He had to be out of his mind. As Nathaniel thought about what he’d have to do to get Grindylow to answer their questions, he experienced true fear. The creature was unlike any other, a water demon as ancient as the water itself. Even when Nathaniel was in the area, he stayed as far away from her lake as possible.
But Grindylow was an oracle. He had to try.
“I thought Grindylow required the sacrifice of a child in exchange for answering any questions? I’m telling you right now, I’m not murdering a kid for the sake of my magic,” Clarissa said.
“It’s good to know you have a line you will not cross.”
“So then what’s your plan?”
“I’m still working it out.”
“We have four hours in the back of this car. Work it out with me.”
Nathaniel looked out the window. The funny thing about dragons and immortality was this: he could be killed. No, he would never die of natural causes, and he was very difficult to kill. Decapitation was the only reliable way to inflict permanent death on a dragon. Clarissa understood that, and if he told her his plan in advance and gave her too long to think about it, she might attempt to talk him out of it. He couldn’t have that. This was a necessary risk.
He’d have to change the subject.
“What have you told Tom about your time here?”
“I’m in a spa in Switzerland, undergoing experimental therapy for my strained vocal cords.”
She leaned back against the seat, and he was struck by how graceful she was. She held herself like a queen, not an orphan who’d grown up with foster carers, some of whom had made it a habit to slap her around and underfeed her. She’d never had a dance class as a child. Nor a voice lesson. But whoever her ancestors were, her real ancestors, they’d given her something. Something a hard life couldn’t take away.
“However will he survive without you?” Nathaniel had never liked the bastard.
“Oh, you know Tom. I’m not his only client, but if my career went under, he’d take a hit.”
“Financially or personally? I always wondered if he fancied you back in the day.”
She snorted. “Oh, he did. Tried to get in my pants on a number of occasions.”
Nathaniel’s dragon twisted, and a growl rumbled through his chest before he could do anything about it.
“Easy,” she said and laughed lightly.
Nathaniel rubbed his chest and cleared his throat. “Apologies. It’s instinct.”
“Still?” She gave him a soft, curious look.
He hated himself for tipping his hand once again, but he nodded. It was the truth. His dragon desperately wanted her and would likely have done nightmarish things to Tom if ever given the chance. “Still.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation, but if it makes you feel better, it never happened. Tom is… not my type. Plus I know exactly what he is. I know he’d use me. I’m his client, not his doormat, and I’d like to keep it that way. I have some self-respect.”
A smile stretched his lips. “Good. You should be with someone who truly adores you.”
“What about you? You must have had a long parade of lovers over the past ten years.” Her gaze darted to her tangled fingers.
“No,” he said evenly.
“No?” She studied his face. “Why not? There was always someone interested in the high priest of the order—witch, fairy, druid, or human.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I am a man of particular taste. A busy man. I’m fine on my own.”
She frowned and looked out the window. “You always are… fine, I mean. I have this memory of you from when we were together. It was the first time I really understood how old you are.”
He laughed darkly. “Ancient compared to you, I suppose, but I will remind you that I do not age like those of your species. My body is no more than thirty by your standards.”
She raised an eyebrow and a blush stained her cheeks. “Oh, I know. I saw for myself, up close and personal, last night. I’ll look older than you in a few years.”
“Never,” he said quietly, admiring the way the light from the window backlit her profile.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’d just started staying with you because you said you couldn’t bear to know I was sleeping in the hostels. We hadn’t even, you know…” She lowered her chin. “…become a couple yet. But I was staying at Mistwood and this man came to your door with horns growing out of his head.”
Nathaniel laughed. “I remember that. Alisdair. Poor Scot didn’t know he had fairy blood and tried to do a transfiguration spell. Got stuck halfway.”
“Anyway, he came in and fell to his knees. He was shaking, trembling from fear. And it took me a moment to realize he was afraid of you.”
“Well, he should have been. It’s against the code of the order to perform that type of magic without permission. Not to mention, his motives were sketchy. The man was attempting to turn himself into a goddamned ram. He said he wanted to spy on his neighbor about a land dispute, but really, what a strange way to go about it.”
She giggled. “I agree. And he was a sight for someone like me who wasn’t familiar with magic. But I remember thinking that you must be extremely powerful for him to fall on the floor, shaking like that. Were you a gangster? A killer? The head of a cult? Why was this man, who was just as big as you, with horns growing out of his head, so afraid of you that he was practically wetting himself?”
