Shea waved her hand in the air and her soft purple light emanated from her fingers. The door opened and revealed an unusual pair. They were two men and one was far taller than the other. The shorter of the two was much younger than his compatriot, perhaps fifteen, with curly brown hair and an open expression on his face. The older and taller of the two was about thirty with dark hair. They both wore plain brown robes over brown jeans and plain dark shirts. Heavy boots covered their feet and they had an air about them of much travel.
There was nothing particularly odd about them, but I felt a strange sense of stirring around their bodies. Almost like a gentle breeze followed the pair.
Shea captured their attention and gestured to us. “This is Miss Lirien, if that is truly her name, and Mr. Arsa. They are reluctant to join our organization and need to be shown to a room while they deliberate their decision.”
The young man cocked his head to one side. “Why wouldn’t you want to join the Keys? We have a lot to-”
“Quiet, Whalen,” the older of the two scolded him. Whalen shrank back from the light reprimand and pinched his lips shut.
Tegan smiled and nodded at the window. “Will our ‘room’ provide us with as good a view as you have, Senator Shea?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
He sighed. “Then there’s nothing to do about it.”
Tegan’s wings burst out of his back and one crashed through the glass, shattering it into millions of tiny pieces. He deftly used his wing to scoop up the falling glass and throw it into the room. All present threw up our arms and ducked the shower of shards that rained down on us.
“A dragon!” I heard Senator Shea shout in shock.
A hand snatched mine and yanked me toward the now-open window. I looked up to find it was Tegan and he practically threw me out of the window before climbing out behind me.
“What are you doing?” I shouted as I stumbled into a bed of pretty flowers.
“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” he replied as he swept me into his arms.
Tegan opened his wings wide and sprang high into the air. He flapped his wings hard and fast and we flew away from the ground. I yelped and wrapped my arms around his neck as the earth disappeared beneath us. The Key and his young Clasp leapt out of the window and stared up at us. The elder of the two raised both hands and a blast of air shot out of his palms. The rough winds struck us like a hard blow in the gut and whipped us about.
Tegan reached into his coat and drew out a small ball. He threw it down at our foes and the orb splattered onto the ground between them. A disgusting ooze exploded upward and covered the pair. The sticky substance stuck their arms to their sides and their feet to the ground.
Their preoccupation gave Tegan a chance to rebalance. He pumped his wings even harder and we flew fast over the Key offices.
A sharp, stifled cry of pain came from my carrier. I whipped my head around to find myself looking into Tegan’s pained face. That’s when I remembered his wings. They were still tattered from our crash landing in the woods and only a few bits of flimsy new flesh covered the many holes.
“We have to land!” I insisted.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I can do this.”
“But you shouldn’t!” I insisted as I looked for a nice spot to land. The wide Cumann River wound its way through the busy streets. I pointed at a particularly wild spot along the banks. “There! Land us there!”
Tegan didn’t look in any condition to argue. His face was ghastly pale and he wasn’t beating his wings as quickly as before. He glided down in a steady circle, but at the last his wings gave out.
I screamed as we plummeted toward the earth.
We crashed through the thick canopy of trees and landed hard on the root-littered earth. I was knocked from Tegan’s arms and rolled a few feet away from him. Leaves and dirt stuck to me as I climbed onto my hands and looked around.
Tegan lay very still where we hand landed.
“Tegan!” I shouted as I scrambled over to him. I grasped his shoulders and gave them a hard shake. “Please wake up! Please!”
His eyes flickered open and a shaky smile spread across his lips as he looked up at me. “Have I reached the heavenly skies of my ancestors?”
I fell back against my legs bent underneath me and breathed a sigh of relief. “No, thank God.”
Tegan eased himself onto his hands and winced. The tender new leather on his wings had torn and blood now sprinkled about his back. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, and his wings slowly slid into his back. A pain-filled groan escaped him when the last bit disappeared into his body.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him.
