Phantom Fae (21 page)

When she landed on the ledge in front of the mouth of the black cave, he landed right next to her. She peered around at the ledge looking for fae dust. He kept an eye on the female dragon, her head up, watching them, her body curled around her eggs. One had a distinctive crack.
So
not good.

Her tail was perfectly still, her eyes narrowed a little, her mouth shut tight. She didn't look happy at all to see them. Not that he blamed her in the least.

He didn't know what made him do it, maybe the fact he wanted to reassure her as he would have if he'd been human and tried to reassure a nervous dog. "We're here to help you. We've been asked to find your dragonling. Your egg." Of course, his voice came out as a dragon roar. He had forgotten that part.

Ena growled at him, her own eyes narrowed. She was pissed.

Hey, he was only doing what he would have done if the momma dragon had been a dog. Didn't Ena tell him to do that?

The dragon visibly relaxed, roared a thank you, and that was it.

Ena stared at the dragon in shock, then turned to Brett. He gave a little dragon shoulder shrug. She pointed to the ground where a fae dust trail had been left behind. It looked suspiciously like Zane's.

Then she bowed her head a little to the dragon. The dragon didn't seem to know what Ena was trying to say.

At the risk of earning Ena's further wrath, Brett said, "We are off to find your baby. We'll return as soon as we do."

The dragon smiled!

Ena's dragon jaw dropped.

He told her he was good with animals. He just hadn't realized that would include dragons.

She motioned with her head to leave, and he followed her off the ledge, where they flew off to the phantom fae kingdom. That night, she motioned to an area where several keeps were situated a mile or so apart. Was that where the dragon shifters lived? He so wished he could see if he was related to some of them, but he had to find the dragonling quickly. If one egg was about to hatch, wouldn't the others? What if he and Ena became its parents?

What a mess. Though he could see Ena's staff welcoming the new baby into the fold as if he or she was their baby to care for and protect.

Ena motioned for them to stop and rest in a clearing in a grove of piney woods and shifted.

"Did you see that one of the eggs was cracked? How long before the baby comes out all the way? And the others soon follow?" Brett asked.

"Hours, a day or maybe more. Hopefully more. This is going to be a disaster if we don't get the baby home before that happens. What did you say to the dragon?"

"We were getting her baby back for her."

Ena just stared at him, not speaking, as if she truly couldn't believe he could do that.

"All right," she said, skeptically. "And she said?"

"Thank you."

"You can't know that."

Brett let out his breath. "I don't know how I can, but yes, that's what she said. I thought the words I spoke and then said them, only I expected my words to come out more human like."

"Fae like," she corrected him. "Get…it…right."

"Right. Fae like. Only all I did was roar."

"You got that right. Maybe she didn't truly understand you."

"Don't you?"

"No. You don't make any sense. You speak in some ancient dragon language."

"Maybe the original real dragon's language?"

"How can you know real dragon?" Ena shook her head. "You understood Freya when she was a raven, too."

"Yeah, I thought it was because she was only a cursed fae."

"But these dragons aren't fae."

"But I'm part dragon."

"Ohmigoddess, Brett, if you can do that, it's amazing."

"Thank you. About the fae dust, it looked like Zane's, I thought. Though I'm not really trained in tracking fae dust, so I could be wrong."

"It is his. But do we go to No Man's Land and force him to tell us where he hid the dragon, or do we find it on our own?"

"I doubt he'll want to give it up unless I give him his freedom. I think that would be a dangerous thing to do. Let's attempt to find the egg before it hatches. Maracose should know where the mage apprentice lived, if not at the castle. Or otherwise, where he might have been able to keep a dragon's egg."

"Agreed. It'll take us another three or so hours to reach the castle."

"I'm good."

"Okay, let's pray that we find the egg and can return it before it's too late. If the dragon imprints with us or someone else, the mother won't take her back and the village will be at further risk, I’m afraid." Ena shifted and flew off.

Brett joined her and if it wasn't for the situation they were in, he would have loved just flying like this with her, the stars so bright in the black night sky, the moon shining like a beacon nearby.

