“She was a good woman.”

  “My mother?”

  Maeve nodded. “I didn’t know her well, but I know she’d seen more than most. I could see it in her eyes. She had seen something, and likely was staying away from something. I don’t know what it was, and doubt that even Bingham would know, or perhaps he would. Maybe he will tell you if you ask kindly.”

  “I doubt it,” Ty muttered.

  “Not with that kind of attitude, Ty.”

  He chuckled. “Why do you think that she had seen something?”

  “Because while she was often happy, there were times when she would stare off into the distance, and she had that morose look of person who contemplated what they had lost. I’ve seen it before with people who come to me. Usually, they’re much older than your mother, which makes me wonder just how much she might’ve seen before she came to Zarinth. It must’ve been horrible.”

  Ty couldn’t help but wonder if it might have to do with everything else that his mother had done since she was here. She had always been searching for dragon relics, but it didn’t fit with the description that Maeve gave.

  “What do you think she was after?”

  “To be honest, I don’t really know. Maybe just answers.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Ty got to his feet, tucking the box under his arm. He gave Maeve a hug and then went out into the street. Once there, he looked up at Ishantil. There was a faint trembling again, a steady rumbling. It built heavily, and though he could feel that rumbling around him, he wasn’t sure if there was any danger to him.

  Before he headed too deep into the city, he began to feel something pulling on him. It was from the dragon, he was certain of it. This close to Ishantil, and the other Tecal, Ty had come know that feeling, and he recognize that it came from Gayal or Dorian or one of the other Tecal.

  They wanted him.

  Maybe they’d found something.

  He wanted to uncover what Roson James and the other Order members were up to so they could return to the capital, and he could return to his training and understand his dragon. It was time for him to go.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ty hadn’t gone very far in the city when he noticed the pair of Dragon Touched.

  They had a distinct appearance to them, but it was less than about their appearance than it was about the fact that they were in the city at all. He worried about their sudden appearance. Ever since the Dragon Touched and Roson James had attacked, he’d been especially concerned about them. He was the only one of the Tecal who had that fear, though.

  He could feel the drawing of the dragon. He wasn’t sure if it was Ishantil or if it was simply the smoke dragon that pulled on him, but before heading up the slope, he felt that he needed to investigate something else. He could take the time follow the Dragon Touched. Gayal would have to understand.

  A hint of steam rose from the distant sight of Ishantil. There was no trembling, nothing to suggest that the volcano might erupt at any moment, for which he was thankful. His time in the city had proven uneventful for the most part. He supposed that he should be thankful of that. Though every so often, he found himself wondering if there might be more to Ishantil, especially given what he had felt.

  He knew he needed to be careful.

  Ty weaved through the crowd. People had returned to the city in droves. Ever since Roson James and the Dragon Touched had been defeated, and the threat to the city had resolved, more and more people had poured out of the capital and headed through the jungle and toward the city. Perhaps it was the fact that the king had put out word that Lothinal had been defeated.

  Ty wasn’t sure that it had been.

  “Watch where you’re going,” someone said as they elbowed past him.

  Ty glanced over, and the smoke dragon flared within him briefly. It was a surge of power that flowed from the dragon, through him, as if the dragon wanted to offer a measure of protection. It was probably unnecessary. He didn’t need any protection from the people of the city.

  It was one of the Dragon Touched, but not one that he’d been following.

  They carried a pale white dragon remnant in one hand.

  Ty didn’t recognize the person, though he didn’t recognize many of the Dragon Touched.

  “I’m sorry,” Ty said. “Can I help you?”

  The man had a long face, and he frowned with a sour expression as he glowered at Ty. “Do you think you have the right to speak to me?”

  How was it that Gayal and Dorian didn’t understand that the Dragon Touched posed a danger?

  Ty felt as if he’d been trying to convince them of that truth, but they viewed the Dragon Touched as still loyal to the king, though he knew better. Perhaps some of them were, but increasingly, Ty didn’t know how many that might be. Others had to be loyal to Roson James. He wouldn’t have maintained his grip on the Dragon Touched as tightly as he had otherwise.

