Dragon's Curse (Heir of Dragons: Book 2) Read online

  “There,” she said when she was finished, stepping back to examine her handiwork. “It isn’t Girl Scout worthy, but it should hold until we can get you some better help.”

  Dani took one look at the bandages and burst into tears. She threw her arms around Kaylee. “Th-thank you! I was s-s-so scared! I didn’t know what to d-do!”

  “You should have told me, or Jade or Maddox,” Kaylee said gently, patting her back. “We could have helped you. Believe it or not we kind of know about this stuff.”

  A flash of naked fear crossed Dani’s face. Her fingers fumbled with the hem of her shirt Kaylee had rolled up to bandage her arms. Kaylee caught a glimpse of purple splotches before Dani tugged the sleeves down and wiped her eyes.

  “I-I’m not as strong as you. I couldn’t face it, so I thought…”

  “You tried handling it yourself. I think that’s pretty strong.”

  Dani gave her a watery smile. Then she glanced at the clock. Her eyes widened. “You have to go.”

  “I can’t leave you—”

  “You have to go now—”

  “The Convocation—you’re a dragon-kin, they need to know.”

  “Kaylee,” Dani spun her around, gripping her arms so hard Kaylee could feel her claws re-emerging, digging into her skin.

  “Breathe,” Kaylee reassured her. “It takes a few times to get it under control. Alastair will—”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Dani said. She shook Kaylee. “Promise me!”

  “Dani, you need their help. This is only shifting. Once you get more elemental magic you don’t want that going off whenever.”

  “Promise. Me.”

  “No! I won’t let you go through what I did.”

  Kaylee heard a car squeal into the driveway. If it was possible, Dani went even paler.

  “Go!”

  “I need my backpack.”

  But Dani grabbed Kaylee and nearly wrenched her to the front door. They had nearly reached it when a man walked into the family room. Time seemed to stop. He looked to be in his late fifties with graying hair going bald and wearing a rumpled suit. A messenger bag was slung over one shoulder. His stormy expression only grew worse as his gaze moved from the busted-in front door, to Kaylee, to Dani’s wrapped arms.

  Dani’s mouth opened and closed like a choking fish. “Dad, this isn’t—she was just leaving.”

  “What is this?” Dani’s dad said in an eerily calm voice. “I thought I told you, a hundred times I thought I made it clear, no friends. No one. Period. And…” he refocused on Dani’s arms. Then on Kaylee. Kaylee could almost hear an audible click as his mind made the connection.

  “She knows.”

  “Daddy—”

  “She’s one of them dragon freaks. Just like I warned you about.”

  In a second his bag was thrown to the side and he was advancing on Kaylee menacingly, and Kaylee forgot that he was an adult, that he was Dani’s dad, just a normal man, but still her magic surged, the temperature in the room stirring.

  “You stay away from here. Get it?” Dani’s dad said, spittle flying from his mouth. “No daughter of mine is going to be some—some beast. You come here again, you’re dead.”

  He grabbed Kaylee’s arm and hurled her out the door.

  “Go, Kaylee!” Dani yelled from inside. “I’ll be fine, go!”

  “And you,” Dani’s dad said, turning on her. He slammed the door shut.

  Bile rose in Kaylee’s mouth as she sat on the sidewalk, her palms stinging from scraping the concrete, her arm throbbing from where Dani’s father had grabbed her. She expected at any moment to hear screams from within, but the ensuing silence was almost worse.

  She should…she couldn’t.

  But Dani…told her to leave. She would only make it worse.

  And Alastair…she said she…

  More than anything Kaylee wanted to run back inside and pummel and punch every enemy she found there. But there was no enemy, only a father and his terrified daughter.

  So, fighting every cell screaming at her, Kaylee stood, and fled back home.

  Kaylee drifted like a phantom through her house. Her feet moved of their own accord, her mind still stuck, frozen on the still image of Dani’s face as the door slammed on her.

