Healed by Fire (7 page)

“As soon as she is ready,” Blu answered.

The prince started to move towards me, but
Blu growled and wrapped his tail protectively around me, lifting me
up to my feet.

The prince squatted down in an attack stance
and changed his hands to paws.

I smacked Blu’s tail. “You’re being rude and
possessive, both of you, and I don’t like it.”

Blu exhaled smoke. “I apologize. I did not
mean to offend you.”

The prince changed his hands back and his
eyes returned to normal. “I’m sorry. I am not usually like
this.”

“The Council will see you both now,” said
the combined voices of the Council who were walking towards the
center of the mountain.

I walked next to Blu, but felt the prince
behind me like a weight on my back. We stopped in front of the
Council and I dropped to the ground in a bow. “Thank you for seeing
us, Council,” I said as humbly as I could. I stood back up and
rested a hand on Blu’s shoulder for support.

“We have spoken to the Prince of Werewolves
and know he has spoken the truth.”

Then he was my mate! How? Why were we
separated?

The Council continued, “But we cannot
perform the recognition spell until the other man you are tied to
has arrived.”

“He should be here any minute,” said the
Prince.

I looked at the Council. “Wait. What do you
mean the other man I am tied to?! I thought you said that the
Prince was telling the truth about me being his mate?”

“You are my mate, but you are also bound to
another. It was an emergency action done to save your life,”
answered the Prince.

“But I do not regret it,” said a voice like
wind chimes.

I knew that voice and I definitely knew the
language with which that voice would normally speak. Sidhe. The man
behind me was a Sidhe and judging by the presence I felt, a very
powerful one.

What had I done in my life to warrant the
attention of the Prince of Werewolves and the… I turned around and
one look at his face released a torrent of memories. I screamed in
pain as I saw the Sidhe holding me while I was in pain, saw him
walk with me down a dark staircase and reassuring me with his
presence. Heard his voice in my head whispering that he loved
me…

I screamed again and my eyes flew open. Blu
was lying across me, humming and singing in the magic of dragons.
The pain in my head was subsiding, but my heart felt like it was
going to explode. I turned my head and found the Sidhe and werewolf
princes being held back by dragons. Yes, that was who he was, a
prince. Wow. Two princes?!

The princes looked at me with fear and
anger. Were they mad at me or with the dragons holding them
back?

“Blu, I think you can let me up now,” I
whispered. The Dragon Council growled angrily and I realized that
I’d slipped and addressed him informally. “I’m sorry, I meant to
say Draco-Blu. Please forgive my offense.”

Blu let me up, but pressed his nose to my
head. “I accept your apology. You’re in much pain still though.
Perhaps you should lie still while I heal you?”

“You cannot heal this pain, Draco-Blu.” I
looked at the princes. “They are the cause of the pain and I
believe only they know how I can fix it.”

Blu lunged across the opening and pinned
each of the princes to the ground under his talons. “What have you
done to her?!”

I rushed to him and put my face in front of
his. “No! You misunderstand! Don’t harm them!”

“Let them up, Draco-Blu,” said the
Council.

Blu hissed at the princes and let them up,
but not before pulling me back against his chest with his head away
from the princes.

The princes both began to glow
incandescently. “Step away from her,” they said eerily in
unison.

“We will begin our discussion now,” said the
Council distracting everyone.

I stepped away from Blu and walked to stand
in the center of the circle of dragons. “I am ready and will humbly
accept whatever decision you give.”

“You are a valued friend of the dragons and
we treasure your acceptance of us,” they said to me.

The two princes came to stand on either side
of me and I had to fight the urge to reach out and touch them. The
Council looked at the Sidhe prince. “You are unknown to us, which
is neither good nor bad as we are neither good nor bad, thus we are
willing to assist you if you meet our small request.”

“Anything for her,” he said without
hesitation.

