She looked to where Keara and Thoren had stood, concentrating on their energy patterns, the only evidence she saw indicating their position. Then the patterns began to move into the front room. Lily’s hand slapped over her mouth as a satchel floated out from under the counter and books flew from the shelves into the bag.
Knowing her invisible friend dumped the books into the bag didn’t make it any less strange.
Her teeth bit into her finger and she tasted blood when the satchel disappeared. Apparently Keara had no hand across her face as she gasped loud enough to draw Lord Simon’s attention.
“Did you hear that?” he asked his men.
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t hear nothing, sir.”
He stared right where her friend must be, even though Lily could no longer see Keara’s energy pattern. The light in the main part of the shop was such she had a hard time seeing Thoren and Keara’s auras, but she thought they still stood right by where the satchel last sat. Good thing Simon hadn’t seen that disappear.
Lily bit back a laugh. She must be losing her mind. Maybe none of this happened. Maybe the whole day was a bad dream. People did not become invisible and bags did not disappear. For that matter, necklaces didn’t stay put around one’s neck until the giver died either. Most definitely, she was dreaming.
Closing her eyes, she buried her face into Enar’s chest. Except this didn’t feel like her pillow, nor did it smell like her pillow. She opened her eyes, noting nothing changed. She still stood in Keara’s shop in the strong arms of a giant who gave delectable kisses. Her body reacted to her surroundings with a pounding heart and trembling limbs, making it hard for her to deny her circumstances. Apparently she wasn’t crazy.
Although in these circumstances crazy would almost be preferable to magic-wielding giant men.
“Is everything in the bags on the horses?” Thoren’s voice whispered out of nowhere.
“Yes. Packed and ready to go.” Lily felt Enar’s voice rumbling against her ear.
She turned her head, facing where the voice sounded, relieved to see Thoren’s aura even if she couldn’t see his body. She saw his aura move, what looked like his hand flick toward the open back door. Lily blinked when the bags on the horses disappeared. Then Keara’s bag, the one sitting in the middle of the room, vanished. Shaking her head, Lily bit back a laugh. The events of the last few minutes had jaded her against disappearing bags. What would happen next? Men turning into dragons?
“Is there any way out of here besides the front or the back door?” Thoren’s disembodied voice whispered.
“There’re the sewers in the cellar.” Lily blinked at Jamie when he spoke. “Leads to the south river.”
How did a small boy know where the thieves hid? Just another thing to add to her list of unusual happenings. The previously non-existent list had grown enormous in the course of one afternoon.
“To the cellar then. Jamie, you’ll lead once we’re at the bottom.”
****
Once down the stairs and out of sight of the open trapdoor, Enar handed the invisibility ball back to Thoren, returning to his visible self. Blood Seeker hummed against his back, ready for a fight, while Lily clung to his arm. His woman shook through the entire encounter with the bastard who called himself a lord. The harder Lily shook, the harder Enar’s chest hurt. To stop the unusual, and heretofore never experienced, pain he had resorted to stroking Lily’s back, which lessened her tremors and in the process reduced the pain in his chest.
Enar cursed as he stubbed his toe against an unseen object while he followed Thoren through the damp darkness. What he would give to have perfect night vision like his friend. Sounds from the soldiers drifted down like pieces of dirt and he felt Lily’s hand tremble as she clutched his arm tighter.
That strange pain in his chest started up again and he rubbed his thumb against the smoothness of Lily’s hand to assuage it. Maybe one of the Draconi healer priestesses would know what was wrong with his chest.
At least he knew the antidote for his pain.
Enar squinted, barely seeing Jamie standing in front of a small iron door built into the stone wall. And what a stench wafted through the opening. Human excrement mixed with dead animal. Everyone caught a whiff of the rank smell and started coughing. Surely not through there. He thought the stench almost unbearable, but Thoren must be suffering with his heightened Draconi sense of smell.
What had he done to deserve this torture?
Not only would his nose hairs be singed off, his boots would be ruined tromping through all that muck.
Jamie ducked through the opening, standing in the smelly, rock-lined tube. “You’ll get used to it. Come on!”
Goddess’s teeth. The dragon was going in. Thoren ducked through the door, doubling over as he entered the sewer tunnel. Enar cursed, bending his legs in a poor attempt to mimic the waddle of a duck, his eyes streaming tears from the stench. “Warriors are not meant to crawl around sewers.”
“Nothing besides rats and small boys are designed for it, friend.” Thoren patted Enar’s shoulder.
Enar snorted. A small click echoed through the tunnel as Jamie pulled the iron door shut. Darkness settled, broken by the trickle of water under their feet and the thick scent of sewage in the air around them.
“Jamie, in front.” Thoren led, Enar bringing up the rear in his formidable duck walk.
Jamie splashed by the others to stand in front of Thoren. Thoren worked his magic, forming a blue flame that danced in his palm, illuminating the dank walls of the tunnel. The light held steady for a moment and then flickered, growing brighter before returning to its normal flame.
Since when did Thoren not manage a steady, burning flame?
Oh, he forgot
. Finding his mate and denying the find would do that to a Draconi male.
“Best keep it down, Draconi. I have no desire to burn in this tunnel.” Enar chuckled, wondering when his friend would realize Keara was his mate. Thoren’s rock-steady flame-in-the-palm routine didn’t work too well when the red-haired apothecary touched him.
And she seemed to touch Thoren a lot if the flickering flame was any indication.
Lily touched him a lot too, her palm sweaty in his. Once they got out of this odorous place he would lay claim to her. He smiled, imaging her lush red lips locked around his shaft, suckling, drawing him deeper as she swallowed him down. Imagined making her peak from his touch.
Concentrate on the task at hand, Enar.
