Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (16 page)

Mordon laughed, tossing his head back, flashing the soft scales beneath his cheeks, using the sight of them as a tease. A small curl of flame escaped his tongue, making his face radiate red light. “My mate masters the wind. I have nothing to fear from it.”

My cheeks burned at the confidence and the lie he had thrust upon me. A few seconds of silence came between us, then Mordon nudged me with his nose before he decided to change. Beneath my hand, Mordon's scales shifted from hot rock to warm leather to the silky black sorcerer's shirt which matched mine.

He stood a head and a half over me, eyes glinting in the lantern light as he flashed me a quick smile. Without pausing to sort out the shirt which had come half untucked from his belt, Mordon gave a graceful bow.

“Happy moonshine to you folks. I regret you gave me a bit of a startle, you will have to accept my apology for my aggressive response to your initial contact,” Mordon said in the deep and rich tones which had always brought a faint smile to my lips. “Might I have the privilege of knowing to whom I am addressing?”

The other drake had shifted as soon as he saw Mordon do it, but the stocky man before us nevertheless grasped the hilt of a sword. “I will provide no such honor until an account of the your presence is provided.”

Mordon said, “I accompany Feraline Swift on her summons.”

The man said, “You lie. It is impossible.”

Mordon's fingers dug into my shoulder. “Why is it impossible?”

“She's scint. A cheap informant could have told you that.”

I recognized the voice now, though the woods had been disguising it from me. I turned so the other man could see my face.

The man grunted. “A passable likeness, but a wasted effort.”

“Lyall said everyone in the Wildwoods knew about my recent adventures. Aren't I expected?” I asked.

The man before me bore 'a passable likeness' to my father, but was different, too. If Father had gone Paul Bunyan on me, this would be what my father would look like: powerful, shortish, and commanding. His beard was sandy brown, down to his chest and bushy. Violence was in his eyes, and for the first time since I was an errant adolescent, I felt a twinge of fear in facing him.

“No,” Father said.

He might as well have proclaimed me guilty, the way that one word rippled through the woods and froze my heart.

“You don't recognize me?” I asked, disbelieving his bluff. We'd gone on so many jobs together, been parted and separated, had practice with confirming identity. To this question, Father was supposed to respond with 'perhaps'.

He said, “Fera is scint. You are not.”

I wasn't expecting to feel hurt, nor was I expecting to find myself out of Mordon's arms and marching towards Father in a cloud of fury. All the things I could have said to convince him were clean out of my head, none of it mattered in the light of a new fact.

“You never thought I'd do it.”

“Fera,” Mordon warned, grabbed my wrist and held it hard. I broke his hold, shooting him a look so venomous that he held up his hands in surrender.

My father remained impassive, but the battalion outside was scrambling into position.

“You never thought I'd break the gryphon's curse, you thought it was impossible, so what, were you humoring me with all the witch doctors and shamans and hare-brained schemes? Did you think I was so weak and pathetic that I couldn't take the truth?”

I got no response, none, not a bat of an eye or a twitch of a muscle. Father just stood there, as if bored of me, not caring about all the trouble I'd gone through to get here. Lake Alarum, the husks, even the damned portal, all of it had led to this. Tears I refused to shed built up in my eyes.

“Great, fine,” I said, not believing any of this, hoping it was a test. Yet when I looked at my Father, I knew that he had never, ever believed that I'd get my magic back. Maybe he had at first, but not towards the end. Probably at about the time he was encouraging me to explore other options. I wondered what they'd said about me behind my back while they were all here together, the whole family unit: Father, Mother, brother, just me left on the outside.

Anger made me spit out, “Forget it.” I rounded on Mordon. “Snap up a portal, I'll hold the others off. I'm ready to go home.”

Mordon looked uncertain, blinking at me dumbly. “What?”

“You heard, get me out of here before I punch him or something.”

Mordon hesitated. I stared expectantly. He crossed his arms and stood still, mirroring my posture. “No.”

“No?”

“You are running from pain. I know that you think it's important to succeed, so, no. I won't make a portal, and I don't think you can make one and maintain the circle simultaneously, so you'll have to abide by my decision.”

I clenched my fist. He saw it and didn't appear concerned at the chance I might use it. The times we'd goofed around, he'd proven why he'd been victorious in wrestling matches and scuffles. I swallowed the urge to start a fistfight now.

“Fine.”

“Fine?” he asked, skeptical for a good reason.

I pulled the protective circle in tight, closing it so much that it nudged my father closer to us and sent the battalion racing for the new boundary. At Mordon's raised brow, I said simply, “It doesn't need to be so large anymore. No more dragon forms.”

“I'm right, Fera. You know I am.”

“I know you think you are,” I said.

“You'll have to listen to me.”

I scowled. He won this too easily. I returned my attention to my father.

“I brought the summons with me, judge it for yourself.” I fished the letter out of my pocket, very creased and stained with sweat and the blue dye from my jeans. I opened it up fold by fold. Father took it calmly but cautiously. I tried to read his expression. He gave away nothing.

He was still examining it when the protective circle faded into nothing and was replaced by a ring of battalion members awaiting orders. Father lifted a finger. One person came forward to take the letter, then returned to the rest of the battalion. They held position, one by one passing the letter around.