The Council then turned to the werewolf
prince and their mood darkened. “You are very well known by us. You
almost destroyed the race of dragons, you and the vampire prince.
You are no friend of ours.”

“I will do anything you ask to make amends
for the devastation I caused and for my ignorant and childish
actions,” he said quietly.

“You are no friend of ours and there is
nothing you can do to make amends for what you have done, but we
love the hatchling you are mated to and thus we will agree to ease
the suffering in her if you agree to a test to prove your
loyalty.”

“Anything,” he answered without pause.

The Council was silent a moment and then
they said, “In addition to one task we will divulge later, you must
retrieve the lost dragon egg.”

I gasped and Blu snorted in surprise.

The werewolf prince asked, “Would this be
the green egg which the vampires found eighty years ago?”

The Council looked at him suspiciously.
“Yes, that is the egg we speak of. We have heard rumor that the
King of Vampires has it in his possession and plans to hatch it and
control the dragon within. We must not let this happen.”

“So, if I get the egg and hand it to you,
you will help Ar…Chandra regain her memories?” he asked.

The Council was vibrating with anger. Why
was he asking them to repeat themselves?

“Yes, if you hand the egg to us, intact and
safe, and pass one more test, we will assist the hatchling in
regaining her memories and thus returning her to you as she was
before she was stolen from you.”

The werewolf prince nodded his head.
“Alright, deal. I will need Ach…the Sidhe prince to fly down to the
bottom of the mountain to assist me, is this alright?” The Council
nodded their heads and the werewolf prince smiled. “Great. We will
be back as soon as we can with your egg.”

The Council was eerily silent as they talked
amongst themselves, probably pondering what he had up his
sleeve.

I turned to the princes. “You do realize
that the King of the Vampires could capture you and kill you,
right?”

The princes both smiled at me, their smiles
bizarrely similar. If I didn’t know better I’d say that they were
brothers. I wanted to get closer to the werewolf prince to smell
him, but decided better of it and planted my feet on the
ground.

The werewolf prince asked, “Are you worried
about my safety?”

I stepped back and then glared at him. “I
was just saying that it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a
girl who doesn’t remember you.” Both princes winced as though I’d
struck them. I hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but he was rude and I
didn’t like it.

The werewolf prince walked to stand a few
inches from me and whispered, “I would face the entire Flight of
Dragons to have you back in my arms and have you remember the times
we’ve spent together. I would cut off my arm and give it to the
dragons as payment if they would accept it. You are the only
important thing in my life and I will face a hundred Vampire Kings
before I let something as simple as death make me hesitate in
getting you back.”

The conviction and feeling in his voice was
overpowering and I would have fallen if not for Blu’s tail catching
me. “She needs to rest.”

The werewolf prince smiled at me and said,
“I’ll be back. You don’t need to worry about me.”