  “Perhaps you don’t recognize this,” Ty said, revealing the small medallion he wore that one of the Dragon Touched should be able to use to identify him as Tecal. Gayal had given it to him after having defeated Roson. Ty wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to wear it openly, which was why he kept it beneath his shirt. Times like these forced him to be more open about his connection to the throne.

  The man frowned, pressing his lips together, and started to move his hand, the one holding the dragon remnant. He pulled it out, as if he were going to point it at him.

  Ty had to wait. The smoke dragon could respond. He was certain that it would.

  There was nothing. It was almost as if the dragon didn’t care that he had someone like this attempting to threaten him.

  Or perhaps there was no threat, and therefore no danger. That was the only thing that the smoke dragon seemed to respond to.

  “Lower it,” a voice said from a nearby alleyway.

  There was another Dragon Touched, this one shorter and younger, with a shock of yellowish hair.

  Ty didn’t recognize him, either. It wasn’t that he would recognize all of the Dragon Touched. His time in the capital, studying with the Tecal, had put him into greater contact with more of the Dragon Touched, but he had only come to know a few of them.

  “You heard me,” the man said.

  Ty glowered at him.

  The man from the alleyway stepped forward. “Don’t mind them. They’ve been away from the city too long. They tend to forget the way things work, and there never were many Tecal to begin with.”

  At least this man seemed to recognize his medallion. “That’s something that will change,” Ty said.

  The younger man watched him for a moment, then he started to grin. “By the Flame, I certainly hope so. We could use more Tecal.”

  “Is that right?”

  “With the kind of business that we’ve been dealing with these days, it seems to me that it would be more than helpful to have the Tecal around.” He leaned forward. “I was here when Ishantil nearly erupted.”

  Ty tensed. Did this man know him?

  “Heard the role the Tecal had. Can’t say that I know what to make of it. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to someone like me, but I’m willing to acknowledge when I don’t understand a thing.” He glanced back at the other Dragon Touched.

  “That’s for the best,” Ty said. “What can you tell me about—”

  Ty began to feel the steady burning within him again. He glanced up to Ishantil, but there was no trembling, nothing more than the traditional steam that rose around it. The mountaintop wasn’t even visible in the daylight. There was a hint of a fog that hung above the upper reaches of the mountain, the jungle obscuring everything else.

  “What do you want me to tell you about?” the Dragon Touched asked.

  In the distance, Ty noticed one of the Dragon Touched doing something near a building, the dragon remnant in their hand glowing with a soft orange light, some flame that Ty could see, but could not exactly tell what they were doing with it.

  The pull deep within him called out. He wasn’t sure what it was, nor why he should feel it so strongly. It surged again.

  Could it be that they were doing something here?

  He frowned. “It seems I need to get moving,” Ty said. He needed to investigate the Dragon Touched, but he would do it in a way that they wouldn’t know that he investigated them.

  The other man shrugged, but then flashed a smile. “We’d be happy to welcome the Tecal to work with us in the city. We need to make sure order is maintained. That’s what the king wants from us, you know.”

  Ty wasn’t sure if the man was telling him the truth. Out here, closer to Lothinal, where it was simply over Ishantil, it would be easier for the Dragon Touched to have been corrupted by Roson James. “I plan on working with the Dragon Touched soon. As do the other Tecal.”

  The man watched him, and then nodded, as if he expected nothing less. But as Ty turned, heading toward Ishantil, he couldn’t help but feel as if the man’s gaze was on him.

  Ty slipped his hand into his pocket, feeling the items that Maeve had given him as he headed away, the heat still flaring within him, and the call of the dragons drawing upon him. By the time he reached the edge of the city, he had passed several other Dragon Touched, and was no more comfortable with what he observed from them than he had been the very first time.