“It's all thirteen of us Hunters,” said a man who resembled Father. Uncle Leazar, my brother's namesake, looked a giant amongst feys. He was the heaviest of the party, with a square face and short hair. Uncle Don was the tallest and slimmest of the brothers, looking like a weightlifter whenever he didn't wear his rectangular black glasses. The letter dwarfed in his palm before he passed it off to the others, the letter making its way around the ring of anxious watchmen.

One of the women in the group said, “I didn't sign this.”

“But it is your signature,” Uncle Don said. “It's authentic.”

“It isn't forgery?” asked Uncle Leazar.

“Do you smell the ilderwiesse flowers from the Great Oak? It was sent by the Wildwoods herself,” someone said. “I saw it happen once before, when I was a boy, and had heard of it happening once before that.”

“Why?”

“Calling her home,” Father said. “We could hardly do the honors without knowing of her situation.” He didn't sound happy, particularly when I offered no explanation. “The woods looks after her own even when they don't take care of themselves.”

I said,
“
If you have something in particular to ask me, ask me it in private. It's been rough going getting here, and I'm pretty upset Lyall didn't mention us to you.”

“Who?”

“Lyall Limber.” At their blank expressions, I described him. “About so high, kind of pointy ears, homemade clothes, likes his long-stemmed pipe, says he's a patrolman and Vanguard, goes around with a bag full of bird food.”

“Sounds like an interesting fellow. Never met him.”

A chorus of agreement followed this.

“I have.”

We all looked at Uncle Don, who was staring off into the woods as if searching for someone. “Linley's grandfather. He went on patrol on day and never came back.”

There was a soft change in the party as they became intrigued.

“But he couldn't be out there, could he?”

“Who is to say?”

“You don't believe this?”

“It is rather strange,” one of them said. “I have never met this young woman before, so I cannot say if she is or is not who she says she is. Magnus, this is your call.”

Father's face had turned red, a noticeable shade darker than it had been earlier. “Why didn't you write and tell me?”

My own cheeks burned with reciprocal anger. Had he paid so little attention the he could not remember? I said, “To start with, I never could burn letters properly, and that hasn't improved since my revival. Then, because I spent all of my time asleep or running ragged on Merlyn's Market Council business. Next thing I know, I have that summons, so I came.”

Father didn't look happy with the answer, but he didn't argue. He nodded at Mordon. “Who is this with you?”

“He owned the antiquities shop I broke into with that key you gave me last Christmas or whenever it was, and I talked him into being my guardian. It seemed like a brilliant idea before I realized you were a drake, too.”

“And now that you know?”

It surprised me that he'd ask. Wasn't it obvious?

“Now I'm with him.”

The meaning suspended between my father and me, and then the appropriate time for congratulations passed. Then the time for a disappointed comment passed.

“We can fight later,” I said, my cheeks aflame. “Am I your daughter or do you want to see how wicked I've become since I stopped hunting with you?”

“It is you.” Father's lips pursed together. “Isn't it?”

It was as if he didn't know how to feel—I did understand his confusion given the series of emotional bombs I'd already dropped on him, but that didn't mean that I liked his aloof behavior. I turned my back on him so I wouldn't have to see him any longer.

“Then come.” A woman opened her arms, and the people surrounding her faded into trees with high limbs and bark with the remnant of eyes and a mouth. One blink later, and the woman was motioning to a mulched path lined with luminescent lanterns.

I darted my eyes to Mordon. He cocked an eyebrow at me and shrugged, then offered his elbow. “Shall we, love?”

A little too gratefully, I threaded my hand through his arm and tried not to cling to him. I had to appear confident, but at the same time, I needed to make absolute certain that people, namely my parents, saw that I chose to have Mordon by my side. Many drakes outside of the colony preferred to bridenap their mates, and that would be a foremost concern for those who saw my fey heritage. My mother had been raised with the sense that even arranged marriages were an evil against the natural order of life. Yet she'd been more than happy to set me up on blind dates with suitable young men.

We followed the woman down the path. She did not introduce herself, nor did she allow me to get a very good look at her features. I saw that in the dark, her hair gleamed with each wave of moonlight as the leaves rustled back and forth; I imagined it was a shade of brown, and it fell down to her waist, hiding and peeking out from the billows of her dress as she led the way.

She stopped in front of a weeping willow tree, very similar to the ones that had been a favorite of Railey's, and pulled aside a curtain of branches thick with flowers like cotton on toothpicks. Inside was a blue lantern, burning low, but bright enough to cast light on a bed of clover. Climbing the tree trunk was a vine hosting a series of leaves cupping water for us.

“You may rest here,” the woman said.

I started in, but stopped when my father approached. The woman frowned and opened her mouth. Father cut her off.

“I will speak to my daughter in private. Wait out here, fire drake.”

Mordon chuckled, his eyes creased with a barely-contained smile as he bobbed his head for me to go ahead without him. I had almost hoped that he would object and employ some of his possessive qualities in this matter, but it seemed he thought I needed to talk to Father by myself. Sighing, I followed the bulk of my parent inside the willow room.