let this go, for now.

“And after your brother
has seen you as a phoenix, he still cannot transform into it?”

Clare shook her head, a
smile flitting across her face.  “No, not my dream beasts or my half forms, and
it drives him crazy that he can’t.”  Then her smiled faded away.  “Do you think
he’s alright?”

Furee would have been
tempted to pat the girl on the head if he had not already seen her in a fight. 
There were times, like now, she still looked so much like the girl he had first
met.  But the moment disappeared quickly as she tilted her head and a small
dainty growl drifted from her lips.

Then she said what his
own senses were telling him.

“Riva is up ahead.”  She
crinkled her nose in disgust.  “And Rendal.”  Then her eyes widened and she met
his look.

He nodded his head, still
growling from the thought of Lord Rendal around his mate.  But they had bigger
problems.  Furee said it before she could.  “Graedon . . . and Theron.”  “The
Lord of Seatown,” he said almost as an afterthought.  He had a feeling someday
the man would be a problem they would be hard-pressed to solve, but for now he
was not the danger to his mate.  Rendal and Graedon had much to answer for. 
Furee felt his flame shoot higher in his anger, even as he was moving forward.

“Theron?”  Her eyes
widened and her cheeks heated; even in the dark of the cave he could see it,
and then those green eyes narrowed flashing mage green.  She lifted her head
again trying to smell what he had.  “I don’t smell Theron.  Somebody else, but
not Theron.”

Furee growled, shaking
his head, and moving her slowly and carefully behind him.  “Theron smells a
little different than he used to,” he muttered and then went for his mate.

Riva regained her senses
slowly, aware as she did that not enough time had passed.  Her healing power
was a warm blanket covering her, repairing damage fast and furiously, while trying
to find power from Dracon around them to pull into the healing.  But the connection
to Dracon was broken so she concentrated on healing that first but it fought
her.  She had no concept of anything happening outside her body and the ground
she was lying on, but she felt a change at some point and knew that Furee was
near.

She wanted to wake up
fully and join her dragon mate, but she had so much to do right here.  That was
when she realized it was not just her wounds she was trying to heal, but somehow
she was poured over Isolation Mountain itself trying to heal the very earth. 
When she came to that realization, she knew that it was wrong, not her place. 
Her gift was for flesh and blood.  She tried to return her healing power just
to her body, but it was a fight for each inch back she made.  The mountain
wanted to be healed. 

By the time she made it
back to her own body completely, she was almost too tired to wake up, but after
what she had just experienced, healing her paltry wounds was as easy as a
thought.

Fully healed Riva opened
her eyes.  She blinked at the sight before her.  Lord Rendal appeared to be
hiding in the corner in a very un-dragon-like way.  His horror-filled eyes were
on what looked like a wind tunnel, and looking around, she saw Lord Theron standing
before the tunnel, a satisfied vengeful gleam in his eyes.  But where was
Furee?

Her eyes turned to the
hallway on their own volition as Furee came through the cave opening.  She
blinked at the sight of his fire burning down the length of his sword, and the
look on his face was both beautiful and terrifying.  She was so relieved to see
him she sagged to the floor, but however she tried to reach him through their
mate connection, something still blocked them.  Riva stood on wobbly legs, and
by the time she had herself up, he was there to make sure she did not fall.

At the first touch of his
hand, it was like being deaf and then suddenly hearing all the sounds around
you at once.  They both grabbed their heads in reaction, and then she was in
Furee’s arms and his fire wrapped around her so tightly that she wasn’t sure
either of them would be able to move.  She sifted through his memories with an
ease that both worried her and assured her.  The assurance because she could
see he was unharmed and so was everyone else.  The worry was for what he would
find when he did the same, which was about a second after her if his bared
teeth and roar of rage were any indication.  He turned eyes of burning ash to
the wind tunnel where something started to scream and thrash in agony. 

Riva realized then what
was in the tunnel.  Lord Theron was finally getting his revenge on the man who
tortured his sister, Asha, and killed his mother.  Furee hissed in both
pleasure at the sound and displeasure because he was not the one inflicting the
pain on the old dragon.