Nathaniel snorted. “You must have assumed I was a monster.”
“I wondered, for a moment. But then you told him to get up, blew some sort of powder into his face, and made the horns go away.”
“I also gave him graveyard duty for a month.”
“Graveyard duty?”
“In decades past, it was common for magical folk to sit in a graveyard at night and speak to the dead on the rare chance one of them should have any warnings or suggestions for us. Truthfully, the dead will speak to anyone who will listen. They like to hear themselves talk. Self-importance doesn’t die with the body. We stopped doing it because we’d often get inundated with stories and questions about people’s descendants. It wasn’t as useful as it was time consuming.”
“You made him sit in a graveyard and talk to ghosts for a month?” She smiled wickedly.
“No better way to teach someone to respect magic.” He gave her a wink. “Did it scare you? Seeing me like that?”
“No. It made me… admire you. You could have handled that situation in many ways, but you showed compassion. I’ve known men who would use any excuse to flex their muscle, but I’ve never seen you abuse your power. Not ever.”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “One who knows their power has no need to prove it.”
She snorted. “See, human men don’t go around saying things like that unless they’re a yogi or Russell Brand.”
He waved a dismissive hand in the air.
“And then the first time I saw you shift… When you took me to your treasure room to show me… I really understood. You are a dragon. A massive purple dragon with claws and teeth as long as I am tall. You can take anything that you want, but you don’t. For as long as I’ve known you, I have never seen you use what you are to your advantage unfairly.” She sighed. “Do you know how unusual that is? To have the power you do and no ego to go along with it?”
This conversation was making him uncomfortable. He pulled his pipe from his pocket and lit up, thankful for the familiar numbness of Warwick’s tobacco. “I can’t have everything I want. I can’t have you. Even if I took you, you wouldn’t be mine.”
She sighed and met his eyes. “I’ll always be yours, Nathaniel,” she whispered. “But if you had me, if you kept me like all the gold and jewels you have in your treasure room, you’d notice I wouldn’t shine as bright. You wouldn’t want me anymore if you had me. I’d just be another thing you’d already collected.”
His eyes narrowed and his inner dragon chuffed. She was serious. She turned to stare out the window, and it occurred to him that this was it. This was the truth. She’d never told it to him straight before. She’d said she wanted to strike out on her own. She’d said it was because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her singing career or her audience. But the truth cut deeper. She’d never had a real family. No one had ever loved her the way she should be loved. And so she didn’t think it was possible. She honestly believed he’d grow tired of her. She’d grow old and he’d lose interest. And if she’d given up her art for that, she’d truly have nothing left when it happened.
“Clarissa,” he said softly, “that’s not how a dragon’s bond works. When we mate, we mate for life, and life to an immortal dragon is a very, very long time.”
Why on earth had she told Nathaniel all that? By God, she might as well cut open her chest and show him her still-beating heart. She’d never been so forthcoming or vulnerable about her deepest fears before. Maybe she’d never realized exactly what had motivated her to leave back then until now. Or maybe…
“Did Warwick add some kind of truth spell to that smoke?” She stared at his pipe. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”
He shook his head. “Same as always.” He blew a smoke ring, and it turned into a bright red heart above her head.
“Oh.”
“I’m glad you told me. Now I can tell you how utterly full of crap you are.”
“Excuse me?”
He leaned toward her. “You are full of shit, Clarissa. You can’t possibly believe that to be true. Not anymore.”
She shrugged. “Why not? Because you say dragons mate for life? People will say anything to get what they want.”
“Do people usually wait decades? Do people…?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He looked away from her and smoked his pipe. When he spoke again, his voice was fire and brimstone. His gray eyes flashed. “You underestimate me, Clarissa. You shouldn’t.”
A chill crept along her skin although the temperature in the car had actually risen a few degrees. That was his inner dragon speaking. Nathaniel was the dragon and the dragon was him. He was a shifter. But the part of him that slept when he was in his human form sometimes woke up. She’d seen the dragon last night when he’d hunted her after the ritual. And now the beast was right there on the surface.
It was a humbling thing to look into the face of a dragon, especially when you didn’t have any magic of your own to protect yourself. She watched the hills roll by and didn’t speak again until the driver, Emory, did.
“Almost to the lake, Mr. Clarke. Where would you like me to park?”
“Close enough to the water that you can help if need be. You have the weapon?”