When they finally saw the towers in the distance, he felt relief, but he was dog-tired. Without rest, no way could they fly all the way back to the dragon caves if they found the baby right away.

They saw movement on the wall walk as guards noticed the dragons flying down to the castle. He hoped they didn't think they were coming at this late hour to cause trouble.

They landed on the wall walk, shifted, and greeted the guards.

"We've come on an urgent errand," Ena said. "Does Zane live here at the castle? Or does he have another home somewhere else?"

"In the hills of Chevron. It's a quarter mile from here," the archer, Hammer, said. "That direction. It's a small keep. Maracose said he'd take possession of it tomorrow. But for now, he's been busy preparing his new rules for the kingdom."

"Thank you. We'll have to check it out." Ena shifted back into her dragon form.

"Did you need our help?" Hammer asked, sounding a bit contrite.

"If we do, we'll let you know." Brett didn't want anyone else to get involved in this.

"I'm sorry about…about what happened," the old archer said. "I saw you release the horses from the burning wagons, and for that, I didn't try to shoot you. I didn't have any idea you were the golden dragon." He glanced at Ena. "I aimed at you. But seeing's how you aided us in getting rid of the queen, I have to apologize to you also."

"At the time, you thought you were doing the right thing. No hard feelings. We've got to go." Brett didn't blame the archer. If Brett had been him and had the job to do, he would have done the same thing. Brett sure didn't want anyone to know why he had gotten shot either. Not anyone other than Alton and Ena who had been there at the time.

Brett hadn't wanted them to think he was clueless about getting in the way of a couple of deadly bolts meant for Ena. He wondered if he could have an archer practice shooting bolts, and then he would catch them in mid-air. He thought it could come in handy sometime. Maybe. But only if he didn't get shot again.

He and Ena flew to the site where Zane's castle was supposed to be and found a vacant meadow. Zane's fae dust ended right here, as if it was a gateway into the castle grounds. They set down on the ground and shifted.

Ena walked around the meadow. "There's nothing here. Would it be underground?"

"It's here. Right here." Brett looked around for any evidence that Zane had wandered about the area, but he hadn't. "I think he's hidden it, cloaked it from view like a Klingon Bird-of-Prey."

"A what?"

"Klingons in
Star Trek
. Sorry, you wouldn't understand." Brett had seen something about this in a mage textbook about hiding inanimate objects that were still at this same location. He had the brilliant idea that if he could do something like this, he could hide Ena's treasure in the dungeon. It would still be there, but invisible and make it appear as though the dungeon was empty. If he could undo the spell Zane had cast on Freya, Brett was certain he could uncloak Zane's castle.

"What are we going to do now if it's…cloaked?"

Brett reached out and touched what he envisioned to be the wall to the keep and wished to feel the mossy stone texture beneath his hands. Suddenly, the walls were there and a small stone tower standing inside the walls rose another thirty feet.

"Omigodess, you did it." Ena looked in awe of him.

"Yeah, but would he have set a trap?"

"No one would know it was here."

"Let me go first, just in case."

"You really think he set a trap?"

"He might have. It just depends how paranoid he is." What were the odds that another mage could uncloak Zane's castle in the first place?

It appeared there were no guards. Brett flew above the locked gate and into the inner courtyard. No one came out and fired bolts at him, so he took that as a good sign. The place appeared devoid of any fae. He dropped down in front of the massive oak door and shifted. Then he reached for the doorknob, and he saw Ena's spread-winged shadow as she hovered over him and settled next to him.

She considered the massive oak door, a mage's staff crowned with an eagle carved into the wood. "I didn't see anyone in the gardens out back where it looked like he had herbs and such for potions."

"I don't hear any movement inside." He opened the door and walked inside, Ena quickly joining him. "If he had any servants, they might have left when they learned what I had done to their boss.'

Oil paintings of landscapes of lakes and forests of the local area framed in gold hung on the stone walls. Furniture was also rich gold brocade. It looked as though the queen paid her mage apprentice well.

