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Tabitha
Tabitha and Maurice followed the blue orbs that were scattered in front of them. The spots were small enough that if they hadn’t known to look for them, they might have missed them entirely.
Then again, that was the point.
“You’re a clever mage,” Maurice said as they traipsed through the forest.
“Clever, huh? Do you meet a lot of mages?”
“Not anymore.”
Maurice offered Tabitha a hand as she climbed over a fallen tree and hopped down on the other side. She knew the woods surrounding the castle had once been lovely and beautiful, but now they were basically overgrown. She landed easily, and then stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding some tree roots. It wouldn’t do her any good to trip on her way to find Felix. She could do a lot of things with her magic now, but she couldn’t heal a broken ankle.
“I studied under the best,” she said.
“Kunzite?”
“Yes.”
“I thought as much,” he said.
“You know about my people?” Tabitha looked over at him. The Mages of Kunzite had been well-known and wonderful, but Tabitha was surprised that someone who had been trapped on a rock for years knew about them.
“I do,” he said. “Or, at least, I did, once upon a time. They’re the ones who helped me come here,” Maurice said solemnly. “I fought with Ursula once, a long time ago. Then I joined with the mages to try to infiltrate this place. I wanted to attack her outright, but the mages convinced me that becoming Felix’s tutor would be a better plan. They believed it would give me a better chance at surviving. The idea was that I should tutor him for a little while and look for the opportune moment to snatch him away.”
“That way she wouldn’t notice,” Tabitha realized. It was a good plan, and probably would have been the one she would have suggested herself, had she been asked. Being sneaky meant there would be a higher chance of success. It required patience, yes, but just attacking Ursula outright and trying to steal Felix probably would have resulted in everyone dying.
“That way she wouldn’t notice. I wanted to grab him and then run away with him. I wanted to save him.”
Maurice sighed loudly. A couple of birds chirped nearby. Tabitha wondered whether they were people-birds or actual birds, and she wondered whether those little chirps held judgment for her or Maurice.
The problem with hindsight was that everything seemed much clearer. When you were in the midst of danger, you couldn’t always figure out what you were dealing with. When you considered your past, though, things were always so much easier.
“You didn’t snatch him away,” Tabitha pointed out.
“As it turned out, Ursula kept him under careful watch. She had all sorts of spells and curses around the castle. Trying to just steal him myself never would have worked. She liked Felix a lot. In some ways, she seemed to view him as her own son. Unfortunately, she basically had an army of shapeshifters she kept with her at all times. It was far too much for one man.”
“The mages didn’t come with you,” Tabitha realized. Why hadn’t they? It probably would have been a suicide mission, she knew. The Mages of Kunzite were a special sort of people. They had great powers, but they had also experienced great loss. When Ursula was cast out of their guild, she constantly tried to get back in.
“They knew Ursula had been practicing dark magic for a very long time,” he explained. “They couldn’t risk coming here. I asked them. Begged them. They didn’t want anything to do with her.”
“I know. They cast her out. She wanted back into their guild,” Tabitha whispered. She remembered her parents feeling stressed and anxious about it. The truth was that they had all loved Ursula, once upon a time. She’d been a prodigy who had always displayed an incredible affinity for magic. She’d been wonderful, according to Tabitha’s parents: wonderful, brave, and strong. They’d never had another mage quite as good as her.
At least, not until Tabitha had come along.
“They were smart not to let her back in,” he said.
Smart?
Yeah, the mages were smart.
They hadn’t been smart enough, though.
Ursula had waited until their powers were weakened to sneak onto their island and slaughter them all. Then, when she herself was weak, Felix had killed her. Most of her shapeshifters had been killed by the mages or they’d fled after her death. Until the spells she’d cast all over the island had finally started to fade, the entire space here had been empty.
Tabitha wasn’t sure if she should tell Maurice what had happened to her people, but he seemed to have a fondness for the mages. Probably, she should let him know. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and then she spoke.
“They’re dead now.”
Even now, the words hurt. She didn’t want to think about the fact that they were gone. It was strange to think about a world without her parents, her friends, and her teachers in it. Even though it had been months since they died, it still hurt, piercing to her core. She missed her family with a deep longing she didn’t even know it was possible to feel.