“I do. Practiced a bit with it beforehand.”
“What weapon is that?”
“Crossbow,” Nathaniel stated. “Holy-water-soaked bolts.”
“What exactly is the plan, Nate?”
“We offer Grindylow a child and then ask her questions.”
Clarissa inclined her head. “And where do we get this child?”
Nathaniel wiggled the fingers of his right hand where a large amethyst ring resided. Clarissa knew few specifics about how dragon magic worked, but she knew the ring was the closest thing to a magic wand that dragons possessed.
“Explain.”
The amethyst flashed and Nathaniel changed. His body folded in on itself in a way that made Clarissa profoundly uncomfortable. It was too angular. There were too many folding joints and protruding bones. The transformation was physical, not mystical, and coupled with the slurp of bodily juices and the crunch of grinding bones, it was truly disgusting. She had to turn her head away. When the noise stopped, she tentatively glanced back at Nate. A twelve-year-old boy was in his place, dressed in a child-sized pair of jeans and a T-shirt he’d procured somewhere.
“Holy fuck! Where did you put it all?”
“Dragons are masters of illusion. I can look any way I desire. Although, I must say going any smaller than this would be astoundingly tight.” He rolled his shoulders as if his current shape and size wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.
“So what’s the plan? We ask the questions and then you get into the water with her and pull the old switcheroo back into the dragon?”
Emory opened her door, and she got out in the middle of nowhere at the edge of a misty body of water. Nathaniel crawled across the seat after her. It was so strange for him to only come up to her shoulder. He looked exactly like a skinny grade-schooler.
“That’s not how this works,” he said. “Grindylow will want her payment first before she gives you any information.”
“But… how will that work?” Suddenly her stomach felt sick. Muscles in her chest tightened.
“You will feed me to the demon. You will ask your questions. When you are done, you’ll call my name and I will shift and rise from the water.” His voice was painfully low.
A lump formed in her throat. “No, you can’t do that. It… that thing could chew you up and hold you underwater.”
“I can’t die from drowning.”
“But you won’t be able to breathe. You’ll feel it. You’ll suffer. What if it rips you apart? I’ve read this thing wants blood.”
He said nothing. So then there was a chance. There was risk. Even an immortal dragon wasn’t invincible. “You can’t do this.”
“It’s already done.” He started walking toward the water.
“Nathaniel, please!” She didn’t even know what to say, only that every cell in her body knew that this was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t worth it. “It’s not…” Her voice gave out as he reached the water’s edge, his little-boy body a slight, pale thing before the dark water.
“Call to her, Clarissa,” he said over his shoulder. “And please, ask your questions quickly.”
All the muscles in her body locked with fear as a dark mat of hair crowned at the center of the water, and then two bulging dark eyes, and pale, waterlogged cheeks.
“Clarissa,” he said between his teeth. “Don’t let her have me for free.”
“Grindylow!” she called. “I have brought you the sacrifice of this child in exchange for questions answered.”
Long limbs rose from the water, each with an extra joint that ensured there would be no confusing her with human. Her ribs protruded under grayish-white skin like a set of sickening gills. Her nostrils flared.
“How old is the boy?”
Clarissa glanced at Nathaniel. He looked twelve at the least, but Grindylow loved children—the younger, the better. “Eleven.”
“Three questions,” she said, licking her lips.
“Five,” Clarissa shot back.
Nathaniel was silent. He stood at the water’s edge, looking terrified. His knees shook. She hated this.
“Three, girl. This is the way it has been and always will be.” Grindylow’s voice warbled as if she were speaking underwater, but she was exposed from the waist up now, aquatic plants draped across her grotesque and twisted body.
Clarissa stared at Nathaniel and hated this, but some part of her knew there was no going back. If she tried to back out now, Grindylow would attack. Nathaniel had chosen this. He hadn’t told her until the last second for precisely this reason. He knew she wouldn’t be comfortable with his choice, and he wanted to do this for her.
Her heart broke as she said, “Okay. Three.”
Those multijointed gray limbs shot out and tore through Nate. Clarissa didn’t even see what happened. There was a spray of blood, a splash of water, and then he was gone. Desperately, she wanted to cry, but anything she said from here on out could be considered one of her three questions, and the longer she took to ask them, the longer Nate was under that water.
But Nathaniel had put her in a terrible position. She hadn’t had time to think of how to phrase her questions, and she doubted Grindylow would be forthcoming if she needed clarity. There was, however, one obvious place to start.