  He found his way through the jungle, moving quickly, and it wasn’t until he neared the lava lake when that sensation began to ease. The power of the massive lava pit spilled out into a pool, leaving a heat rising up around Ty. The energy was incredible, but he had grown to know it quite well, a feeling of power that he had always been aware of when he had been growing up in this area—a sense of energy and of something more.

  Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the power of the lava flow here. The pool that bubbled occasionally, giving off the energy of Ishantil, reminded him of everything that he had ever known since he was a young child. Now that he had connected to the smoke dragon, however faintly that might be, he still could feel that energy, but was not impacted quite as much.

  A loud shriek from out in the forest caught his attention, splitting the silence around him. The velum, violent creatures that lived in the jungle, were irritated today.

  “Why did they cry like that?” Dorian asked.

  Ty looked over to see Dorian standing along the shoreline of the lava lake, his arms crossed in front of him as he studied the heat. He had lost almost all of the dragons he had connected to, leaving him only the shadow dragon, which he wrapped around him like a cloak of darkness. Every so often, it would flutter, making a faint movement as the dragon he connected to reacted, but then it stopped. It seemed almost as if Dorian attempted to withdraw into that cloak, the same way that he had withdrawn ever since losing his connection to the dragons.

  “We’ve never known,” Ty said. “The velum prowl these trees, and they seem to be connected in some way, but…” He shrugged, looking up at the jungle canopy and seeing nothing there other than what he already had. There was only the swaying of the branches from some unfelt breeze, but there was little more than that.

  “I find it unsettling,” Dorian said. Wrinkles formed around the corners of his eyes, deepening his scowl further.

  Since surviving the attack, Dorian had looked much older than when Ty had first met him. Even now, in the time since the attack, when he should have recovered, Dorian still looked older than Ty thought he was. Though Ty would never tell him that.

  “You get used to it,” Ty said, tearing his gaze away and turning back to the lava lake. He had come along with Dorian to scout the shoreline, but he had also come with another purpose.

  Ever since the attack, Ty believed himself connected to the dragon buried within the lava lake, and he thought that if he could reach for that power that he might find some connection to that dragon, though so far, he’d been unsuccessful in doing so.

  It irritated him.

  Not only did he have a struggle with the smoke dragon—though the longer that he worked with it, the closer he came to a stable connection with it—he also struggled with this dragon.

  Of the two of them, the lava dragon should be the easier one for him. Not because of the power, though Ty suspected the lava dragon was far more powerful than the smoke dragon, but because of his lifetime proximity to Ishantil, and his knowledge of that power. He would’ve expected that would have granted him some better innate connection, a kind of understanding. Only it hadn’t.

  “I don’t care to get used to it.” Dorian frowned as he stared across the lava lake. “Once we finish our patrol of this area and clear it out, I intend to return to the capital.”

  “Just you?”

  Ty straightened, and found Gayal patrolling along the tree line, her dark shadow cloak hanging motionless. She was a petite but striking figure, and with her dark hair and matching black eyes, she looked almost as if she were carved out of the shadows themselves. Connecting to a shadow dragon seemed fitting, especially given how powerful the shadow dragon had made her.

  “She has other responsibilities.” Dorian turned Ty. “As will you.”

  Ty snorted. “You want me to return to my training. I get that.”

  It was a far cry from the days that he’d spent sneaking, thieving, and looking for the next score. Now he was respectable, in a way. He still couldn’t reveal to everybody what he could be and what he could do, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have some respectability. In time, he would progress and become one of the king’s Tecal, something that seemed impossible even a few months ago.

  Dorian’s eyes were clouded by a darkness that had lingered in his eyes ever since losing his dragons. He looked older, haggard, and had begun to seem almost lost. “None of us will be able to keep training. If they push their attack, we will all be needed.”

  Most of the Tecal had returned to their posts after the attack. With Dorian no longer having access to his wind dragon, they wouldn’t be able to send word to them as easily but given that Lothinal had proven a willingness and an interest in attacking, they had to be vigilant. There was only so much the Dragon Touched could do to protect the kingdom. The Tecal, and their dragons, offered a different layer of protection.

