The cold morphed to panic as I searched for a way out of this. “You say you don’t know what’s coming, only that it’s something big. I can stop it. I can figure it out. If I do, there will be no need for the Dragon Fae to come. You obviously think very highly of me, so believe me when I tell you I can do this.”

  For at least a minute I pled with my eyes for her trust. When her lips parted, I didn’t know if I had won it. “Very well. You stop whatever attack is coming and prove to us that you’ve eliminated the threat and I can convince the royal courts not to announce the arrival of the Dragon Fae.”

  Meilin stood, her business here done. Alistair and I followed suit. She created a portal right there in the living room, the first one I’d seen since I’d come Earthside three years ago. It led into the grand meeting chamber of the Circle of Sorcerers at the Starlight Palace.

  Two steps in front of me was my home world. Once through the portal, I could close my eyes and appear on that beach right next to Julien overlooking the lake. I’d explain to him what had happened, what I’d done. I’d make him understand. I’d apologize, tell him how much I regretted the hurt I’d caused. With my cuff, we could have weeks together, maybe even months before I was found out. I could hide away with him, never use my magic, and no one would ever know I was there. My hand actually reached out toward the blurry picture of home. But I couldn’t do it. Julien didn’t want me anymore. That was my dream, not his. I couldn’t survive his rejection again.

  Meilin looked at Alistair. “I’ll expect regular reports.” Then she stepped through the portal, and it was gone.

  10

  I stared at the spot where the portal had been, not quite knowing what to do next. Beside me, Alistair stood at the table, patting the spot in front of my chair. “Sit with me.”

  The sting of his betrayal pierced deep, but I liked to think that I was adult enough to not let irrational emotion rule me. Logically, there wasn’t much justification for my feeling of betrayal. Alistair had only ever looked out for me, defended me, protected me from the repercussions of my actions with the Circle. The most he was guilty of was not being upfront with his motivations. He hadn’t meant me harm.

  Except for the fact that he did it all because he thought—hoped—that I was the Dragon Fae who would die young and alone. That was where the sting of betrayal came from.

  Alistair’s hands closed around my shoulders. “Please, talk with me. We’ve always been upfront and honest with each other.”

  I broke free of his grasp and faced him. “Except you haven’t been. All this time, you thought I was the Dragon Fae, and you didn’t say anything.”

  He held his hands in front of him, palms up, trying to explain himself to my closed-off mind. “I didn’t want to influence your actions one way or the other. If you were she, then everything would happen according to prophecy. If you weren’t, you didn’t need to know that I ever had the thought.”

  I refused to believe that Alistair was that blind. We’d worked together since I was a teenager. Together we’d seen more of the world than most. We knew how the game worked. “This entire thing has been engineered by the Circle and the fae court. They’re using this prophecy, this sacred legend of ours, for political purposes. How can you be all right with that?” Despite myself, I stepped closer to him. I needed his answer because I couldn’t make sense of this on my own.

  “I’m not going to stand here and pretend like the court’s motives are pure. I respect you too much for that, and you’re not naïve enough to believe it.” He tilted his head to the side the way he did when he wanted to make sure I understood what he was saying. “But I don’t think they’re wrong. I’ve spoken with the Oracle. The court may be exploiting the prophecy, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re the fulfillment of it.”

  The idea that Alistair had spoken to the Oracle behind my back deepened my sense of betrayal. “Oh, so now it’s a fact?”

  “I think you’re exactly what our people need. You’re strong, you’ve seen this conflict here and at home, and you’ve proved over and over again that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to fight for the cause, to fight to protect magic folk and humans, to preserve Elustria. Even your history plays into the prophecy. The Dragon Fae doesn’t have parents.”

  I thrust my finger toward his chest, using the motion to release the physical energy that urged me to hit him. “I don’t have parents because mages killed them.” No one got to offload their deaths onto the shoulders of prophecy. “There are thousands of others like me. All it means is that mages are dangerous and need to be stopped. That’s it.”