  Useless, Kaylee told herself. She’d been useless. She’d been helpless. Wasn’t that the entire point of her training? So that others would never get hurt protecting her, but that she could instead protect those she cared about?

  Kaylee punched the wall. A bump upstairs answered and the light in Reese’s room flickered to life, causing Kaylee to blink.

  “Kaylee?”

  Reese was nothing but a silhouette at the top of the stairs. Kaylee’s heart stuttered. For a moment—just a moment—she had seen something else. Something who was not her brother, but instead a person with blades and a hatred for her that could only be quenched by violence.

  Then Reese stepped into the light and the sensation passed.

  “Kaylee? Why are you standing in the dark? You okay?”

  “Fine,” Kaylee said. She dragged her feet the rest of the way upstairs. “Where is everyone?”

  “Mom and Dad went out to dinner and Jeremey’s at a friend’s house.”

  “Okay.”

  “I thought you were at Randy’s—is that blood?”

  Kaylee looked down at the sleeve Reese had grabbed. Brown stains were dotted like pinpricks on her shirt. She hadn’t even considered how she might look after leaving Dani’s. Hopefully the blood was the only sign that anything was wrong.

  Reese pulled her into his room. “Where are you bleeding? If he hurt you I swear I’ll kill him.”

  “Randy didn’t do this.”

  Reese wouldn’t be dissuaded. He sat Kaylee on his bed and began brushing aside stuff on his desk. Kaylee hadn’t realized how much his room had changed since she’d last been in it. Before, it seemed as if there wasn’t enough wall to hold all his posters, or enough shelf for his books. He and Edwin would have gotten along fantastically, Kaylee realized. She had forgotten how much Reese liked to read.

  But all that was gone now. The extent of what Reese had returned home from college with included a single trunk and a pile of textbooks. This new space felt sterile. Sparse.

  Another crash. A pair of running shoes fell off the desk as he went through the drawers.

  “Out running?” She said, trying to talk about something that would help calm him down.

  “New workout routine,” Reese said absentmindedly. “Better than my last one.”

  Kaylee blinked. Since when did Reese like working out? Even she hadn’t found exercise all that appealing before her dragon-kin training, and she’d still managed to move more than he had.

  “Band-Aids, Band-Aids,” Reese muttered.

  “Reese,” Kaylee said, realizing she’d better put a stop to him before he tore what little he had left apart. “The blood isn’t mine.”

  Reese slammed the drawers shut. “Then whose is it?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “If you’re in some kind of trouble…”

  “Not me. A friend.”

  “Kaylee, I need to know—”

  “Can you…not ask me what happened? Please. I just need to think.”

  Reese stared at her for a moment. Then he took a heavy seat down on the bed beside her. The beads on his wrist clacked as he played with them. He hadn’t been lying. He actually had started working out. His arms were sinewy and strong, laced with a couple faint white scars.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “Hm?” Reese turned his hands over. He chuckled. “Karate club. I was part of it until last semester.”

  “I didn’t know Queensbury University had a karate club.”

  “Queensbury has many different clubs. There’s even this one…” Reese paused. “No. Don’t distract me. You don’t want to tell me what happened, that’s fine. But Kaylee?”

  Kaylee turned to him. She was shocked to feel
a warm tear run down her check. Reese gently brushed it away. “You know you can tell me anything.”

  “You said that already.”

  “I meant it. Anything. Even if no one else believes you, I will. Understand?”

  “Sometimes…” Kaylee said before she could stop. “Sometimes I want to do something, but I don’t know what. There’s a hundred things I wished I’d done but I didn’t, and I feel so useless. Why are there so many evil things? And why can’t I stop them?”

  Reese looked at the wall. One hand continued rubbing the beads.

  “Reese?”

  “There are some pretty twisted things in this world. And no, I don’t know why it’s such a broken place. Sometimes I wish…” he punched a fist into his open hand. “Sometimes I wish they were all something we could physically fight against. They’re not, but I guess we each have to find ways to fight them somehow. You’ll find a way to fight back, too.”