I moaned in pain as a memory of a weaker,
non-magical me stood on the porch of someone’s house watching the
werewolf prince leave somewhere and say those exact words to me.
Blu whisked me away from the princes and into my tent before I
could say anything else. He laid his head on me and sang until I
fell asleep.

~~~

I couldn’t believe that we had finally found
her. She looked even more beautiful than I remembered and yet I
could see that she was not herself. The need to touch her was
incredible, but I resisted so as not to cause her pain. She was so
strong and yet so fragile since she had not found herself yet. I
gripped Ares under the arms and jumped out of the Lair, letting the
wind catch us.

“Could you please
not
jump,” Ares
said angrily as his heartbeat quickened.

“I had forgotten that you were afraid of
heights,” I said.

He growled. “I’m not afraid of heights, I’m
afraid of you dropping me.”

We landed on the ground and I patted his
shoulder. “I wouldn’t drop you, Brother.”

Ares grunted, cleared his throat and then
howled as loudly as he could. I wished I could see the process of
his vocal chords and throat changing shape when he went from a
human’s throat to a wolf’s throat. Although I doubted slicing a
man’s throat in half to watch would then allow the process to
complete.

A bat screeched nearby and I smiled. Victor
loved being a bat when he could. I think he just liked being
smaller and able to fly.

A small black bat came to hover in front of
us and then changed into a six foot tall, black eyed man. If you
were human you might think he was simply imposing, but it was just
his raw, incredible power. Victor was one of the few vampires I
genuinely trusted and did not fear. He shook out his body and then
looked at me with a smile, showing just the tips of his fangs. “I
do enjoy being smaller and being able to fly.”

I pointed at him. “Stay out of my head.”

Ares sighed. “If only that were
possible.”

We’d known each other so long that most
times we knew what the other was thinking without the use of
telepathic abilities so Victor’s abilities were not as intrusive as
they once were.

Being one thousand years old made years seem
like a human’s minutes, but the last one hundred years had felt
like a lifetime. I had finally revealed myself to Artemis in
Lyngvi, trying to claim her, only to come up against Ares and the
bond they had already developed. Then, after many fights and
binding her to save her from Hera, I had told her that I loved her
and showed her my memories only to have her taken from my by my
mother. I understand why Hera had done it, but it didn’t make the
pain at being separated from Artemis any easier. Especially when we
hadn’t been able to find her where Hera claimed to have left
her.

And now Ares had been the first to find her,
the first to make contact with her. I hated that he had been able
to find her first, but I could not direct that hate at him. I’d
watched him suffer each night with only Koda there to console him
as he lost the ability to hold shape and turned into a wolf. Not
being able to maintain shape was something very uncommon for the
Prince of the Werewolves. Every night he dreamed of her being taken
and then turned into a wolf, howling his grief until he passed out
from weariness.

A wolf’s grieving howl was the most eerie
and heart wrenching sound I’d ever heard. It made it that much
worse to feel the same pain and sorrow echoed in my own heart. My
soul howled right along with his as we ached to see and touch
her.

The day Ares had come back from the town to
confirm it was her he had seemed defeated instead of happy. Now,
seeing her and knowing she did not recognize us, did not feel for
us as she had when we’d last seen her, hurt incredibly. She had
been the love of my life since I had first seen her and she had no
clue who I was.

What had she been doing since we last saw
her? Had she found a mate? Had she slept with someone else? What if
she had a family? Could we really give her back her memories if she
was already happy?

Theseus had said she was living in a witch’s
coven and that she didn’t smell of a man, but it had been a hundred
years; she could have mated with a human and had a family between
now and then.

The thought of another man touching her made
my fists clench and my skin start to glow.

“Achilles,” Ares said softly, “It’ll be
alright.”

I turned away from the concern on his face
and ground my teeth together. “You have already established a bond
with her. Of course you think it’ll be alright. I am, yet again,
left to wait.”

“Would you like me to answer the questions
you were asking yourself a moment ago?” Victor asked me quietly. “I
have seen some of her memories and know some of the answers.”

It was tempting, extremely tempting, but I
shook my head. “No, thank you. I shall wait to hear them from her
lips.”

Even if I hadn’t been bound to her and she
hadn’t been my match, I wouldn’t have been able to leave her or
forget her. She was perfect. She was the only woman I wanted. The
only one I thought about. She was everything to me.

Ares rested his hand on my shoulder and then
turned to Victor. “We need the dragon egg your father has.”

“That is the price the Council asked of
you?” Victor asked in shock.

Ares smiled. “Yes, well I don’t think they
knew that you could just pop in and get it and come back.”

Victor smiled. “Yes, translocation is a
handy ability.”

It would have been a much handier ability if
he had had it when we were captured one hundred years ago. Of
course, we had all learned some new ability which would help us
should we be captured again. None of us enjoyed being
imprisoned.

Victor closed his eyes, chanted a few words
and then disappeared. Ares turned and met my eyes. “She’ll remember
you too, Achilles. She won’t get only the memories of me back.”