“Who caused the loss of my magic?”
The beast spread the thin flaps of skin that served as lips and exposed rows of black teeth. “The dragon queen and her fairy liege caused what vexes you.”
Dragon queen. Clarissa knew of no dragon queen. The Order of the Dragon had one high priest, and it was Nathaniel. He’d told her once that his mother had been queen of Paragon, but she’d died in the bloody coup that brought him here.
“How do I get my power back?” she yelled. It was a broader question than how to break the curse. If her problem didn’t stem from a curse, she’d learn nothing with that question. But this one should gain her the answer she wanted.
“Rebind thee to thy sisters.” The empty pits that served as Grindylow’s eyes narrowed on her.
“Liar!” she yelled. “Return the child. I have no sisters!”
The pale limbs thrashed, and Clarissa was doused with murky water. “Insolent witch. Grindylow does not lie. Grindylow cannot lie. Ask thee thy third and then run from my sight or I will punish thee for thine insult!”
Well… that wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. She pushed the answer out of her head and focused on her last and final question. But what should she ask? None of this made any sense.
“How do I find these sisters?” she spat out.
Grindylow shifted. “One is near. She will come to you. The other must be retrieved from her obsidian tomb before the queen finishes what she started.”
“Obsidian tomb? Where is that? Is she dead?”
Grindylow retreated into the lake, her dark head sinking toward the surface. “Three were asked. Three were given. Now we eat.”
“Nathaniel!” she screamed.
Emory was by her side in an instant, crossbow raised. But Grindylow was gone. She disappeared below the dark surface. Emory grumbled and aimed the crossbow at the ripples that signaled her departure. He couldn’t fire, not without risk of hitting Nathaniel. The water turned as smooth as glass.
Clarissa rushed toward the lake, her toes slapping the edge and spraying mud up her legs. Emory grabbed her around the waist so she could go no farther.
“Nathaniel! Nathaniel!” She screamed with all the air in her useless, magicless lungs.
A bubble rose and popped. She held her breath. With a thrash and spray, a dark wing broke the surface, and then Nathaniel in his human form, wings spread, rose partway out of the water, his fist driving into Grindylow’s gaping maw over and over.
“Why isn’t he transforming?”
“Wing’s broke,” Emory said as if no further explanation was needed. He fired the crossbow.
The arrow pierced Grindylow’s shoulder, and she dropped Nathaniel before sinking into the bubbling, dark deep. Nathaniel took a few swimming strokes toward her. Fuck, he was pale, and one wing definitely wasn’t working.
Clarissa pushed out of Emory’s grip and waded waist deep into the water, reaching out and grasping Nathaniel’s fingers. She hauled him to shore.
“Help me,” she cried.
Emory waded in ankle deep and grabbed Nathaniel’s other arm. “Hurry, miss. That arrow won’t kill ol’ Grindy, just give her a sore shoulder and a sore disposition to match.”
Leveraging every ounce of her weight, she squatted down and with Emory’s help heaved Nathaniel out of the water. She landed on her back with him lying in the grass beside her. He was barely conscious.
“Nathaniel, can you walk to the car?”
His eyes fluttered, and then he turned his head away and spewed a fountain of dark, frothy water.
“Bloody well not okay yet,” Emory said. “Let ’im rest a bit.”
Nathaniel turned back to her. “Hurt.”
“Why didn’t you shift into your dragon form?”
He groaned. “Wing broke. Treasure room.”
Emory sighed. “I thought that might be the case. Changin’ into a kid like that uses a ton of magic. He doesn’t have enough left to heal himself fully, and if he shifts here and now, he might make things worse. Help me get him back to the car.”
She was soaked to the bone and covered in mud, but together, they were able to move him in short bursts. Unfortunately, the broken wing dragged painfully on the ground. Nathaniel couldn’t retract it, and she couldn’t figure out a way to cradle it while she helped carry him. She gave a relieved sigh when they finally reached the car.
With one last, massive effort, she dragged him into the back seat. She ended up leaning against the far window and coaxing his back against her chest with his body between her legs. Her thigh gave some support to the wing, and in this position, she could keep him from rolling off the seat. Although he dwarfed her frame, she was strong enough to hold him, especially after what he’d done for her. She’d hold him until her arms gave out.
“Ready, Emory. Get us home.”