  Alistair took my hand into his, smoothing out my fist, calming me the way he’d always been able to. “And that’s all we’re asking you to do. How is this any different than what you’ve been doing all along?”

  The difference was that even as I lied about myself every day, the work I did was still more honest than pretending to be the Dragon Fae. I’d lied to humans, to mages, but never to myself and never to my own people—except for Julien, and that lie had cost me everything.

  Before I could answer him, Deacon yelled from the other room. “Alistair, Nadiya, get in here!”

  Shit, we’d left him alone with Christoff. There was no telling what could have happened. Alistair reached the door a split second before I did, and I nearly tripped over him in my hurry to get inside. Christoff lay lifeless on the ground, his eyes staring vacantly ahead.

  “What did you do?” I ran to Christoff and knelt next to his body.

  “I didn’t do anything. One minute he was squirming around, and the next, this happened.” Genuine shock filled Deacon’s eyes. He didn’t cause this. But I didn’t understand why he just stood there.

  “So why don’t you heal him?” That was supposed to be one of the advantages of having a dragon shifter forced upon me as a partner.

  “My powers can heal—they can’t bring someone back from the dead.”

  Christoff’s eyes produced no signs of life, and no breath escaped his body. Where his pulse should’ve been, there was only an eerie stillness. “Fuck.”

  “How did he do it?” The puzzlement in Deacon’s voice contrasted with his usual confidence. “I thought you couldn’t kill yourself with your own magic.”

  “You can’t. Even if he could have, you voided him, didn’t you?” Alistair asked me as he knelt on the opposite side of Christoff.

  “Of course I did.” Lightheadedness unsteadied me as I stood. What could I do now? My only lead to what the mages were planning lay dead at my feet.

  “Ah, here.” Alistair’s fingers fished around inside Christoff’s mouth and emerged holding what appeared to be a cracked tooth. “I’ve seen this before in the movies they show here. He poisoned himself.”

  “Shit.” I’d never known of a Directorate operative killing himself. Whatever secrets he protected, they’d been worth his life. That meant Meilin was right: something big was coming.

  “Yes, this is bad, but Christoff was a bad guy. Aren’t we happy he’s dead?” Deacon asked in a puzzled way that would’ve been adorable were the circumstances any different. I knew from our sparring session that he was competent in combat, but those skills didn’t transfer to the clandestine.

  Alistair rummaged through Christoff’s pockets, pulling out a cell phone and hotel key card. “He was our best link to what’s going to happen. With him alive, we could have given him truth potion and found out everything. Now we have nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” Deacon said. “His death will at least delay whatever the mages were planning.”

  Alistair stood and pocketed the items, looking at the body one last time before focusing his attention on us. “Deacon’s right. It’s unfortunate, but not insurmountable. We still dealt a blow to the mages today. We need to debrief. Let’s go back to the hotel. I’ll send word to the Circle to clean this up.”

  The three of us held hands in a circle, and Alistair ported us to my hotel room. As soon as we arrived, he ported himself back to his room to make contact with the Circle. According to protocol, a handler didn’t communicate with the Circle in the presence of their agent unless absolutely necessary. Alistair liked to say it was for my protection, that he kept my exact location secret even from our superiors in case we had a mole. I thought the rule had more to do with insulating the Circle from the strong opinions of their agents in the field.

  That left me alone with Deacon. I didn’t know what to say to him. I could only hope that he hadn’t overheard the conversation in the living room, but that seemed too far-fetched. Luckily for me, he was too busy tormenting himself for us to have any awkward chitchat about my supposed identity as the prophesied savior of Elustria.

  Deacon collapsed on the bed in defeat, his eyes heavy with regret. “I didn’t mean to let him die. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Despite the problems facing me, I felt sorry for Deacon. He was a rookie, and all rookies made mistakes. That’s why the Circle shouldn’t be sending them into the field so soon. They certainly shouldn’t be throwing a new agent into the middle of the fight simply to manipulate a prophecy. “It’s not your fault. These mages use human tactics. I wouldn’t have seen that coming.”