  “What if the evil thing isn’t something you can fight?”

  “There’s always something to fight. There are always evils in this world, true monsters. Only a few of us are strong enough to stand between those who want to hurt others.”

  Kaylee felt vaguely as if she’d heard someone say that before, but her head was starting to hurt too much now to remember. Kaylee wanted to tell him about the Convocation right then, but Randy’s warning flooded back to her. When she looked in Reese’s eyes and saw the intensity there, directed at an unknown adversary she couldn’t see, she could almost understand why he’d told her to wait.

  Reese opened his arms. “Come here.”

  Kaylee leaned into him. It was just as she’d done when they were kids during a thunderstorm, or when Kaylee had heard a scary movie playing from the TV downstairs. She could still remember tip-toeing down the shadowed hallway, her breathless knocks, light as butterfly wings, on Reese’s door. Yet still Reese heard them. He always heard them. He’d always answered, and although he acted annoyed, he had always let her curl up on the other side of the bed until whatever had been bothering her was gone.

  But now storms didn’t scare her. She was the storm. And now scary movies didn’t scare her, because she’d faced those creatures in real life.

  Now it was her turn to be the protector.

  “I have to go,” Kaylee said.

  Reese slowly let her up. “Where?”

  “To help a friend. There’s always a way to fight, right?”

  Reese nodded. Kaylee left him there in his room, hunched over and staring at nothing in particular at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  You were right, I was wrong,” Jade said, hands stuffed in her pockets as they walked. “To think it was in front of me the whole time…”

  “You weren’t wrong, Jade. There was nothing to be wrong about.”

  “But I’m a Tamer. I should have recognized the signs.”

  “And I’m an actual dragon-kin. If anyone should know something was different about Dani, it’d be me.”

  Jade let out a long breath. She kicked a pinecone out of her way, her feet scuffing the sidewalk up to Edwin’s house. “Tell me again what happened?”

  “I’ll let Alastair. He’s the one who called us.”

  “A dragon-kin,” Jade said in disbelief. “We haven’t had one around here—like, actually born here—in a while, and she was…” Jade lowered her voice. “She was pulling the scales off herself?”

  Kaylee felt nauseous at the memory. “Yes.”

  “Oh, Dani,” Jade said sadly.

  Kaylee was grateful the conversation was put on pause when they reached Alastair’s front door and Tibbs let them in.

  “Alastair will meet you in the lounge,” Tibbs said. “And I believe master Edwin will be joining you shortly.”

  “Only if he manages to unstick his face from whatever book he’s currently reading,” Jade said.

  Tibbs gave a low bow. “You have an uncanny understanding of my young master’s personality.”

  Kaylee stepped into the lounge and froze.

  Dani sat rigid on one of the couches. Despite the fire going in the fireplace, the sheer chill as she turned to them could have summoned ice more powerful than anything Kaylee could.

  “Dani—” Kaylee started. But no sooner had she opened her mouth than Dani stood and slapped her with one bandage-covered arm.

  “Hey!” Jade stepped between them, pushing Dani away as she jabbed a finger at Kaylee.

  “You lied.”

  Kaylee let the sting settle on her cheek. She tried not to be mad. This wasn’t Dani talking, this was fear. “I didn’t lie.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Dani!” Jade said sharply as Dani threw her off. Kaylee noticed her arms were wrapped with new bandages. Alastair must have had a healer look at them.

  “You ruined my life!” Dani shouted.

  Kaylee ducked as Dani made another swipe. Her earlier fear at how Dani would react was gone now, replaced by annoyance, then anger.

  “It looked like your life was already pretty ruined to me.”

  Dani let out a growl. She flexed her hands like she wanted to rip Kaylee’s face off. Jade tensed, but Dani’s fingers remained fingers.

  “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone,” Dani seethed.

  “You needed help, Dani.”

  “I had my powers under control.”

  “Not just with that.”