“After a time,” he assured me as he tried to stand.
I scurried to my feet and grabbed his arm to draw his weight against me. We both nearly toppled as his lack of balance dropped most of his weight on my smaller frame, but I dug my heels into the damp river bank and managed to keep us both upright.
“How about you try sitting down for a while?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “I very much doubt the Keys will give us time to rest. We need to get back to MacAlastair’s inn as soon as possible.”
“Why not leave the city?” I asked him.
“The Keys will alert their guard friends at the city walls,” Tegan pointed out. “We won’t get very far without MacAlastair’s methods of escape.”
I looked around the small woodland that surrounded us. We were hidden from all of the streets, but anyone on the other side of the narrow river could see us. “What’s the quickest way there?”
A wry smile slipped onto his lips. “Swimming across the Cumann River.”
My face drooped and I studied the dark depths of the flowing waters. “What’s the second quickest way?”
He nodded upstream. “There’s a wagon bridge a quarter of a mile up the river. We can cross there and slip into MacAlastair’s inn through the back.”
I readjusted his weight. “Can you walk that far?”
“When I don’t have a choice,” he pointed out as we began our journey.
My imagination ran wild with me as we traveled through the dense trees. Every shadow and errant whinny spooked me and made me believe the Keys had discovered us. My thoughts also bounced to our brief conversation with Miss Shea.
“What do you think they were going to do to us?” I asked him.
Tegan pursed his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know, but I know I dislike when the answer is decided for me.” I hung my head and bit my lower lip. He gave my shoulder a soft squeeze with his hand that was draped over my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I guess I made the decision for you, didn’t I?”
I sighed and smiled up at him. “It’s okay. I’d rather have you decide than some stranger, especially one who wore that much purple.”
He chuckled. “She was certainly decked out. Perhaps I saved us from a fate worse than death. We may have been condemned to wear plaid.”
I shuddered. “Definitely worse than death.” The conversation about clothing brought a question to mind. “Do you have any idea who those other robed guys were? The Key and his, um, Clip?”
“Clasp,” Tegan corrected me as he shook his head. “And unfortunately, I don’t, though I have a feeling that won’t be the last we see of them.”
I looked Tegan up and down as we hurried along as fast as we could. “That Shea lady sounded really surprised to see your wings. I’m guessing dragons aren’t usually Keys.” A strange cloud settled on Tegan’s brow and my heart skipped a beat. “What? Is it wrong?”
He shook his head. “Not wrong, just impossible.”
I blinked at him. “Come again?”
“Dragons aren’t capable of becoming Keys.”
I jerked us to a stop and glared at him. “Is this some sort of joke? You touched me and gave me magic. That makes you my Key, right?”
Tegan nodded. “It does, but among my kind and the others it’s well known that no dragon has ever been able to stir magic within another.”
My mouth flopped open as I tried to gather my thoughts. “I. . .what. . .what does that even mean? That you’re my Key but you shouldn’t be?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought we might find answers there, but it seems recent events have made them a little more overbearing than I could bear.”
I pursed my lips but tugged him forward. “Is there anything else you need to tell me before we stumble into more trouble?”
Too late. A figure stepped out of the shadows of a large tree in front of us. They were cloaked in a heavy black overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat covered much of their head. The collar of the coat concealed the rest.
The stranger spoke in a gravelly voice that would have worked perfectly in some old hardboiled detective movie. “You made a hasty exit from the Key office.”
Tegan glared at him. “That’s quite the personal question for a stranger to ask.”
The person chuckled. “Perhaps I desire to be something more.”
Tegan nodded down at me. “One companion is enough for me.”
“But you haven’t heard my offer yet,” the person countered as they reached into their coat and drew out a card pinched between two fingers.
They threw the thick piece of paper at us like a dagger. I jerked to one side to avoid it but Tegan’s other hand darted out and he caught it in his fingers. He flipped the card over and revealed a single word.
Domini.