Riva just wondered how
she could get them to stop.  She could understand both Theron’s and Furee’s
wanting to hurt the dragon that had caused so much pain, but something about
this was not setting right with her.  She was all set to step forward when a
sound or a movement drew Riva’s eyes, and she saw Clare just outside the door. 
She had lost her animal transformation characteristics, and with her hands
wrapped tightly around her stomach, she seemed to huddle in on herself; her
eyes both sad and pain-filled, she looked less like the warrior Riva had seen
at Seatown and more the soft woman she hid most of the time.  Riva could
understand the sadness, the whole situation was sad, but the pain?  Then she
realized she was not looking at Graedon.  Her eyes were on Theron, as if he was
the one in pain.

Riva opened her healer
sight and gasped at what she saw.  She had not been dreaming when she saw Lord
Theron as twisted and wrong before.  Even as she watched, his light seemed to
be swallowed up more and more by the dark of old blood.

Riva sucked in a breath
and shook her head in denial at what she was seeing.

“Stop!”  She yelled the
words before she knew she was going to say them and struggled to free herself of
Furee’s fire.  His arms locked down around her and he shook his head, looking
from her to the sight of Theron torturing Graedon.  He suddenly looked pained
but not for the right reasons.

I am sorry, Riva, I let
my rage at your pain cloud my mind.  You should not have to see such a thing as
this. 
 He turned to lead her from the room, but she broke
free just as they were passing Clare.  Riva was so distraught by what she knew
was happening she was having a hard time forming thoughts, let alone words.  Riva
grabbed Clare’s arm and held fast, drawing both her mate’s and Clare’s eyes. 
She knew what she had to say. Riva looked at Furee but spoke the words for both
of them.

“We have to stop this and
heal Theron.  If he kills Graedon, it will destroy what is left that is still
of the light.”

Furee studied her frantic
eyes and seemed to be considering her words.  Clare sucked in a breath as if to
speak, but it was Lord Theron of Seatown behind them who spoke next into the
sudden and daunting quiet. Had he killed Graedon already?

“You have something you
wish to say to me, Lady Riva?”  The words were rough, as if they traveled over
stone, but the tone behind them was both challenging and dark.

They all turned to see
Lord Theron standing so casually, his back to the whirlwind that held Graedon. 
After everything she knew from Furee’s memories that Lord Theron had done with
his powers today, it was more than a little daunting that he seemed more than
willing to hold Graedon all day without taxing himself a bit.

Furee stepped in front of
Riva and she turned fully, raising her chin to look in Theron’s black eyes
around Furee’s bristling back.  She had to suck in another breath when she saw
the red haze that gathered over the black of Theron’s eyes like a veil.  Riva
wrapped her hand around Furee’s arm and firmed her resolve, trying to get out
from behind her mate. 

Please, Furee, I must do
this.

He allowed it with only a
clenched jaw to show his displeasure, but plastered himself to her back, his
fire wrapping her up.  Riva realized it was the best she would get; she faced
both Theron and the creature he was becoming.

“Asha asked me to help
you, Lord Theron.  The blood stone you carry is infecting you.  I can heal you
if you will allow it.”  She licked her lips while he raised a sardonic brow at
her words.  She went on a little more frantically.  “You need to stop torturing
Lord Graedon and allow me to heal you before it is too late.”

“Stop torturing him?” 
Then Theron laughed, and before her eyes she could see the darkness spread.

Graedon shrieked like a
mindless animal, making Riva realize he had stopped when she distracted Theron,
but from the look in the Lord of Seatown’s eyes, he was too far gone to be
distracted so easily again.  They needed a better distraction.  She turned and
flashed a look at Clare, but she didn’t need to.  The mage was already moving.

Clare stepped right into
Theron’s space and thrust her hands into his chest shoving him back or trying
to; he moved not an inch, but the screaming stopped, and all they could hear in
the silence that followed was a mindless whimpering.  Theron’s full attention
was lazered in on Clare – the red fading back to black.  Riva breathed a sigh
of relief, but Furee seemed to tense up even more at her back when Clare pushed
him again.

Theron looked down at the
young titian-haired mage with challenge in her eyes and smiled. 

Riva swallowed, her
throat suddenly dry.

She is his mate?

I believe so,
Riva answered Furee’s thought, her eyes never leaving Theron and Clare. 
Remember
how he came for her in Dracon?

He killed Brax for
touching her. 
Something about the grimness in his voice
had her looking back at Furee over her shoulder.  She did not like the look in
his eyes any more than she liked the sudden ice on her spine.

Yes.

This is a bad idea. 

Furee?

But Furee had moved his
eyes back to Theron and Clare just as Clare finally spoke.