  “What if they’re still attacking?” Ty asked. “When I was in Zarinth, I ran into the Dragon Touched—”

  “They are not the problem,” Dorian said curtly.

  “Are you—are we—sure? Roson James led them long enough that he has to have influenced them. What if he uses them against us?” He wanted to remind Dorian that they had few enough Tecal the way it was but knew that wasn’t necessary.

  “We’ve been keeping watch,” Gayal said softly. “It’s the rest of Lothinal we must be concerned with.”

  He glanced from her to Dorian. He shouldn’t push the issue of the Dragon Touched, though he was sure that they were wrong. They couldn’t be sure if they could trust them. Ty certainly didn’t.

  If nothing else, he would keep an eye on them himself.

  “How long do you think we have?” Ty asked.

  Dorian stared off into the distance, and the shadow cloak fluttered for a moment, as if he were losing control over the dragon. “We have dealt with the threat of Lothinal incursion along the border for many years. None of us have really known how they resisted, but now that we understand they have access to some dark power, we will have to be ready. We will have to fight.” He looked over the lava lake and fell silent.

  Ty took a deep breath, and he tried to reach for the energy of the smoke dragon, straining to feel for that burning power buried within him, but it simply didn’t respond.

  Occasionally, he could feel the smoke dragon fluttering through him, a stirring of burning energy that suggested to him that the smoke dragon would respond, but then it disappeared altogether, leaving him thinking that the smoke dragon had abandoned him.

  How could he ever control that feeling? There was a measure of understanding that Ty needed, and as much as he believed that it came from trying to control that energy, it was more about finding what the dragon needed from him so that he could ensure the two of them could work together. The burning deep within him came more easily these days, but not easy. Never easy. He had to control that.

  But it was more than just that burning he needed to master. It was the strange connection that he also had to the dragon in the lava lake. It was one that Ty had not come to control at all, though increasingly he thought that he would need to. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to master that connection as well.

  “I’m curious to see what Lothinal looks like from the peak of Ishantil,” Ty said. “Especially after what they did, and how they tried to push on our lands, and the way that they thought to influence the Flame. There has to be something that we might be able to find. Perhaps some way of tracking them, and—”

  “You will find nothing.” The gaze she turned on him suggested that she knew why he asked. Not that he expected to see evidence of the Lothinal working with the Dragon Touched, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he were to see that. “We have found nothing. Others far more experienced than you have gone looking and have not uncovered anything. But that’s not to say that you don’t need to be ready.”

  “You will be asked to participate,” Dorian said. “Which is why you must continue your training. You need to get control over that dragon.”

  At least Ty no longer feared that Dorian was trying to steal the dragon from him, nor worry about him trying to siphon that energy off. Though every so often, Ty could feel Dorian focusing on him, as if Dorian wanted to try and see if he could detect the dragon, and if he might be able to pull on it the way that he had when Ty had first been training.

  These days, the dragon, when he was aware of it, remained wrapped up within him. It was almost as if the dragon wanted to ensure his safety, though he wasn’t sure if that was all it was. Maybe it just wanted to ensure its own safety.

  Ty wanted to say something more to Dorian but decided against it. In the time since the attack, some aspect of him had changed, and Ty knew better than to continue to press him. Instead, Ty made his way over to Gayal and joined her as she stood within the tree line. The trees around the lava lake were tall, and some of them had charred trunks from where the flame touched them, burning along their surface but leaving the leaves untouched. There came an occasional rustle in the trees suggesting that the velum were there and watching, but they never made their presence fully known. Heat radiated off of the lava lake, unpleasant, but something Ty had grown accustomed to. It was a dry heat, not the humidity of the rest of the surrounding jungle, and nothing at all like the strangely arid heat of Carn. Gayal had her head tipped off to the side, and for a moment, Ty thought she might be listening to something, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

 

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