He reached down, adjusting himself. Duck walking was difficult enough without a stiff shaft in the way.
He watched Lily’s pale hair glow in the dim light. She was the epitome of his race’s beauty, fair haired and fair skinned. Many Watchers had claimed blonde women, but none of those women possessed the pale skin his Lily did. His. He liked how it felt, knowing she belonged to him, knowing she depended upon him.
Instead of being ridiculed, he would be praised for his choice of a woman. He would protect Lily, not allowing anyone to harm her. Unlike how the other Watchers treated their claims. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed hard. Some things he couldn’t do no matter who laughed at him, no matter if his father never spoke another word to him.
“Almost there,” Jamie said, rousing him out of his mind and back into their situation.
“Goddess be praised,” Enar muttered. Torture time coming to an end.
The tunnel burst open into the side of the town’s wall, the sewage stream falling over the edge into the river below. Thoren closed his hand, extinguishing the flame, before standing next to the opening. Enar felt the pulse of his friend’s magic as Thoren reached out with his senses, feeling up along the wall and out across the ground, checking for the presence of humans.
“All clear. Enar, the bags are on the ridge where we first entered this valley. I’ll lead if you’ll guard the rear. They weren’t following us, but they might have figured out where we went,” Thoren said as he helped Keara step the few feet from the tunnel to the river.
Enar followed him, jumping calf deep into the river, soaking his boots. Ruined. If the excrement from the sewers didn’t do them in, the drenching in the river would. Served him right for being so vain about his clothing.
Enar turned, offering his hand to his woman, helping her the two feet she needed to step. Lily’s sweat-drenched hand grasped his tightly, refusing to let go. He stood a little taller knowing she must think him a capable leader.
Funny what respect from a woman, albeit a claimed one, could do to a male.
“Where are we going?” Lily touched his arm as they walked, a light touch, but one that nonetheless went straight to his groin.
What was it about Lily that made him feel like a randy bull in a pen full of heifers? Every touch, every movement, every look his way and he felt as if he’d been sucker punched in the chest. Since when did he feel this way about a woman?
Must be the claiming necklace. Yes, that was it. Somehow the magic in the necklace crept out and affected him.
“Enar?”
Had she asked a question?
Think with the head on your shoulders, Enar.
“As Thoren said, we’re camping in a clearing. We’ll stay there tonight and leave in the morning.”
“I meant, where are we going to go tomorrow? Where are you taking me?”
She didn’t really want to know the answer to that. “We will go to Draconia. To return Keara to her people.” There, no lies from him. Truth evasion, but no outright lies. Wasn’t he an outstanding reconnaissance specialist?
“Who are her people?”
“The Draconi.”
“The Draconi? The ones you were telling me about earlier who left their children behind?”
“They don’t all leave their children behind, only a few of the males.”
“Ah. So Keara is one of those Halflings you were talking about?”
“She is.”
“So you were sent here to find her?”
“No. The Council didn’t tell us about her. We were sent after a male Halfling.”
“Oh. So what’s so special about these Halflings that you have to return them to Draconia?”
“They possess magical powers. And the males have other abilities.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Male Draconi are shapeshifters.”
“Shapeshifters?” Mouth gaping, she stopped, froze right up like prey to a predator.
“Keep moving, woman. Yes, Thoren can change shapes.”
She lengthened her strides to catch him. “Into what?”
“A dragon.”
“A dragon?” she squeaked.
Enar raised a brow as he glanced down at Lily.
“Really? So he can turn into a dragon? Can you?”
He wished. Riding on Thoren in dragon form set his spirit free. To float above the clouds, wind racing through his hair, left him relaxed, calm. If only he had more moments like those.
“Of course not. Do I look like a dragon?”
“I have no idea what a dragon looks like. Thoren looks like a man.”
“Dragons are big creatures. But they normally stay in human form.”
She stared at Thoren for a couple of steps before turning back to Enar. “If you’re not Draconi, then what are you?”
“A Watcher.”
“A Watcher? What’s that?”
“Woman, you talk too much. Hush, now.”
Her glare felt like it pierced his skin. Her eyes narrowed, her nose shot upward and she strode forward to walk with Jamie.
Did he hurt her feelings? He needed to remedy that. Son of a goat. What was he thinking?
If anything happened to Lily, he’d pull a demented-dragon act and raze everything to the ground.
He clearly had a problem if his claim affected him this way. Maybe it meant he needed to join with her. Perhaps his crazed thoughts about her would disappear after he took her.
That had to be it. Because if taking her to his bedroll didn’t solve all those feelings pinging around inside his chest, he had a real problem.
Chapter 5
They arrived at the campsite as twilight approached. After a quick dinner using no fire, Thoren laid wards, the magic preventing anything non-magical from entering or leaving the campsite. Enar walked about the site with him, wishing, not for the first time, he had been born Draconi. What he wouldn’t give to be like Thoren, to use magic as effortlessly as most people breathed. Instead, he only possessed the weak magic of his mother.
Something he hid well, considering Watchers weren’t supposed to possess magical abilities.
Besides using a persuasive smile at Draconi females until they joined with him, he wasn’t sure what his middling magic could do.
No sense wondering over the unknown. If the Goddess wanted him to know, then he would. Until then...
His eye caught sight of Lily sitting on a downed tree trunk with Keara, holding her friend’s hand. His woman’s pink tongue licked over her lips as she watched him from hooded lids.
And just like that his shaft strained at his laces, wanting to be free.
Mighty inconvenient of Thoren to make him help lay wards when he could be spending time with his woman.
“I heard that thought.” Thoren waved his hand over another stone, turning the rock into a ward.
“What thought?”
“Uh-huh. Don’t play all innocent with me.”
“You know me better than that.”