How silly was that?
She should have gotten over it by now.
Tabitha tried to distract herself as much as possible. Felix was probably the best distraction she ever could have imagined. He was kind and funny, and she loved exploring the island with him. There were places to go and things to see. It had been, overall, entirely wonderful.
But her family was gone.
She would never have a moment where she could find her mother and let her know that she’d finally fallen in love. Tabitha couldn’t simply grab a phone and call her dad to say she was completely smitten with a guy. There wasn’t ever going to be a moment where she could just take a deep breath and present him happily to all of the other mages. They were gone.
Forever.
“I’m sorry,” Maurice said carefully. If he’d been a shifter like Felix was, he would have been able to scent her emotions. Dragons were especially adept at scenting emotions. Fear, sadness, disappointment...they could read it all with just the slightest sniff of their nostrils.
She felt all of those things, but she wasn’t about to talk about her feelings with a stranger. Tabitha steeled herself, ready to face the world on her own. That’s what she’d been doing before Felix entered her life, after all, and she’d been doing just fine. Now, even though Maurice was with her, she still felt alone. He could help her find Felix, of course, but at the end of the day, it was on her. The pressure was hers alone to deal with.
“Not your fault.”
There wasn’t anything he could say or do that would bring them back, so it wasn’t even worth worrying about. At least, that was what she kept telling herself.
“Ursula?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course,” Maurice shook his head. “She caused more trouble than anyone could have possibly imagined. Now we all have to clean up the messes she left behind.”
“Felix has a family, you know,” Tabitha said. She wasn’t sure why she was volunteering this information. Felix didn’t know much about his past. What he did know was pretty personal. He’d shared bits and pieces of his returning memories with Tabitha, but he still didn’t have the whole picture of where he’d come from.
“Does he?” Maurice asked, glancing over at her. “He remembers, then?”
“No, he doesn’t remember, but he must. He must have a family.”
“You sound quite certain.”
“He was taken as a child. Sometimes he remembers his mother.”
That seemed to interest Maurice. He looked over at her.
“What does he remember?”
She stopped walking and turned to Maurice. She frowned, narrowing her eyes. That was a lot of questions all in a row, wasn’t it? What was Maurice getting at?
“You’re being weird. What do you know about Felix’s past that I don’t know?”
Maurice seemed taken aback, as though he was slightly offended at the idea that he knew something – or anything, really – about who Felix was. Tabitha had been raised around witches. Nobody was more suspicious than a witch. She’d learned very well what was normal and not-normal behavior, and Maurice? He wasn’t being normal.
He was acting like he knew something Tabitha didn’t, and he was trying to test her to find out just how much she knew. It was stealthy and sneaky. On another girl, it might have even worked.
Not on Tabitha.
“My dear,” he started to say, but she wasn’t in the mood. Tabitha conjured up a medium-sized green energy ball and shoved it out, pushing Maurice back. He landed against a tree, hitting it with his back. He was old, and she felt a little bad, but he didn’t seem injured.
Not that it would have mattered. He needed to know that the second-guessing attitude he was cocking with her wasn’t welcome. None of it was. She didn’t have time for anything except finding her mate. If Maurice was going to slow her down or hold her back, then she’d do this on her own.
“No,” she told him. “No calling me that. I didn’t give you permission.”
“It’s just a term of endearment.”
“Tell me the truth,” she snapped, producing another small orb. “Who are you to him?”
“I was his tutor,” he explained. Maurice looked nervous. Good. He needed to remember who was in charge.
“Tutor?”
“Yes. That’s all.”
“Why would a tutor care so much about saving him?”
“He was always a good student,” Maurice said. “I value that.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Tabitha said slowly.
“Excuse me?”
“Look, Maurice, I don’t know what kind of idiot you think I am, but I’ve had plenty of tutors. Literally zero of them would go through the trouble for me.”
Tabitha wanted to think that Maurice had ulterior motives, rather than a true admiration for his student. She knew without a doubt that none of her tutors would have moved heaven and hell to save her. Then again, she’d always been mediocre at best.
“Well, he was a very special student.”
“Holy dragons,” she said, suddenly, looking up at him. Maurice had a strange expression on his face, and suddenly, it all made sense. How had she not seen it sooner? “You’re his father.”