The castle seemed to be vacant. "Maybe Zane just paid for help to come, clean, do whatever work he needed done, then leave."

"Could be," Ena said. "I'll check the top floor and work my way down. You can check the main floor and work your way up."

"All right." He kind of wanted to stick with Ena. This scenario reminded him of a horror story where everyone divided up and went off looking in different areas. But he suspected Zane was confident no one would ever have gotten into his castle when it was cloaked.

Brett considered a horrible thought—what if the egg was here, the dragonling hatched, and no one had ever been aware of it? The baby dragon would have perished with no one to care for it.

Brett and Ena quickly began exploring every room in the castle. No sign of an egg or dragon baby anywhere.

He met up with Ena on the second floor of the five-floor keep.

"What about a dungeon? Did you locate one?" Ena asked, as they headed back down to the Great Hall.

Tapestries hung on the walls picturing mages casting spells—from a mage turning a woman into a swan—which reminded Brett of Zane turning Freya into a raven—and a mage creating a wall of fire. Were these Zane's ancestors depicted in the wall hangings?

"It's worth a try. Back that way was a cellar. But it only had ale and stored food." Brett found another door and opened it. It was dark. Stone stairs descended into the abyss. Thankfully, Brett had learned the fae way to make light.

Ena created her own to chase away more of the darkness.

In one of the unlocked cells, they found a speckled blue egg—dragon size, resting in a nest of fresh straw. A hairline crack splintered the top of the eggshell, which made Brett's heart accelerate.

"It matches the others in the dragon's nest. Let's get it out of here now," he said in a rush. They heard the sounds of several footfalls in the keep and that didn't bode well, Brett didn't believe. "A welcoming party. I doubt it's good news."

"So what do we do now?"

He smiled. "We leave."

"We can't fae transport from the dungeon. The walls are made of iron ore. The same as the keep walls."

"You know how the castle was invisible and I made it visible? I can make us and the egg disappear. Just stick close to me. Feel my heat. Neither of us leave a fae dust trail and as long as we don't physically bump into anyone, we should be good. Once we're outside the keep, we can transport. Are you ready?" Brett lifted the egg that was incredibly heavy for being an egg—maybe twenty pounds.

And then together they became invisible.

Chapter 19

Ena had to trust Brett could get them out of Zane's castle without detection because she certainly didn't have any other viable plan. They hoped to get to the first floor before anyone headed down the narrow stairs and bumped into them. Brett carried the egg as they hurried up the stairs. Thank the goddess, they reached the first floor just as three guards stalked toward the dungeon and missed them by inches. The guards passed them by and rushed down the stairs.

"They're not down here!" a man called out a few seconds later from down below.

What was going on? Had Hammer, or one of the other archers on the wall walk, set them up? Maybe thinking Zane had something valuable and it should belong to the phantom fae?

As soon as Brett saw the entryway, Ena went first to open the door. They hoped her action wouldn't catch anyone's attention. But at the moment, no one was in view.

The door swung open and Brett and Ena hurried outside as she grabbed onto his tunic again.

"Let's go," Brett said.

Ena was never so grateful when they left the mage's keep undetected. "Can you continue to hold onto the egg?"
They were no longer invisible to each other as they fae transported.

"How long will it take us to transport there?"

"About three hours."

"That long?" Brett sounded worried.

"What's wrong? We evaded the men at Zane's keep. They can't follow our trail dust because neither of us leave one."

"I hear and feel the dragonling pecking at the shell from inside."

Ena fought feeling panicked. "Let's hurry,"

"You're a dragon shifter. Aren't you interested in bonding with the dragonling?"

"Are you kidding? Can you imagine housebreaking it?" And more than that. Caring for it until it was old enough to fend for itself.

"Oh, yeah, I envision what a problem that would be. I had to help housebreak a Labrador retriever puppy. I can't imagine how hard it would be to teach that to a baby dragon.

Halfway to the dragon caves, a loud cracking sound came from the dragon's shell nearly making Brett drop the egg. "It's hatching! I'm afraid I'll be holding onto the shell and the baby will fall. We better land."