  The concept of suicide didn’t really exist in Elustria. A person’s magic couldn’t be used to kill themselves. We had depression, not as much as humans, but in Elustria we dealt with it with magic. It would’ve been impossible to expect anyone to foresee a mage committing suicide. We operated in extreme times.

  “Thank you, but I don’t need excuses. I’m here to do a job.” His stern tone deepened my respect for him, which only frustrated me.

  I’d made no secret of the fact that I didn’t want another partner to worry over. What Meilin suggested was more than just a typical partner bond. If she had it her way, Deacon and I would be entwined as closely as two people could be. Not only that, we’d be responsible for the fate of Elustria.

  I couldn’t let my mind wander down that path. It wouldn’t get that far. Even though Deacon made mistakes, he was earnest and learned from them. Together we’d be capable enough to uncover the Directorate’s plot and stop it.

  We had to be.

  11

  Waiting for Alistair to return and debrief us, I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, strapping my dagger’s sheath onto my calf and concealing it in my boot. Earth clothes all seemed impractical to me, business attire most of all. My heels were a lost cause somewhere outside the conference room from earlier. I couldn’t say I’d miss them.

  Alistair returned with sandwiches. We ate at the small table, getting a few bites in to raise our blood sugar before we started to untangle everything that had happened. The digital clock on the nightstand read seventeen minutes past noon. How could it still be so early in the day? In the space between two meals, my entire world had changed. Now I was left to figure out how to right it with nothing to go on.

  “Now that Christoff is dead, it’s more important than ever that we analyze exactly what happened this morning,” Alistair said, looking at me. I knew he wanted to know about the meeting, but I needed to find out something first.

  “Deacon, did you sense any latent mages?”

  “No.” His answer came quick, not a second of doubt or hesitation. “No one in that hotel had magic except for you, Christoff, and myself. There was nothing else.”

  “Then I don’t understand. If he wasn’t recruiting latent mages, then what was he doing?” After sitting through that ridiculous meeting, I could only assume that Christoff had gone off the deep end. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t have spoken to me as if I were an agent from the Directorate. He wouldn’t have committed suicide, unless that was “transcending his mortal experience to ascend to a higher plane.”

  “What exactly happened at that meeting?” Alistair looked between me and Deacon.

  I didn’t even know how to begin to relay the strangeness of what I had witnessed. “There are no words to describe it. It was a room full of humans cheering and chanting and encouraging each other to be better. I didn’t understand any of it. They kept talking about ascending to a higher plane, being your best self, nothing about magic or mages or Elustria or anything.”

  “So Christoff was preaching to these people?” Alistair asked.

  That would have at least made a little bit of sense. “No, he didn’t say anything. He sat and observed just like I did. Afterward, he spoke with me and Bob, the presenter. Then we went off and spoke privately. He seemed pleased to tell me that everything was going according to plan and that I should report back to the Directorate that they were ready to move on to the next phase.”

  “What would the mages want with a bunch of humans?” Deacon asked.

  “Perhaps the Directorate is using them for intelligence,” Alistair said. “We know they have an interest in human technology. Perhaps these humans are giving them information about a weapon of some kind.”

  The thought almost made me laugh. I shook my head. “No, not these humans. They weren’t scientific. Definitely not. And as far as I know, there’s not another meeting until next week. We can’t wait that long. Christoff did say something about there being meetings all over the world, but I don’t know where or when they are.”

  “I know we want to find out what’s going on, but why the hurry?” Deacon asked.

  How much to tell him? I wouldn’t lie to my partner, but I also didn’t want to get into everything Meilin had told me. “The Circle wants us to discover the Directorate’s plan and thwart it before the Feast of the Dragon.” It was a half-truth. It was certainly more truthful than saying I was the Dragon Fae.