“What? No, I’m not,” Maurice shook his head furiously. “What would give you such a preposterous idea?”
He bit his lip and looked away, hiding his face from her. It reminded Tabitha of a little child who thought hiding his face from a parent meant they wouldn’t know he’d been sneaking cookies from the cookie jar.
Maurice couldn’t hide his face from this situation.
“You’re his dad. You came here to rescue him, didn’t you? Only, the witch found out and she turned you into a lion.”
Tabitha’s heart raced. How hadn’t she noticed before? When she’d been helping Maurice-as-a-lion deal with his injured paw, she had felt that it was a strange situation. What kind of lion didn’t attack a witch?
Apparently, the enchanted kind.
Maurice stood with his back to Tabitha for a long minute, and finally, he spun around. He just shook his head.
“She found out,” Tabitha repeated. “She couldn’t believe you’d betrayed her that way. There she was, thinking you were just an innocent tutor, and you were there to steal her kid.”
She was goading him. She knew that. She wanted Maurice to react, though. She wanted to know what it was that had transpired between Ursula and Maurice. Any information he had could give them a clue as to how they could save Felix now. Tabitha knew something very wrong was happening with him. The spell Ursula had cast that trapped him on the island was making him weak somehow.
“How did she find out?” Tabitha asked once more.
“She didn’t find out!”
Maurice’s jaw dropped, as though he hadn’t meant to say that, and Tabitha just stared at him. She couldn’t un-see the family resemblance. Maurice had the same bone structure as Felix. He was about the same height, and his eyes looked remarkably similar.
“It really is you,” she whispered, shaking her own head. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Fuck,” Maurice kicked a rock. “Don’t say anything to him when we find him.”
Tabitha only stared. So, that was it. Felix’s father had found him. He’d come to him. He’d come to save his son, and what? He’d gotten trapped? Tricked? Ursula had trapped him as a lion – not as a dragon – and he hadn’t been able to leave. Even if Maurice wasn’t physically trapped on the island the way that Felix was, how could he have possibly left? It wasn’t like a lion could build a boat and just float away.
“You came to save your kid,” she finally whispered, trying to understand what had happened.
“Of course, I came to save him. He’s my son.”
“What...where...how?” Tabitha finally said. There were so many questions. She knew she couldn’t just throw them at Maurice. Oh, this would be so much easier if she could read minds and just absorb all of the information he was hiding in that head of his.
“There will be plenty of time for stories later,” Maurice told her. “For now, let’s keep walking. We don’t know how far we’ll have to travel to keep up with your little orbs.”
“My orbs,” she whispered, looking ahead. Her orbs.
Her orbs were going to lead them to her mate, to Maurice’s son. If they worked as they should, then they’d just be able to keep following the little dots to Felix. Tabitha ached as she wished that she hadn’t given Orion the chance to hurt her, but she had. She’d have to deal with that.
“Wait,” she said, turning to him. “If you’re his father, then you must be a dragon. Why don’t you shift?” It would be faster, she thought. He’d be able to soar up into the sky. Tabitha wouldn’t ask Maurice to carry her along or let her ride on his back, of course. They didn’t really know each other well enough for that.
Still, she’d be able to ask him to guide her. He could fly ahead, locate Felix, and then signal her somehow. Wouldn’t that be faster? Why were they still walking?
“I didn’t want to scare the man who stole him away,” Maurice said. “If I shifted, it would have frightened you, too, but I didn’t want to do anything that would catch the eye of Orion.”
“Because you think if you startle him, he’ll hurt Felix.”
“It’s possible.”
“Do you want to shift now?”
“Not now,” he said. “Not until the time is right.”
That seemed to be the message of the hour, didn’t it? Timing. It always had to be perfect. Always.
Tabitha nodded, accepting Maurice’s hesitation to shift, and they kept walking, carefully making their way deeper and deeper into the forest. It seemed as though Orion had been quite determined to take Felix to a secluded location. Not that the entire island wasn’t secluded – it obviously was – but he’d brought him to a place full of caves and caverns. Some of them were up high, built into the side of what looked like a tiny mountain.
“I recognize this place,” she said.
“You do?”
“Felix and I...”