  “He’s my family.”

  “We’re your family now, too,” Jade said.

  “He was hurting you, Dani,” Kaylee said softly.

  Dani blinked away tears. “He was just scared of me. I’m scared of me. He wanted to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “By hurting you?”

  Dani’s cheeks splotched with red. Her voice rose. “Don’t pretend like you have any idea what I’ve—”

  “Been through?” Kaylee said, holding up one shifted arm. “You mean like being hated, hunted, feared, reviled, called any number of horrible things and made to feel like, just because of what you are, you’re lesser than dirt, lower than the most disgusting thing on the planet? Of course not. How could I possibly know how that feels?”

  “My whole life—”

  “Is still there. That’s what it took me a little while to figure out, and now I’m saving you the trouble of figuring it out for yourself. This isn’t the end, Dani.”

  Dani looked between the two of them, then sank to the floor, her shoulders heaving with sobs. In her, Kaylee saw her own struggle. Maybe not physically, but the torment that had raged through her for most of her first year: that black horizon of uncertainty in the future, and moving further towards it no matter how hard she resisted.

  But she hadn’t been alone. She’d had Jade and the Convocation. Friends and family by her side the whole way.

  Kaylee knelt beside Dani. After a brief hesitation, she put her arms around the other girl’s heaving shoulders and allowed her to finish crying herself out. Dani wiped her tears with the palm of her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For slapping you, I mean.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  Dani gave a hiccupy chuckle. “I believe it. You know,” she wiped her eyes again. “You know….” She said again, but the sentence didn’t sound like she knew what she was going to say.

  “I had to tell, Dani,” Kaylee said.

  Dani stayed silent.

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but—”

  “You know what the worst part about it was, about…that?” Dani said. “It was putting the mask on every day, pretending I had this perfect life all the time. Being away from home, and being truly—truly—happy, but knowing in the back of my mind that I had to go back, and that those brief bits of happiness were all I was going to get. And you know what? I told myself I could live with that. I was okay with that. But then,” she held up her arms and let them flop down again. “Then this happened.”

  “It�
��ll get better,” Kaylee said. “Both of these things will.”

  “Better?” Dani shrugged out of her grip. “Can you look me in the eye and promise me that?”

  Kaylee couldn’t meet her eyes. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  There was a soft knock and Alastair entered. He took in the scene immediately, then gestured for Kaylee and Jade to leave the room.

  “Miss Richards, Miss Azuma, if you please. Miss Fairfax and I have a few things to discuss.”

  Amelia passed them as they left, carrying a tray of hot chocolate. Alastair held the door for her, then closed it softly behind him. He sighed.

  “I apologize. I had not filled Tibbs in on the situation, and didn’t realize he’d put you both in the same room.” He sighed again. “The things that girl has been through…it just proves that dragon-kin are far from the biggest monsters in our world. Kaylee, I want to thank you for telling me about her.”

  “She hates me.”

  “For now, yes. But hate like hers is a fluid emotion. She will move beyond it.”

  “You have to promise she’ll be taken care of, no matter what kind of dragon-kin she is,” Kaylee said. “She can’t be sent back there.”

  Jade was giving her a funny look, but Alastair’s expression told her he knew exactly what she was referring to.

  “You’ve talked to Zaria, I assume.”

  “What if I have? Is that wrong?”

  Alastair shook his head. “No. We are not such a dictatorship that we don’t allow the influx of new perceptions, no matter how, er, skewed they might be.”

  “Dani can’t end up like them.”

  “And she won’t.” He stood up straighter, his figure imposing. “Have I ever given you any reason to doubt my word on that?”

  “No...”

  “Kaylee, I want you to know that resentment tends to distort the truth. What you have is her side of certain events, however true or false they may be. My side is what I show you in how I act and perform my duties for the Convocation every day. I won’t pretend like it’s the same everywhere, but it’s the same in enough places. I’ll leave you with that, and you can decide how you want to believe.”