  “Here.” Alistair handed me Christoff’s cell phone and hotel key card. It still had the little cardboard holder with the room number scrawled on it. “You should go check it out. We don’t know when he was next scheduled to check in, but since he was meeting with you, we can assume he didn’t have immediate direct contact with the Directorate. See if there’s anything in his room that can be of use.”

  “Do you have a tellenium box for me?” The last thing I needed was to end up like Sasha.

  “There’s no need,” Deacon said. “I can handle mage objects just fine. Even if they’ve rigged them, my magic won’t trip anything.”

  “Really?” I looked to Alastair for an answer. Given Deacon’s lack of experience, I didn’t trust that he knew what he was talking about.

  “Yes. It’s one of the reasons the Circle assigned him to you. Given how Sasha died, they figured this would help make your work go faster.”

  Finally, an upside to having a partner.

  “They don’t set traps for shifters,” Deacon said. “You know how little mages think of shifters.”

  I snorted. “Trust me, no one thinks little of dragon shifters.” Truth was most people in Elustria weren’t sure if dragon shifters still existed. Given the value of dragon scales, blood, talons, etc., it behooved most of the shifters to keep their existence secret. In reality, though, the thought of a dragon shifter terrified most people.

  I swept my hair up into a ponytail and threw on a baseball cap. I’d blend right in with the tourists. “All right, let’s go.”

  I focused back on the mission. Humans weren’t any use to mages, not even as slave labor. Humans couldn’t travel through the portals between our worlds. Whatever the mages were doing with them, it had to be here on Earth. And I only had five days to figure out what it was and how it fit into the Directorate’s master plan.

  12

  Adrenaline sharpened my senses as we approached Christoff’s room. I didn’t know what traps may be lying in wait. As far as I knew, Christoff had no idea we were on to him before his death. But if I were him, I’d have security on my room.

  A few doors away from our target, Deacon held his arm out in front of me. “Let me inspect it first.”

  I should have been glad his head was in the game and on the same track mine was, but the insinuation that I couldn’t take care of myself grated. Pushing my personal irritation aside, I removed the room key from its holder and handed it to him. Professionally, it was the right call. The threat of a magical trap I could inadvertently trigger outweighed the risk of him making another blunder.

  Deacon approached the door, sniffing the air as he went. An older couple passed us, giving Deacon a funny look. I smiled and nodded. Their expressions relaxed, and they returned the nod. For some reason, in this part of the world, a smile and nod put most humans at ease. When Deacon reached the door, he placed a palm on it and took a deep breath, his eyes closing. My breath caught when his eyes flew open a second later.

  “Are you sure this is the right room?” he asked.

  I matched the number scrawled on the outside of the key card holder to the number on the door. “Yeah, it’s the same number, unless it’s written in code.” If that were the case, we’d have a beast of a time cracking it. Codes were not my strong suit.

  “No, it’s probably right. There’s the faintest bit of magic, just not the amount I was expecting.”

  We weren’t in the clear yet. Mages usually had plenty of magical devices. There could be tellenium blocking magic from Deacon’s senses. I let him open the door and followed him inside.

  The room appeared in immaculate condition. It was hard to tell that anyone had stayed here at all. The bed was made, and no personal effects were left out. “Let’s make this as quick as we safely can. The Directorate could send someone at any minute. Is the room clear?” I asked.

  Deacon focused on the closet and didn’t even glance at the rest of the room. “Yeah, it’s good. The only magic is coming from here.”

  Deacon searched the closet while I took the rest of the room. In the bathroom, toiletries were laid out next to the sink, the standard human shave kit, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a little bottle of mouthwash. This man had kept his cover well. The discipline of not even allowing himself some of the comforts of home in the privacy of his room impressed me. No wonder the humans in the meeting had no problem accepting him as one of their own.

 

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