She blushed. She wasn’t about to tell Felix’s dad that this was where they’d slept together for the first time.
“We took shelter here from a storm,” she finally said.
Maurice was no innocent, though, and he saw through her explanation. He didn’t seem embarrassed or uncomfortable with the topic, though. Instead, he just nodded.
“Finding out someone is your mate can be quite intense,” he said.
“Do you...”
“Have a mate?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Every dragon does.”
“But I thought those were just stories.”
“Everyone says that. When you find your mate, though, everything changes. It gives you strength even when you feel you can’t muster anymore.”
Was that what was going to happen to Felix? Did he feel like he had no strength? Would he be able to power through? She wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him now, but she was desperate to find him.
If only there was a way that she could communicate with him now. Things would be so much easier. She missed phones and radios and normal methods of talking to other people. If she had anything like that, anything with service, she’d be able to reach him and tell him to just keep hanging on.
As they walked, she grew more and more tired. Her head still hurt. Orion had done quite a number on her.
Who was he, anyway?
Why had he gone after Felix so quickly?
“Tell me about Orion,” she said as they continued to walk. They were getting close to the caves and her orbs were starting to fade. She knew that Felix must be in this general area, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint where he was. Oh, blast it!
Her powers were letting her down, and she hated that. Her mother had taught her to always be strong. Tabitha felt like she was letting both Felix and Mom down in this moment, not to mention Maurice. He was basically her father-in-law, she knew, and he was probably going to think she was completely lame for not being able to save her own life mate.
“He worked for Ursula after me,” Maurice said.
“How do you know? Weren’t you a lion?”
“I was,” Maurice said.
“Wait a minute. Why didn’t you just change into your dragon form and run away?”
“So many questions,” he said.
“Don’t avoid them.”
“When Ursula turned me into a lion, she caught me off guard with her spell. I didn’t block it, defend myself, or shift. If I had, I would have been able to make it away from the castle. As it was, she condemned me to live in the body of a lion. I also couldn’t shift back, which was horrible. I could feel my dragon form clawing at my insides, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I also couldn’t go very far.”
“Because lions can’t run very fast?”
“Are you serious right now? Lions are one of the fastest big cats in existence.”
“You don’t seem very fast,” Tabitha pointed out. “After all, you did get a big ol’ thorn in your paw.”
Maurice looked like his head was going to explode from irritation, but Tabitha just chuckled. Teasing him was fun. She missed teasing her own dad. Getting to mess around with her father-in-law was almost as enjoyable.
“I’m fucking with you,” she said. “Look.” She pointed ahead to where the blue orbs were fading into oblivion. As they watched, the last orb faded. “I think they stopped around here somewhere.”
“They must be close,” Maurice said, looking around.
“Can you use your dragon senses to find them?”
“I don’t know what my son told you about dragons,” Maurice started to say, but then he saw Tabitha laughing and he paused. “You’re messing with me again.”
“You caught me,” she chuckled, waving her hand. “There are footprints going that way. Come on.”
Together, they quietly started following the footprints. It looked as though Orion had carried or dragged Felix this way. He was still weakened, Tabitha suspected. Whatever the problem with Ursula’s spell was, it was growing worse, and fast.
They heard a loud crash up ahead. Exchanging worried glances, they scurried ahead, but nothing was there. There were some broken branches and some dust and dirt floating in the air. Obviously, there had been some sort of disruption, but Felix was nowhere to be seen.
“I thought that was him, for a minute,” she said.
“I did, too.”
“It was him,” a deep voice said. Tabitha and Maurice spun around to face Orion. Instantly, Tabitha shot an orb out to hit him, but she was once again too slow. Orion held up a silver shield that reflected her spell back at her. The orb hit her at full force. Maurice leapt into the air. It looked like he was trying to shift into his dragon form. Instead, he fell back to the ground.
He cried out, obviously pained.
“I guess you haven’t figured out that your powers don’t return right away once you’re human again. I don’t know what the witch did to us, but it was nasty. Unfortunately for you, that means no more shifting, Grandpa. That’s a good thing for me, though, because you’re right where I want you.”
Maurice growled as he launched himself at Orion. Tabitha felt her world spinning and she closed her eyes, collapsing once more on the ground.
Pity.